News

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...

The UK telecoms regulator has today published their annual 2024 Pricing Trends Report, which among other things confirms that the take-up of cheaper social broadband ISP and mobile tariffs for those on state benefits has jumped to 506,000 customers in June 2024 (up from 380,000 in Sept 2023). But that’s still just 9.6% of eligible households (e.g. those on Universal Credit). Consumer broadband, phone and mobile services are often considered to be quite reasonably priced in the UK, but there...

The Swansea Bay City Region project has announced that it’s successfully completed 50% of its Full Fibre Infrastructure Build project with BT. This forms part of the related ‘Swansea Bay City Deal’s Digital Infrastructure Programme’ and is helping to upgrade key public sector sites with “future proofed” broadband connectivity. Just to recap. The UK and Welsh Governments gave their approval for a £55m digital infrastructure investment under the £1.3bn Swansea Bay City Region project back in...

Internet benchmarking firm Opensignal has used their crowdsource data, which is collected via users of their benchmarking apps and services, to reveal a bit more information about how the recent 3G mobile switch-off on EE (BT), Three UK (ongoing) and Vodafone has impacted the availability of their remaining 2G, 4G and 5G based mobile / broadband services. Just to recap. Both EE (BT) and Vodafone completed their shutdown of older 3G services in February 2024 (here and here), while Three UK are...

The Communications Ombudsman, which is one of Ofcom’s two approved Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) providers for UK consumers of broadband ISPs, mobile and landline phone providers, has released its complaints data Q3 2024 and reported a 29% increase compared to the same period in 2023. The regulator requires that all telecoms providers – those offering services to consumers and small businesses – must be members of an approved ADR scheme. The schemes are free for consumers to access and...

Broadband and telecoms giant BT Group has today highlighted how they’re using AI (Artificial Intelligence) based systems to “significantly” enhance the customer experience and streamline support processes across the Group. For example, EE’s (mobile) new virtual assistant, Aimee, now handles up to 60,000 customer conversations per week. The group’s adoption of “advanced AI and generative AI technologies” is being conducted in collaboration with Sprinklr, which has supplied BT with their unified...

Prices aren’t the only thing changing at Openreach (BT) today. The national UK network operator has also revealed that it will be withdrawing some of the “legacy” speed tiers on their Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP + FTTP on Demand) based broadband products for ISPs and their customers. The public briefing summary on this doesn’t provide any useful information, except to confirm that they’re today notifying all Communication Providers (CP) about “legacy speed tiers...

News Here’s a look at the five biggest stories over the last week from our sister publication, Broadband Communities A partnership between T-Mobile and Starlink can move ahead with providing supplemental cell service from space following approval from the FCC, and the industry applauds the latest digital equity grant approvals and passage of the ACCESS Rural America Act.   T-Mobile and Starlink score a win with the FCC The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved an application...

News The deal comes with a price tag of $6.5 billion Having been in discussions since May this year, Indonesia’s third- and fourth-largest telcos, XL Axiata and Smartfren, have finally agreed to merge their operations. The deal, valued at around $6.5 billion, will see both parties take a 34.8% stake in the merged entity, with the remaining 30.4% stake being traded publicly. Axiata will receive roughly $400 million as part of the deal. The new company will be called PT XLSmart Telecom Sejahtera...

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today started to unveil their usual round of annual (2024) price increases across their wholesale broadband and Ethernet products for UK ISPs, which touches on everything from full fibre (FTTP) lines to hybrid fibre (FTTC / SOGEA), Cablelinks and Ethernet, among other products. Ofcom’s regulatory rules (example) currently allow Openreach to increase prices across their various products, usually by the CPI level of inflation (currently 2.3%), although...