Existing TalkTalk UK Shareholders to Provide Over £200m of Funding
The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of UK broadband ISP and network business TalkTalk, James Smith, has revealed that the debt-laden group’s existing shareholders have “confirmed their intent to provide new funding of over £200m” to support the company’s “working capital and operational costs“. The provider has already spent much of the past couple of years wrestling with its existing c.£1bn debt pile, which in 2023 culminated in a plan to demerge the group into three separate businesses...
Street Think Tank Calls for Removal of UK’s Old and Ugly Pay Phone Boxes
A new report from think tank Create Street has suggested that the new UK government should make it easier for local authorities to remove old and “ugly” pay phone boxes, which are said to damage the look of many high streets by attracting litter, graffiti and.. other things. The focus here is on the more modern boxes (e.g. KX100+), rather than BT’s classic red kiosks across the UK or KCOM’s cream-coloured ones in Hull – many of those are now protected. There are now roughly 20,000 remaining...
Broadband ISP BT Confirms Closure of UK Cloud Storage Service
Existing customers of BT’s online Cloud storage service, which was once frequently offered alongside their various broadband packages, have been notified that the long-running service will finally be switched off on 31st October 2024. At this point “all information will be deleted“, so now might be a good time for users to download anything of relevance. The move, which was spotted by one of ISPreview’s forum community members – ‘Some Edinburgh Guy‘ (here), should not come as too much of a...
BeFibre Add £75 Amazon Gift Card to 900Mbps Broadband Plan
Merseyside-based UK ISP BeFibre, which is powered by FullFibre Ltd’s national gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, has sweetened the existing discounts on their top 900Mbps (symmetric) broadband package by throwing in a £75 Amazon gift card (£50 if you take a shorter 12-month term). The package costs from £29 per month on a 24-month term (£45 thereafter). The package itself includes free installation, a WiFi 6 capable Linksys router, a pledge of no in-contract price hikes and...
Ofcom clamps down on mid-contract price rises
News Telcos will not longer be allowed to implement mid-contract price rises linked to unclear metrics like inflation In December last year, Ofcom proposed the introduction of stricter rules surrounding mid-contract price hikes for mobile, pay-TV, and broadband customers, after an investigation found that many customers were confused The issue primarily related to inflation-based price increases, where pricing would be linked to indexes like the consumer price index (CPI) or retail price index...
Commscope sells mobile networks businesses to Amphenol in $2.1 bn deal
News The sale comes off the back of a financially poor first quarter for Commscope Commscope has announced a deal to sell its mobile networks businesses to Amphenol for $2.1 billion. Specifically, the deal includes the purchase of CommScope’s Outdoor Wireless Networks (OWN) segment as well as the Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) business, which resides in CommScope’s Networking, Intelligent Cellular and Security Solutions (NICS) unit. The acquired businesses are projected to generate...
Global IT outage disrupts the world in “biggest IT fail ever”
News The outage has caused disruption for millions Today, an IT malfunction of unprecedented scale has sent shockwaves across the world, affecting critical services and impacting millions of people. Elon Musk, tweeting this morning, has labeled the event as the “biggest IT fail ever.” The cause of the huge outage lies in a software update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The company uses a cloud-based system that offers companies security over the internet, rather than local...
Openreach Name Next 92 UK Areas for Copper to FTTP Switch – Tranche 17
Openreach (BT) has today released the next batch of 92 exchanges (Tranche 17) in their “FTTP Priority Exchange Stop Sell” programme, which reflects areas where over 75% of premises are able to get full fibre and will thus stop selling copper based analogue phone and broadband products (i.e. FTTP becomes the only product option). Currently, there are two schemes for moving away from old copper lines and services, which can sometimes criss-cross. The first starts with the gradual migration of...
Chair of Government’s Building Digital UK Agency Resigns
The Government (DSIT) has just confirmed that the Chair of their broadband and mobile centric Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, Simon Blagden, resigned from his position yesterday “with immediate effect“. The details of Simon’s departure have not been made public, but it’s perhaps not surprising given the recent change of Government. A spokesperson at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said: “The Department would like to thank Mr Blagden for the significant contribution he...
Quickline’s Project Gigabit Broadband Build Hits 600 Homes in Escrick as Kids Try Diggers
UK ISP Quickline has announced that their state aid (Project Gigabit) supported roll-out of a new gigabit full fibre (FTTP) broadband network in the North Yorkshire village of Escrick has now reached 600 homes. As part of that, they’ve teamed up with PBS Construction to show pupils at the local Primary School how they build the network via a “Digger Day“. The school Digger Day, which sounds like a dream come true for many kids (particularly boys of a certain age – usually aged 5 to 80+), is a...