Openreach leans on Labour party to remove broadband roadblocks for MDUs
News Openreach’s parent company, BT, has lobbied the opposition party to help remove the red tape surrounding fibre deployment for multi-dwelling units (MDUs) According to a report from the Financial Times, the UK’s largest broadband provider Openreach has held talks with the Labour party asking them to commit to legislation that would make it easier to deploy fibre broadband infrastructure in blocks of flats and other MDUs. Currently, companies seeking to deploy their full fibre networks in...
16% of UK consumers fell victim to phone scams in 2023, costing them on average £634
Hiya, the global leader in voice security, has published its 2024 State of the Call report, a global study of the trends shaping the voice calling industry. It has revealed that 16% of UK consumers have reported losing money to a phone scam in 2023. On average, those who were successfully scammed lost £634 ($798). The average amount lost by consumers globally was £1,792 ($2,257), with consumers in Germany losing £3686 ($4,649). Consumers and businesses consistently identify voice as their...
AFL Announces a Multi-Million-Dollar Investment and Expansion to its U.S. Fiber Optic Cable Manufacturing Operations
AFL, an industry-leading manufacturer of fiber optic cables, connectivity and equipment, today announced an investment of over $50 million to expand its fiber optic cable manufacturing operations in South Carolina. This investment aligns with the Biden-Harris administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Internet for All initiatives to increase broadband access in the U.S. It will result in the creation of new jobs and support AFL’s portfolio of products compliant with the Build...
Gigaclear Celebrates Reaching Two Significant Milestones
Rural full fibre broadband provider Gigaclear is celebrating two major milestones this month (March), reaching 100,000 customers and a total of 500,000 homes and businesses able to connect to its network. The figures serve to underline the significant growth Abingdon-based Gigaclear has undergone during the past three-and-a-half years, having begun 2021 with 36,000 customers and 140,000 homes and businesses able to connect. Welcoming the news, newly appointed CEO Nathan Rundle said whilst the...
stc and Huawei completed the MENA region’s first-ever long-haul 800G live network trial
VIEWPOINT [Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 28, 2024] stc Group, the leading operator in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, partnered with Huawei to complete the MENA region’s first-ever long-haul 800G/channel trial in its live optical network. This successful live network trial with connection over 1,000 kilometers, from Riyadh to Makkah, of state-of-the-art processing and transporting capacity proves the 800G solution is ready for scale deployment across Saudi Arabia, driving the Kingdom and the MENA...
Rural UK ISP County Broadband Completes Sudbury FTTP Rollout
Despite last year’s concerns over redundancies (here), network provider County Broadband has today announced the completion of their work to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the Suffolk market town of Sudbury, which is home to a population of around 13,000. The full fibre provider, which has been supported by an investment of £146m from Aviva Investors (here), is currently deploying their new FTTP network across rural parts of Cambridgeshire, Essex,...
Huawei’s Barry Hou discusses 5G monetisation at MWC Barcelona 2024
Insight At MWC this year, Shaun Collins, Executive Chairman of CCS Insight interviewed Barry Hou, Huawei’s President of 5G Marketing and Solution Sales to discuss the current state of the 5G market, and what future growth in the industry might look like Barry explains that it has been 5 years since the launch of 5G, and monetisation of the offering is still a huge hot topic. At the end of last year, there were around 1.6 billion users, which accounts for 20% of all mobile connections. This 20%...
Openreach Seek Changes to Make Building FTTP Broadband into Flats Easier
Network access provider Openreach (BT) are reportedly lobbying MPs, both UK government ministers and members of the Labour opposition, to introduce further legislative changes that could make it even easier for them to extend their 1.8Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network into multi-dwelling units (MDUs) by upgrading existing copper lines. The government has already done a fair bit of work to help make it both quicker and cheaper for gigabit broadband networks to access...
FCC rejects SpaceX’s request for spectrum
News The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that the company’s requests “do not substantially comply with Commission requirements” The FCC’s Space Bureau has rejected SpaceX’s requests to use spectrum in the 1.6 GHz, 2 GHz, and 2.4 GHz bands to provide mobile services via its next generation Starlink satellites. The regulator said that they are currently not looking to allow additional satellite players access to these bands, hence the application itself was invalid. “SpaceX’s...
After 3 Years of Waiting, Stocksfield’s FTTP Broadband Finally Goes Live
The Fusion Fibre Group (formerly FACTCO), which is a rural ISP and UK full fibre network builder, has announced that their much delayed deployment across the small commuter village of Stocksfield in Northumberland (this also includes homes in Mickley) has finally started to go live after suffering three years of “unexpected hurdles“. The previous article (here) covers some of the difficulties faced by the deployment, which were at least partly related to Project Gigabit’s wider suspension of...