Virgin Media and Nexfibre Add 11,000 Homes to FTTP in Chester
Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with UK broadband ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), has announced that they’ve built to cover 11,000 additional homes in the Cheshire (England) city of Chester to their new 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network. The top half of Chester is now well covered by Virgin Media and nexfibre’s gigabit-capable broadband network, although they’ve yet to do the bottom half. The city is also home to significant...
Gigaclear to Cut Jobs as UK Rural Full Fibre Broadband Build Slows
Alternative network provider and rural broadband ISP Gigaclear has today revealed that, as part of “planning for the next stage of its development” and a “re-focus on ultra-rural areas“, their current pace of full fibre (FTTP) build will be slowing and that means job losses. The “ultra-rural” re-focus mentioned above is likely to be Gigaclear’s way of alluding to the recent state aid supported contracts that they’ve secured under the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme, which includes...
Verizon Business signs 5G deal with teledriving company Vay
News The partnership will see Verizon’s 5G tech embedded within Vay’s remotely driven electric vehicle fleet This week, Verizon Business has announced a new partnership with German start-up Vay Technology, aiming to provide the latter’s remotely operated electric vehicle fleet with 5G technology. Berlin-based start-up Vay Technology was founded in 2019 with the idea of introducing a ‘new approach to driverless mobility’. Using Vay’s app, customers can hire a remotely operated car, which is...
Streaming Provider Disney+ Joins Crackdown on Password Sharing
Internet video streaming provider Disney+ has, following earlier hints and a new subscriber agreement, finally joined Netflix by cracking down on password sharing through the introduction of a new ‘Paid Sharing‘ (Extra Member) service, which is indirectly intended to make it more difficult to share your account with people outside your household. In the past, streaming providers often tolerated password sharing and saw it as a way of helping to drum up publicity / support for their service....
Three UK Boosts Rewards and Enters the Smartphone Reuse, Recycle Fray
Mobile network operator Three UK has decided to catch up with some of their rivals by launching three new initiatives (i.e. ‘Like New‘, ‘Trade-In‘ and ‘Connect Together’) for consumers to help them reuse and recycle older Smartphones, while also rewarding households for adding more connections, if they so choose. We’ll start with ‘Connect Together‘ because it’s a bit of a different proposition from the other two initiatives. Under this scheme, customers will be able to receive a 20% discount...
Study Claims UK Broadband Users Lost £98m to Poor Customer Service
A new survey of 4,101 nationally representative UK adults, which was conducted by Which? in May 2024, has estimated that 950,000 consumers were £89m worse off over the last year due to giving up contacting their broadband provider after a poor experience. The magazine previously named Virgin Media as being the worst ISP for customer service (here and here). The survey, which claims that an estimated 9.2 million broadband consumers also experienced emotional harm as a result of poor customer...
Quickline’s £60m Gigabit Broadband Build in North and West Yorkshire UK Goes Live
Alternative network operator and ISP Quickline has today announced that the first 4,500 premises under their £60m state aid supported gigabit broadband roll-out contract for North and West Yorkshire, including the remote areas surrounding York, have been covered by the new network. The goal is to reach 28,000 premises in hard-to-reach rural areas. The West Yorkshire and York Area (Lot 8) contract, which was awarded back in February 2024 as part of the government’s £5bn Project Gigabit...
Investors waiting for the UK’s ‘fragile’ altnet ecosystem to consolidate, says Nexfibre CEO
Interview At this year’s Connected Britain, Total Telecom caught up with Rajiv Datta, CEO of Nexfibre, to discuss the company’s fibre rollout progress since hitting 1 million premises, investor tensions around market consolidation, and what a competitive broadband market will ultimately look like. Check out the full interview here! Also in the news: Meta resumes use of UK user posts to train its AI models Verizon’s 4,800 job cuts will cost over $1.9 billion CMA questions Vodafone–Three...
Dell launches AI For Telecom programme
Press Release Dell Technologies today announced Dell AI for Telecom, a program designed to simplify and accelerate AI deployments for communications service providers (CSPs). A recent MeriTalk study, commissioned by Dell Technologies, found that 48% of telecom executives see AI as the industry’s most transformative technology in the next five years, yet 68% feel their organisation is struggling to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies and customer needs. The Dell AI for Telecom...
Ofcom Tells UK Telecoms Adjudicator to Help Fix OTS Broadband ISP Switching
The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has called on the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA) to help fix some of the remaining problems (i.e. the matching process) with the new One Touch Switching (OTS) system, which aims to make it easier for consumers to change broadband ISPs, and the related processes adopted by the One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo). Just to recap. The long-awaited introduction of OTS, which has faced many delays but aims to make it both quicker and easier for consumers to switch...