Summer 2023 BDUK Update on UK Project Gigabit Broadband Build
The Building Digital UK agency has published their latest quarterly update (June 2023) on the Government’s £5bn rural Project Gigabit broadband rollout progress, which has so far awarded rollout contracts worth a total of £589m (state aid) to help extend coverage to an extra 378,450 of the hardest to reach premises. The project aims to […]
JT Plan £80m Rollout of 5G Mobile on Jersey – Channel Islands
State-owned ISP JT (Jersey Telecom) has announced that they are planning to invest £80 million in order to roll out a new 5G based ultrafast mobile broadband network across Jersey (English Channel Island), which is to be deployed using Ericsson’s technology (radio kit etc.). The deployment will also see JT’s existing 4G network, which is […]
CityFibre Win Three Major UK Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout Contracts
The UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme has announced that CityFibre have secured three major build contracts for Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk in England. The combined award is worth £488m (£318m state aid and £170m private) and will see the operator extend 10Gbps capable FTTP to 218,000 premises. The operator, which is supported […]
UK Disappoints in Global Comparison of 5G Mobile Broadband Speeds
Benchmarking firm Opensignal, which specialises in testing the performance of mobile networks, has published new research that reveals how the UK compares with the rest of the world for 5G based mobile broadband speeds (downloads and uploads) and availability. Suffice to say, we sit at the wrong end of the table. The new research is […]
2023 H1 – UK Full Fibre Broadband Coverage Rises to 53 Percent
The latest biannual summary of UK fixed broadband coverage for H1 2023 has found that “full fibre” (FTTP) ISP networks have surged to reach 52.77% of premises (up from 45.13% in H2 2022) and 76.22% are within reach of “gigabit” speeds (up from 72.66%). Read on for details of England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland. At […]
Broadband ISP Virgin Media UK Suffers More Email Problems
Customers of Virgin Media’s (VMO2) email service are once again reporting problems today. The situation occurred after the provider attempted to conduct maintenance on the service which, instead of making things better, only appears to have resulted in a new set of “intermittent issues” (connectivity problems). In case anybody has forgotten, Virgin Media suffered a […]
BT Reveal Cause of 999 Emergency UK Call Handling Outage
Broadband and telecoms giant BT has revealed that last Sunday’s outage and disruption to their 999 emergency services number, which resulted in 11,470 unique emergency calls being “unsuccessfully connected“, was caused by a “complex software issue” that had never previously been seen through their testing regime. Apparently, the software bug was causing a “caching issue“, […]
SK Telecom overhauls AI service ‘A.’ using ChatGPT
Press Release SK Telecom today announced that it has released a major UX overhaul of its AI service ‘A.’ (pronounced A dot) to enhance customers to enjoy various content based on personal tastes and preferences. The reorganisation includes enhancements to several features such as the addition of new AI agents that are capable of taking on diverse personas. SKT has improved the UX of the main screen of ‘A.’ so that various content can be viewed on one screen at once according to the user’s...
Leveraging 5G to Develop New Value and Unlock Digital Dividends
VIEWPOINT The global digital industry, enabled by 5G, continues to move from strength to strength. In the last four years, 5G has not only gained one billion users across the world but is also playing a crucial role in the digitalization of all industries. “All stakeholders from across the industry will need to work together, exploring innovative ways to connect people, homes, industries, machines, and vehicles. We will have to create new value with 5G to unleash digital dividends as it...
Scotland’s R100 FTTP Broadband Build Tops 24,000 Premises
The Scottish Government has, in response to a Freedom of Information Request, published a useful progress update on their £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach (BT), which reveals that 24,194 premises have now been covered by their rollout of a new “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) capable ISP network. At present 96% of premises in Scotland […]