Lightning Fibre Trial 50Mbps UK Broadband Plan for People Aged 66+
Eastbourne-based alternative UK broadband ISP Lightning Fibre, which has built a new full fibre (FTTP) network across parts of Sussex and Kent in England, have today begun to “trial” a new 50Mbps (symmetric) package that costs just £15 per month for 24-months. But it’s only available to people born before 23rd September 1958. The new package aligns to the current state pension age, which is 66 years old for both men and women. But unlike their similar Social Tariff (same speed and price, but...
Full Fibre UK Broadband ISP Connexin Launch 5Gbps Speeds
Alternative broadband ISP Connexin, which is currently aiming to deploy a new full fibre (FTTP) network across 500,000 premises in East Yorkshire and beyond (England), has today become one of the UK’s fastest residential providers with the launch of a new 5Gbps (symmetric speed) package called “Fibre 5000“. The premium package is being aimed at “heavy internet users … [with] exceptionally high data demands“, such as content creators and video professionals, as well as businesses or individuals...
BT Get £105m for First Sale of Old UK Copper Telecoms Cables
The BT Group has confirmed that they recently received their first upfront prepayment of £105m for the sale of leftover copper cables, which had been extracted from their legacy UK exchange network (broadband and phone lines) as part of the operator’s gradual move to replace those with newer fibre optic lines. Just to recap. The group’s £15bn investment to roll-out Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband ISP lines across the UK, which is being handled by Openreach, will ultimately...
Ofcom’s Roaming Rules Come into Force for UK Mobile Operators
The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, will tomorrow (1st Oct 2024) begin enforcing new roaming rules that require mobile network operators, such as Three UK, Vodafone, EE and O2 (including their many virtual / MVNO partners), to protect consumers who travel abroad from mobile BILL SHOCKS on data (broadband), call and text charges. Just to recap. The regulator previously found (here) that the quality of information being provided by mobile operators on roaming charges could be “inconsistent and...
Survey Claims UK Internet Users Leave Broadband Routers Open to Hackers
A new survey of 3,045 UK internet users, which was conducted by Broadband Genie between 1st January and 26th April 2024, has revealed that 89% of respondents have never updated the firmware of their home router and 86% have never changed the device’s administrator password (falling to 72% for those who have never changed their WiFi password). The survey also found that 75% have never checked to see what or who is linked to their router and 52% have never changed or updated any of their...
Comms Council UK Name Winners of Best 2024 VoIP Provider Awards
The Comms Council UK, which represents the United Kingdom’s national Unified Communications and Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) phone industry, has this afternoon announced the winners of their 16th annual 2024 awards event at a ceremony at The IET in London. Eli Katz, Chair of Comms Council UK Council, said: ““It’s been another fantastic CCUK Awards ceremony, congratulations to all the winners and highly commended companies. The Awards continue to highlight the importance of our sector as...
Guernsey Set for £48m 5G Mobile Boost as Gov Suspends Competition Law
The States of Guernsey, which governs the English Channel Island of Guernsey (British Crown dependency), yesterday voted to do something extraordinary by temporarily suspending local competition law in order to allow the dominant telecoms and broadband operator, Sure, to acquire Airtel Vodafone. The reward is a £48m deal to deploy 5G services. Normally it would be unthinkable for a government to suspend its competition laws in order to allow a specific merger to go through, but Guernsey is a...
Broadband ISP EE UK Discounts 1.6Gbps Speed Full Fibre Plan
Broadband ISP and mobile operator EE (BT) has discounted their top 1.6Gbps (110Mbps upload) Busiest Home Bundle for new customers covered by Openreach’s new FTTP network, which includes their latest WiFi 7 router (Smart Hub Pro), by an extra £5 per month. This reduces its monthly rental to £64.99 per month on a 24-month term with free setup. The same discount has also been applied to their premium ‘Made for Gamers‘ package, which offers the same features as the above tier but also adds some...
UK ISP Gigaclear Complete Fastershire FTTP Broadband Rollout
Rural broadband ISP Gigaclear appears to have completed their state aid supported contract under the Fastershire scheme, which originally instructed the operator to extend their gigabit-capable “full fibre” (FTTP) network to 70,000 of the hardest to reach premises in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire (this was revised upwards to 110,000 in 2020 – here). The deployment, which suffered from many significant delays and was previously due to complete in September 2022, has clearly been running a...
Network Rail’s Wi-Fi Suffers UK Outage at 19 Stations Due to Rogue Employee
The company that owns and manages most of the railway network in Great Britain, Network Rail, suffered a major service outage on their national Wi-Fi network this week, which began on Wednesday and impacted 19 stations. But it appears to have been caused by an “employee of Global Reach [who] corrupted the system“. Commuters began noticing that something was amiss at around 5pm on Wednesday, after many of them reported seeing messages about terror attacks being displayed as they logged onto the...