Full fibre ISP Jurassic Fibre, which aims to cover 350,000 UK premises with a 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across South West England (here and here), appears to have refreshed their packages and reduced prices on several tiers.

The latest independent model has estimated that the H1 2020 coverage of “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband ISP networks across the UK has risen to 14.8% of premises (up from 11% in H2 2019), while 61.7% can get 100Mbps+ (up from 59.3%) and 22.1% are within reach of “gigabit” (1Gbps) speeds.

Full fibre UK ISP Hyperoptic has announced that they’re donating IT equipment and dongles in Edinburgh (Scotland) to help enable 17 low-income households in the port district of Leith to get online and access essential services.

Business broadband ISP HighNet has revealed that an unspecific investment from Shawbrook Bank has enabled the company to be “fully business as usual” during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, while at the same time continuing to fuel its growth by investing in new hardware and additional IP addresses.

At present most consumer UK internet traffic is made up of video content (70-80%) and one of the problems with having a slower broadband ISP connection is that you’re often stuck with lower quality streaming. But that could be about to change with the new H.266 Versatile Video Coding standard, which offers 50% more compression.

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today announced that a further 94 rural villages and towns have been added to their UK roll-out plan for 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP technology over the next 2 years, but all of them will be in Northern Ireland.

Broadband ISP Zen Internet looks to have become the latest provider to add a Pay TV service after they began contacting existing customers to offer them a special deal on the Netgem TV (IPTV) platform, which reduces the normal monthly cost from £14.99 to £9.99 and is free for the first month (on a 12 month contract).

Openreach (BT) has today announced that 80,000 premises across the city of Edinburgh in Scotland can now access their 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network and work is on-going. The city was one of the first to be announced under their “Fibre First” deployment plan, which began two years ago.

Belfast-based UK broadband ISP Fibrus appears as if it could be set to secure a key £15m Full Fibre Northern Ireland Consortium (FFNI) contract, which will construct a new gigabit-capable Dark Fibre or FTTP network to connect around 880 public sector sites across 10 council areas by March 2021.

UK ISP B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North), which is deploying a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network to rural premises in several counties across England, has furnished us with a progress update and revealed that they aim to reach 40,000 properties passed by 31st March 2022 and possibly c.70,000 by 2025/26.

The Government and Indian conglomerate Bharti Global have today made a successful £800m ($1bn) bid to acquire the British-registered space company OneWeb, which will see the UK invest £400m ($500m) in order to help build a new global network of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites for ultrafast broadband and possibly GPS.

The UK communications and media regulator, Ofcom, has this week called on broadband ISPs, phone providers and mobile operators to “continue to support” consumers who may be struggling to pay their bills as a result of the on-going Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Mobile operator Vodafone today claims to have become “the first UK operator” to showcase the next evolution of gigabit-capable 5G (mobile broadband) technology – “Standalone 5G” (SA), which includes support for improvements like ultra-low latency, “guaranteed speed performance” and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Fixed home broadband customers of UK ISP Vodafone have been quick to spot today that the provider’s “Ultimate Speed Guarantee” (primarily focused on their “superfast” FTTC packages) has suddenly vanished from the operator’s website. The feature gives a discount when the connection goes too slow.

Residents in the rural Pembrokeshire (Wales) village of Nolton Haven were last week left with a smelly problem after a team of Openreach (BT) engineers, which have been busy deploying Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband in the area, managed to install one of their telegraph poles through a mains sewer.

The release of a major new Season 4 patch for the popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (CoD) video game, which occurred on Tuesday (30th June 2020), pushed “broadband traffic” over Openreach’s (BT) national UK network to a new daily record of 189 PetaBytes consumed.

Low cost broadband ISP TalkTalk has today refreshed some of their packages and also appear to have stopped selling the Sky Sports and Sky Cinema boosts to customers via their YouView (IPTV) based Pay TV platform, which previously cost £18 and £36 extra per month respectively to add.