Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Mobile network provider giffgaff, which is owned by Telefónica and harnesses O2’s virtual operator (MVNO) platform in the UK, has today launched a new range of travel data (4G/5G mobile broadband) add-ons that will be available to customers who plan on roaming across any one of over 40 EU countries and several selected locations (e.g. USA, Turkey).

Existing giffgaff customers already benefit from up to 5 GigaBytes (data allowance) of inclusive roaming in the EU and selected destinations “at no extra cost“. But the new add-ons will offer an easy ability to boost this without falling back on excess charging (i.e. members are normally charged 10p/MB once 5GB is used).

The prices vary by add-on and location, but will come in usage increments of 1GB, 5GB or 10GB – each lasting for 30 days or until you use them up. The CEO of giffgaff, Ash Schofield, said: “At giffgaff we like to make life simple for our members. Our new travel data add-ons alongside our existing 5GB of inclusive EU roaming will remove the fear of running out of data whilst away, or being sprung with unexpected charges.”

Giffgaff’s New Roaming Add-Ons

Customers could alternatively consider just using a travel eSIM provider (if your Smartphone supports this), which are often able to sell you more data for less money. But this does come with some added complexity / admin hassle, which some people may prefer to avoid.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Thousands of homes and businesses across Shetland, which is a remote UK subarctic archipelago that resides north of the Scottish mainland, have suffered disruption to their broadband services this weekend after part of the main SHEFA-2 (Faroese Telecom) submarine (subsea) fibre optic cable was damaged. Premises on the Orkney Islands were also hit.

Faroese Telecom’s SHEFA-2 cable reaches Shetland via two landing sites, including one stretch that goes North West up to the Faroe Islands and another cable that runs south to connect Orkney and the Scottish Mainland. In addition, BT recently deployed an additional subsea fibre link between Shetland and Orkney as part of the ongoing R100 project.

The latest situation started at around 3am yesterday (Saturday 26th July 2025) after damage occurred on the section of SHEFA-2 that runs between Orkney and Banff in Aberdeenshire. Shetland Telecom promptly stated that their own internet customers were “unaffected as traffic switched to our resilient route via Faroe“. But the situation for Openreach (BT)’s local fibre broadband network was more problematic.

A Spokesperson for Openreach said:

“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience, the damage to a subsea cable from Orkney to Banff, has caused from Saturday morning. Customers can still make landline calls, and whilst we’re constantly assessing customer impact, we believe up to 10,000 customers in Faroe, Shetland and Orkney islands could have disruption to their broadband services.

We’re working on repairs as soon as we can and will update further once we can confirm our specific work and timeline. Anyone experiencing any issues should report it to their service provider for further investigation as usual.”

The cause of the break has not yet been ascertained, although the most likely reason tends to be ships dragging their anchors across the cable or fishing trawlers dragging large nets in the same way (fishing fleets usually know where the cables run, but not every trawler pays proper attention and accidents can happen). Some past cable breaks have often been attributed to these, although in the current climate nobody can rule out the potential for sabotage (here).

The latest such incident occurred in October 2022 and was much more disruptive because it involved two separate cable breaks that hit within a relatively short space of time (here). Such breaks can sometimes take several weeks to fully repair, which is partly due to the delay in arranging for a cable repair ship to be dispatched, as well as uncertainty around the scale of damage and weather. Repair ships have recently been in quite high demand.

According to Faroese Telecom, the location of the damage was some 9km off the coast of Orkney, and they currently expect a repair vessel to be on site by the middle of next week. The outage does not appear to be impacting fixed line phone (voice) services. We should add that residents on Shetland can now also purchase packages via Starlink’s LEO satellite broadband network, which may be a useful alternative for redundancy.

The outage comes shortly after Vodafone (VodafoneThree) announced that they had begun a new “feasibility study”, which will explore the possibility and cost of deploying a new subsea fibre optic cable system to help transform broadband and mobile connectivity on the Shetland Islands and boost resilience (here).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Carlisle-based alternative network operator and ISP Grain (Grain Connect), which a week ago secured a major £225m funding boost (here), on Friday revealed that their gigabit-capable full fibre (FTTP) broadband network had now covered 270,000 UK premises (up from 250k in March 2025) – from Aberdeen to Brighton, Carlisle to Cornwall, Leicester to Liverpool and Newcastle to Newport etc.

The operator’s broadband network, which is also home to over 43,000 customers (end of March 2025), is now aiming to build toward its next target of around 600,000 premises – it’s not currently known when this might be achieved. After that there’s also an aspiration toward reaching 1 million premises. Grain has no plans for M&A and so this will all come from fresh infrastructure build.

So far this year we’ve only seen a few big announcements of fresh funding from the altnet sector, with some of the main headliners being CityFibre’s massive £2.3bn deal (here), Netomnia’s £160m boost (here) and Wessex Internet’s £50m funding deal (here). Elsewhere in the market many other players are back to focusing more on growing take-up than new network build, while at the same time seeking a good outcome from consolidation in the future.

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A couple of weeks have passed since Sky Broadband became the largest retail ISP to go live on CityFibre’s national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network (here). But some rival providers have privately begun to note that customers who sign-up to Sky’s service seem to be getting earlier installation dates than they can. We take a closer look.

According to CityFibre’s website (here), customers who take one of their consumer full fibre broadband products via a supporting ISP should get a fairly short “6 day standard install lead time“, although other ISPs have expressed that the “service will be provided in approximately 10 working days” or sometimes up to 14. Experiences will of course vary by location and type of install (new provision vs migration etc.).

However, in theory, all ISPs should be pulling their dates from the same appointment book, which would mean that – no matter which ISP you choose on CityFibre’s network – somebody with the same address and provision type should expect to get either an identical installation date, or at least something very close to that. But ISPreview has observed something different.

Over the past week a number of network engineers, consumers and ISP reps have privately suggested that Sky Broadband appeared as if they could be getting preferential treatment for installations on CityFibre’s network. The feedback indicated that Sky’s customers were often able to pick installation dates (during the order process) that were up to 2-3 weeks in advance of anybody else – checked across multiple cities.

In response, ISPreview decided to conduct a few anecdotal tests via several ISPs, using a random selection of addresses covered by CityFibre in York, Poole, and Dundee. We only tested against new provisions (not migrations) and also excluded any possibility that the results could be polluted by the order process picking up different networks, such as Openreach. We also repeat-tested via different web browsers to avoid cache conflicts and to confirm our findings.

The Results

Address in Dundee:

The earliest installation date offered by Sky was “Tuesday 5th August (AM slot)“, while every other ISP we tested (e.g. TalkTalk, FibreCast, Zen Internet and several random picks) returned an earliest date of Monday 18th August (almost a two week gap).

Address in York:

The earliest installation date offered by Sky was “Monday 28th July (PM slot)“, while every other ISP we tested returned dates between 31st July (Zen) and out as far as 6th August (TalkTalk).

Address in Poole:

The earliest installation date offered by Sky was “Monday 28th July (AM slot)“, while most of the other ISPs we tested returned dates for Monday 4th August.

The limited testing we conducted showed that Sky Broadband always came out with the earliest date, while every other ISP tended to get a date that was anything from a few short days to several weeks further into the future. The results seemed to support the initial feedback we’d received, although only one of the examples tested highlighted a c.2-week gap. But we suspect that we might well have found longer gaps by testing against a larger sample.

ISPreview queried this trend with both Sky and CityFibre, although Sky did not respond to our follow-up queries and instead directed us back to the network operator’s statement below.

A CityFibre spokesperson told ISPreview:

“CityFibre offers the same market-leading products and services to all of our customers and we always aim to offer an installation date within days of an order being placed. Whilst there will be variances in the first available date, informed by demand, customer equipment availability, or the complexity of the planned install, the vast majority (around 90%) of our offered install dates are within ten working days, with around half offered within five working days.”

Once again, the issue isn’t so much with how long it takes to install, but rather the fact that one ISP – Sky – seems able to give out earlier dates than all of the other ISPs we tested, including those where issues of demand and CPE availability should not be preventing access to the same dates.

The other possibility here is that Sky could be doing something unusual with their ordering system and not treating or checking CityFibre’s appointments database in the same way as others. But if that were the case then we’d expect the selected appointment date, assuming users only picked the earliest one, to end up being delayed after completion of the order (we couldn’t test this for obvious reasons).

One key thing to point out here is that the date customers choose should really be expressed as “provisional“. But of all the ISPs we tested, only TalkTalk actually clearly expressed it that way – none of the other order systems we tried referred to the selected dates as provisional or subject to change, even though they’re not strictly set in stone until AFTER the order has been placed.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Press Release

Orange Cyberdefense, the cybersecurity subsidiary of Orange, has acquired 100% of ensec, a Swiss cybersecurity company based in Zurich, known for its expertise in consulting, IT security integration, managed security services and tailored support for a wide-ranging portfolio of products from leading cybersecurity providers. This targeted acquisition, which was finalized on 23 July, will reinforce Orange Cyberdefense’s existing presence in Switzerland.

In a fast-growing Swiss market characterized by increased regulatory requirements and strong demand for local expertise, the acquisition of ensec will expand Orange Cyberdefense’s presence in German-speaking Switzerland, complementing its existing footprint in the French-speaking part of the country.

Orange Cyberdefense has been present in Switzerland since 2022 and enjoys a solid reputation, particularly in offensive security solutions. With over 100 highly skilled cybersecurity experts in the country, Orange already works closely with customers from both the public and private sectors, ranging from SMBs to large multi-nationals in collaboration with Orange Business.

The acquisition of ensec will build on this presence, bringing considerable value in terms of expertise and customer proximity in the Germanic regions of Switzerland. The company counts around 40 highly trained experts and a distinct customer portfolio of over 130 clients operating in sensitive fields such as finance, retail and energy, as well as customers from the public sector.

This operation constitutes an opportunity to capitalize on complementary strengths: on the one hand, leveraging synergies with Orange Business and Orange Cyberdefense’s global sales forces; and on the other, benefiting from the technical expertise and local presence of ensec in the Germanic regions of Switzerland and in neighboring areas. This move strengthens Orange Cyberdefense’s position in Europe as a leading cybersecurity player and reinforces its ambition to be the trusted cybersecurity partner of choice in Switzerland and beyond.

This new milestone is fully aligned with Orange Cyberdefense’s unique positioning as a global cybersecurity player, combining local presence with scalable expertise and services, as well as deep-threat intelligence. It also reflects the Orange group’s broader ambition to deliver sustainable growth and digital trust through expert-led and territorially anchored cybersecurity services.

Hugues Foulon, CEO of Orange Cyberdefense, commented: “The acquisition of ensec marks a significant milestone in our European development, enabling us to better serve our customers with comprehensive, high-impact cybersecurity solutions. This move not only strengthens our market position among Germanic customers in Switzerland but also underscores our commitment to build a safer digital society for our clients and partners. We are delighted to welcome ensec’s teams into the Orange Cyberdefense family.”

Nicolas Lutz, CEO of Orange Cyberdefense Switzerland, added: “We strongly believe that the combination of our respective activities in Switzerland makes sense for our customers by providing increased proximity and the ability to respond rapidly irrespective of language-related constraints. In addition, ensec’s recognized expertise in consulting and cybersecurity integration makes for a perfect match that will build on our existing capabilities to create a dynamic Swiss cyber champion.”

Mike Schuler, CEO of ensec, concluded: “Joining Orange Cyberdefense marks an exciting new chapter for ensec. This step enables us to scale our impact, expand our footprint, and bring even more value to our clients — while staying true to our core: deep technical expertise, a strong local presence, and trusted partnerships. With access to Orange Cyberdefense’s extensive portfolio of services and products, we are ideally positioned to deliver end-to-end cybersecurity solutions tailored to the Swiss market. This evolution also opens up new opportunities for our employees to grow within a global leader and for our partners to benefit from an even broader ecosystem. Together, we will shape the future of cybersecurity in Switzerland and beyond”.

The financial details of this acquisition remain confidential.

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Also in the news:
US judge rules Huawei must face charges of fraud and racketeering
Optus ditches football rights to focus on telecoms
Nokia launches digital twin platform Enscryb to digitalise energy sector

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Rome/Algiers, 24 July 2025

Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, and Algérie Télécom, the leading national telecommunications operator in Algeria, which offers a wide range of fixed-line, Internet, and enterprise solutions, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the development of a new subsea cable linking Italy and Algeria.

The agreement was announced during the 6^th Italy-Algeria Business Forum held yesterday in Rome, in the presence of the President of the Council of Ministers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, and of the President of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune.

As part of the MoU, Sparkle will realise with Algérie Télécom a submarine cable linking Italy and Algeria and provide related value-added services on cybersecurity and cloud computing, technical support for data center development, training across key technical topics as well as a point of presence in Europe fully dedicated to Algérie Télécom, all aimed at supporting Algeria’s digital transformation.

The new, dedicated submarine cable will provide a high-capacity route to Europe, delivering enhanced performance, ultra-low latency, and full redundancy compared to existing infrastructures. By doing so, it will also support the growing demand for internet services and digital content, offering an outstanding connectivity experience for both consumers and businesses.

“This agreement marks a significant step in strengthening digital ties between Europe and North Africa,” said Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle. “We are proud to contribute to Algeria’s digital future by delivering modern infrastructure as well as innovative and secure solutions for fast and resilient international connectivity.”

“The strategic partnership with Sparkle confirms the long-standing relationship between our two companies and reflects our shared commitment to innovation and excellence,” said Adel Bentoumi, CEO of Algérie Télécom. “We believe that this project will play a key role in diversifying our international routes and in meeting the increasing needs of our customers across Algeria.”

The Italy-Algeria Business Forum aims to strengthen bilateral cooperation between the two countries in strategic sectors such as energy, innovation, education, agriculture, and culture. It forms part of the Mattei Plan for Africa, through which Italy seeks to build balanced partnerships based on mutual respect and shared benefits.

About Sparkle

Sparkle is TIM Group’s global operator, first international service provider in Italy and among the top worldwide, offering a full range of infrastructure and global connectivity services – capacity, IP, SD-WAN, colocation, IoT connectivity, roaming and voice – to national and international Carriers, OTTs, ISPs, Media/Content Providers, and multinational enterprises. As a leading player in the submarine cable industry, Sparkle owns and manages a network of more than 600,000 km of fiber stretching across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, and Asia. Sparkle’s sales team has a global presence, with representatives in 32 countries.

Find out more about Sparkle following its X and LinkedIn profiles or visiting the website tisparkle.com

 About Algérie Télécom

Algérie Télécom is the incumbent telecommunications operator in Algeria with a presence across the country. The company provides a range of services, including fixed telephony, high speed and ultra-high-speed Internet access, and advanced connectivity solutions for individuals, businesses, and institutions.

At the forefront of Algeria’s digital transformation, Algérie Télécom continually invests in modernizing its infrastructure, particularly through the development of its fiber optic network and the implementation of innovative technologies.

This commitment enables the company to provide inclusive, reliable, and high-performance connectivity, playing a strategic role in Algeria’s digital economy.

Sparkle Media Contacts:

sparkle.communication@tisparkle.com

X: @TISparkle

Algérie Télécom Media Contacts:

Email: contact@at.dz

Tél : +213 (021) 82 38 38

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

A recent study by telecom analyst firm Tarifica, which examined the change in fixed broadband ISP pricing between 2023 and 2025 across six major European countries (Italy, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands), has found that prices fell in every country except the UK where they rose by 7.86%.

In fairness, when viewed across a much larger country sample, past studies have tended to indicate that the UK normally does pretty well when it comes to the issue of broadband pricing and affordability. This is often a reflection of our highly competitive market, particularly since the introduction of alternative networks that have driven down pricing to steal market share away from the incumbents of Openreach (BT) and Virgin Media.

The new study claims to have checked the residential packages of “every broadband provider” in each country – those able to offer plans with download speeds of at least 100Mbps with unlimited usage. The results were then sorted into four consumer profiles, separated by download speed – 100Mbps+, 250Mbps+, 500Mbps+ and 1000Mbps+.

The results show that almost all the countries, except the UK, saw a fall in their prices, with Spain, the Netherlands, and France all seeing double-digit drops in their average price (these reductions were seen across every user type). By comparison, the UK was already the third most expensive market in 2023, but with its average price increasing and the declines in price from Germany and the Netherlands, the country ended up ranked as the most expensive for consumer broadband service by Q1 2025.

The increase in the UK is said to have been “driven exclusively by the rise in cost for 1000+Mbps plans“, where the country’s average price is said to have increased by “more than 50%“. For its other offer types, the country did see modest price declines, just “not enough to offset the price increase for these super users“.

The results are somewhat questionable and lead us to suspect that the study may not have actually included the results from “every” ISP as claimed (there are around 200 domestic-focused ISPs in the UK). ISPreview similarly conducted a study of 1Gbps package prices earlier this year (here), which looked at the change from 2022 to 2025 and found that monthly pricing had broadly fallen due to competition; we also made our data public.

In addition, there are a few caveats to consider above, such as with the fact that Tarifica seems to be lending too much weight in their overall average to the perceived increase in 1Gbps pricing. This is an issue because only a small portion of users will actually be adopting 1Gbps tiers, thus the study should ideally be weighting such tiers to have a lower impact on the general average.

The study also noted that only 38% of the UK ISPs sampled actually offered 1Gbps packages (in 2023 this figure was just 25%), which they say compares with c.80-100% in the other countries (where full fibre (FTTP) networks have been around at scale for several years longer). However, the figure of 38% for 2025 is questionable, as most of the ISPs we monitor have already introduced such a tier. We’d be curious to see Tarifica’s data for this.

The other catch is that the study is only considering the prices offered to new customers, which will always benefit from temporary first term discounts and special offers. But since most consumers do tend to remain with their ISP post-contract, at least for a few years, then to get the full picture we’d probably need to examine the higher prices that loyal customers pay too (not an easy thing to do as many ISPs are not transparent about this).

Overall, it’s an interesting piece of research, but one that should probably be taken with a pinch of salt. Pricing is a notoriously difficult thing to pin down and correctly reflect.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The debt strained TalkTalk Group, which has recently been going through another turbulent time due to payment disputes with suppliers and reports of a possible sale (here, here and here), has reportedly secured an additional £100m funding deal from existing shareholder Ares Management. This may be enough to reduce some of the financial pressures.

The group previously secured a crucial refinancing package worth c. £400m in September 2024 (here and here), which saved it from the immediate risk of a default on its debts (extended debt maturities to September 2027). But as well as the aforementioned challenges, it’s since also suffered another round of redundancies (here) and then there’s the continued shrinking of its customer base from 3.6 to 3.2 million (here).

Suffice to say that the group is still not out of the woods and has continued to hunt for a buyer for different parts of their business (here), while also recently migrating another batch of their legacy broadband and phone customers (here) over to the Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus). The strain is evident and reports suggest that there’s now been a major development.

According to the City Editor of Sky News, Mark Kleinman (credits to Ionide on our forum for spotting), the provider has just “agreed a £100m funding deal with existing backer Ares Management that will alleviate financial pressure on the company founded by Sir Charles Dunstone. An announcement could come as soon as today“. The full story hasn’t yet been published on Sky News, but it should be live any minute.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

The VP of Engineering at satellite broadband operator Starlink (SpaceX), Michael Nicolls, has revealed that last night’s 2.5 hour long network outage of their mega constellation – impacting all terminals (business and residential) – was caused by a “failure of key internal software services” in their core network.

The outage, which appears to have begun at just after 8pm last night (British Summer Time), is not the first such disruption that has hit Starlink during its life, but it was one of the biggest. The network-wide issue was then marked as being fully resolved just before 11pm (often it can take time for some terminals to come back, even after a core issue has been resolved). Starlink’s official website also experience a wobble during this period, which may have been caused by the surge of global interest.

According to Michael Nicolls (X): “Starlink has now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours. The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network. We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network, and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again.”

At present Starlink has around 8,000 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (c.4,300 are v2 / V2 Mini) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km – and they’ll add thousands more by the end of 2027. Residential customers in the UK usually pay from £75 a month, plus £299 for hardware (currently free for most areas) on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (kit price may vary due to different offers), which promises UK latency times of 28-36ms, downloads of 103-258Mbps and uploads of 15-26Mbps. Cheaper and more restrictive options also exist for roaming users.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Some customers of mobile operator EE (BT), as well as those on other networks who might be trying to contact them, are currently experiencing a partial service outage that is disrupting their ability to make calls (others complain they also can’t receive calls). The operator has declared this to be a priority 1 incident. The issue also seems to be impacting some landline calls.

The sporadic problem, which doesn’t seem to affect everybody, appears to have started at around 11am and will have also been felt by those on EE’s virtual (MVNO) operators (Spusu, Lyca Mobile etc.). The issue does not appear to be impacting Wi-Fi Calling, text messaging (SMS) or 4G and 5G data (mobile broadband) connections.

A spokesperson for EE said: “We’re currently addressing an issue impacting our services. We apologise for any inconvenience caused; we’re working urgently to fix this issue and will provide a further update as soon as possible.”

Calling problems on mobile operators can often be complex due to how call routing is handled and the issue of who actually controls your number – hint: it’s not always your current mobile operator (try a network lookup).