Northern Ireland Ministers Call for Improvements to Rural Mobile Coverage
The Northern Ireland Assembly yesterday met to debate the need for improvements in rural mobile coverage, which among other things highlighted problems with “major delays in the planning process” for approving new 4G / 5G masts, the need for greater infrastructure sharing and question marks over what impact the barrier busting task force has actually had. In case anybody has forgotten. The Department for the Economy (DfE) published a rather vague Mobile Action Plan for Northern Ireland (MAP...
London Broadband ISP Community Fibre Discounts 500Mbps to £20
London-focused broadband ISP CommunityFibre (CF), which has rolled out their 3Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to around 1.4 million UK premises (predominantly in the city), has launched a new discount that cuts their mid-tier 500Mbps (symmetric) speed package to £20 per month on a 24-month term (price increases £4 post-contract). Just to put this in perspective. Residential customers of CF typically pay from £21 per month on a 24-month term for speeds of 150Mbps (symmetric)...
Rural Full Fibre Broadband ISP Gigaclear Summarises Annual UK Progress
Alternative network provider Gigaclear, which as of March 2024 has built a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 500,000 rural premises (RFS) in England (inc. 100,000 customers), has this week published their annual accounts to the end of 2023 and revealed some key figures for the year. Just to recap. Gigaclear is principally owned by Infracapital, together with Equitix and Railpen. The company previously had investment commitments estimated to be worth up...
Opensignal Name the UK Top 4G and 5G Mobile Operators for H2 2024
Crowdsourced benchmarking firm Opensignal has today published their latest Mobile Network Experience Report for H2 2024, which examines the 4G and 5G (mobile broadband) services of all four primary networks – EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three UK – to find which delivers the best performance. Overall, EE scooped 10 out of 14 awards. As usual, the report is based off data (speed and signal tests etc.) gathered from people using hundreds of thousands of devices (Smartphones etc.) between 1st June and...
ASA Bans NOW TV Advert Over Lack of Clarity for Significant Conditions
The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a website ad for Sky’s broadband ISP and subscription-based TV streaming sub-brand, NOW TV (NOW Broadband), after it failed to make clear the “significant conditions” of its free trials, which would automatically auto-renew at a fee. The promotion itself was for one of NOW TV’s standard Entertainment Membership plans, which showed up after clicking the “Choose your membership” button on the company’s website in December 2023. Upon...
Aqua Comms upgrades AEC-1 subsea network
News The 5,536km-long America Europe Connect (AEC-1) cable links the US to Ireland and the UK Subsea connectivity company Aqua Comms has expanded its network capacity by lighting a new fibre pair on the AEC-1 submarine cable system. The cable, which is Ireland’s first dedicated subsea cable, connects New York, Dublin, and London. The move is designed to meet the increasing demand for fast and reliable data transmission between the three nations. Aqua Comms says the move has also...
EU gives green light to Swisscom’s acquisition of Vodafone Italia
News Swisscom first announced the €8 billion deal back in March, and notified the EU in August The European Commission has given the green light to Swisscom’s acquisition of Vodafone Italia, without conditions. The clearance, granted under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, is a crucial step toward finalising the transaction. The Italian Competition Authority is still reviewing the deal, having launched a deeper investigation earlier this month to assess the transaction’s impact on market...
Superfast North Yorkshire UK Broadband Rollout Helped 200,000 Premises
The state-aid backed Superfast North Yorkshire (SFNY) project, which was supported by £100m of investment (£85m from public sources), has finally reached completion and helped more than 200,000 extra premises to access faster broadband speeds via a mix of different technologies (FTTC, FTTP, Fixed Wireless etc.) and operators (Openreach and Quickline). The SFNY project was managed by NYnet (i.e. the North Yorkshire County Council-owned broadband company) and financed by a mixture of funds from...
Vodafone Claim 5G SA Rollout Across UK Road and Rail Worth £3bn to Economy
Mobile operator Vodafone UK has today claimed, as part of their efforts to build support for a merger with Three UK, that their joint plans for a nationwide roll-out of 5G Standalone (mobile broadband) technology could save regular road users £2bn a year on fuel and boost productivity through remote working on trains by £1bn (GVA) a year. At present most existing 5G networks in the UK are Non-Standalone (NSA), which means they’re still partly reliant on some older 4G infrastructure. By...
BT to use new GenAI Gateway to avoid LLM ‘lock-in’
News The internal platform, built in partnership with AWS, will help BT to integrate Generative AI (GenAI) models from numerous providers into their operations BT’s Digital Unit has launched the GenAI Gateway, a new platform designed to streamline the company’s use of large language models (LLMs). Built in collaboration with AWS, the Gateway represents a unified platform offering secure access to advanced AI models from multiple providers including Anthropic, Meta, and Amazon. This, BT...