The UK Government has today announced the start of their new “Fibre in Water” trial, which will test the deployment of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband cables through 17km of live drinking water mains between Barnsley and Penistone (Yorkshire). In theory, this could help to cut the cost of rural broadband delivery and reduce leaks. The Government […]
BDUK Start New Batch of Phase 3A Project Gigabit Coverage Reviews
The Building Digital UK team has started a new batch of Open Market Reviews (OMR) under Phase 3A of the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout, which will examine network coverage in Herefordshire, Cheshire, Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire and East Riding. Just to recap. The project seeks to ensure that a minimum of 85%+ of UK […]
Vodafone UK Enhances Fixed Broadband and Mobile Bundles
Mobile operator and UK ISP Vodafone has today enhanced their existing “Together” bundle of fixed line broadband (FTTC or FTTP) and mobile plans (4G or 5G) with the addition of family rewards, as well as an additional SIM discount and Norton 360 Premium for online sector and parental controls. Previously, customers who bundled their Vodafone […]
Toob Prep Full Fibre Broadband for 19000 Premises in Fareham
Alternative network ISP toob have today announced that they will invest £7 million to extend their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband infrastructure to cover 19,000 homes and businesses in the Hampshire (England) market town of Fareham. The operator, which was originally backed by an investment of £75m from funds advised by the Amber Infrastructure Group (here) […]
Telenet partners with Netcracker on its digital transformation journey
Telenet has announced that it has selected to deploy Netcracker Technology’s Online Charging System (OCS) as part of its ongoing digital transformation programme. Netcracker’s Digital BSS solution…
PLDT to offload 6,000 towers to cut debt
Philippines telecoms operator PLDT is reported to have begun discussions with two companies, EdgePoint and Edotco, aiming to sell 3,000 mobile telecommunications towers to each buyer.
In total, the two deals are valued at approximately $1.5 billion.
EdgePoint, backed by Digital Bridge and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, will reportedly acquire 3…
5G spectrum auction could offer Bite a taste of Estonian mobile market
According to the TTJA, four mobile operators have applied to bid for the three 5G spectrum licences being made available in Estonia’s upcoming auction.
Each licence will offer a 130MHz block in the 3.5GHz spectrum band, with a reserve price for these licences is set at €1.6 million.
All three of Estonia’s existing mobile players – Telia, Elisa, and Tele2 – have confirmed their intention to take part…
Amazon’s Project Kuiper prepares for lift off with procurement deal
From the enormous scale of Elon Musk’s Starlink deployment to the meteoric recovery of OneWeb from bankruptcy to billion-dollar investment, low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are one the hottest topics in the international telecoms sector.
Able to provide broad geographic coverage in areas typically hard to reach by conventional methods, as well as providing lower latency and higher bandwidth that their geostationary counterparts, LEO satellites are becoming an increasingly viable alternative to terrestrial communications infrastructure…
Sky Broadband’s New 900Mbps Gigafast UK Package Goes Live
As first predicted on Monday (here), UK ISP Sky Broadband has today officially confirmed the launch of their new Gigafast Package for homes, which offers average download speeds of 900Mbps (90Mbps uploads) via Openreach’s national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. The details of this are exactly as we described on Monday. Customers will pay £55 per month […]
Creating a new 'norm' for the subsea cable industry
In the run up to Submarine Networks EMEA 2022 next month, we caught up with Lynsey Thomas from Subsea Networks to hear her take on the biggest topics in the global submarine cable market.
In your view, what is the most exciting thing happening in the industry right now?
It is really great to see all the projects that have been in the planning, financing and design phases starting to come to fruition. LinkedIn is scattered with images of new shore end landings and final splice deployments, all across the globe. Seeing the teams who have worked so hard to deliver these projects, especially in the recent challenging times, is very uplifting.
Similarly, we are seeing an increase in the deployment of SDM systems, and learning how to address the new issues faced by high fibre count designs is interesting; how and what should be tested at acceptance being a particularly important question, especially for multi-landing designs with numerous discrete fibre pair owners…