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Mobile operator Lebara, which harnesses a mobile virtual network operator (mvno) platform from Vodafone UK, has today rejected the rising culture of mid-contract price hikes among their rivals (e.g. O2, EE, Three UK, Sky Mobile etc.) that they say are “penalising people for staying loyal” and committed to “never raise prices mid-contract“.

Lebara, which typically offers customers a mix of mobile plans on 30 day and 12-month minimum terms, has long made a point of promoting their packages alongside a commitment of “no yearly price increases like the Big Mobile Networks“. But lately we have seen some other mobile and broadband ISPs do U-turns on similar positions, so it’s always welcome when a provider renews such commitments for the New Year.

Mayur Jauhari, Commercial Director at Lebara Mobile UK, told ISPreview: “Sky Mobile joins O2 in increasing prices mid-contract for their millions of existing customers. Price hikes like this have become all too common across major networks, penalising people for staying loyal. At Lebara, we believe in fairness and transparency, which is why we never raise prices mid-contract. The price you agree to is the price you pay – no surprises, no hidden hikes. We remain committed to keeping things simple and affordable for our customers.”

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The UK telecoms and broadband giant, BT Group, has today continued to reduce their international operations by announcing the complete sale of US government contracting subsidiary, BT Federal Inc., to 22nd Century Technologies, Inc. (TSCTI) – a public-sector IT systems integrator – for an undisclosed sum.

The transaction will expand TSCTI’s managed network services capabilities, including coverage across all 50 states of the USA, with BT Federal’s telecommunications and networking expertise. But for BT, this move marks yet another milestone on their road to pursuing a more UK-focused strategy (i.e. exiting many of their international / global businesses).

The telecoms giant said it would also allow BT International, now a standalone unit, to build on its position in the market as it serves the needs of multinational customers and aims to become a global leader in secure multi-cloud connectivity. “BT International will continue to have a strong presence in the US with regional offices and employees based in New York, Dallas and Reston,” said the announcement.

Bas Burger, CEO of BT International, said:

“Today’s announcement is another milestone in delivering on our strategy to focus our international business on what it does best: providing secure multi-cloud connectivity to large organisations globally. Our BT Federal unit, which has been a leading provider of services to US federal agencies, will enter a new era with 22nd Century Technologies. We are confident that 22nd Century Technologies will continue to build on the excellence and commitment of BT Federal to the US government sector.”

Satvinder Singh, President of 22nd Century Technologies, said:

“This acquisition is a growth catalyst for us, our customers, and the agencies we have yet to serve. The expansion of solutions and reach allows us to bring more innovation and reliability to a wider set of federal missions that depend on secure, high-performance network infrastructure.”

Both organisations said they were “committed to ensuring a seamless transition for employees, customers and partners, with no immediate changes to ongoing operations“. The transaction was cleared by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

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Internet retail giant Amazon has announced that owners of their Fire TV line of broadband streaming sticks and internet-connected televisions will in the near future receive a major software (firmware) update, which will deliver a new and faster User Interface (UI), as well as a “transformed” Fire TV mobile app. But UK users will have a longer wait.

The “redesigned user interface” is said to be “cleaner, faster, and better organized“. For example, in some cases, Amazon are claiming to see up to 20–30% gains in speed when using the new UI after their development team rebuilt the underlying code.

The new UI also makes it easier to search for content across all your subscriptions (e.g. you’ll see titles from all the apps you use) and, on top of that, they’ve given it a more modern design with improved layouts, rounded corners, redesigned colour gradients, updated typography, and more optimized spacing.

Amazon has also increased the number of apps you can pin to your home screen from 6 to 20, and you can now press the ‘Menu’ button on your remote to quickly get to Games, Art & Photos, and the Ambient Experience. And with Amazon Photos on Fire TV, you can connect your personal photos so they show up on the biggest screen in your home.

“We’ve also added a shortcut panel you can access by long-pressing the Home button on your remote. It gives you quick access to the most-used controls on Fire TV, including audio and display settings, your connected Ring cameras, and smart home device management,” said the announcement.

Finally, the redesigned Fire TV App adds the ability to browse content, manage your watchlist, and play titles on your TV — all while adopting the same look and feel as the new Fire TV design. You can also use your phone as a second screen to discover what to watch next or add a friend’s show recommendation to your watchlist when you’re away from home.

All of these improvements will be made available to existing customers via a free software update. The new Fire TV UI and mobile app will launch starting in February 2026 on the Fire TV Stick 4K Plus, Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Gen), and Fire TV Omni Mini-LED Series in the USA, while people in the UK and those with other / older Fire TV devices will need to wait until “later this spring” (older devices include Fire TV 4K streaming media players and TVs like the Fire TV 2-Series, Fire TV 4-Series, Fire TV Omni QLED Series; TVs made by partners like Hisense, Insignia, Panasonic, and TCL).

Sadly, there’s no mention of Fire TV’s streaming sticks receiving support for the UK’s broadband-based Freely TV streaming service, although it’s already on some of their newer 2024+ TV sets – here.

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Some readers might recall that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned an advert on mobile and broadband ISP Vodafone’s website in April 2025 after EE complained about the operator describing itself as “The Nation’s Network” (here), which was ultimately deemed to be a misleading claim. The ASA has now banned another six ads for doing the same sort of thing.

The six adverts reflected a mix of TV and YouTube promotions, as well as posters, Meta website banners and other ads seen between February 2025 and July 2025. All made general references to Vodafone being “The Nation’s Network“, albeit without fully explaining what that really meant, and often accompanying it with small text like: “Supporting the nation since 1984“.

As before, EE (BT), who believed the claim “The Nation’s Network” was an implied comparative superiority claim, challenged whether the ads were misleading due to the lack of clear substantiation. But Vodafone disagreed and instead said that the term merely reflected a “corporate positioning statement or strap line that was not capable of objective substantiation“.

Vodafone added that it was intended as a “brand platform that reflected Vodafone’s legacy, cultural sponsorships and emphasised their role and reach” and they pointed to how the ASA’s prior ruling, in April 2025, had deemed one of their TV ads (a Christmas 2024 ad), which used the same claim, to be acceptable. The provider said they “understood that the April 2025 Ruling permitted the use of “The Nation’s Network” when it was clearly conceptualised as a heritage-based message“.

The ASA disagreed and found that the ads did not include a clear contextual basis for the claim.

ASA Ruling Ref: A25-1300811 Vodafone Ltd

In the absence of a clear explanation for the basis of the claim in the ads, we considered that there were several possible consumer interpretations for it. For example, we considered that some consumers might understand that Vodafone were expressing their subjective view that they were “the Nation’s Network” because they were a UK-based network, which provided services to the UK since 1984. However, we considered at least a significant minority of consumers were likely to interpret the claim as being an objective comparative claim against the UK’s other network providers. For example, we noted the ads did not state Vodafone was “one of the nation’s networks”, or “a network serving the nation”, which would be unlikely to be considered as comparative, depending on the context in which they appeared.

One such interpretation, that we considered that a significant minority of consumers were likely to hold, was that Vodafone was more popular than, or had more customers than, other networks that also provided telecoms services to UK consumers. We considered that the scenarios presented in ads (a) and (b), of groups of people enjoying leisure activities, added to that impression.

We also considered that some consumers were likely to view the claim, particularly in the context of the ads which referred to “99% population coverage”, “the nation’s most valuable UK telecoms provider” and “London’s Best Network”, to mean that Vodafone was the nation’s network because it was more reliable or offered better connectivity or coverage than other network providers.

The CAP and BCAP Codes required that comparisons with identifiable competitors must objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative features of those products. As such, we expected the ad to objectively compare one or more verifiable feature. Because we considered that was likely to be understood by consumers in a range of ways (including as a comparison against all other UK networks, for example that Vodafone was the most popular network in the UK or had the most customers), we considered the ads failed to objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature and concluded that the claim “The Nation’s Network”, as it appeared in the ads, breached the Code.

Ad (a) breached BCAP Code rule 3.36 (Comparisons with identifiable competitors).

Ads (b), (c), (d) and (f) breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.34 (Comparisons with identifiable competitors).

Ad (e) breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.35 (Comparisons with identifiable competitors) [rule as worded pre-7 April 2025].

As before, the ASA banned the adverts in their current form and warned Vodafone to ensure that, in future, they “objectively compared one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature[s] if making an implied comparative claim in future“. Judgements like this show that there can be a very fine line between what is and is not deemed acceptable under the rules.

As we always say, it’s usually best for providers to avoid making any generalised claims like this as they’re often hard or even impossible to truly substantiate in such a diverse, complex and competitive market.

On the flip side, the ASA’s ruling arrives far too late to really have much impact, since the related ad campaigns have long since run their course. Vodafone is now more focused on pushing the benefits of their merger with Three UK.

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A new survey of 1,469 adults, which was conducted by the child protection focused Lucy Faithfull Foundation, has “warned” that 45% of adults who don’t want to verify their identities to access porn – a requirement of the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) – have turned to using sites without age checks. In addition, 29% have used Virtual Private Networks to bypass age checks on sites that have them.

The foundation expresses concern about this because those adults turning to riskier sites are said to be more likely to see child abuse images, although they didn’t provide enough solid data to substantiate that the sites being visited by such respondents actually fall into that category. Lest we forget that opinion surveys like this, with small sample sizes, are also notoriously unreliable.

Sky News reports that the foundation, which has the noble aim of working to stop people viewing child abuse images, also commissioned another survey of 3,724 adults in November 2025. This study revealed how 39% of the people who had visited “unregulated porn sites” had reported seeing content that made them uncomfortable (sadly, no details were included to better define this), and 40% had been put off visiting the same site again.

However, it’s important to remind readers that it is NOT illegal for UK adults to view pornography, but under the OSA it can become illegal if it involves children, non-consensual acts, bestiality, or extreme content like realistic depictions of serious violence (e.g. strangulation). The Age Verification requirements are largely designed to help prevent children accessing such content, although it also creates problems for adults (more on that later).

Kerry Smith, CEO of the Foundation, said:

“It’s highly concerning that age verification measures are not being implemented on certain platforms. Safeguards on pornography sites are essential to protect children from accessing pornography, which we know, if viewed at a young age, can normalise harmful sexual behaviours and leave children more vulnerable to grooming from predators.

There needs to be strong enforcement of the OSA to ensure robust and meaningful safety measures are put in place on pornography platforms, including the use of deterrence messaging and signposting for adults to appropriate support services.

We would also encourage the government to bring in even more robust legislation, so online pornography is treated just as it is in the offline world.”

An Ofcom spokesperson said:

“Change is happening, and the tide on online safety is beginning to turn for the better. Last year saw important changes for people, with new measures across many sites and apps now better protecting UK users from harmful content, particularly children. But we need to see much more from tech companies this year, and we’ll use our full powers if they fall short.”

Overall, it’s hardly surprising or controversial that many adults do not want to have to share their private personal or financial details with unknown and unregulated third-party age verification providers, particularly when those services are associated with porn peddlers. The infamous Ashley Madison hack showed just how dangerous such information could be in the wrong hands (countless cases of blackmail and suicide etc.).

In response, many adults have indeed been adopting VPN services and other methods in order to avoid age verification (e.g. using them to change the geographic location of their active IP address and mask the real connection), which works because a lot of sites will have different access rules to respect the different laws of different countries via the same website domain.

Several government MPs have even called for the nuclear option of banning VPNs to stop circumvention of the rules (here), which could potentially have far-reaching consequences as VPNs are also legitimate tools for businesses, journalists and to help protect people when abroad or on public networks etc. But officially, the government says there are “no current plans to ban the use of VPNs“, although plans can and often do change.

As for non-compliant porn sites, Ofcom does have the power to impose significant financial fines, although there remains a question mark as to how much impact this will have on non-UK based sites. The regulator could also ask broadband ISPs and mobile operators to block the sites at network-level, although this would have little impact on VPN users.

Once again, it is not illegal for adults to watch porn. The regulator’s CEO, Dame Melanie Dawes, recently revealed (here) that, “following the 25th July deadline we saw a spike in [VPN] use – with UK daily active users of VPN apps temporarily doubling to around 1.5 million. However, usage has since plateaued, and has now fallen back to around 1 million by the end of September“.

Ofcom previously said that the key question they will be monitoring (though they admit “it is hard to measure“) is whether VPN use is rising among children. Data from Internet Matters, collected before July 2025, suggests that around one in ten under-18s used VPNs, with use skewing towards older teenagers. No surprise there – this is the group likely to feel most aggrieved by the new approach, since there are few things more annoying than being 15-18 years old and treated like you’re 5.

At present, both of the largest political parts remain fully supportive of the OSA, thus there’s currently little in the way of effective opposition to any future mission creep in this area. Please note that we won’t be able to approve any comments on this news article that appear to directly promote specific VPN services, due to the risk that this could clash with the government’s recent warnings about such promotions (here).

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News

The funds aim to “spark a step change in public sector cyber defences”, as well as “holding organisations to account for fixing vulnerabilities”

Today, the UK government has unveiled a new cybersecurity plan, introducing new measures aimed at making government departments and public services more secure.

The Government Cyber Action Plan, created by the Government Cyber Unit (GCU) and backed by £210 million, aims to achieve clearer visibility of cybersecurity risks across government units, more centralised and coordinated decision-making to meet those risks, and a faster response to emerging threats.

It will also increase and define new cyber resilience standards for commercial companies providing support for critical services such as health, energy or utilities.

“Cyber-attacks can take vital public services offline in minutes – disrupting our digital services and our very way of life. This plan sets a new bar to bolster the defences of our public sector, putting cyber-criminals on warning that we are going further and faster to protect the UK’s businesses and public services alike,” said Digital Government Minister Ian Murray. “This is how we keep people safe, services running, and build a government the public can trust in the digital age.”

The GCU itself was formally formed under the Labour government in July 2024, based out of the Government Cyber Coordination Centre that itself was formed two years earlier. It forms a central pillar of the Government Cyber Security Strategy 2022–2030, which emphasises the need for more a more unified cybersecurity approach (i.e., ‘Defend as One’) across government departments.

Initially operated by the Cabinet Office, operation of the GCU was transferred to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) in June 2025.

In tandem with this new plan, the government is also introducing a new Software Security Ambassador Scheme, which aims to promote cybersecurity best practices across the software market. This is one by the championing of the Software Security Code of Practice, a voluntary set of cybersecurity measures developed in collaboration by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and industry experts.

Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Sage, Santander, and NCC Group are among those joining the scheme as ambassadors.

The announcement notably coincides with the second reading of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill in Parliament, legislation that would replace the aging NIS Regulations and give the government greater powers to regulate organisation in its digital supply chain.

All of these measures combined cannot come soon enough. The cybersecurity threat landscape is growing and evolving at an alarming rate, with public sector organisations increasingly in the firing line. According to the NCSC, between September 2024 and August 2025 the UK saw 204 ‘nationally significant’ cybersecurity incidents, up from 89 the previous year. Category 2 incidents, defined as those with serious impact on central government, essential services, or large portions of the population, rose by 50% year-on-year.

The public sector, long hamstrung by fragmented legacy systems and a widening skills gap is poorly equipped to defend itself in this environment. Updating these defences will require significant investment and collaboration with the private sector, both of which today’s measures begin to initiate.

Keep up to date with all the latest telecoms news with the Total Telecom newsletter

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In somewhat of an unusual move, internet provider TalkTalk has today attempted to predict which major dates and events in 2026 will drive the most traffic across their UK broadband network. For example, the ISP is forecasting up to an 8% surge in network usage during the 2026 World Cup’s initial stages and a 15% increase for the Grand Theft Auto 6 launch (16th Nov 2026).

Major broadband providers often attempt to forecast what kind of impact such events may have on their service, which helps them to plan an appropriate level of capacity and organise Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to avoid such things having an overly negative impact on their customer base.

Internet providers typically use sophisticated CDNs and traffic management systems to help manage the load from big online events, which caches popular content closer in the network to end-users (i.e. improves performance without adding network strain). This in turn lowers the provider’s impact on external links and helps to keep costs down.

Demand for data is of course constantly rising and home broadband connections are forever getting faster, thus new peaks of usage are being set all the time by every ISP. But it’s unusual to see an ISP publishing what sort of impact they expect to see from such events ahead of time.

Steve Wallage, Chief Product Officer at TalkTalk, said:

“Many aspects of everyday life will continue to be dependent on Wi-Fi and connectivity in 2026. A big driver of this is the ongoing switch to streaming over traditional broadcast media. This is also increasing device-agnostic viewing, meaning viewers can watch a TV series, sport and films on phones, tablets and laptops rather than being limited to a TV screen. Even when viewing on the TV, other devices are still being used for second-screening, as consumers use Wi-Fi on their phone or tablet to browse online or use social media at the same time as watching television.

We are already looking at the likely traffic spikes through 2026 to help us ensure customers have seamless connectivity throughout the year, whatever their usage demands. Football and gaming are typically the biggest drivers of traffic, and 2026 looks to be no different, with the World Cup featuring more teams and matches than ever before, and two huge gaming releases at the end of the year, including the first new Grand Theft Auto release for 13 years.”

Football typically dominates traffic spikes every year and 2026 being a World Cup year is only going to accelerate matters, with the tournament kicking off on 11th June through to 19th July. Hosted across the USA, Canada and Mexico, it’ll be the biggest tournament ever with the number of teams up from 32 to 48, increasing the number of matches from 64 to 104.

The location of the World Cup will also have a notable impact upon viewing. For UK fans, time differences will vary between 5 and 8 hours, meaning you could be watching any time from 9pm to as late as 4am depending on the game. This could shift fan behaviour, meaning less pub viewing for UK fans, and more early-morning home supporting or streaming highlights on personal devices during work or commute hours.

TalkTalk’s Network Usage Predictions for 2026

➤ 2026 World Cup (June to July): The ISP is predicting a potential initial increase of up to 8% in network usage around the opening ceremony and early group rounds, with rises expected during England, Scotland, and other home nation games.

As the tournament progresses, the knockout stages will see interest increase further, with a likely 10% traffic spike, culminating in an even bigger potential spike for the final on 19th July, and higher if England were to feature.

➤ UEFA Champions League: The knockout rounds from January through February historically see up to 15% higher network traffic, with major spikes directly tied to the success of UK teams such including Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City etc. The season culminates with the final on 30th May, which is likely to deliver a higher spike.

➤ Call of Duty 2026 Launch: Kicking off in late October to mid-November, the Call of Duty 2026 launch is expected to cause a significant spike, with previous titles driving a 10-12% rise in network usage.

➤ Grand Theft Auto (GTA) 6: The ISP is predicting a 15% increase in network demand for this launch in mid-November 2026.

➤ Fortnite Chapter Finale: Finally, in late November, the climactic, once-a-year launch of Fortnite Chapter Finale is expected to drive a further surge of up to 12%.

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Engineers from Hull-based broadband ISP KCOM, which have deployed their own full fibre (FTTP) network across a big chunk of East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in England, recently took a break from their normal work to help the BBC’s DIY SOS team and the Gladiators to build a new, purpose-built youth centre in the market town of Beverley.

According to the BBC’s summary on iPlayer, the Gladiator’s Special (Episode 5 of Series 34) saw the DIY SOS team step in to help a youth club that had lost its home by building a new one on the edge of a local park. As usual, this involved a number of local trades committing resources to help the Gladiators and DIY SOS crew, managed by TV presenter Nick Knowles, to complete the new building.

Dozens of KCOM volunteers also took part in building the new Cherry Tree Youth Hub (CTYH) from scratch in five days during the summer of 2025 (although the TV episode of this has only just aired). The operator also connected the club up to their broadband network too. As well as the BBC episode linked above, you can also see a brief clip from KCOM’s side below.

Jessica Paddison, KCOM’s Business Operation Team Leader, said: “It’s been the best project I’ve ever worked on – and I’ve done quite a few projects in my time at KCOM. It was just a field at the beginning, so we had to put all the network in – design all that and assemble a team to put it together. It was a big job, but the guys did brilliantly to pull it together.”

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Customers of the Sky Mobile service, which is an O2 (Virgin Media) powered Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) with an estimated 3.7 million subscribers, has today announced that the majority of their monthly data (mobile broadband) tariffs will increase by £1.50 (equating to an annual rise of £18), effective from February 2026.

Sky says that this is the first time they’ve implemented a price change for in-contract customers in over seven years (last year’s price rise was targeted at out-of-contract users). But unlike many other major providers, Sky’s prices are variable, thus customers who are in a minimum term can at least cancel their Sky Mobile tariff after being notified of a price increase, without paying any early termination charges.

Sky Mobile notes that the price rise is being driven by a number of factors, such as with how their wholesale network costs have increased significantly since last year. At the same time, they’ve continued to invest in their network to meet ever-growing customer demand for data and improve their services.

A Sky Mobile spokesperson said:

“To continue delivering the quality, service, and value our customers expect, most Sky Mobile customers will see a £1.50 increase to their monthly bill from February. We don’t take decisions like this lightly, which is why we have not increased mobile prices mid-contract for more than seven years. This change reflects the ongoing cost pressures being faced across the industry, while allowing us to continue investing in our network and customer experience.”

Customers who are impacted will be contacted from 6th January 2026 to let them know how the change impacts their data plan(s) – affected customers will start to see the relevant price change on their bill from 14th February 2026 onwards.

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A new study from Broadband Genie has analysed 145,926 internet speed tests in order to identify the top slowest and fastest ten UK streets for broadband. The slowest street was found to be Heol-Y-Fedw (Cymmer) in Wales on an average download of just 0.81Mbps (Megabits per second), while the fastest was Inglewood Avenue in Derby (England), where residents enjoy speeds of 1.21Gbps (1,210Mbps).

According to Thinkbroadband’s latest independent modelling, some 89.7% of UK premises are currently within reach of a gigabit-capable fixed broadband network (1000Mbps+), which primary reflects the combination of full fibre (FTTP/B) and hybrid fibre coax (HFC) lines (the latter is largely only from Virgin Media). Similarly, some 98.45% of premises should be within reach of a fixed “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) network.

However, the new study is based on consumer speedtests, rather than network availability. One issue here is that such reports aren’t able to accurately reflect the underlying availability of faster networks and are thus more a reflection of localised consumer take-up (i.e. results from people still on slower networks/packages may weight against those on faster ones in the same street).

The new report does acknowledge the aforementioned issue and highlights how occupants on the slowest listed streets all have access to Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL / SOGEA) based broadband lines, which can provide a download speeds of around 35Mbps to many of them. In addition, seven of the slowest streets had access to “ultrafast” speeds (100Mbps+) and four of the slowest were even covered by gigabit full fibre (FTTP) networks.

Clearly, issues of awareness, demand / desire and the fear of switching to a new service or ISP may still be holding some consumers back from making the change to a faster broadband connection. This could, in some cases, also mean they’re stuck paying higher prices for a legacy connection that underperforms.

However, speedtest-based studies like this can also be influenced by other factors, such as poor home wiring (copper telecoms lines), local (home) network congestion and slow WiFi etc. In short, take these results with a pinch of salt and remember, this study won’t be reflecting every street in the UK because a minimum of three speed tests from three unique IP addresses via a commercial fixed line broadband ISP were required for inclusion. At least 8 residential properties were also required at a postcode, so quite a lot of streets will be missed.

Similarly, the fastest streets are usually those covered by the handful of providers capable of offering them speeds in the 7-10Gbps range, such as B4RN, Youfibre and a few others.

Slowest 10 streets for UK broadband (2026)

Fastest 10 streets for UK broadband (2026)

The government’s Project Gigabit scheme is currently working to help extend broadband ISP networks capable of delivering download speeds of at least 1000Mbps (1Gbps) to achieve “nationwide” coverage (c.99%) by 2030 2032 (here) – focusing on the commercially unviable areas (usually rural and semi-rural locations). But the impact of this won’t fully show in the results above until everybody moves over to such lines.