Openreach Engineers Told to Measure Insect Splats on UK Vans
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has revealed that a good number of their UK broadband and phone engineers will now be given an extra fun task to perform, which involves measuring the number of bugs that get unceremoniously splatted across their vans. The company currently operates the UK’s second-largest commercial van fleet, which totals around 29,000 vehicles and covers more than 4 million miles every year. Suffice to say that a lot of insects get wiped out on their vehicles and this...
Rural UK Broadband ISP Airband Launch New TV Campaign
Alternative broadband operator Airband, which aims to cover 400,000 premises in rural parts of Wales and South West England via a mix of fixed wireless access (FWA) and full fibre (FTTP) networks by 2026, has done something that we don’t often see from Altnets by launching a TV campaign to promote their service. The TV ad, which will be shown in parts of the country where Airband has a presence, features the voiceover of BAFTA award-winning comedy actor Charlie Cooper characterised as a duck...
Vale Communications Plan Full Fibre Rollout for 1.2 Million UK Premises
A seemingly new alternative network provider called Vale Communications Infrastructure (part of the Vale Group) has sprung up with a plan to deploy a new full fibre (10Gbps capable XGS-PON) broadband and wireless network, which is targeting coverage of 1.2 million premises passed – across 19 towns – by the end of 2025. The plan was revealed as part of the company’s application for Code Powers from Ofcom. Such powers are typically sought to help speed-up deployments of new fibre and cut costs,...
UK ‘at a crossroads’ with fibre regulation, says nexfibre CEO
Viewpoint By Rajiv Datta, CEO of nexfibre Our industry’s achievements There is so much to celebrate in our industry. The significant investment made in deploying full fibre networks over the past few years has given the nation’s fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) rollout the shot in the arm it needed, creating a dynamism and competitive frisson that has been absent from the sector for a decade or more. This investment means that today full-fibre broadband is available to more than half of UK homes. Much...
Nexfibre Calls for Changes to Protect UK Fibre Broadband Market
Network builder nexfibre, which is being supported by UK ISP Virgin Media (O2), has today warned that the progress on rolling out gigabit full fibre (FTTP) broadband networks across the UK remains “fragile” and it wants Ofcom to take “decisive action” to prevent the “mistakes of the past” (i.e. Openreach domination) from being “repeated“. So far Nexfibre has covered over 1 million premises across the UK with their new network and they’re currently in the process of investing another £1bn...
New Study Ranks UK Parliamentary Constituencies by Broadband Speed
A new study from Cable.co.uk and M-Lab has used data gathered from 62 million UK internet-based speed tests, conducted between 1st July 2023 and 13th May 2024, to rank each of the country’s parliamentary constituencies by their average broadband ISP download performance. Overall, SNP constituencies were found to be the slowest, while Labour were the fastest. The new research should perhaps be taken with a big pinch of salt, since this often has much more to do with the commercial / build...
Orange mulls selling its stake in Mauritius Telecom
News A decision could be made in November, according to reports French telco group Orange is exploring the potential sale of its 40% share in Mauritius Telecom, according to a Bloomberg report citing anonymous sources. According to the sources, Orange has met with advisers to discuss the potential sale, but has not yet spoken to Mauritius Telecom’s board regarding its interest in a share buyback scheme. Orange has owned the 40% stake in the company since 2000, with the remaining 60% stake...
Nap time: EE rolls out energy-saving ‘cell sleep’ tech to mobile network
News The nationwide rollout is expected to deliver energy savings of up to 4.5m KWh per year across the entire network This week, EE has announced that it has rolled out its new dynamic ‘cell sleep’ technology across its 4G mobil network, potentially greatly reducing its power consumption. The technology functions by putting certain 4G LTE carriers into a less functional low-power mod (i.e., ‘cell sleep’) at times when this capacity is not likely to be needed. These periods of cell sleep are...
Vodafone Spain faces strike action over job cuts
News Vodafone Spain is currently facing strike action due to a redundancy plan implemented by its new owner, Zegona Communications The Spanish trade union UGT has scheduled strikes for the 9th and 11th of July, with partial strikes being carried out on various days throughout the month. Zegona Communications completed its €5 billion acquisition of Vodafone Spain earlier this month. Since then, the new owner has announced plans to cut around 1,200 jobs, just over a third of the Spanish...
Huawei won the TM Forum Best Sustainability Moonshot Catalyst Award together with Global CSPs and Industry Players
Press Release [Copenhagen, Denmark, June 20, 2024] Huawei partnered with global Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and industry players including China Mobile, Hong Kong Telecom (HKT), South Africa Openserve, Saudi Arabia STC, Tsinghua University, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and Eastcom Software won the TM Forum’s Best Moonshot Catalyst Award 2024 in Sustainability Challenge with the project “Sustainable Telco by Green Network Evolution”. This project...