Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Network operator Openreach (BT) has today published an updated build plan for the ongoing roll-out of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband ISP network, which is the first update since December 2024 and adds 21 new locations – covering 80,000 extra UK premises – to their national deployment plan.

Just to recap. The BT Group is currently investing up to £15bn to expand the coverage of their new full fibre network to 25 million premises by December 2026 (here), which will include around 6.2m in rural or semi-rural areas. On top of that, they’ve also expressed an ambition to reach up to 30m by 2030 (there are c. 33m in the UK), which is partly dependent upon a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s next Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR).

Openreach has effectively already set their primary roll-out plan to achieve the December 2026 target, which occurred back in May 2024 (here) – this meant that round 3,500 towns, cities, boroughs, villages and hamlets were now included in the build programme (even more if we include their Project Gigabit contracts). Since then, the operator’s build updates have largely focused on reflecting progress and changes that have been made within that existing plan.

The latest June 2025 Build Plan (and map) thus represent somewhat of a process update for the previous update in December 2024, but it also adds another 21 new locations   forming part of their plan to reach up to 5 million more homes and businesses during the year to March 2026 (up from 4.3m added in the prior year). Not to mention that this also partly reflects Openreach’s recent move to accelerate its roll-out by 20% (here).

List of the 21 new build exchanges

However, we don’t currently expect Openreach to announce a much bigger list of new UK build locations or coverage expansions, such as for their future plan for going from 25m to 30 million premises by 2030, until after Ofcom have published their final telecoms market review proposals – due later this year (implementation from April 2026). For an operator of Openreach’s size, the addition of 80,000 premises to their existing plan is relatively small.

Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said:

“This is a UK infrastructure success story, so it makes sense for us, and the country, to push hard on the accelerator pedal. Our new network is helping to drive economic growth, create jobs, and will be the backbone of a prosperous, globally connected and competitive UK.

Last year was our biggest year of build ever – reaching well over four million homes with this life changing technology. No other builder across Europe has achieved that kind of build rate and this year will be our biggest ever.”

Openreach currently has 15,000 people focused on their UK deployment of full fibre technology and the average per premises build cost continues to hover around the £280 mark (roughly £1.2bn per year). The new service, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some providers have started to do free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

Finally, Openreach’s top consumer FTTP home broadband speed is currently 1800Mbps or 1.8Gbps (120Mbps upload), although the operator will shortly begin to trial their new 10Gbps capable XGS-PON network (here) and recently hinted at real-world symmetric speeds of up to 3.3Gbps being possible for their future setup (here).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Abingdon-based alternative rural gigabit broadband ISP Gigaclear, which has already deployed their full fibre (FTTP) network to cover 600,000 premises (mostly in remote rural parts of England), sadly appears to have suffered another round of redundancies over the past few weeks.

The provider, which is home to a customer base of 150,000 (i.e. 25% take-up, with a goal of reaching 29% by the end of this financial year), last suffered a noticeable level of redundancies back in September 2024 (here). This was partly fuelled by the same strains as many other network builders are continuing to experience (i.e. high interest rates, rising build costs and a highly competitive environment).

The last round of job cuts also came as part of Gigaclear’s plan for the “next stage of its development” and a “re-focus on ultra-rural areas“ (i.e. their state aid backed project gigabit roll-out), while at the same time placing greater focus on commercialisation. Sadly, the current market continues to be under many of the same strains as before, and the provider has reportedly also been on the hunt for fresh funding while slowing their build (here).

The above context may help to explain why, over the past few weeks, ISPreview has noted a sudden increase in the number of staff – mostly from their network build teams – now announcing themselves as being made redundant (#opentowork) via Linkedin and other popular employment platforms. But the exact scale of this remains unclear.

As the CEO of Gigaclear, Nathan Rundle, said earlier this month (here): “We’ve definitely been refocusing our build to go ultra-rural, which means the deployment is slower than it was, and we’re using a lot more BDUK [public] money, while being really clear around those investment cases. I think the current funding climate, as every altnet knows, is tough and ultimately deploying large amounts of capital at the moment isn’t necessarily a logical thing to do.”

Despite this, the provider retains their original aspiration for reaching “over” 1 million UK premises, although at present it remains unclear whether that will be delivered via new build or consolidation with other networks.

Ben Woods, Gigaclear’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), said:

“Gigaclear is offering some employees the opportunity to apply for voluntary redundancy as part of an ongoing review of our build plans for the remainder of 2025 and into 2026.

I would like to extend my thanks to all our colleagues for their commitment and contribution and emphasise that these redundancies are purely voluntary.

As we move forward, our focus remains on bringing more customers onto the network and reinforcing our position as the UK’s leading provider of full fibre broadband to rural communities.”

At this point it’s worth remembering that building Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure into remote rural communities has always been an extremely slow, expensive and complex challenge – particularly for a commercial operator like Gigaclear.

Put another way, it’s impressive that commercial providers like this have been able to do it to such a scale, and it remains sensible for them to focus more on delivering their Project Gigabit contracts in order to avoid past problems (they’ve previously struggled to deliver on some of their state aid backed deployments, such as for Devon and Somerset).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

A new report from Jersey Statistics (PDF) has revealed that, between 2020 and 2024, the average monthly spend by fixed broadband customers on the English Channel Islands of Guernsey went up by 16% to £86.55, and on Jersey it increased by just under 8% to £82.17. But over the same period, inflation on the islands went up by 27.3% and 30% respectively.

The same report (credits to the BBC News) also revealed that Guernsey had 41.6 broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, while Jersey saw 42.3 (the same as in the United Kingdom). Furthermore, broadband users on Guernsey gobbled an average of 400GB (GigaBytes) of data per month (up 12.2% from 2023), while on Jersey it was 431GB (up by 8.8%) – this is less than the UK average of 531GB (rising to 766GB when only looking at full-fibre connections).

However, it’s worth remembering that broadband ISPs are not immune to cost increases. Internet providers, much like consumers, have also been suffering under the burden of rising supplier and lease costs, surging inflation, high energy prices, as well as the cost of adding all sorts of new services (e.g. FTTP) and catering for new regulations etc.

On the flip side, while consumers in the UK can often tackle price hikes by switching providers, it’s much more difficult to do that on a smaller island where incumbents often still dominate.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Get ready to jump out of your skin.. again. The UK Government recently announced that mobile network operators will conduct a second nationwide test of the Emergency Alerts service later in 2025, which is normally only intended to be used if there’s a “danger to life nearby” (e.g. severe flooding, fires and extreme weather).

The government has not yet agreed a firm date for the new Emergency Alerts test, which will usually only show-up on modern 4G and 5G capable Smartphones. But it’s expected to follow the same format as the last one, and you will not get the alerts if your device is turned off or in aeroplane mode.

In other words, recipients (most of us) can expect to suffer 10 seconds of an annoyingly loud siren suddenly blaring out at you while your phone vibrates and displays a message to say that all is actually well, it’s just a test. Small comfort if you happen to be driving down a busy motorway at the time it hits, or using a public toilet. The latter is at least usually more amusing than dangerous.

The alerts themselves are broadcast from cell towers in the vicinity of an emergency (they don’t need your phone number for this to work) and will only ever come from the Government or emergency services. Such alerts are a free one-way secure communication and do NOT reveal anyone’s location or collect personal data.

You can opt out of the emergency alerts system in your phone’s settings, which is normally possible by search the settings section for “emergency alerts”, and turning off “severe alerts” and “extreme alerts”. But we have found that these specific options don’t always exist, even on modern handsets. Alternatively, Android users could try this method (further details):

• Open your phone calling app
• Use the keypad to enter *#*#2627#*#*
• Search your settings for ‘emergency alerts’ and turn off ‘test alerts’, ‘exercise alerts’, ‘operator defined’ and ‘operator alerts’

Hopefully it goes without saying that you should NOT read or respond to an emergency alert when you are driving or riding a vehicle. Find somewhere safe and legal to stop before picking up your phone and reading the message.

The last national test occurred in 2023, although it was used in Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland during January 2025, which came as part of the response to the red weather warnings issued ahead of Storm Éowyn.

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Network testing giant Ookla, which collects data from consumers via their popular Speedtest.net service, has published the results from a new study that reveals the onboard WiFi (wireless broadband) speeds of various major airlines (e.g. British Airways, Virgin Atlantic) and their satellite-based network partners.

As anybody who has tried in-flight WiFi could probably attest, it’s far from a perfect experience. The internet connectivity can be fairly expensive, very restrictive and is often incredibly slow. But a growing number of Airlines are now switching to more modern satellite backhaul solutions, such as those based in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – like Starlink or OneWeb, which is starting to show a positive impact.

For example, Ookla’s study found that the fastest carrier was Hawaiian Airlines, which now uses Starlink and managed to deliver a median average download speed of 161.76Mbps, with uploads of 20.47Mbps and latency times of 74ms (a lower figure is quicker for latency). This is not too different from what Starlink’s regular home broadband customers typically receive, albeit this time occurring on a fast moving aircraft with many users.

By comparison, British Airways, which appears in the bottom half of the table, still largely appears to use GoGo’s 2Ku based satellite solution from the Panasonic Avionics Corporation. This harnesses satellites in a high Geostationary Orbit (GEO) and shares capacity of around 50-100Mbps across all cabins. But GoGo do have a deal with OneWeb that may eventually improve matters (here).

As a result, British Airways scored an average download speed of 22.57Mbps, with uploads of 3.9Mbps and latency 827ms. The raw internet speeds are actually pretty good (better than the 6-8Mbps I’ve had on recent BA flights), but having nearly a full second of latency to contend with can still be quite annoying. You can check out the full results here, but we’ve summarised the download ranking and network-specific results below.

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Press Release

Orange is strengthening its commitment to sovereignty with the creation of a new division dedicated to defense and homeland security, integrated within Orange Business. This strategic decision aligns with the “Lead the Future” plan and makes Orange’s focus on strategic verticals with high sovereignty stakes a reality. It also demonstrates the Group’s desire to leverage its operational excellence to support defense and security actors in France and Europe.

The Defense and Security sector increasingly relies on cutting-edge technologies driven by digital innovation and has high requirements for resilience and security. It demands a deep understanding of the needs of these actors, as well as a high level of data sovereignty, risk anticipation, operational excellence, and regulatory compliance. In this context, Orange Business announces the creation of the Defense & Security Division (Direction Défense & Sécurité – DD&S), a specialized unit bringing together several hundred experts dedicated to the digital transformation of ministries, operators, and companies in defense and homeland security industries.

The new Defense & Security Division aims to strengthen and develop existing activities to address several key challenges: deployment of resilient connectivity solutions, hybridization of civilian and military networks, hosting of sensitive data, emergency communication systems, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity — in collaboration with the Defense and Security Vertical of Orange Cyberdefense, the sector leader in France and several other European countries. It will rely on Orange Business’ recognized expertise in deploying, operating, and maintaining top-tier digital infrastructures owned by Orange: the best service quality on its 5G network in France and Europe, 45,000 km of terrestrial fiber, over 2,500 satellite antennas, and 450,000 km of submarine cables. Orange Cyberdefense complements this expertise with its ability to detect, protect against and respond to cyber-attacks, supported by its Cyber Threat Intelligence.

This division will bring together expertise from various Group entities to ensure a comprehensive value chain, from technological innovation to operational maintenance, including the integration of digital solutions, security, resilience and service quality.

The leadership of this new entity has been entrusted to Nassima Auvray, Director of Defense & Security: “I am proud to lead this strategic division, which brings together a multidisciplinary team of several hundred experts committed to designing sovereign, resilient, and high-value solutions for our clients and partners in the defense and security sectors. By leveraging Orange’s innovation power — from advanced cybersecurity and artificial intelligence to emerging quantum technologies — we are ideally positioned to meet the rapidly evolving needs of this highly specialized sector, which relies on civil solutions and contributes to building tomorrow’s secure digital infrastructure.”

Aliette Mousnier Lompré, CEO of Orange Business, emphasizes: “Defense and security are complex and demanding sectors that require a specialized approach, dedicated expertise, and a nuanced understanding of sovereignty and resilience issues. That’s why we have decided to create the Defense & Security Division to harness Orange Business’s technological strength and operational excellence in serving key actors in this expanding sector.”

Also in the news:
SWR deploys Europe’s first ’Rail-5G’ Wi-Fi  
BT accelerates fibre rollout amid cost cuts
AT&T agrees $5.75 billion deal for Lumen’s consumer fibre asset

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

Press Release

Virgin Media O2 has today announced the details of its spectrum transfer agreement with Vodafone UK that will see Virgin Media O2 acquire 78.8 MHz of spectrum for an investment of £343 million, materially enhancing the company’s network position and helping to improve the connectivity experience of consumers and businesses across the country.

The deal, which follows the completion of the merger between Vodafone UK and Three UK, and is subject to Ofcom approval, will bring Virgin Media O2’s total mobile spectrum share to approximately 30%, ensuring the UK has three scaled mobile network operators with a greater balance in terms of spectrum holdings.

The acquired spectrum comprises:

•                     20 MHz of 1400 MHz Supplemental Downlink

•                     18.8 MHz of 2100 MHz Frequency Division Duplex

•                     20 MHz of 2600 MHz Time Division Duplex

•                     20 MHz of 3400 MHz Time Division Duplex

The transfer is part of a wider deal struck between Virgin Media O2 and Vodafone UK in July 2024 where the parties agreed to extend and enhance their existing mobile network sharing arrangement for more than a decade, and, following the completion of their merger VodafoneThree will now participate in that network sharing agreement.

Virgin Media O2’s spectrum acquisition, incremental to its existing investment of more than £2 billion in its networks and services, will bolster the quality of its mobile coverage across the country and will deliver improved services for its customers. Businesses will also benefit, including the MVNOs who make use of Virgin Media O2’s mobile network via wholesale partnerships to deliver their own mobile services to millions of people across the country.

The transfer of spectrum reduces the previous imbalances in spectrum between mobile network operators in the UK, enhancing competition and allowing Virgin Media O2 to provide increased capacity, speeds and greater coverage for its customers.

The spectrum will be partially funded by the minority stake sale in Cornerstone in 2024, with spectrum payments extending beyond 2025 and deployment occurring over the medium term, starting this year.

Lutz Schüler, CEO of Virgin Media O2 said: “This acquisition of spectrum will not only create greater balance in holdings across the UK’s mobile networks, but for Virgin Media O2 it will allow us to boost coverage and further improve our network quality, building on the significant investment we are already making in our mobile network. We’re committed to giving our customers a reliable mobile experience across the country and this increase in spectrum will help us deliver on that.”

How is the UK’s telecoms market changing in 2025? Join the industry in discussion at Connected Britain, the UK’s largest digital economy event

Also in the news:
SWR deploys Europe’s first ’Rail-5G’ Wi-Fi  
BT accelerates fibre rollout amid cost cuts
AT&T agrees $5.75 billion deal for Lumen’s consumer fibre asset

Original article Total Telecom:Read More

The project was delivered entirely by GNM’s in-house engineering team, without the involvement of external contractors. All stages – from planning and logistics to setup and final network configuration – were handled internally, ensuring full control, seamless integration with existing infrastructure, and adherence to tight deployment timelines.

«This kind of delivery isn’t a special case for us», says Alex Surkov, Head of Development at GNM. «We’ve built our processes to operate at this pace – with full internal coordination, no outsourcing, and flexible routing options already in place. That’s what allows us to move quickly and deliver stable, production-ready transport in days, not weeks».

The new segment strengthens GNM’s DWDM footprint, which spans Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and connects to key interconnection hubs including Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Helsinki, and Singapore. Services are designed to meet the needs of carriers, content providers, and data centre operators, with a focus on scalability, redundancy, and delivery speed.

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The Government has announced that the £1bn industry-led Shared Rural Network (SRN) project, which aimed to extend geographic 4G mobile (mobile broadband) coverage to 95% of the UK (aggregate) by the end of 2025 (5G also benefits from the new infrastructure), has “achieved its overarching target a year ahead of schedule“. But there’s more work left to do.

The SRN – supported by £501m of public funding and £532m of private investment from operators – involves both the reciprocal sharing of existing masts in certain areas and the demand-led building and sharing of new masts in others between the operators. But the programme actually consists of two main targets, which often gets overlooked.

The first target, which was achieved around the end of last summer (i.e. extending 4G coverage 88% of the UK’s landmass), involved the delivery of industry funded coverage improvements in Partial Not-Spot (PNS) areas (i.e. areas that receive coverage from at least one operator, but not all).

The second target involved tackling Total Not-Spot (TNS) areas by early 2027. Ofcom’s licence obligations commit each individual operator to increase its 4G coverage to 90% of the UK’s landmass by January 2027 – with these individual obligations supporting the overall target of 95% by December 2025.

As part of all this the SRN was intended to provide guaranteed coverage to an additional 280,000 UK premises, 16,000km of roads and boost ‘in car’ coverage on around 45,000 km of road, as well as better indoor coverage for around 1.2 million premises.

Hitting the target early

The good news this morning is that the SRN programme has “achieved its overarching target a year ahead of schedule“, with over 95% of the UK now within range of a 4G mobile signal as a result of all MNOs (EE, Vodafone / Three UK and O2) delivering new infrastructure. The programme has also met its road and premises targets, which were due in January 2027, and delivered more than 50 government-funded mast upgrades as part of the SRN’s Extended Area Service (EAS) project.

The EAS phase of the work focuses on the part of the SRN that sees the government providing a total of £184m from their pot to the Home Office and mobile operators, which is helping to upgrade EAS masts being built as part of the 4G Emergency Services Network (ESN) – these masts previously only connected EE customers and anyone making 999 calls (i.e. all mobile operators can now use these sites).

4G Mobile Coverage (SRN) Progress – 29th June 2025

The programme today said that it is now focusing on addressing the connectivity challenges in more “hard-to-reach areas” of Great Britain that are TNS areas. “We have spent time engaging with local communities and interest groups, especially in Scotland, to understand how best to maximise the benefits of future mobile upgrades,” said the announcement.

As a result of these conversations, the Government and the operators have agreed to “prioritise new mobile infrastructure for areas where it will have the biggest positive impact, primarily where people live, work, or travel, including walking and hiking routes“. This includes parts of the West Highland Way and Munros Ben Lawers and Ben Vorlich where there is no 4G signal at all, yet walkers and tourists regularly need it – especially in emergency situations.

Under the revised plans, while “fewer new masts are planned” across rural Scotland, those that are built will provide new mobile coverage to areas such as Glen Coe, the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, Wester Ross, and several islands including the Isle of Mull, South Uist and Skye. Readers can see an updated MAP of Planned Mast Builds in Scotland on the SRN website.

However, the somewhat low-key announcement (there are no quotes from anybody included and it flew in as a routine update), makes no mention of how much this change impacts the project’s public funding. Mobile network operators, which feel they’ve been doing their part, were previously reported to have been concerned that the government may have been looking to cut costs and thus not reinvest any savings back into mobile connectivity (here).

On the other hand, mobile operators had previously expressed a desire for any saved SRN based public funding to be reinvested to help improve coverage across the UK’s railways, which is very relevant because the government recently unveiled Project Reach – a public-private partnership that will deploy “ultra fast fibre optic cable” across 1,000km of major rail lines to help “eliminate mobile signal blackspots” in tunnels on “key rail routes” up and down the country.

In addition, the Government’s recently published its 10 Year Industrial Strategy, which among other things pledged £41m to help introduce Low Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband satellite connectivity “on all mainline trains” in order to “significantly improve both the availability and internet data connection speeds for Wi-Fi connected passengers.” The Project Reach announcement appears intended to complement that effort, so perhaps the mobile operators got what they wanted.

Finally, in May 2025, the government stated that a further 50 state-aid funded mast sites in England, Wales and Scotland were being targeted for upgrades by March 2026 (here).

Original article ISPreview UK:Read More

Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today revealed the details of their spectrum transfer agreement with Vodafone UK (VodafoneThree), which follows last year’s network sharing deal. This will see VMO2 acquiring 78.8MHz of spectrum for an investment of £343m to “materially enhance” their 4G and 5G mobile (mobile broadband) network.

In case anybody has forgotten, VMO2 and Vodafone signed a key 10-year network sharing agreement back in July 2024 (here), which was necessary in order to correct for some competitive conflicts that might have been created by Vodafone’s recently completed merger with Three UK (i.e. Three had a network sharing agreement with EE, while Vodafone had one with O2).

The deal also stipulated that – upon completion of Vodafone’s merger with Three UK – VMO2 would later acquire spectrum from the newly created VodafoneThree, thus establishing three scaled mobile network operators each with better alignment of their respective spectrum holdings. But the exact details and value of that spectrum deal has, until now, remained unclear.

The spectrum will be partially funded by the minority stake sale in Cornerstone in 2024, with spectrum payments extending beyond 2025 and “deployment occurring over the medium term, starting this year“.

Spectrum Being Acquired by VMO2 from Vodafone UK

• 20MHz of 1400MHz Supplemental Downlink

• 18.8MHz of 2100MHz Frequency Division Duplex

• 20MHz of 2600MHz Time Division Duplex

• 20MHz of 3400MHz Time Division Duplex

Lutz Schüler, CEO of VMO2, said:

“This acquisition of spectrum will not only create greater balance in holdings across the UK’s mobile networks, but for Virgin Media O2 it will allow us to boost coverage and further improve our network quality, building on the significant investment we are already making in our mobile network. We’re committed to giving our customers a reliable mobile experience across the country and this increase in spectrum will help us deliver on that.”

The news bodes well for O2, which in many independent studies has tended to show somewhat of a performance detriment (particularly with respect to data speeds) when compared with Vodafone, Three UK and EE – this is despite the operator now having much greater access to Virgin Media’s national fixed line network.

The extra spectrum should help to boost their network performance and perhaps also improve signal coverage in some locations, which will no doubt be welcomed by the operator’s customers and MVNO partners. But we would have liked a bit more detail on the exact timescale for each band to be deployed (we’ve asked VMO2 and will report back if they provide more info.).