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Broadband, phone and pay TV provider Virgin Media has this morning launched a new promotion that gives existing customers the opportunity to earn up to £70 if they refer a friend (it’s normally £50). The incentive will also give the new customer up to £70 too.

But the offer is somewhat time-limited. “Customers must act quick as the offer is on for a limited time, from now until 9th October 2025, the refer a friend offer will then return to its standard £50 referral fee,” said Virgin Media today.

Broadband packages start from £25.99 per month on a 24-month contract and depending on which package the customer takes depends on the money they’ll get, customers can either get £60, £65 or £70 depending on the product or bundle they choose.

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A new Opinium survey of 2,000 UK adults, conducted during June 2025, has revealed that 28% of respondents aged 18-27 years old (Gen Z) still have a landline phone at home and 21% of that same group only retain it “as a decoration”. But interestingly, 43% of respondents remain unaware of the looming change to digital phones by the end of 2027.

The reality today is that most people don’t make much use of their home phone services (if they still have one), often preferring to use VoIP, mobiles or internet messaging services. At the same time, the old legacy phone networks have reached end-of-life and the market is gradually switching over to fibre optic broadband connections and digital (IP-based) landline alternatives.

The switch-off of legacy phone services is currently expected to complete on 31st January 2027, which was last year delayed from December 2025 in order to give broadband ISPs, phone, telecare providers, councils and consumers more time to adapt (details).

The main focus of this delay was the 1.8 million UK people who use vital home telecare systems (e.g. elderly, disabled – vulnerable users), which aren’t always compatible with digital phone services because telecare providers were slow to adapt. But this overlooks that, for everybody else, many telecoms providers will still be working to the original Dec 2025 deadline to have their customers off the PSTN network.

The new survey, which was commissioned by Uswitch.com and should be taken with a pinch of salt given its small sample size, indicates that such landlines may still be quite popular with some unexpected groups, like Gen Z. But the findings are quite limited.

Additional Survey Findings

➤ 24% of Gen Z who own a landline say they use it frequently, compared to just 11% of the older Gen X (aged 44-59).

➤ Other top reasons for having a landline include speaking to family based abroad (25%), for emergencies (23%) and better call quality (23%).

➤ Gen Z don’t have the same nostalgic attachment as older generations, with just 19% able to recall their childhood phone number, compared to 50% of Gen X and 43% of Millennials.

➤ 43% of Gen Z think landlines are ‘old-fashioned’.

➤ 44% of respondents still have a landline.

➤ 11% of respondents say they prefer using a landline to a mobile phone and that a landline feels more “personal” than a mobile phone (13%).

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Broadband ISP Zen Internet appears to have quietly begun a new programme of package upgrades (regrades) for some of their customers on CityFibre’s national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. The move essentially upgrades those on their 100Mbps (symmetric speed) plan to the faster rate of 160Mbps “at no extra cost“.

The change was first spotted this week after some of Zen’s related broadband customers (credits to Pavel and Mike) reported to ISPreview that their packages had suddenly been regraded to the new tier, and seemingly without the ISP giving a prior notification of the change. But Zen says they do send notifications for this, although not everybody seems to have received it.

A spokesperson for Zen Internet confirmed to us that they recently saw an opportunity to upgrade customers on the 100Mbps plan to a faster tier. The process began this week as part of a small test to confirm the upgrade would work, but we’re told that they will now continue to work through small batches over the “coming months” to ensure all of those on this plan can benefit.

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The Comms Council UK, which represents the United Kingdom’s national Unified Communications and Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) phone industry, has today announced the winners of their 17th annual 2025 awards event at a ceremony at The IET in London. Some of the winners include bOnline, 8×8, and Yealink.

Tracey Wright, Chair of Comms Council UK Council, said: “This was another brilliant CCUK Awards ceremony, the first one that I had the pleasure to host as CCUK Chair. Congratulations to all the winners and highly commended organisations. The Awards continue to highlight the importance of our sector and the innovation and competition continues to be strong. We were also thrilled to award the first Women in Telecoms Champion, which shows our continued support of women in our industry through our Women in Telecoms group.”

The winners are usually independently reviewed by several judges, although we couldn’t find a list of the panel members. As usual, there was also no specific category for consumer VoIP phone services, although the SOHO (Small Office / Small Home) category does get a little bit closer to that.

Comms Council UK Awards 2025 Winners

Best Communication Provider – SME

bOnline

Highly Commended: Microtalk Europe

Best Communication Provider – Enterprise

8×8

Best Enterprise Service

Colt Technology Services – Colt Intelligent Communications (CIC)

Best SOHO Service

bOnline

Best Multi-national Service

Monty eSIM (Monty UK Global)

Best Comms Device

Yealink AX83H Wi-Fi Handset

Best Comms Application

Daktela – Contact Centre Platform

Highly Commended: Vonage: VCC Intelligent Workspace

Best Innovation

Ciptex – Video Advice Kiosk with Agent AI Assist

Highly Commended: SCG Together, Emergency Response Solution

Best Industry Enabler

Guardian Assurance by Kerv

Women in Telecoms Champion

Dee Sweeney

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The ITS Technology Group, which has deployed various open access full fibre broadband and Ethernet networks across parts of the United Kingdom, has today announced the launch of its new Cisco-powered ‘ITS SecureEdge’ product. The new value-added service is designed to “protect businesses of all sizes” from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

The new service, which will leverage Cisco Secure DDoS Protection technology, is said to be part of ITS’ “wider mission” to redefine what business connectivity looks like in the “fibre utility” era, moving beyond pure bandwidth and into smarter, more equitable infrastructure solutions.

According to ITS, traditionally, DDoS mitigation has been the “preserve of large enterprises and government“, relying on solutions that backhaul traffic to off-site scrubbing centres – often at significant cost and prohibitive in today’s low latency application environments. But SecureEdge’s approach is said to bring this protection “closer to the edge of the network“, utilising AI to allow constant monitoring, fast mitigation and accuracy at scale.

The approach also seems to avoid the need for redirection to external scrubbing centres, reducing mitigation times and cutting costs.

Pete England, Product Director at ITS, said:

“Connectivity has to be more than speed alone. We’re investing in innovation that directly answers the real-world risks businesses face every day. DDoS attacks can cripple an organisation in minutes – from online retailers losing sales, to schools and councils losing critical digital services. With this launch, we’re making protection simple, affordable, and built into the network itself.”

The new service is said to be available on all ITS Internet Access services (FibreOne, FibreLight, FibreBright) through a simple, transparent uplift, with “no premium pricing tiers” (i.e. it shouldn’t cost thousands of pounds a year like some existing solutions). The focus here seems to be on SMEs, schools, and public sector organisations.

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As first hinted at last month (here), broadband and TV provider Virgin Media (O2) has now begun the process of rolling out the latest firmware update (v5.21) for their TV 360 and STREAM platforms (set-top-boxes). The change introduces a new search feature and some smaller changes / fixes, but nothing major.

The key change this time around includes enhanced search functionality, which uses small image previews (tiles) on its results instead of a text heavy display (pictured – top). The update also appears to introduce a few minor graphical changes to the onscreen programme guide, and they added a few extra details on the WiFi settings page (e.g. RSSI signal strength, channels used etc.).

Some further details on this were released earlier in the month (here), but it looks like customers will have to wait a bit longer for a major feature update to arrive.

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Broadband, mobile and telecoms giant BT has today published a new economic modelling study from Assembly Research, which examines how the ongoing migration from legacy networks (PSTN/WLR, 2G mobile etc.) to All-IP (Internet Protocol) services could “deliver billions in benefits” (£3bn) to the UK’s critical national infrastructure sectors.

At present BT (EE) and Openreach have a number of programmes that could be said to form part of this migration, such as their move from legacy to digital phone services, the withdrawal of 3G/2G mobile platforms, the closure of old telephone exchanges and the related migration of copper to full fibre (FTTP) broadband lines. But while in recent times much of the media’s attention has tended to focus on the disruption this causes, BT clearly wants to highlight the benefits too.

The new Assembly Research study broadly claims that a £3 billion net economic benefit could be realised across five key sectors by 2040, such as £1.4b in potential saving for the energy sector through improved resilience and demand forecasting. In the water sector, smarter network monitoring and reduced electricity usage could generate efficiencies worth £771 million.

The research evaluated the costs, risks and potential gains from digital migration across energy, water, health (NHS), emergency services and local government. It accounted for the direct cost of upgrading, as well as the rising expense of maintaining legacy systems like the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and the 2G mobile network – both decades old and increasingly challenging to support. Ofcom data shows resilience incidents on the PSTN have risen by 45%, underscoring the urgency of change.

Summary of Predicted Benefits by 2040

➤ Preventing 750,000 unnecessary ambulance trips – averaging more than 100 avoided journeys every day.

➤ Freeing up 12 million hours of council staff time – equal to around 6,500 staff working full-time for a year.

➤ Saving over 600,000 NHS staff hours – comparable to the annual workload of 350 full-time employees.

➤ Avoiding up to 280,000 false fire service callouts as businesses move away from legacy fire alarms – equivalent to 54 false alarms every day.

➤ Cutting 3.42 megatonnes of carbon emissions – equal to powering every home in Birmingham for a year.

Local governments, often under pressure to do more with less, also “stand to gain” £486m by modernising telecare systems and cutting the cost of maintaining ageing analogue equipment. In the NHS, digital transformation promises better call handling and more efficient emergency response. Meanwhile, emergency services could see fewer false alarms and improved call management, enabling faster, more targeted responses.

Jon James, CEO of BT Business, said:

“This research sends a clear message: delaying the shift to digital carries a real cost to public services, the environment and the wider economy. Legacy systems are becoming increasingly unreliable, and the case for action is urgent. BT is committed to guiding the UK’s critical national infrastructure sectors through this upgrade with the resilience and support they need.”

The UK’s transition to digital connectivity is a major national infrastructure programme endorsed by Ofcom and the Government. The Public Switched Telephone Network will be fully retired in January 2027 for the most vulnerable users, with businesses and public services urged to complete their migrations sooner – by the end of 2025 – to “avoid last-minute disruption“.

In 2024 alone, BT migrated nearly 300,000 legacy PSTN business lines. Yet the operator warns that “many CNI [critical infrastructure] providers in the UK still rely on ageing analogue systems for critical operations“, while other countries are moving faster (e.g. Germany and Spain are close to completing their migrations).

The report also claims that the “cost of inaction” could be £437m, although the report itself doesn’t make it easy to clarify how such a figure was produced. As usual, it’s often wise to take such economic modelling with a pinch of salt, not least because it’s incredibly difficult to verify and associate such impacts in the real-world.

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Internet provider TalkTalk has today unveiled the “next step in our Wi-Fi transformation” with the launch of “U“, which as well as being a letter in the alphabet also seems to be both a new class of UK broadband product and order process that aims to deliver a “tailored setup for each customer’s home, with speed that flexes as they need it, all for one price“.

The official announcement is heavy on the promotional language and light on detail, which makes it a bit tricky to reflect what TalkTalk U actually offers. The provider says it’s designed to give consumers a “custom set-up” that removes the need for them to worry about “annoying blindspots in the house” (poor WiFi) or what broadband speed they need, instead “seamlessly flexing to ensure they are always on the right speed for them“, all for one price.

Customers’ TalkTalk U journey will apparently begin by simply providing their home address, the provider then does the work, using property data to ensure that whatever the size and whatever construction type, customers are receiving the right amount of equipment (WiFi boosters etc.) in the right places tailored to their home.

The service will also choose the right speed broadband package for them and, once connected, will use its “smart algorithm to monitor and seamlessly flex their speed behind the scenes as their demands change“, without the need to change package or contract. We quite like the idea of a flexible package like this, but it’s unclear if doing this may impact the price.

In addition, TalkTalk U customers will also be amongst the first to benefit from TalkTalk’s new customer management system, enabled by Kraken Technologies, which is said to be “improving customer services by giving customer service agents all the tools they need to help customers end-to-end“.

Susie Buckridge, TalkTalk CEO, said:

“We’re shaking up our outdated industry by starting to change the way we talk about our products with customers – TalkTalk U is all about need not speed.

The industry has converged around ever-increasing speed packages, implying that these alone are the answer, but the fact is that the majority of homes don’t need more than about 80 or 100mps to cover the average nine connected devices.

Customers tell us what really matters to them is how their Wi-Fi works around the home: they want to be able to stream TV episodes and films seamlessly, have video calls that don’t drop out, and scroll TikTok without endless buffering.

It has been years since we saw any change in the way Wi-Fi is sold, but TalkTalk U allows customers to never have to think about Wi-Fi. It just works, all around their home, automatically flexing with changing needs, no matter what is demanded of it.”

The new type of product is certainly a bit of an innovation in the consumer space (although flexible speeds already exist on Ethernet / leased line services), not least because wholesale providers usually sell Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based products to ISPs by splitting different speeds between tiers and pricing each tier differently from the last one. But this approach tends to work against flexible products like U.

The above might help to explain why, at launch, the “beta version” of their U product is currently only available in CityFibre areas (c.4.5 million UK premises). But TalkTalk said they plan to expand it out to “other networks by the end of the year“, which seems like it will require some networks to offer a different class of product to ISPs at wholesale. At present we’re not sure if this would work on some networks, like Openreach’s, where this sort of speed flexibility doesn’t yet seem to exist.

However, we’re still missing a lot of details, such as how fast ‘U’ will actually allow lines to go (maximum and minimum), what the base package includes and how the wholesale side will be balancing the costing for such a changeable product. But TalkTalk does state that U “starts from” £28 per month and will launch “this month“. If Wi-Fi Extenders are required, depending on home size, an additional charge is also payable.

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Rochdale-based UK broadband ISP Zen Internet has today announced that MS3 have become the latest alternative network to sign a wholesale partnership deal. The move means that Zen’s customers will soon be able to order packages via the new FTTP network and no doubt the altnet will also join their Fibre Hub (network aggregation platform for use by other ISPs).

The Fibre Hub already offered access to a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband footprint of over 20 million premises via infrastructure providers Openreach, CityFibre, ITS Technology, Freedom Fibre and Trooli. But today’s agreement will further expand its reach for Zen’s partners and also provide greater access to their own retail base.

Hull-based alternative UK network operator MS3 has so far deployed their full fibre broadband network across 234,000 premises (207k RFS) in the North of England – mostly around the Hull (East Yorkshire) and Lincolnshire regions – and recently announced connecting their 20,000th customer to the network, which is offered via several partner ISPs; now including Zen Internet.

Zen Internet hasn’t yet revealed any details of the broadband packages or prices they’ll be offering to customers on the new network, which won’t be known until they go live during early 2026. Zen’s implementation of new altnets often occurs gradually and in phases, rather than all at once, so after they go live it may still take a bit longer for everything to be fully integrated.

Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting this development. In addition, Zen Internet said they expected to sign another alternative network to their platform in November 2025.

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The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today hit internet phone (VoIP) provider Vonage with a £700,000 fine after an investigation that started in March 2024 (here). The penalty follows an incident that resulted in disruption for its business customers to emergency calling (999) services between 23rd October and 3rd November 2023.

The regulator’s existing General Conditions rules (e.g. General Condition A3.2 and sections 105A, 105C and 105K of the Communications Act 2003) require every communications provider to “ensure the fullest possible availability of public communications services at all times, including in the event of a disaster or catastrophic network failure, and uninterrupted access to emergency organisations.”

Naturally, any failure of such communications, particularly to the emergency services, is extremely serious and could result in a loss of life. This is particularly relevant now that broadband ISPs and their customers are increasingly switching away from traditional phone line services and on to IP-based phone alternatives, which may be more exposed to connectivity problems and power cuts etc.

However, Ofcom’s investigation of Vonage found that, during the aforementioned period, the company’s UK VoIP business customers were “unable to connect to the emergency services when using desk phones” and their internal processes “did not include adequate assessment of whether a software update, which caused the issue, had the potential to impact emergency calls“. As a result, Vonage failed to carry out testing following the update, which led to its emergency call service failing.

The provider also “failed to have adequate monitoring procedures in place“, which meant it did not have sufficient oversight of its network to enable it to identify an outage affecting emergency calls.

George Lusty, Ofcom’s Enforcement Director, said:

“Being able to call the emergency services can mean the difference between life and death. It’s vital that telecoms providers take their responsibilities seriously and if they don’t, we’ll hold them to account. Vonage fell short on a number of levels, putting its customers at unacceptable risk.”

Breaking news.. more to follow..