First Residential UK Broadband Customers Change ISP via New Switching System
The industry-led One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo), which holds responsibility for implementing Ofcom’s heavily delayed One Touch Switch (OTS) migration system for faster consumer switching between UK internet service providers, has reported its “first successful residential customer switches” during the final trial phase. The OTS system was originally due to go live in April 2023, but it’s since suffered big delays (details here, here and here) and is now planned to launch on 12th...
AST SpaceMobile prepares to launch first commercial satellites
News The five Bluebird satellites are set to be launched into low Earth orbit (LEO) in September Direct-to-device (D2D) satellite communications operator AST SpaceMobile has announced this week that it’s five new commercial satellites, dubbed Bluebirds, are built and ready for launch. The Bluebirds will be shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida, at the start of August, where they are targeted for launch in September. The exact launch date will depend on weather conditions at the launch site and...
TalkTalk UK Shareholders Propose £400m Package to Entice Lenders
The efforts to try and save broadband ISP TalkTalk from its rapidly suffocating debts took another twist today after a report claimed that shareholders, led by company founder Sir Charles Dunstone, are attempting to sweeten their offer to lenders by introducing an asset pledge – worth c.£200m – to support an already proposed capital injection of over £200m. Just to recap. The TalkTalk Group has already spent much of the past few years wrestling with its existing c.£1bn debt pile, which in 2023...
Microsoft partners with Lumen to revamp data centres as AI demand soars
Press Release Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) have announced a partnership that will use the Microsoft Cloud to further drive Lumen’s digital transformation. In addition, Microsoft has chosen Lumen to expand its network capacity and capability to meet the growing demand on its datacenters due to AI. A network for the AI era Datacenters have become critical infrastructure that power the compute capabilities for the millions of people and organizations who rely...
nexfibre passes almost 1.3m homes with full fibre
Press Release nexfibre, the next generation fibre network operator, has today published the latest quarterly update of its nationwide rollout plan The report reveals planned build locations for 2025 and early 2026, with significantly expanded footprint in previously underserved areas of North Wales and Scotland. The update demonstrates nexfibre’s commitment to bringing sustainable, national-scale competition to the fibre access market, with network expansion set to benefit towns across the UK,...
CEO of UK Broadband ISP Zzoomm Prep FTTP Growth via Consolidation
The CEO of Oxfordshire-based alternative broadband provider Zzoomm, Matthew Hare, has revealed that they’re still aspiring to cover 1 million UK premises with their 2Gbps FTTP network (despite the recent move to stop new building work), but “if we can’t build it ourselves then … you have to buy it” (growing through consolidation). Just to recap. Zzoomm has so far extended their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 202,000 premises (RFS) – with 30,000 customers expected in August 2024...
Nexfibre Publish Q2 2024 UK Full Fibre Broadband Rollout Update
Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with retail ISP partner Virgin Media (VMO2), has this morning published their latest quarterly (Q2 2024) progress update on the roll-out of their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband ISP network. This includes details on build locations for 2025 and early 2026. We’ll start with the usual recap. Back in 2022 Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners setup nexfibre as a new £4.5bn joint...
Sky UK Reveals Broadband Traffic, TV and Mobile Network Usage Stats
Comcast-owned internet, TV and mobile provider Sky UK has published an interesting new report, which reveals a lot of interesting details about their network and TV usage, which we haven’t previously seen. For example, Sky Broadband now has 1.5 million FTTP customers and internet traffic peaked at 24.35Tbps on 9th April 2024. The new ‘Sky Attention Index‘ (PDF) report, which includes data from the January to June 2024 period, broadly summarises a sizeable amount of data from across Sky’s...
Virgin Media O2 See UK Broadband Users Fall to 5.71 Million as Nexfibre Ramps FTTP
The latest Q2 2024 results from Virgin Media (O2) have today been published, which reveals that they’re now home to 5,710,700 fixed broadband customers (down by -12.2k in Q2 2024 vs +5.3k in Q1) and built another 295,300 full fibre (FTTP) premises – mostly via nexfibre (up from 194k last quarter). Both VM and nexfibre now cover 5m premises via full fibre. According to the latest results, the combined VMO2 and nexfibre broadband network currently reaches 17,489,000 Homes Serviceable (up from...
Which? Name ISP Virgin Media as Worst UK Telecoms Provider for 2024
Consumer magazine Which? have today named the winners of their annual Shoddy Awards 2024, which lists the companies that have done poorly through the year. Suffice to say that broadband provider Virgin Media picked up the award for “Worst Telecoms Company” for the second year running, due to “poor customer service and mid-contract price hikes“. In order to be nominated for a “Shoddy“, companies had to fall short on one of the following criteria: failing an industry standard, potentially...