Openreach UK Warn Surrey Petrol Leak to Take At Least 1 Year to Fix
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...
“Cowardly and irresponsible”: French fibre networks sabotaged overnight
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...
Penmachno in Wales Builds Own WiFi Network to Tackle Poor Mobile Signal
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...
Ofcom Orders UK Phones Providers to Add Tougher Scam Call Blocking
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...
A Month of Rural Broadband Connectivity Woes for Shropshire Village
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...
Liberty Global CEO Updates on Virgin Media UK Going Wholesale, AltNets and TalkTalk
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...
Essex Council Take Legal Action Against Rural Broadband ISP Gigaclear
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...
First Residential UK Broadband Customers Change ISP via New Switching System
The industry-led One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo), which holds responsibility for implementing Ofcom’s heavily delayed One Touch Switch (OTS) migration system for faster consumer switching between UK internet service providers, has reported its “first successful residential customer switches” during the final trial phase. The OTS system was originally due to go live in April 2023, but it’s since suffered big delays (details here, here and here) and is now planned to launch on 12th...
AST SpaceMobile prepares to launch first commercial satellites
News The five Bluebird satellites are set to be launched into low Earth orbit (LEO) in September Direct-to-device (D2D) satellite communications operator AST SpaceMobile has announced this week that it’s five new commercial satellites, dubbed Bluebirds, are built and ready for launch. The Bluebirds will be shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida, at the start of August, where they are targeted for launch in September. The exact launch date will depend on weather conditions at the launch site and...
TalkTalk UK Shareholders Propose £400m Package to Entice Lenders
The efforts to try and save broadband ISP TalkTalk from its rapidly suffocating debts took another twist today after a report claimed that shareholders, led by company founder Sir Charles Dunstone, are attempting to sweeten their offer to lenders by introducing an asset pledge – worth c.£200m – to support an already proposed capital injection of over £200m. Just to recap. The TalkTalk Group has already spent much of the past few years wrestling with its existing c.£1bn debt pile, which in 2023...