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Articles for Category Tag - Politics

Gigabit Broadband May Boost British Economy £51.4bn by 2025 UPDATE

27th April, 2020 (4 Comments)

A new study from Assembly Research, which was commissioned via the vested interests of Huawei, has forecast that the UK Government’s deployment of “gigabit-capable broadband” could provide £51.4bn gross value added to the economy in five years, growing to £68.8bn in 2030. But any delays could be very costly.

Cityfibre Start 1Gb Home Broadband Build in Bury St Edmunds

27th April, 2020 (4 Comments)

Cityfibre has today announced that they’ve already started construction of their new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband ISP network in the Suffolk (England) town of Bury St Edmunds (not to be confused with Bury near Manchester), which was only very recently added (here) to their £4bn UK roll-out plan.

Flaky Parliamentary Video Debates Highlight Poor Broadband

24th April, 2020 (24 Comments)

Across the UK various devolved and central parliaments have been returning to work this week in a very different way, with many connecting to hybrid public debates via live video conferencing from their own homes for the first time. But a few hiccups have helped to highlight how some areas still suffer from poor connectivity.

Government Attempts to Expand UK Internet Snooping Bodies

23rd April, 2020 (8 Comments)

The Government appears to have decided that, while the country’s attention is distracted by the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis, it might as well try to increase the number of bodies capable of obtaining communications data from UK phone, mobile and broadband ISPs under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPAct).

Gov Climate Advisor Says, Switch UK Road Funding to Broadband

21st April, 2020 (18 Comments)

The CEO of the UK Government’s independent Climate Change Committee (CCC), Chris Stark, has called on MPs to consider switching funding from the £28bn pot for building new roads (intended to help relieve congestion) and instead invest it in helping to roll-out “full fibre” broadband ISP networks across the country.

COVID-19 – Free Laptops and 4G Broadband for Vulnerable Kids

20th April, 2020 (51 Comments)

The Government has announced that “disadvantaged children” (e.g. those who receive support from a social worker and care leavers) across England are to be given a free tablet or laptop computer and 4G based mobile broadband service, which is intended to help with their education during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis.

WightFibre CEO – The Challenge of Bringing FTTP to an Island

10th April, 2020 (7 Comments)

In a new interview the CEO of ISP WightFibre, John Irvine, has spoken to ISPreview about some of the challenges they’ve faced in deploying Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband across the Isle of Wight (England), particularly obstacles created by the council, and their future hope of covering 71,000 premises by 2025.

Alternative Full Fibre ISPs Aim for 15.7 Million UK Premises by 2025

8th April, 2020 (7 Comments)

The Independent Networks Co-operative Association (INCA) and Point Topic have today estimated that alternative “full fibre” (FTTP/B) broadband ISPs grew their UK coverage by 50% in 2019 (up from 23% last year) and now reach 1,223,168 premises passed. Going forward such providers aspire to cover 15,734,673 by the end of 2025.

COVID-19 – UK Government Gets Tough on Criminal 5G Vandals

6th April, 2020 (0 Comments)

Over the past couple of weeks the increasingly absurd anti-5G campaign has taken a chilling turn. Videos have emerged of arson against several UK mobile masts and engineers being abused while doing their jobs. The criminal activity has been fuelled by a bogus conspiracy theory that links the spread of COVID-19 to the 5G roll-out.

BBC Suggests Broadband ISP Levy to Replace UK TV Licence Fee

1st April, 2020 (172 Comments)

The BBC has given its response to the UK Government’s (DCMS) consultation on their proposal to decriminalise TV licence fee evasion, which among other things includes a suggestion that the fee could be replaced by a levy or tax on consumer broadband bills. But they are not “advocating” for that, yet.

Government Considers COVID-19 Tracking of UK Mobile Phones

30th March, 2020 (17 Comments)

The UK Government appears to be considering an idea that could see them attempt to monitor the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) by working with mobile network operators (e.g. Three UK, Vodafone, BT (EE) and O2) to track the location data of handsets (Smartphones etc.), but it’ll only be able to use “properly anonymised” data.

Mobile Firms and UK ISPs Commit to Protect Vulnerable Users

29th March, 2020 (0 Comments)

Most of the major UK broadband ISPs and mobile network operators have today agreed a set of “important commitments” with Ofcom and Government (DCMS) help to support and protect “vulnerable consumers,” as well as those who may become vulnerable due to circumstances arising from COVID-19 (Coronavirus).

Impact of COVID-19 on the UK Full Fibre Broadband Rollout

28th March, 2020 (8 Comments)

The rapid spread of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) has had a significant impact upon the United Kingdom and we thought it might be useful to take a quick look at how it’s impacting the national roll-out of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP networks, as well as to try and answer a few common questions.

COVID-19 – YouTube Cuts Video Stream Quality to Standard Def

20th March, 2020 (9 Comments)

Internet video streaming giant YouTube has today announced that it will follow Netflix (here) by reducing the quality of their streams across the EU in order to help broadband ISPs deal with rising levels of network use. But unlike Netflix they’ve “temporarily” switched “all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default.”

COVID-19 – UK ISPs Being Urged to Offer Free Broadband

20th March, 2020 (11 Comments)

The Government is understood to be in “very early talks” with UK internet access providers over how they could better support people during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis, which has resulted in many people and families needing to work from and stay at home. One option could be to offer free broadband.

10Mbps UK Broadband Universal Service Obligation to Go Live UPDATE3

19th March, 2020 (98 Comments)

The UK Government’s new legally-binding Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband – supplied by ISPs BT and KCOM – will tomorrow go live. The aim is to ensure that anybody living in a digitally disadvantaged area can request a “minimum” download speed of at least 10Mbps (1Mbps upload), but there are caveats.

Ofcom’s Plan to Measure the 4G UK Mobile Coverage Obligation

18th March, 2020 (4 Comments)

The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today revealed some more details about the new £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN), which aims to extend UK geographic 4G mobile coverage to 95% by the end of 2025, and explained how they will assess the compliance of O2, Vodafone, Three UK and EE (BT) with those commitments.