News

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

The annual 2024 Comms National Awards were held this week, which each year works to recognise the stand-out organisations, technologies, leaders and innovations in the communications and ICT communities. The event covers a lot of different categories, and there were several wins for alternative broadband networks / ISPs. The winners were selected by a team of judges from the wider industry and associated sectors. But one of the standouts was MS3 being named as the ‘Best Altnet’ for the second...

The Peterborough-based Rydal Group, which is a UK telecoms and managed IT provider, has today announced that they’ve acquired the Cambridgeshire-based data centre (they have one site in Huntingdon), phone and broadband provider Merula for an undisclosed sum. According to the blurb, the acquisition “empowers Rydal Group to provide more comprehensive, controlled, and robust service offerings, including access to dedicated rack space and the ability to leverage multiple broadband options such as...

Openreach (BT) has told ISPreview they’re reviewing new options with broadband operators (CPs) for making better and more efficient use of their existing cable ducts. This occurred after a dispute was raised over one operator’s deployment of large 51.2mm optical diameter (OD) multitube cabling (the limit is normally 25mm to a single cable/subduct diameter). Granted, cable size isn’t exactly the sexist of topics to discuss, but for network operators engaged in the national race to deploy faster...

News The airline says its planes will be upgraded gradually to support the satellite connectivity This week, Air France has become the latest airline to strike partnership with SpaceX’s low Earth orbit satellite subsidiary Starlink for in-flight WiFi. The deal will see Air France’s fleet of aeroplanes gradually fitted with Starlink technology, allowing them to provide customers with a “ground-like” WiFi experience, with customers able to connect numerous devices at once. The exact connectivity...