News

Residential customers of BT’s (inc. EE) home broadband ISP and phone services may like to know that the UK telecoms provider is preparing to launch an “advanced” version of their existing Battery Backup Unit (BBU) “later this year“, which is said to be capable of “[lasting] for the full duration of most power outages.” At present BT and EE already provide a free BBU to “vulnerable customers” who have their new Digital Voice service, so their Smart Hub (broadband router) can still receive power...

News  This is the second round of layoffs that the company has announced this year, having cut 5% of its global workforce in February  Cisco has announced that it will cut 7% of its global workforce –approximately 6,000 employees– as it shifts its focus towards higher growth areas, such as AI and cybersecurity.  Cisco acquired software platform company Splunk in 2023 for $157 per share, valuing the deal at approximately $28 billion. Including Splunk employees, Cisco has around 90,000 staff,...

The Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) has today announced that they’ve invested another £10m into ISP Highland Broadband (aka – Lothian Broadband), which is building a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) network across rural parts of the Highlands. The provider, which started building in 2022 (here), previously aimed to provide access to gigabit-capable broadband to over 20,000 premises in the Highlands by early 2024. Since 2022 they’ve also completed builds in Alness,...

News After the acquisition, DigitalBridge will take the company private    US investment company DigitalBridge has made an offer to acquire Japanese infrastructure firm JTower, in a deal worth JPY93 billion ($631.2 million) according to a Bloomberg report.  JTower’s board of directors has endorsed the offer, recognising the growing need for advanced telecom infrastructure as Japan prepares for further 5G and 6G technologies. The partnership with DigitalBridge is expected to provide JTower with...

Customers of business broadband and hosting provider Fastnet are currently experiencing a “major, wide scale service outage” across their VMWare hosting platform, which is affecting web, email, DNS hosting including cPanel services, Virtual Datacentre and some other services. But connectivity, DSL and Ethernet services are said to be “unaffected“. At the time of writing, Fastnet’s service status page still appears to be offline and the ISP has instead replaced the front page of their website...

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has just announced that they’re planning to launch their first symmetric 1Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP packages, albeit initially only in “certain locations” from April 2025. Some of the first premises to benefit will be those covered by their rural Project Gigabit contracts (here). Openreach’s full fibre network has so far covered 15 million premises (there are around 32.5m across the UK), but they aim to reach 25 million...

UK ISP LilaConnect, which following the VXFIBER acquisition is now part of Freedom Fibre‘s growing UK full fibre gigabit broadband network (here), has announced to ISPreview that they’ve just surpassed the milestone of 15,000 connected customers (up from 13,000+ at the end of June 2024). Take note that other ISPs also sell over the FF network. LilaConnect states that, over the past year, the retail ISP has increased new orders by 90% and witnessed a 300% growth in Active Subscribers. But we...

Rochdale-base broadband ISP Zen Internet has today become the first national provider to sign a wholesale deal that will enable them to sell services to premises covered by alternative operator Trooli, which has deployed a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 370,000 homes and businesses across parts of England and Scotland. Trooli’s network is mostly found in towns and large semi-rural villages across parts of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Dorset, East Sussex,...

Retail ISP Hey! Broadband, which caters for areas covered by F&W Networks‘ (Fibre and Wireless) new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines – mostly across the South East of England, has for the first time recently revealed that they’ve managed to grow their customer base to total over 25,000 on the new network. Customers of the service typically pay from £23 per month for a 150Mbps (symmetric) package, which rises to £33 for 400Mbps and then £26 (discounted from £43) for 900Mbps...

Troubled mobile operator Lyca Mobile, which is a virtual network operator (MVNO) on EE’s platform in the UK, has suffered another major blow this week after the tax authority, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), filed a winding-up petition in the courts against their UK business on Monday. Just for those who may be unfamiliar with this process, a Winding Up Petition (WUP) is a legal action that is usually taken by a creditor or creditors, which in this case is HMRC, against a company that owes them...