N.Ireland Assembly Blasts Broadband and Mobile Providers Over Storm Eowyn Response
Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly have this week criticised UK broadband and mobile operators, particularly Vodafone, BT, EE, Sky Broadband, Vodafone, O2 and Fibrus, for their response to the damage caused by Storm Éowyn. The complaints touched on issues of slow repairs, absent compensation and poor communication with customers. Just to recap. Storm Éowyn (pronounced ‘Ay-oh-win’), which was the result of explosive cyclogenesis (aka – a weather bomb), struck parts of the UK on Friday...
BT completes Irish unit sale
News The transaction, subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close this year BT has agreed to sell its Irish wholesale and enterprise division, BT Communications Ireland Ltd (BTCIL) to Speed Fibre Group, in a €22 million deal. The sale includes BTCIL’s domestic network infrastructure, over 400 customers, and supporting teams but excludes its multinational clients, large Irish enterprises, emergency call services, and recently divested data centre business. As part of the deal, BT and...
Vodafone reports strong Q3 growth amid Germany challenges
News Any losses were aligned with company expectations, Vodafone said Vodafone has reported a 5% increase in total revenue to €9.8 billion in its Q3 trading update, fuelled by strong performances in the UK, Africa, and Türkiye. The company’s service revenue grew 5.6% to €7.9 billion. However, Vodafone’s German business was under pressure, with service revenue declining 6.4% after a regulatory change that ended bulk TV contracts for tenants. The decline in Germany follows a major change in...
BT scraps managerial DEI targets
News BT is expected to cut the diversity targets from its managerial bonus scheme, according to a recent article from The Telegraph The company has told its major investors that it will replace the DEI section of its managerial bonus scorecard with a “measure of employee engagement,” which will come into effect in April. Currently, ten percent of the BT annual bonus for its 37,400 managers is made up of DEI targets, comprised of representation of women, disabled people and ethnic...
Openreach and Nokia Claim UK’s First Live Test of 50Gbps Broadband
Network access provider Openreach (BT), working alongside new 50G PON technology from strategic supplier Nokia, has this morning announced that they’ve “successfully tested” the United Kingdom’s “first live” 50Gbps speed broadband connection from a residential property in Ipswich (Suffolk, England). At present most of Openreach’s existing Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network, which covers over 17 million UK premises, is still using their old Gigabit Passive Optical Network...
Ookla Finds Starlink’s UK Broadband Speeds are Poor vs Europe
Internet benchmarking firm Ookla, which operates the popular Speedtest.net broadband and mobile connection testing service, has published a new study that examines the performance of Starlink’s (SpaceX) LEO satellite broadband service across Europe. Overall, the UK delivers the best latency of all the countries tested, but we’re poor for download and upload speeds. At present Starlink has almost 7,000 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (c.2,800 are v2 Mini / GEN 2A) – mostly at altitudes of...
Scottish Government Seeks Feedback on R100 Fibre Broadband Build
The Scottish Government has launched a new evaluation survey that calls for feedback from those who have benefitted from their £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach (BT). This is rolling out full fibre (FTTP) broadband to remote rural areas and has now built to a total of 70,000 premises or 75,000 if you include vouchers. The R100 scheme aims to reach another 113,000 premises – split across three contracts – in areas that lack access to “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) by March...
BT Sells Irish Wholesale and Business Unit to Speed Fibre Group
The UK telecoms giant, BT Group, has today continued to reduce their international operations by announcing the acquisition of their Irish wholesale and enterprise business unit – ‘BT Communications Ireland Ltd.‘ (BTCIL) – by the Speed Fibre Group, which describes itself as being an open access fibre infrastructure provider (managing or owning 5,400km of fibre). The transaction, which is currently still subject to customary conditions including competition approval and is expected to complete...
Virgin Media O2 UK Blocked 168 Million Suspected Fraud Texts Over Past 2 Years
Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today revealed that their UK network blocked 168 million suspected fraudulent text messages from reaching customers over the past two years (up from 89 million texts in 2023), with scams including fake TikTok job offers, and deals and discounts for popular brands. Most of the United Kingdom’s major broadband, phone and mobile network providers have already implemented various technical measures to tackle Nuisance and Scam calls and text messages (SMS)....
First Homes Live on Freedom Fibre’s Shropshire UK Project Gigabit Broadband Build
Alternative network operator Freedom Fibre has today announced that the first homes have gone live on their new full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network in North Shropshire (England), which is being delivered as part of their £24m (state aid) LOT 25.02 Project Gigabit contract (here) to cover “around” 12,000 hard-to-reach rural homes. In case anybody has forgotten, the original announcement in May 2023 stated that the first properties could start to go live from October 2024 and that the 3-year...