News

A new newspaper report has revealed what digital infrastructure investors think of the UK’s current market for alternative broadband networks (altnets). Suffice to say that, after a difficult couple of years, there still seems to be a fair mix of both strong pessimism and optimism for 2025, which perhaps reflects the different states of the market’s many providers. ISPreview’s regular readers will already be familiar with the many challenges being experienced by network operators over the past...

The CEO of alternative network operator AllPoints Fibre (APFN / Fern Trading), Jarlath Finnegan, has today told ISPreview – in a new interview – of his ambition for the company to become the “UBER of the full fibre wholesale market“, which reflects their desire to help “accelerate” the delivery of related UK broadband services over the next few years. In case anybody has forgotten, AllPoints Fibre Networks was officially formed between 2023 and 2024 from the consolidation of three alternative...

National network access provider Openreach (BT) has today revealed that their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which offers broadband speeds of up to 1800Mbps to homes and businesses via hundreds of ISPs, has now covered 17 million UK premises. This includes more than 4.3 million premises in “rural and hard-to-reach areas“. The data means that Openreach, which also saw their overall broadband usage (data / internet traffic) surge by 10.8% during the year (representing traffic from...

SpaceX’s Starlink service, which offers ultrafast broadband speeds to the UK and globally via a mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), has published an annual 2024 Progress Report that summarises their recent upgrades and reveals how their future V3 (GEN3) satellite will be able to handle 1Tbps (Terabits per second) of capacity. At present Starlink’s network has around 6,900 satellites in orbit (c.2,800 are v2 Mini / GEN 2A) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km – and...

News The court of appeal ruled on Thursday that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have the legal authority to reinstate the rules This week has seen a US appeals court strike a major blow to the Biden administration’s aspirations of restoring net neutrality, ruling that the FCC does not have the power to enforce such regulations. Net neutrality is the concept that all internet users and internet traffic should be treated equally by service providers. This paradigm means that...

News  The deal follows Zegona’s €5 billion purchase of Vodafone Spain last June  Zegona Communications has announced that Vodafone Spain and MasOrange will form a new fibre network joint venture, dubbed FibreCo.  FibreCo will combine the two companies’  fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, reaching roughly 12.2 million premises across Spain. This, the partners say, will create the largest FTTH network in Europe.  FibreCo will use existing infrastructure, with nearly 40% of the combined FTTH...

News The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack caused a website failure and service disruption for around 12 hours Today, Japan’s largest mobile operator, NTT Docomo, has revealed it has suffered a cyberattack, impacting a number of services. The DDoS attack reportedly resulted in a system glitch at 5:27am, which disrupted access to several services – such as the company website and the company’s ‘goo’ portal – for almost 12 hours. Mobile and other communication services were notably...

European satellite operator Eutelsat has confirmed that their OneWeb network, which is the global constellation of broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that is still partly supported by the UK government, suffered a “temporary, 48-hour outage” over the New Year period that started on 31st December 2024. OneWeb (aka – Eutelsat OneWeb) has 654 small (c.150kg) first generation (GEN1) LEO platforms in space – orbiting at an altitude of 1,200km above the Earth (c.600 of them for coverage...

News  The connectivity could prove vital in areas where infrastructure is destroyed by Russian military activity  Telecoms group VEON has announced a new partnership with Starlink, a division of SpaceX, to bring direct-to-cell satellite connectivity to Ukraine.   The deal will see Kyivstar, VEON’s Ukrainian subsidiary, offer these satellite-based connectivity services to its customers across the country.  The deal will see Ukraine become one of the first countries to benefit from Starlink’s...

News  The news follows final regulatory approval last month  Swiss telco Swisscom has completed its acquisition of Vodafone Italia in a move set to reshape the competitive landscape of Italy’s telecoms sector.   The deal, valued at €8 billion, was finalised on December 31 following approval from Italian regulators earlier in the month.  The acquisition will see Vodafone Italia merged with Swisscom’s existing Italian subsidiary, Fastweb. The move will reduce the number of mobile players in the...