News

News The Innovation Centre is supported by a grant from the Spanish Space Agency and will allow partners to test solutions combining satellite and mobile connectivity Vodafone has this week announced the creation of a new innovation centre in Málaga, Spain, aimed at better integrating satellite and terrestrial mobile communications. The centre’s creation is partially financed by a grant from the Spanish Space Agency and includes AST SpaceMobile and the University of Málaga as its key initial...

Mobile network operator Vodafone UK has won a key court case against leasing firm AP Wireless (inc. the affiliated Icon Tower company). Some operators believe the firm could risk damaging their roll-out of 5G based mobile broadband technology, such as by pushing up their costs and threatening the viability of future deployments. Mobile operators have historically tended to lease their land directly from landowners. But in recent years APW has been stepping in to buy mast leases from existing...

Edinburgh-based ISP GoFibre has secured a third contract under the UK government’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme, which is worth £26.2m (state aid) and will see them expand their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover around 11,000 premises across hard-to-reach rural areas in the Scottish Borders and East Lothian regions. Just to recap. The Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme is currently working to extend 1Gbps download speeds (200Mbps+ uploads) to reach...

News The Indian billionaire made the sale following the company’s positive quarterly results This week, Sunil Mittal has sold a 0.84% stake (51 million shares) in India’s second largest telco, Bharti Airtel, raising roughly $976 million. The sale was made through the Mittal family’s investment company, Indian Continental Investment. Roughly a quarter of these shares were sold to group firm Bharti Telecom, with the remaining three quarters sold to ‘key marquee long-only names, both global and...

The CEO of Liberty Global, Mike Fries, has said they’ve made “significant progress” on their plan for opening up Virgin Media’s existing UK fixed line broadband network to wholesale (rival ISPs) via a new business (NetCo) during the first half of 2025 (here). Fries also confirmed they had received “proposals from a handful of the strongest infrastructure investors” for a stake in the biz. Just to recap. The merged business of Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2), which is backed by parents Telefónica...

The CEO of Fern Networks Limited (Fern Trading) backed alternative broadband network operator AllPointsFibre (APFN), Jarlath Finnegan, has this week spoken of his “excitement” ahead of officially launching their new Aquila wholesale platform into the wider UK market, which is expected to take place on 14th May 2025. Just to recap. APFN was originally formed through the consolidation of three alternative broadband networks and ISPs (here and here), including Giganet, Swish Fibre and Jurassic...

Telecoms giant BT has revealed that they’ve now deployed their Global Fabric Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform to “over” 30 Equinix data-centres across the UK and world, which will grow to over 40 in the next year – spanning the world’s top 30 business locations and covering 95% of the world’s cloud interconnection traffic. Global Fabric is designed to simplify multi-cloud connectivity, security, and infrastructure for multinational organisations – providing visibility and control of both...

Broadband ISP and mobile operator Vodafone has revealed that they’ve begun “piloting” (no pun intended, we think) a new type of done that is designed to help restore connectivity to mobile masts, such as when their underground data capacity cables are cut or damaged. The drones employ a special optical wireless link. The drones, which could also be deployed as part of disaster recovery situations, are currently being tested in Seville (Spain) and use a “wireless optical connectivity” link that...

The UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has today begun their annual hunt for the best ISPs and internet companies ahead of their forthcoming 2025 awards event (the 27th one they’ve held), which this time adds several new and refreshed categories (total of 20) to help reflect the trends and successes of the industry. The winners of the previous 2024 awards event were unveiled back in November 2024 (here), which among other things saw several ISPs taking home two awards each across...

Press Release The North East’s pioneering role in advanced wireless innovation took centre stage at the 5G Innovation Regions (5GIR) Showcase.   Bringing together industry leaders, government representatives and technology innovators, the event celebrated the progress, impact and future potential of advanced wireless infrastructure use cases across key sectors, including smart port operations, agritech, connected transport and creative industries. Spearheaded by Sunderland City Council in...