Openreach Name Top 5 London Boroughs for Full Fibre Broadband Cover
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today revealed the top five London Boroughs for coverage of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which sees Barking and Dagenham topping the table with more than 8 out of 10 premises now able to upgrade to the new service. The boroughs of Bexley, Redbridge, Hillingdon and Merton then round off the remaining top five slots, although Openreach hasn’t provided any coverage figures for those. The network operator’s new full fibre network...
Lyca Mobile Warns up to 90 Percent of UK Staff Could Lose their Jobs
Troubled mobile operator Lyca Mobile, which is a virtual operator (mvno) on EE’s network, has reportedly told its UK workforce that the company is facing some “pretty serious challenges” and as a result of that almost 90% of their workers (up to 316 jobs) could be made redundant. Over the past couple of years’ the operator has certainly faced its fair share of “serious challenges“. For example, there was last year’s cyberattack (here), as well as the conviction of Lyca’s French entities for...
Voneus Face Rural Broadband Complaints in Shropshire and Powys
Rural broadband ISP Voneus, which has built a mix of full fibre (FTTP) and fixed wireless broadband networks across parts of Wales and England, has pledge to “increase community communication” after more than a hundred complaints about their service were raised by residents through two MPs for Shropshire and Powys. According to the BBC News, the complaints highlighted issues of connection drops, extremely poor speeds (sometimes sub-1Mbps) and customer support being slow to respond or failing...
Football Streaming Pushes BT to Record UK Broadband Traffic of 33.7Tbps
Broadband and telecoms giant BT (EE) has used a mix of UK network stats and a consumer survey of 2,000 adults to reveal how the “British public are engaging with the biggest cultural moments of the year“. BT also hit a record peak of broadband traffic on 4th Dec 2024, when streaming of Premier League Football helped push them to 33.7Tbps (Terabits per second). According to the operator’s new ‘2024 Network Wrapped‘ research, some 56% of people in the UK believe live sport provided the “most...
Ofcom UK Propose Tweak to 3.9GHz Band for Mobile and Wireless Broadband
The UK telecoms regulator has proposed an additional tweak to its existing licence for the 3.9GHz (3925 – 4009MHz) radio spectrum band, which would change the authorised frequency from 3925-4009 MHz (3.9GHz) to 3800-3884 MHz (3.8GHz). This could potentially make it more efficient for fixed wireless and 5G based mobile broadband services, such as those from Three UK. Just to recap. Mobile operator Three UK (H3G) previously asked Ofcom, in May 2024 (here), to consider making a useful technical...
Openreach Brings FTTP Broadband Cover to 50 Percent of UK Premises
The latest independent data from Thinkbroadband has revealed that the footprint of Openreach’s (BT) national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which currently offers broadband speeds of up to 1.8Gbps to ISPs and their customers, has just passed the 50% of UK premises (16,328,469 ready for service) milestone. Openreach are currently investing up to £15bn to expand the coverage of their new full fibre network to reach 25 million UK premises by December 2026 (here), which includes around 6.2...
CityFibre Begin Project Gigabit Broadband Build in Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes
Network operator CityFibre has today announced that they’ve begun the roll-out phase of their £51m state-aid supported Project Gigabit contract for the Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire & Milton Keynes (Lot 12) area. This will extend their 10Gbps capable FTTP broadband network to an additional 25,000 hard-to-reach rural premises in those regions. The LOT 12 contract for Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes was officially awarded to CityFibre by the Government’s Building Digital UK...
Talking the language of sustainability
Interview Ahead of the recent World Communication Awards, we spoke with Sandra Klackenborn, Head of Sustainability at Arelion, to discuss the growing energy challenge and how the industry must do more to tackle the issue collaboratively The growing energy challenge With networks spanning hundreds or even thousands of miles, it is no surprise that energy consumption has always been a key concern for telcos when it comes to sustainability. Operating these massive networks not only generates a...
Congress boosts funding for drive to replace Chinese equipment
News The U.S. House of Representatives has approved additional funding for a federal initiative to replace Chinese-made communications equipment By: Brad Randall, Broadband Communities A budgetary shortfall for the federal government’s “rip and replace” initiative, aimed at replacing Chinese communications equipment, is one step closer to being wiped out. The drive to replace Chinese telecom equipment in the United States was first authorized by the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks...
Reflections on the World Communication Awards
Reflections by Marc Anné, Chair of Judges at the World Communication Awards LastWednesday evening, all the shortlisted nominees as well as the Judges enjoyed the 26th anniversary of the World Communication Awards (WCA). This year, the Oscar grade gala event took place in The Marriott, Grosvenor Square, London. On behalf of the Judging Panel, I hereby congratulate all the winners and finalists of this year, as well as a big thank you to all the WCA award entrants for their participation and...