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News As the UK’s fibre network rollout continues to push ahead, operators are increasingly seeking to deploy in more challenging environments, particularly in rural areas. In this interview at Connected Britain 2024, Asa Malone, Sales Director at Hexatronic UK discusses how the company is building bespoke solutions for customers and investing heavily to make these hard-to-reach areas more accessible. Watch our full interview here   Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by...

News The funds will be awarded to projects related to 5G and European backbone networks This week, the European Commission has announced the start of the second phase of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital programme, which will provide €865 million in funding to various digital infrastructure projects from 2024 to 2027. This latest round of funding will be awarded to projects focusing on the further deployment of 5G and backbone networks – including quantum communication networks and...

The UK telecoms and media regulator, Ofcom, has launched an investigation into rural broadband ISP Gigaclear over a possible failure to “provide accurate and reliable caller location information to emergency organisations“, which could have made it more difficult for the police, fire and ambulances to find callers. The network operator, which is principally owned by Infracapital (together with Equitix and Railpen), has so far built a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP...

Rural broadband ISP Voneus has today announced the completion of their effort to roll-out a new “Gigabit Wireless Broadband” (FWA) network across 4,700 homes on Walney Island in Cumbria (England), which they say took only 12-weeks to complete and is thus the “fastest ever deployed worldwide.” The new network, which involved the deployment of Voneus’ kit on top of local council-owned lighting columns (i.e. avoiding disruptive street works), is said to be capable of 1Gbps (symmetric) speeds and...

Broadband, TV and phone provider Virgin Media (O2) this morning claims to have become the first major UK telecoms provider to enable digital payment systems, Apple Pay and Google Pay, for recurring contract payments. The hope is that this will provide a “convenient alternative to traditional direct debits“. The provider is known to have been conducting trials of this for a little while, but at launch it’s currently only available to new customers who sign-up for their service. Virgin Media...

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), which were investigating the recent theft of copper broadband and phone cables from Openreach (BT) that was said to be worth “six figures“, have just arrested three men (aged 36, 38 and 60) on suspicion of related theft and criminal damage. Over the past few weeks’ there have been a number of cable thefts on Openreach’s network from locations in Armagh and Dungannon, which are known to have disrupted the operator’s internet and phone services...

The Kent Police’s Rural Task Force arrested four suspects on Monday – three men aged between 37 – 57 and a 14-year-old boy, in connection with the theft of batteries from “telecoms boxes” (i.e. street cabinets using by broadband providers) and a large number of cables from across the South East of England. A number of network operators put batteries in street cabinets, such as those used to house copper based broadband services (e.g. Openreach’s hybrid fibre FTTC service), which can cost...

Infracapital-backed network builder and UK ISP Ogi, which is investing £245m into the deployment of a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across South Wales, has confirmed that they’ve opened up their “Cefnogi” local community support fund for an 8th round of projects. The operator has so far covered a total of 100,000 premises RFS (4th Jan 2024) with their full fibre (FTTP) broadband network – most of them residential – in Wales up to the end of 2023. In addition, they’re home...

A rather basic new study, which was conducted by tech refurbishment firm Back Market, has analysed the number of nuisance call reports coming from 752 area codes across the UK – as reported on who-called.co.uk – to see which ones receive the highest percentage of reports nationally. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its size, London was found to be the area most exploited by cold callers. The researchers also analysed the most recent comments left while making these reports to determine what...

News The new 5G standalone network is the first of its kind in the country, and covers key urban centres Today, Nokia have announced the launch of the first 5G standalone (SA) network in Costa Rica in partnership with Radiografica Costarricense (RACSA). RACSA, the mobile unit of Costa Rica’s state-owned utilities/telecoms group ICE, says they have already rolled out the new technology in of 30 sites in major cities, including San Jose, Cartago, and Limon, with 170 additional sites due later...