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News  The speech is the first delivered under the new Labour government   At the state opening of parliament yesterday, the new government set out its agenda for its tenure ahead. At the centre of the event was a speech from the King, written by the new government, which outlines the government’s agenda and proposed policies for the coming parliamentary session.   Of the 40 bills mentioned in the speech, there were three of relevance to the telco sector:  The ‘Cyber Security and Resilience...

Network benchmarking firm Opensignal has today published the results of a new study that explored the differences in broadband reliability between urban and rural areas across 18 countries. The study reveals that, among other things, the Nordics, the United Kingdom and Canada all score highly for connection reliability. Opensignal typically leverages crowdsourced data collected via end-users on their benchmarking app and services. In this case they also harnessed their new Broadband...

London-focused UK business internet provider Vorboss, which has rolled out a 100Gbps capable full fibre network across the city centre, has today announced that they’ve appointed two new chiefs to their top leadership team – Jason O’Malley as Chief of Commercial Operations (CCO) and Malcolm Puddefoot joins as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Just to recap. Vorboss has spent the past few years deploying 500km of their own dedicated point-to-point fibre optic cables across Central London (covering...

The UK telecoms and media regulator, Ofcom, has launched a new consultation that will update and extend their information gathering policy, which largely reflects the fact that they’ve gained new powers to extract information from companies and broadband providers etc. to support their work. Ofcom’s existing policy on information gathering was published in March 2005, although they last consulted on changes in 2015, which led to significant adjustments in their practical processes including...

News The Commission will close its four-year antitrust investigation into Apple’s mobile payment platform Apple Pay following the US tech giant’s decision to open up its tap-and-go payments tech to third parties The European Commission (EC) has announced that it will close its investigation into anticompetitive practices related to Apple’s iPhone’s contactless payments policies. The investigation was opened four years ago, when European regulators took issue with the fact that Apple would not...

London focused broadband ISP G.Network, which has spent the past few years building a gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of the city centre (here), has completed the “first phase” of a new deployment with the Peabody Trust – extending their fibre optic service to more homes across Camden and Westminster. The curiously named Peabody Trust is said to be one of the UK’s oldest not-for-profit housing association and their partnership with G.Network has, since the first...

Internet provider Virgin Media (O2) has finally fixed a fault that left a small number of their broadband customers, specifically some of those on top tier packages (e.g. 1Gbps), with half their normal upload rate (i.e. 50Mbps instead of 100Mbps). But it’s unclear why the seemingly simple problem took over a month to resolve. The issue, which was raised by a couple of ISPreview’s readers (special credit to David) and via Virgin Media’s Community Forum, first appears to have started at the very...

News  The dispute relates to major planned job cuts following Vodafone Spain’s acquisition by Zegona last month  Spanish trade unions have accepted the workforce reduction plans offered to them by Vodafone Spain’s new owner Zegona Communications, who acquired the company back in June.  The Spanish trade union UGT had scheduled strikes for the 9th and 11th of July – with partial strikes being carried out on various days throughout the month – in protest against a redundancy plan announced by...

News The $20.5 billion deal would see the parent company of Advanced Info Service (AIS) combined with Gulf Energy Development This week, Thailand’s seventh-richest man, Sarath Ratanavadi, has revealed ambitious plans to merge his energy company Gulf Energy Development with its telecoms subsidiary, InTouch Holdings, the parent company of Thailand’s biggest telco AIS. The move would see the formation of a new public limited company with an estimate value of $20.5 billion. Gulf already owns a...

The State Opening of Parliament – often referred to as the “King’s Speech” – took place today, which saw the new UK Government set out their agenda for the coming session. The speech included mentions of several bills that could potentially support the expansion of gigabit broadband and 5G mobile networks, as well as toughen cyber security and Digital Verification Services. Just to recap. The Labour Party’s 2024 General Election Manifesto (here) has previously made clear that they would be...