First Customer Live on CityFibre’s Cambridgeshire Project Gigabit Broadband Build
CityFibre have today announced that the first customer has just gone live on their new full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network in Cambridgeshire (England) under the £69m state aid supported Project Gigabit rollout contract (Lot 5), which began its construction phase back in February 2024 (contract was awarded in March 2023). The original contracted announcement stated that a total of “around” 45,000 premises (hard-to-reach homes and businesses) in the county are ultimately expected to be...
Australian Government and AWS Collaborate to Strengthen country’s Cybersecurity
News The Australian Government has announced a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bolster Australia’s cybersecurity capabilities with an investment of at least $2 billion over the next decade The partnership will involves establishing a Top Secret (TS) AWS cloud in Australia, which the country will move its secret intelligence data to, in collaboration with the Australian Signals Directorate (an Australian government intelligence agency). The platform aims to enhance the...
Solving congestion challenges in FTTP deployment
Viewpoint Article by Evan Rogers, Solution Innovation Manager EMEA, Corning Optical Communications The UK is currently building Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) at an unprecedented rate. Figures published by Ofcom in April 2024 confirmed that 62% of UK households (as of January 2024) can now access full-fibre broadband – a 48% year on year increase. Powering this charge towards a more connected Britain are, of course, the likes of Openreach and a host of altnets, who must work smartly to utilise...
Netomnia’s Full Fibre Broadband Covers 1 Million UK Premises
One of the UK market’s largest alternative network operators, Netomnia (YouFibre), has today announced that after four years of work they’ve managed to build their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP infrastructure to cover 1 million premises passed (Ready for Service) – rising to 1.6m once the Brsk merger (here) completes. The figure of 1 million premises (RFS) represents another significant improvement from the 960,000 they had just a month ago, which shows that their...
Virgin Media UK Start Phase 2 of Smart Support to Boost Broadband Reliability
Broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) has begun the second phase of their effort to deploy the new “Smart Support” service, which aims to boost the reliability of internet connections by proactively identifying and tackling issues remotely at no extra cost. So far only 50,000 users have benefitted from this since its April 2024 launch (here), but new customers will now join them. Just to recap. The Smart Support service is built on technology from Cisco’s ThousandEyes (formerly SamKnows) platform...
Possible Broadband Boost as New UK Gov Looks to Unblock Planning
The new UK Government is off to a rapid start this week and has already appointed Peter Kyle (MP) to be the new Secretary of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), which oversees many of the country’s public broadband and mobile infrastructure projects. But bigger news on planning is expected from the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, today. Just to recap. The Labour Party’s 2024 General Election Manifesto (here) stated that the previous (Conservative) government’s...
2024 H1 – UK Gigabit Broadband Coverage Tops 83 Percent
ISPreview’s latest biannual UK summary of fixed broadband coverage for H1 2024 has found that “full fibre” (FTTP) ISP networks have grown to reach 67.68% of premises (up from 60.54% in H2 2023) and 83.39% are within reach of “gigabit” speeds (up from 79.86%). Continue on to see details for England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland. Practically all the new gigabit-capable (1000Mbps+ or 1Gbps+) class connectivity added during 2024 so far have come from Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based network...
ISP Hey! Broadband Offer 900Mbps Plan at £1.99 Monthly for Six Months
New customers looking to join UK ISP Hey! Broadband, which caters for areas covered by F&W Networks‘ new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines, may like to know that the provider is currently offering their top 900Mbps (symmetric) package for just £1.99 per month for the first size months of service on a 24-month term (£28 thereafter). The package, which also commits to making “no price increase during the length of your contract“, includes a wireless router and free installation. But take...
Vodafone Invests £120m in AI Chatbot ‘SuperTOBi’
News The chatbot is an upgrade to the pre-existing ‘TOBi’ Vodafone has announced the rollout of SuperTOBi, its new virtual assistant powered by Generative AI (GenAI), across Europe. Built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI, SuperTOBi is designed to handle complex customer inquiries more effectively than traditional chatbots. After successful launches in Italy and Portugal, SuperTOBi will be available to customers in Germany and Turkey this month, with more countries to follow later in the year. This...
Nokia, BT Group and Qualcomm achieve enhanced 5G SA downlink speeds in European first
Press Release Nokia, BT Group and Qualcomm achieve enhanced 5G SA downlink speeds in European first 5G Carrier Aggregation with Five Component Carriers BT Group becomes first European operator to achieve 5G 5CC carrier aggregation, boosting 5G standalone (SA) performance ahead of network launch later this year. Combines three FDD and two TDD carriers with 150 MHz total bandwidth, delivering greater capacity and downlink speeds in areas of high demand. Follows 5G SA downlink 4CC carrier...