News

Contributed Article By James McKenzie, international arbitration and cross-border litigation partner at Eversheds Sutherland The difficulties inherent in delivering subsea cable projects are well known, but a confluence of geopolitical events is making delivering them now, in the current climate, particularly acute. The critical security role performed by subsea cables makes them an obvious target. Recent events have highlighted the physical challenges of policing and patrolling large cables,...

Alternative network operator Freedom Fibre, which has built a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network that it wholesales out to UK ISPs across the North West and West Midlands of England, have today appointed Lindsey Sutherland to be their new Chief Operations Officer (COO). This will become effective from 4th March 2025. Lindsey is a former military veteran with 30 years of experience, most of which has been spent in engineering and IT roles. He originally founded a data systems...

Wireless infrastructure provider Freshwave, which is backed by investment firm DigitalBridge and naturally has its own vested interests in this field, have published a new study that claims a focus on improving indoor mobile (4G, 5G etc.) signals and “eliminating mobile dead zones” could help to grow the UK economy by £70bn a year. According to Freshwave’s somewhat high-level Mobile Connectivity ROI Index, just 5 minutes of poor current connectivity a day reduces annual productive time by 1%...

After conducting more research, the UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today formally begun to consult on a proposal that will allow low power indoor WiFi and mobile broadband (4G, 5G etc.) networks to “share” access to the upper 6GHz radio spectrum band (6425 to 7125MHz). But full implementation could take years. The regulator has already made the lower part (5925 to 6425MHz) of the 6GHz band available for WiFi under the new WiFi 6E, WiFi 7 and future standards (here), yet the Upper part has...

Press Release  Following CMA clearance of the Vodafone UK Three UK merger in December 2024 (subject to legally binding commitments), and in anticipation of final deal completion in the coming months, Vodafone-Three has announced the company’s General Management Team Max Taylor, CEO Vodafone UK, and CEO of the future merged entity, has appointed the following people to lead the new company: Darren Purkis, CFO Kelly Barlow, Strategy and Portfolio Clare Corkish, HR Andrea Dona, Networks Nick...

Ofcom have today published their Q3 2024 study of UK consumer telecoms complaints, which names and shames TalkTalk for attracting the most complaints about broadband, while O2 took the most flak mobile and Virgin Media was put on the naughty step for Pay TV. Take note that the regulator’s report only covers complaints that Ofcom itself has received and not those sent directly to an ISP, the ISPA or an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) complaints handler (i.e. Communications Ombudsman or...

News  “This large AI infrastructure is needed to allow open, collaborative development of the most complex AI models and to make Europe an AI continent,” the European Commission said The European Commission has launched InvestAI, a €200 billion initiative aimed at accelerating AI investment and innovation across Europe. Central to the plan is a €20 billion investment in AI gigafactories, designed to provide the computing power needed for AI development.   The InvestAI fund will support the...

The not-for-profit London Internet Exchange (LINX), which handles a large chunk of UK and global data traffic through their switches via around 900 members (broadband ISPs, mobile operators etc.), has today announced that their regional internet exchange in Manchester has hit a new “record maximum traffic peak” of 725Gbps (Gigabits per second). The exchange states that LINX Manchester has seen consistent growth in traffic, rising by an average of 100-200Gbps throughout 2024. At least part of...

The CEO and Co-Founder of UK ISP Fibrus, Dominic Kearns, has apologised to the several thousand premises in Northern Ireland that are still without access to their full fibre broadband network following Storm Éowyn (pronounced ‘Ay-oh-win’), which struck nearly three weeks ago. But most of their customers are now back online. The storm, which was the result of explosive cyclogenesis (aka – a weather bomb), struck parts of the United Kingdom on Friday 24th January 2025 (here and here) and...

After launching their first commercial 5G Standalone (SA) based mobile broadband network for consumers in February 2024 (here), mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today expanded the service’s availability to include large enterprise, public sector, and SME (business) customers on eligible tariffs. Just to recap. 5GSA networks are pure end-to-end 5G that can deliver ultra-low latency times, greater energy efficiency, better speeds (particularly uploads), network slicing, improved support for...