News

Network analyst firm Streetwave has been contracted to conduct a huge survey of mobile broadband network (4G, 5G) coverage, using bin lorries, which will this time focus on 8 council areas within Scotland’s Glasgow City Region – including North Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire, South Lanarkshire, Glasgow, East Dunbartonshire, and East Renfrewshire. The past year has seen Streetwave harnessing waste (bin / refuse) collection lorries to map mobile network / broadband coverage and speeds across...

Mobile network operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today announced that they’ve completed a project to upgrade the capacity of their 4G and 5G based mobile services across “over” 600 postcodes in the port city of Aberdeen (Scotland), which should mean “faster” mobile broadband speeds and greater reliability. The work, which began at the start of 2024, forms part of O2’s ongoing effort to invest £2m a day into their mobile network, which enables them to deploy new technologies and keep up with...

Debt-troubled UK internet provider TalkTalk has confirmed that its staff were yesterday informed about another round of significant redundancies, which one report indicates could affect almost a quarter (c. 130) of their consumer division workforce across the country. But the specifics won’t be known until after Christmas. The move comes shortly after the group’s recent decision to accept a refinancing package worth roughly £400m (here and here), which saved TalkTalk from the immediate risk of...

Mobile operator EE (BT) has come top in umlaut and Connect’s latest annual 2024 UK Mobile Network Test, which used a range of different benchmarks to test 4G (voice and data / broadband) and 5G performance across 19 cities, 27 towns and along 10,480km of major roads. On the flip side, O2 (Virgin Media) once again found themselves at the bottom. The study’s more scientific drivetests and walktests were both conducted between 28th October to 13th November 2024 using Samsung Galaxy S23...

News  Gelsinger has spent more than 40 years at the company  Intel has announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired.   Gelsinger, who also stepped down from Intel’s board of directors, first joined the company in 1979 and became its first chief technology officer in 2005. After spending few years at EMC and almost a decade as CEO of VMware, Gelsinger returned to Intel as CEO in 2021. Since then, he has overseen a pivotal period for the chipmaker as it worked to address major challenges in a...

News  The formation of the joint venture had been under discussion for over a year  Telefónica’s proposed sale of its Peruvian fibre optic network to private equity firm KKR and Chilean telecom operator Entel has collapsed, representing a major setback in the Spanish telecom giant’s efforts to streamline operations and reduce debt.   The deal, announced in July last year, would have seen KKR and Entel acquire a 54% and 10% stake in the network, respectively, valuing the business at...

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today introduced changes that are designed to improve their spectrum sharing framework, which among other things have been designed to add more flexibility, facilitate more effective spectrum sharing and increase spectrum supply to support new types of fixed wireless (broadband) and mobile (4G, 5G etc.) services. The existing spectrum sharing framework was first introduced in 2019 (here) and paved the way for many smaller mobile and fixed wireless data...

Contributed Article  Recently, Huawei launched its new 5G-AA solutions, designed to address the growing demands of Mobile AI.   The solutions aim to deepen the integration of 5.5G networks with AI technologies, improving both network capabilities and user experiences. As such, these solutions focus on two complimentary concepts: ‘Networks for AI’ and ‘AI for Networks’.   ‘Networks for AI’ seeks to ensure that mobile networks are equipped with the necessary capacity and flexibility to support...

News  BT has long been a cornerstone of the UK’s emergency connectivity, handling 999 emergency calls since 1937  BT has signed a £1.29 billion contract with the Home Office to provide mobile services for the UK’s Emergency Services Network (ESN) over the next seven years, the company announced over the weekend.  The ESN is a critical system that uses the 4G network to deliver secure and reliable voice, video, and data communications for the UK’s emergency services. It allows police, fire, and...

Broadband ISP and mobile operator EE (BT) has today announced that customers of their pay TV service have just gained access to the new Paramount+ streaming App via their TV Box Pro and TV Box Mini hardware (set-top-boxes). This offers access to a wide selection of blockbuster movies and TV shows etc. But there’s a catch for those with a Premium plan. In addition to the ‘Standard’ (£7.99 per month) Paramount+ plan, customers can also sign-up to the recently introduced ‘Basic (with ads)’...