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...
CityFibre UK Completes Primary FTTP Broadband Build in Bracknell
Network access provider CityFibre, which has so far built their 2.5Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover around 4 million UK premises, have today confirmed the completion of their “primary” £20m build in the Berkshire (England) town of Bracknell. The network deployment, which originally began with the help of civil engineering contractor VolkerSmart Technologies, first entered the construction phase during Spring 2021 (here) and was expected to reach completion...
Octopus Energy Users Offered £200 Amazon Voucher for Taking Cuckoo Broadband
Internet provider Cuckoo, which is the full fibre (FTTP) retail broadband ISP for the consolidated AllPoints Fibre (Fern Trading) network and also offers packages via Openreach and CityFibre’s networks, has today launched a new offer that rewards existing Octopus Energy customers – who switch to their service – with a £200 Amazon gift card. The deal is only available through ‘Octoplus’, Octopus Energy’s rewards scheme. In short, for a standard 24-month contract, customers signing up for full...
Ofcom Propose to Auction Upper 1.4GHz Band for UK 4G and 5G Mobile
The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today proposed to auction off a 25MHz (spectrum frequency) slice of the 1.4GHz band (i.e. the “upper block” of 1492 to 1517MHz) to mobile operators (EE, O2, Vodafone / Three UK), which will be able to use it for their 4G and 5G based mobile broadband services. At present both Three UK and Vodafone are already harnessing the lower part (40MHz) of the L-Band spectrum (i.e 1452-1492MHz) to boost their mobile data connectivity (example) – mostly as a...
UK ISP Sky Broadband and TV Confirms UK Price Increases for 2025
Customers of Sky UK’s (Sky Broadband, Comcast etc.) internet, phone and Pay TV products have today been told to brace for an average annual price increase of 6.2% (down from 6.7% last year), which will be introduced from April 2025. But customers who are unhappy about this will be able to exit their contracts penalty free. Sky has traditionally shunned the old inflationary (CPI + X%) linked price hike policies of their rivals, which in recent years has resulted in their annual rises being a...
Nokia and AT&T extend voice core partnership
News AT&T has announced an extension of its partnership with Nokia in a multi-year deal to improve its voice network As part of this upgrade, AT&T will add Voice over New Radio (VoNR) and move its Nokia IMS Voice Core to a cloud-based system. This will help the company roll out new services faster, cut costs, and improve automation. AT&T will also use Nokia’s Cloud Platform to simplify network operations and reduce the need for manual work. Additionally, Nokia’s Digital...