News

SpaceX’s Starlink service, which offers ultrafast broadband speeds to the UK and globally via a mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), has published an annual 2024 Progress Report that summarises their recent upgrades and reveals how their future V3 (GEN3) satellite will be able to handle 1Tbps (Terabits per second) of capacity. At present Starlink’s network has around 6,900 satellites in orbit (c.2,800 are v2 Mini / GEN 2A) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km – and...

News The court of appeal ruled on Thursday that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have the legal authority to reinstate the rules This week has seen a US appeals court strike a major blow to the Biden administration’s aspirations of restoring net neutrality, ruling that the FCC does not have the power to enforce such regulations. Net neutrality is the concept that all internet users and internet traffic should be treated equally by service providers. This paradigm means that...

News  The deal follows Zegona’s €5 billion purchase of Vodafone Spain last June  Zegona Communications has announced that Vodafone Spain and MasOrange will form a new fibre network joint venture, dubbed FibreCo.  FibreCo will combine the two companies’  fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, reaching roughly 12.2 million premises across Spain. This, the partners say, will create the largest FTTH network in Europe.  FibreCo will use existing infrastructure, with nearly 40% of the combined FTTH...

News The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack caused a website failure and service disruption for around 12 hours Today, Japan’s largest mobile operator, NTT Docomo, has revealed it has suffered a cyberattack, impacting a number of services. The DDoS attack reportedly resulted in a system glitch at 5:27am, which disrupted access to several services – such as the company website and the company’s ‘goo’ portal – for almost 12 hours. Mobile and other communication services were notably...

European satellite operator Eutelsat has confirmed that their OneWeb network, which is the global constellation of broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that is still partly supported by the UK government, suffered a “temporary, 48-hour outage” over the New Year period that started on 31st December 2024. OneWeb (aka – Eutelsat OneWeb) has 654 small (c.150kg) first generation (GEN1) LEO platforms in space – orbiting at an altitude of 1,200km above the Earth (c.600 of them for coverage...

News  The connectivity could prove vital in areas where infrastructure is destroyed by Russian military activity  Telecoms group VEON has announced a new partnership with Starlink, a division of SpaceX, to bring direct-to-cell satellite connectivity to Ukraine.   The deal will see Kyivstar, VEON’s Ukrainian subsidiary, offer these satellite-based connectivity services to its customers across the country.  The deal will see Ukraine become one of the first countries to benefit from Starlink’s...

News  The news follows final regulatory approval last month  Swiss telco Swisscom has completed its acquisition of Vodafone Italia in a move set to reshape the competitive landscape of Italy’s telecoms sector.   The deal, valued at €8 billion, was finalised on December 31 following approval from Italian regulators earlier in the month.  The acquisition will see Vodafone Italia merged with Swisscom’s existing Italian subsidiary, Fastweb. The move will reduce the number of mobile players in the...

The UK government has today confirmed the expected news that BT Group (Openreach) have been formally awarded several new Type C (Cross-Regional) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contracts. This will help upgrade internet connectivity across more parts (hard to reach rural areas) of Shropshire, Herefordshire, Wales, Devon, Somerset, Essex and North East England, and Worcestershire. Project Gigabit itself has been running for the past few years and aims to extend networks capable of delivering...

Business, student and residential ISP Glide Group, which has been busy expanding their full fibre broadband network across more of the UK (leased lines and FTTP etc.), recently announced the successful completion of a refinancing of its existing debt arrangements. The deal also included a new capex (capital expenditure) facility to support growth. The 5-year bank financing is said to have been “oversubscribed“, which suggests there was strong demand from the banking sector. Evercore acted as...

ISPreview has today published our biannual UK summary of fixed broadband coverage for H2 2024, which found that “full fibre” (FTTP) ISP networks have grown to reach 73.53% of premises (up from 67.68% in H1) and 85.87% are within reach of “gigabit” speeds (up from 83.39%). Continue on to see details for England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland. Just to recap. Virtually all the new gigabit-capable (1000Mbps+ or 1Gbps+) connectivity added during 2024 has come from Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based...