The UK telecoms regulator has today proposed, following evidence submitted by BT (EE), to reduce the total amount paid by the mobile network operators to use the 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2100MHz radio spectrum bands – used to support 2G, 3G and 4G mobile (mobile broadband) services – by around £40m per year.

The cost of Annual Licence Fees (ALF) is often a highly divisive subject for the likes of EE, Vodafone, Three UK and O2. Mobile operators often complain that hikes in this area can mean price rises for consumers and less investment going toward their networks. The horrifically overpriced 3G auction that netted a staggering £22bn in 2000, but which also hobbled the roll-out and network investment in related services, is just one such example.

In recent years, Ofcom and the Government have worked somewhat more effectively to address the issue of spectrum pricing, although some grumbles will always exist. But the cost of such licence fees can also be influenced by other factors, such as the ongoing removal of 3G services, as well as the desire to make modern 5G services available via the same bands.

At the start of 2024 the regulator signalled that they would investigate if there was “sufficient evidence of a possible material misalignment between our fees and the underlying market value of the relevant spectrum“. BT then promptly provided evidence to support their claim of a material misalignment with the fees charged for the 1800MHz band (i.e. 1800MHz fees 49% higher than 2.1GHz), which also highlighted other changes, such as in supply and demand conditions since the fees were set. Ofcom then opened a review of this in July 2024 (here) and has today proposed the following changes.

Ofcom Statement

In our review, we considered submissions from the mobile network operators, used evidence from recent spectrum auctions in the UK and internationally, and applied our method for calculating the fees. We are therefore now proposing the following changes:

➤ reduce the ALFs for 900 MHz spectrum to £1.097m per MHz (a 21% reduction);

➤ reduce ALFs for 1800 MHz spectrum to £0.81m per MHz (also a 21% reduction); and

➤ increase ALFs for 2100 MHz spectrum to £0.766m per MHz (a 12% increase).

As a result of these changes, the total amount paid by the mobile network operators to use these spectrum bands would reduce by around £40m per year, with each of the operators seeing a reduction in the total amount they pay. The amount of the reduction varies by operator because they hold different amounts of spectrum in each of the bands.

The savings involved in this change are unlikely to have much of an impact on end-user pricing, but any reduction is sure to be welcomed by the operators (except perhaps those that hold more of the 2100MHz spectrum than the other bands). Ofcom’s related consultation will remain open for feedback until 7th March 2025 and the regulator then aims to publish a final statement during summer 2025.

Gigabit broadband ISP Hyperoptic, which has built a full fibre broadband (FTTP / B) network to cover “more than” 1.73 million UK homes in parts of 64 towns and cities (mostly MDUs), has been fined £50,000 by the Westminster Magistrates Court in London after they were found to have carried out unsafe street works.

The successful prosecution was actually pursued by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which occurred after the Council’s Street Works Compliance Inspector witnessed (Jan 2024) operatives working in a manhole in the carriageway on Old Brompton Road (South Kensington) and found several safety issues including “inadequate barriers, no advance warning signs for motorists, no temporary traffic management and leaving manhole exposed to public“.

In addition, it was later discovered that the provider had not even applied for a permit to carry out the work. Following a hearing at the Westminster Magistrates Court, which took place on Wednesday 4th December 2024, Hyperoptic was fined £50,000 and were ordered to pay a £2,000 victim surcharge and £2,500 towards the Council’s legal costs.

The council prosecuted Hyperoptic after having issued them with 7 cautions for previous offences relating to site safety, but the local authority didn’t provide any more detail than that.

Councillor Cem Kemahli, Lead Member Planning and Public Realm, said:

“Keeping our streets clear and safe for residents is our top priority and we will continue to crackdown on companies who don’t take safety seriously.

This is our first successful prosecution of Hyperoptic, which not only put public safety at risk but caused disruption to motorists by ignoring safety measures.

Our network management team are working hard to ensure street works are coordinated to minimise disruption and carried out in the safest possible way. We will not hesitate to take legal action against companies who continue to put members of public at risk.”

Sadly we do occasionally see broadband operators being fined for safety failings, as well as some generally sloppy street works, with some other recent examples this year including nexfibre (here), Openreach (here), Truespeed (here) and Airband (here). But it should be said that these issues often hail from mistakes made by third-party contractors, albeit with the network operator as the responsible party.

We’ve asked Hyperoptic for a comment and will report back when they respond.

Network analyst firm Streetwave, which is currently conducting various UK surveys to study the coverage and speed of 4G and 5G mobile (broadband) networks across the UK using bin lorries and private vehicles, appears to have responded to some of ISPreview’s suggestions by making interactive visual maps of their findings available for free to the public.

Over the past year Streetwave have been harnessing waste (bin / refuse) collection lorries to map mobile network / broadband coverage and speeds in various parts of the UK, particularly Wales (here, here, here, here and here). In this setup, refuse trucks are installed with several off-the-shelf Smartphones using software from Streetwave on top, which run continuous network tests (once every 20 metres in rural areas and 5m in urban areas) as the vehicles go around their routes.

The data is being used by local authorities to help identify areas that may require additional intervention in order to improve local mobile coverage and or network capacity. In addition, members of the public have also been given access to some of this data via an address-based coverage checker (more will become available as the studies are completed), but until now this was quite limited.

The good news is that Streetwave have now started to add interactive maps to their coverage checker, which enables people to see a visual overview of each study region and thus how each mobile operator performs over a much wider area – without needing to enter lots of individual addresses. Admittedly, this is fairly basic, but it’s still a big usability improvement.

At launch there are only a few maps available, but we expect this to grow in quantity and sophistication over time. The data will surely make for an interesting contrast against the somewhat rough estimates of coverage and performance produced by the mobile operators themselves.

Which Streetwave Maps Are Publicly Available?

Torfaen County Borough Council:
https://app.streetwave.co/coverage-checker/58/map

Norfolk County Council:
https://app.streetwave.co/coverage-checker/55/map

Caerphilly County Borough Council:
https://app.streetwave.co/coverage-checker/48/map

Tyfu Canolbarth Cymru | Growing Mid Wales:
https://app.streetwave.co/coverage-checker/56/map

River Severn Partnership Advanced Wireless Innovation Region:
https://app.streetwave.co/coverage-checker/60/map

Rochdale-based UK ISP Zen Internet appears to have finally started to make their new Openreach powered 1.6Gbps broadband package available to retail customers, which follows some months after they made the new tier available at wholesale to other partners (here). But there’s still no sign of any 2Gbps packages on the CityFibre side of their network.

The new top tier package costs £65 per month (plus a one-off £15 set-up charge) for estimated downloads of 1,600Mbps (115Mbps upload) on an 18-month contract term. Customers who take this package will also receive Amazon’s Wi-Fi 6E eero mesh router, although you can optionally add the eero Max 7 (Wi-Fi 7) router for an extra £10 per month.

However, we’re not huge fans of Amazon’s kit, partly due to the limited port options on their devices. But each to their own. Credits to community member YuGi for the tip.

Rural broadband ISP Alncom has today informed ISPreview that they’ve completed the roll-out of a new FTTP broadband network to the rural villages of Craster and Embleton (inc. surrounding areas) in Northumberland (England), covering 1,057 properties. But as part of that they’ve also been teaching local school children how to build the network.

The network project, which has also connected the local village halls with free connections and public WiFi, was part-funded by BDUK’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS). But the operator has also been able to do even more than this for the local communities as part of the ‘World Wide Web from a Wood and Classroom Without Walls’ programme.

Alncom has essentially been donating their time to teaching school children in Northumberland new skills this month. This has been done through the Clarty Commandos, which is a ‘Forest School’ that was set up in the grounds of Howick Estate near Alnwick, where children of all ages can experience learning in a unique environment, with a focus on practical rather than academic activities.

Alncom were approached by founder Mark Tuff to devise some training, so the students could learn some of the skills required to deploy fibre broadband. The idea being that students could gain an understanding of how the internet gets into their homes.

The provider felt that it was also a great opportunity to actually build a fibre network into the wood where the Forest School is based and used the opportunity for the Duchess High School students to “build it themselves“. A charity project from start to finish.

Students from Alnwick’s Duchess Community High School Development Group 2 were given an overview of network design and from this they were able to carry out a site survey, design the network and create ‘job packs’. Under very close supervision, the students physically built 250m of fibre network, connecting the Forest School to Alncom’s core network, using a mole plough and by hand. They installed duct, built a chamber, spliced joints then set-up WiFi to the site.

Lawrie Stevenson, Director of Alncom, said:

“Team building, life-long skills and valuable experience for the students was a priority and we are delighted to say that all the students were outstanding and loved the outside school”.

Mark Tuff, Founder of Clarty Commandos, said:

“Alncom are amazing, they’ve helped us several times as well as this fantastic project. They helped after Storm Arwen, a devastating fire and we’ve never had to ask for help, they’re just there. They know what’s going on and they know how to help.”

Managing Director of Alncom Stephen Pinchen said; “As a company we are keen on helping the community and we like to help in anyway we can. A special well done to Lawrie who has excelled in this very special classroom without walls.”

In the past we’ve seen a number of network operators getting children involved with such deployments as part of their education (example). But going from that to actually having them build a significant chunk of new network in order to connect their own school is quite a feat (we’ll resist the desire for puns about child labour). Now if they could just teach them how to fill out Openreach’s PIA forms and deal with BDUK’s systems..

A new survey conducted by broadband ISP Zen Internet claims to have revealed that UK businesses are still “alarmingly unprepared” for the transition to IP-based digital phone (VoIP etc.) services. This is occurring with the phased shutdown of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN).

Just to recap. The big switch-off was recently delayed to 31st January 2027 in order to give broadband ISPs, phone providers, telecare operators and consumers more time to adapt (details). But the main focus of this delay was the 1.8 million people who use vital home telecare systems in the UK (e.g. elderly, disabled, and vulnerable people), which often aren’t compatible with the replacement VoIP / IP-based digital phone services (i.e. for everybody else the deadline is still technically Dec 2025).

However, Zen’s survey found that only 18% of small businesses and 26% of large businesses currently have a post-PSTN solution in place. With enterprise and SME results combined, 27% are assessing their options and 17% of businesses are yet to work out what their next steps will be. Nearly a fifth (19%) are currently migrating to another system.

Even more concerning, some 9% remain unaware of the impending ‘landline’ network switch off entirely. Zen also worries that the revised 2027 deadline could catch businesses out. After December 2025, businesses could receive just 90 days’ notice to migrate to all-IP solutions or risk losing access to essential communication and operational systems, which would be a nightmare for those that have failed to prepare.

David Barber, Strategy Director at Zen, said:

“While our research shows good awareness that the switch off is happening there’s a clear disconnect between knowing about the end of PSTN and having a future-proof solution in place. Too many businesses may be leaving decisions around all-IP communications to the last minute, which could be a recipe for disruption.

There’s no need to panic, but preparation is key. Businesses should start thinking about the options open to them now. Check what’s available in your area, conduct an audit of all systems that rely on the old network, and talk to your technology partners. At Zen, we’re always happy to run through what PSTN means for our customers.”

The data which forms the basis of this research study was derived from a survey conducted by Censuswide, among a sample of 1,900 business leaders, including 1,004 CEOs in large businesses (250+ employees), 403 decision makers in large businesses (250+ employees) and 500 IT decision makers in SMEs. The data itself was collected between 15.08.204 – 27.08.2024.

Naturally, Zen Internet has a vested interest here, as they’re in a position to help with such transitions. But at the same time, the warning about a lack of preparation remains very valid.

Internet provider Yayzi Broadband has been causing a spot of bother for quite a few of their customers this week after their plan to roll-out an “incredible network upgrade” resulted in a protracted period of service disruption as users were migrated, which saw broadband speeds plummet to single digits (Mbps), as well as other connectivity problems.

The migration, which was announced a month ago (here), had been aiming to “deliver lower latency, improved peering, and a smoother overall experience” in order to better support their future growth. But in fairness, Yayzi had provided prior warning (here) that it would also cause some short but “random connection dropouts” and disruption to the availability of Static IPs.

In addition, the ISP also said that it would be applying some “temporary traffic shaping” during peak hours (between 5pm and 10pm), which would remain in place until 14th December 2024 to help “maintain stability“. The technical details of what Yayzi has actually changed remain a little unclear, but it appears as if many customers were not prepared for the level of disruption it caused.

The bulk migration process was due to commence on 5th December, and Yayzi told ISPreview that this involved moving to their own network infrastructure, including migrating “thousands of customers over 6 days“. But as any quick skim of their community forum will tell you, quite a few of their customers have seen their broadband speeds dive into sub-10Mbps territory during this transition (even some of those on their 2Gbps+ packages).

“Yayzi are currently going through a customer migration, which has gone about as bad as you could imagine. IP ranges located in Iran? Check! Customer speeds sub 10mb on 2.5gb lines? Check! Repeatedly missed dates and not sticking to agreed timelines? Triple check,” said one of the provider’s customers to ISPreview.

“My Internet has been pretty much unusable for the past 3 days, my current speed is 3mb/s,” added another disgruntled customer. But there is light at the end of the new fibre tunnel, says Yayzi.

A Spokesperson for Yayzi told ISPreview:

“The migration was successful and the customers were all moved to the new network.

Unfortunately we had a delay with a cable which meant that customers have suffered less than favourable speeds, this was not an intended consequence and we have communicated with customers via email, and our forums. We have been as open and transparent as we can with customers, and we expect full speeds to be back as normal tomorrow.

We will deal with any compensation claims on a case by case basis due to the complexities. There isn’t a one size fits all solution as some customers only moved to the new network yesterday.”

History shows that major migrations of key network platforms do have a nasty tendency to throw up the odd problem, although such disruption is usually only minor, when planned and executed properly. In this case, it appears as if Yayzi’s plan ran into some unexpected difficulties and the result has been.. rather bumpy. Some customers will inevitably be more forgiving of all this than others.

This is all in stark contrast to the network upgrade email that customers received on the 6th December, which only warned of a speed reduction to 250Mbps and occasional latency spikes. Yayzi has since acknowledged that they “got it wrong when we communicated the 250Mbps speeds. This expectation was based on past traffic trends, and we sincerely apologise for the confusion and frustration caused.”

In fact, we do have to credit the provider for being significantly better at communicating all this to their customers than we’ve seen other providers doing in the past, where it’s often more common – depressingly so – for providers to be almost totally silent during such events. The hope now is that Yayzi will stay true to their word and get speeds back to normal tomorrow. We’ll know soon enough.

ISPreview has spotted that the Scottish Government (SG) yesterday issued a contract notice for the Orkney & Shetland (Lot 6 – Scotland) deployment under the UK’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out scheme, which is expected to expand full fibre (FTTP) connectivity to an estimated 13,550 premises in hard-to-reach (rural) parts of the remote Northern Isles.

Firstly, it’s important to point out that the SG is already working to expand FTTP coverage on the islands as part of their existing £600m Reaching 100% (R100) contract with Openreach (BT) – this includes the LOT 1 commitment that is expected to cover 60,764 additional premises across “North Scotland and the Highlands” by 2027/28. But only some of that will specifically benefit Orkney & Shetland.

The two island groups have a combined population of around 45,000, which suggests that the new contract, when combined with any improvements delivered via the R100 scheme, will result in a significant expansion of gigabit broadband coverage. But this will clearly come at a very high per premises build cost, which is to be expected given the remote and complex nature of the Northern Isles.

The new Project Gigabit contract is currently targeted to be awarded to a supplier in October 2025 (estimate) and will then remain in force for approximately 11 years – comprising a build period of approximately 4 years, followed by an operational period of at least 7 years. “It is the intention that the build period will be completed by the end of 2029,” said the public contract notice.

Local broadband services tend to be dominated by Openreach’s (BT) ADSL, FTTC and FTTP broadband network, which typically suggests that they may be the only bidder for the new contract. However, it is worth noting that Shetland Telecom, which is the arms-length network operator that the council set up some years ago, have in recent years looked at expanding their presence into the local access market (here).

In addition, an interesting project conducted with CloudNet recently used the community-owned water authority’s existing infrastructure (pipes used for drinking water) on Papa Westray in Orkney to run new fibre optic cables (here). But it’s too early to say if this will have any role in the new procurement.

Broadband operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with retail UK ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), has today confirmed that they’ve made their 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network available to more than 5,000 additional homes in Whitby (North Yorkshire, England).

The town previously only had a small amount of coverage from Virgin Media’s own gigabit broadband network, although the nexfibre build means they’re now able to reach a sizeable majority of local premises within the community. Openreach’s rival FTTP network also has a decent level of coverage in the seaside town, albeit concentrated more around the central riverside areas.

Nexfibre itself has already covered around 1.6 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, and they’re currently in the process of investing another £1bn this year, which should enable them to cover an additional 1 million UK premises by the end of 2024 (reaching a total footprint of c.2m).

Just for some context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally set up the new £4.5bn nexfibre joint venture in 2022 (here), which aims to deploy an open access fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises. The funding reflects £3.3bn of fully underwritten financing and up to £1.4bn in equity commitments.

CityFibre has today announced that the first customers have gone live on their new full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network in Suffolk (England), which is being built as part of their £100m state aid supported Project Gigabit contract (Lot 2) – this aims to reach more than 79,500 extra homes and businesses across hard-to-reach rural areas of the county.

The operator, which is supported by ISPs like Vodafone, TalkTalk, Zen Internet and many more (Sky Broadband to follow in 2025), already covers around 4 million UK premises with full fibre broadband – mostly in urban areas – and their ambition is to cover up to 8m (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity, c.£4.9bn debt and c.£800m of BDUK / public subsidy) – representing c.30% of the UK.

Over the past couple of years CityFibre has also secured nine Project Gigabit contracts, totalling over £782m in government subsidies to serve more than 464,000 hard to reach rural premises in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Sussex, Kent, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire & Milton Keynes. The operator has also committed their own funding to help build commercially beyond this (total of £1.2bn in combined public and private investment).

The Project Gigabit contract for Suffolk was officially awarded to CityFibre back in mid-2023 (here) and they’ve just confirmed that, after conducting months of engineering surveys and work, the first customers have now started to go live – starting with the town of Woodbridge. Other locations, including hamlets, villages and towns such as Icklingham, Mellis and Ringshall, will soon follow.

Simon Holden, Group Chief Operations Officer at CityFibre, said:

“Bringing our network to hard-to-reach areas in Suffolk will bring a new era of connectivity to people across the region. CityFibre’s ultrafast and ultra-reliable full fibre network will help residents and businesses make the most of being online and it’s exciting to see how full fibre will supercharge Suffolk for years to come.”

Sir Chris Bryant MP, Minister of State at DSIT, said:

“For many families and businesses in Suffolk, the ‘circle of doom’ will be a thing of the past thanks to this government-backed programme bringing lightning-fast internet to rural areas.

No one should be held back in their professional or personal lives because of lack of reliable digital connectivity, and it is fantastic to see the first customers in Suffolk reaping the benefits of Project Gigabit.”

The Project Gigabit contract for Suffolk anticipates that CityFibre’s roll-out will reach completion by December 2028 and the operator has also invested £74m of their own private funding in order to conduct complementary commercial builds alongside this roll-out.

Project Gigabit ultimately aims to help extend 1Gbps capable (download) broadband networks to reach “nationwide” UK coverage (c. 99%) by around 2030 (here) – the country recently passed the 85% coverage mark and seems to be making good progress.