The Building Digital UK team have published another batch of Public Reviews (PR) for the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout – this time covering Herefordshire, Lincolnshire (inc. north-east Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire) and East Riding, Cheshire and Gloucestershire in England. Project Gigabit seeks to ensure that 85% of UK premises can access a gigabit-capable […]
ISP Hyperoptic Offers 9 Months FREE UK Full Fibre Broadband
City-focused UK broadband ISP Hyperoptic, which is rolling out a new gigabit speed “full fibre” (FTTP/B) network to serve 2 million UK homes by the end of 2023 (900,000 premises are already covered), has launched a new promotion that offers 9 months’ of free broadband to anyone switching from their current contract. The provider claims […]
ISP Sky Broadband Freezes UK Package Prices for 18 Months
New customers joining UK ISP Sky Broadband may like to know that the provider has adopted an 18-month “price freeze” on their Openreach based (FTTC + FTTP) superfast, ultrafast and gigafast broadband packages (including some TV bundles), which removes the usual mid-contract price hikes. Unlike most of the other major providers, Sky Broadband doesn’t adopt […]
UK Jumps to 35th out of 220 Countries for Broadband Speed in 2022
Research firm M-Lab and Cable.co.uk have today published their annual 2022 global broadband ISP speeds report, which reveals that the United Kingdom delivered an average (mean) download speed of 72.06Mbps (up from 51.48Mbps last year), ranking us 35th fastest in the world (up from 43rd in 2021 and 47th in 2020). The research stems from […]
CityFibre to Start £17m Rollout of 1Gbps Broadband in Rugby
Network developer CityFibre has today confirmed that they’ll begin the £17 million rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the Warwickshire (England) town of Rugby this month, which aims to reach “almost every home and business locally.” The project is being backed by one of the operator’s existing civil engineering partners […]
Cheshire UK Boosts Value of Gigabit Broadband Rollout Vouchers
The Cheshire East Council has announced that the wider Connecting Cheshire Partnership have committed £2.9m to boost the value of the UK Government’s local Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS), which offers vouchers to help rural homes and businesses install gigabit-capable internet connections. The rural-focused GBVS scheme – as managed by the Building Digital UK (BDUK) […]
Cable Thieves Knock Out Openreach’s Broadband in Shenley
Openreach UK has confirmed that around 970 premises (homes and businesses) in the village of Shenley (Hertfordshire), near Watford, were impacted late last month after copper thieves ripped 1,400 metres worth of the operator’s cable out of the ground, which has so far taken several weeks to fully resolve. According to the Watford Observer, the […]
OneWeb Take £200m Hit Over Scrapping of Russian Satellite Launch
British-registered OneWeb, which is building a mega constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast low-latency broadband satellites, has confirmed in their accounts that they took a $229.2m (£199m) hit after Russia blocked the launch of 36 platforms earlier this year due to the war in Ukraine and related sanctions. The company has so far […]
The Connected Britain Awards shortlist 2022
The Connected Britain Awards recognise the most significant and innovative organisations, solutions, and programmes that are shaping Britain’s digital future. Below you will find the shortlisted entrants for this year’s Awards.
Join us at the end of Day One at Connected Britain when the winners will be revealed!
B2B Service Provider of the Year Award
BT Enterprise Managed Service
Comtec
Giganet
Glide Group
Netgem – Netgem TV managed service for ISPs
Pangea Connected
Broadband Provider of the Year Award
Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN)
Community Fibre Ltd
Giganet
Hyperoptic
Ogi
Zzoomm Full Fibre broadband
Digital Skills Award
BT Skills for Tomorrow
CityFibre
Good Things Foundation
Good Things Foundation – Nobody in the Dark
The Lloyds Banking Group Digital Helpline – in partnership with We Are Digital
Three Discovery
West Mercia Rural 5G project team
Enterprise Solution of the Year
Axiros GmbH
DexGreen Ltd – Virtual Buddy Artificial Intelligence Fault-Finder
FarrPoint. Mobile Coverage Mapping Solution
Fibrus Networks Ltd
Nokia, Vodafone UK & Kinected Solutions – Banshee Mobile Radio
Openreach, The University of Suffolk and Nokia Corporation
PSI Mobile – Implementation of multichannel automation processes
RouteThis Resolve
Vitruvi™ Software
Project Rollout Award
CityFibre
Mid Sussex District Council / Brighton and Hove City Council and West Sussex County Council – Digital Mid Sussex Connected Region
Netomnia Ltd
Ogi
Wessex Internet
The Access Innovation Award
5G RuralDorset
Infinera, XR Optics
Pangea Connected – Connecting 4,500 critical street furniture endpoints in urban notspots
Trench Networks Limited – Outpost Hybrid Mobile
WeLink Communications (UK) Ltd – Wireless Gigabit Broadband
West Mercia Rural 5G
WHP Telecoms
The Barrier Removal Award
BDUK, National Parks, Openreach & Trenches Law – National Parks Accord
Powys County Council
Trenches Law
Wessex Internet
West Mercia Rural 5G and Airband
The Community Improvement Award
4th Utility
Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN)
Community Fibre Ltd
Gigaclear
Westminster City Council and Community Fibre – Community Fibre Digital Ambassadors in Westminster
WHP Telecoms
The Full Fibre ISP Innovation Award
Giganet
Hyperoptic
Wessex Internet
The Industrial Innovation Award
5G RuralDorset
Keltech IoT
Pangea Connected – Migrating 4,500 critical street furniture endpoints before the PSTN switch-off
South Gloucestershire Council & Toshiba Europe Ltd, Bristol Research and Innovation Lab
The Smart Places Award
Dorset Council
Greater Manchester Combined Authority – Digital Exclusion Risk Index
Nottinghamshire County Council, Pioneering 5G in Sherwood Forest
South London Partnership InnOvaTe project – with DORIS care
Sunderland City Council and BAI Communications: Smarter Together
The Sustainability Award
BT’s ECO Programme
CityFibre
Glide Group
Keltech IoT the product name Dual Distributed Network
LightSpeed Broadband Ltd
Startup of the Year Award
The shortlisted finalists in this category will pitch their business live to the judges on the Startup Stage at Connected Britain!
ANGOKA
Curvalux
Entrust Smart Home Microgrid
Grayscale AI
Neuron Innovations
PLINX
PRAEFERRE
Spark Tools
Streetwave
Teragence
Who will win? Find out at the end of Day 1 of Connected Britain 2022!
The post The Connected Britain Awards shortlist 2022 first appeared on Total Telecom.
Telco duo snaps up digital payment licences in Qatar
NEWS
Alongside various banks, Vodafone and Ooredoo have been awarded licences by the Qatar Central Bank (QCB), opening the door for mobile payments head of the FIFA World Cup.
This weekend, a tweet from the QCB has revealed that two telcos are among the seven companies to be awarded mobile payment licences.
Earlier this week, the QCB allocated digital payment licences to five Qatari banks, thereby enabling customers to make payments with a variety of popular apps, including Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and Apple Pay.
Alongside this announcement, the QCB also revealed that it had granted a similar licence to the country’s two mobile operators Vodafone Qatar and Ooredoo, thereby allowing the telcos’ customers to make digital payments using the telcos’ respective platforms, namely Vodafone iPay and Ooredoo Money.
أصدر مصرف قطر المركزي أول ترخيص في الدولة لشركتين تمارسان نشاط تقديم خدمات الدفع الإلكتروني.#مصرف_قطر_المركزي pic.twitter.com/XSqoO1V3SO
— مصرف قطر المركزي (@QCBQATAR) August 30, 2022
Additional digital payment licences are expected to follow in the months to come, in anticipation of the huge influx of tourists arriving for the World Cup in November.
It should be noted, however, that the Qatari government remains staunchly against allowing digital assets (e.g., cryptocurrency), which have been banned for being too high risk since 2020.
Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, and Tunisia, have all issued similar bans.
Instead, the government is focussing on blockchain technology and its own central bank digital currency, though progress in this area appears to have stalled sine it was first announced in March this year.
How is mobile banking reshaping the telecoms industry? Learn more from the operators themselves at this year’s live Total Telecom Congress
Also in the news:
UK telcos to face stricter cybersecurity obligations under new govt rules
Jio prepares to plough $25bn into 5G
VMO2 activates first open RAN sites in live network
The post Telco duo snaps up digital payment licences in Qatar first appeared on Total Telecom.