News

Viewpoint For over a decade, the Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Primary Storage has remained largely unchanged, with little movement among the leaders. Published by IT consulting firm Gartner, MQ is a series of market research reports demonstrating market trends, such as direction, maturity and participants. Industry insiders now suggest that Gartner may be shifting its standard criteria and methodology to favour firms that can integrate with hyperscalers: large cloud service providers such as Amazon...

A coalition of 46 signatories (mostly in Scotland), including various outdoor conservation organisations, community councils / trusts and landowners, have again called on the UK government to avoid “needless damage to large areas of some of the wildest places” by reconsidering the rural expansion of 4G (broadband) mobile masts under the £1bn Shared Rural Network project. The industry-led SRN project with EE (BT), Vodafone, Three UK and O2 (Virgin Media) – supported by £501m of public funding...

Alternative network operator and broadband ISP CommunityFibre, which has deployed their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across around 1.4 million UK premises (mostly in London), has today announced that their customer base has grown to 300,000 (up from 200,000+ on 27th Nov 2023). The provider states that they’ve seen an 85% increase in their customer base over the past 12 months as more people look to alternative networks (Altnets) for faster, more affordable fibre...

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and Institute of Directors (IoD) have this week written to the UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, in the hope of encouraging them to extend the automatic compensation scheme for consumer broadband outages to businesses. Easier said than done. The current voluntary system (full summary), which was first introduced in 2019, typically requires member ISPs to compensate consumers (cash or bill credits) by £9.76 per day for...

The next batch of four government-funded rural 4G (mobile broadband) mast upgrades have gone live in some of Britain’s most visited national parks, which forms part of the industry-led £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) project with EE (BT), Vodafone, Three UK and O2 (Virgin Media). The SRN – supported by £501m of public funding and £532m from operators – involves both the reciprocal sharing of existing masts in certain areas and the demand-led building and sharing of new masts in others between...

Alternative network ISP Fibrus, which is deploying a new multi-gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across rural parts of Cumbria and Northern Ireland, has today announced that they’ve secured an additional £100m tranche of Senior Debt and are now “fully funded to complete” their roll-out plan for 500,000 UK premises. The new funding package represents an increase to the Belfast-based operator’s existing £200m senior debt facility and £20m revolving credit facility...

Leeds-based internet provider Unchained ISP appears to have recently complemented their existing range of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) packages on Openreach’s national network by launching a similar range via alternative network operator CityFibre, albeit with a few notable benefits. The new packages naturally have the benefit of symmetrical speeds (same download and upload rate) and they’re also being offered on a short 30-day minimum contract term (the Openreach packages are on 12-month...

Some customers trying to order a broadband package via ISPs on CityFibre’s new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network are finding, in certain locations, that the wholesale operator has been rejecting orders where their network is “at capacity“. This is despite continuing to list the same addresses as being available on their website. First things first. All broadband networks can run into issues of capacity, such as those that might occur when there aren’t enough spare ports currently...

News The news follows BT’s initial launch of the content delivery solution in December 2023    BT and Edgio have announced the launch of the world’s first Multicast-Assisted Unicast Delivery (MAUD)-enabled Content Delivery Network (CDN).   The partnership aims to improve the delivery of live television over the internet, by offering benefits such as cost reduction, enhanced content quality, scalability, and more sustainable streaming.  Edgio, integrating its CDN with BT Group’s MAUD...

News  On Day 1 of Connected Britain (September 11), ten startups from the Startup Village will pitch their ideas to a panel of judges, including investors and industry experts. The winner will be awarded the Connected Britain 2024 Startup of the Year Award at the prestigious Connected Britain Awards ceremony later that evening. After a competitive first round of judging, here are the ten startups shortlisted from the 90 attending the show this year!  Connected Specialising in advanced building...