News

Wireless infrastructure firm Cellnex has today extended their existing partnership with UK mobile providers Vodafone and O2 (Virgin Media), which will ensure that both operators continue to have access to share Cellnex’s national tower infrastructure to help deploy 5G (mobile broadband) and future services. The expected move follows shortly after VMO2 and Vodafone reached a new 10-year network sharing agreement (here), which was necessary in order for Vodafone to satisfy several network and...

Press Release Cellnex UK, Vodafone and Virgin Media O2 have reached a new long-term agreement for Cellnex UK to provide the two Mobile Network Operators with tower infrastructure and associated services. This new agreement strengthens and grows the existing relationship providing certainty for all parties. Cellnex UK CEO, Gianluca Landonlina underlined how “This agreement exemplifies the strength of Cellnex’s partnerships with its customers. The new agreement, forged through great...

News After approval from the EU, the government aims to increase fibre network funding from €12 billion to €38 billion Last Tuesday, the European Commission gave approval to the German government to amend the exiting state aid scheme aimed at rolling out fibre across the country. These amendments will see the scheme extended until the end of 2028, and the budget increase from 12 billion to €38 billion. The funding is available for local authorities either to deploy and own their own fibre...

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has issued another update on a long-running underground petrol leak in the Surrey village of Bramley, which has already restricted the ability to safely work on their local broadband ISP and phone network. The bad news today is that “making [this] network safe and accessible” could now take “at least 12 months“. In case anybody missed our last report in early June 2024 (here). Openreach is currently dealing with the “significant and ongoing impact” of the...

News The fibre cables have reportedly been accessed via street cabinets belonging to SFR and Bouygues Telecom Today, French authorities have revealed that fibre networks in several part of the country have been ‘sabotaged’, causing fixed broadband disruptions for thousands of people. According to a report by Le Parisien, fibre cables in southern France were damaged in cabinets belonging to SFR and Bouygues Telecom, while damage was also reported in the Meuse region near Luxembourg and the Oise...

Residents living in the tiny North Wales (UK) village of Penmachno in the isolated upland Machno valley area, which has long been known to suffer from flaky mobile coverage, have banded together to tackle the issue by installing a “cutting-edge, free WiFi system” in the centre of the community. According to the press release, the village receives “absolutely no mobile phone service.” But the admittedly unreliable coverage checkers from Three UK, O2 and EE do all claim to be able to deliver...

The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today given UK phone providers (fixed line and mobile) six months to implement changes that aim to help tackle scammers who call from abroad and imitate UK landline numbers (i.e. spoofed calls), which requires stricter measures against “Presentation Numbers” that are used to identify who is making a call. Most of the United Kingdom’s major broadband, phone and mobile network providers have already implemented various technical measures to tackle Nuisance...

Residents in the rural Shropshire (England) village of Brockton (Lydbury North), which sits a few short miles from the town of Bishop’s Castle and is served by a hybrid full fibre (FTTP) and wireless broadband network from Voneus, have for the past month been “plagued with frequent outages and, when it is up, lots of packet loss, essentially making it unusable“. According to local residents, the new network was originally built by UK ISP SWS Broadband (Rural Broadband Solutions) before they...

The CEO of Virgin Media’s co-parent operator Liberty Global, Michael Fries, has given a useful update on the progress they’re making with opening up their UK broadband network to wholesale (NetCo), the potential for consolidation within the alternative network (altnet) market and their position with respect to ISP TalkTalk’s debt problems. Just to give a little context. UK ISP Virgin Media previously announced that their own network of 16 million premises passed will be opening up to wholesale...

Abingdon-based UK broadband ISP Gigaclear, which has long been rolling out their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover rural locations across Essex (England) – via a mix of commercial build and state aid supported contracts, is now facing legal action from Essex County Council (ECC) over an alleged failure to deliver on their contracted builds. The alternative network provider is principally owned by Infracapital, together with Equitix and Railpen. The company previously...