Chris Bryant, the UK Labour Party’s Shadow Minister for the Creative Industries & Digital, has perhaps unsurprisingly indicated that – should the party be elected at the next General Election – they would honour the Government’s existing £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out programme. But some market intervention may occur.

A new survey of business leaders and decision-makers from 160 UK companies, which was conducted by Neos Networks during June 2023, has claimed that one in every five UK businesses are receiving insufficient broadband speeds. Plus 42% regard moving to higher capacity connectivity in the next 2 years as key to growth plans.

UK ISP and network builder Zzoomm has today announced their new 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network has just gone live in the Cheshire town of Middlewich. The build is said to have cost the operator £2.5m and covers 6,500 local homes and businesses.

Broadband ISP TalkTalk Business (TTB) has this morning announced that the UK company’s existing Managing Director, Ruth Kennedy, has been officially promoted to the top job of Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The move comes as the wider TalkTalk group is going through a lot of changes, while trying to tackle its debt pile.

Network operator and UK broadband ISP CommunityFibre, which is deploying a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across London and some surrounding areas, has today become the latest in a growing line of alternative network providers to confirm plans for staff redundancies and build suspension.

The first 100 homes and businesses on the remote rural Hebridean isle of Jura in Scotland can now access Openreach’s new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. The development was partly funded by gigabit broadband vouchers from the UK and Scottish governments, which offer subsidies worth up to £5,000 per property.

Eastbourne-based broadband ISP Lightning Fibre, which is rolling out a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of Sussex and Kent in England, appears to have responded to CityFibre’s recent move to launch faster tiers by adding a new 2.5Gbps (symmetric) product tier for residential customers on its network too.

Rural broadband ISP GoFibre (BorderLink), which is building a 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) network across the North of England and Scottish Borders area, has announced that they’ve completed the first phase of their £6.6m state-aid supported Project Gigabit contract in rural Teesdale – putting services live across 885 covered homes.

The Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) in England has issued a progress update on their ongoing £7m project to deploy a new gigabit-capable full fibre broadband network to over 175 public sector sites (schools, hospitals etc.), which reveals that 171 of the sites have been completed, while a further 22 sites are now due to be upgraded by 2024.

We’ve just completed another big update sweep of the UK ISP Listings database and have opted to add a new category for multi-gigabit broadband packages, which at present is only listing the fastest package available from each provider up to a maximum of 10Gbps and above the 1Gbps tiers.

The UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband rollout scheme has today announced two new contracts, which sees ISP Gigaclear awarded £26.5m to cover around 10,000 rural premises in North and South Oxfordshire. At the same time, Connect Fibre has scooped a £16.5m deal to cover 6,000 premises in North East Staffordshire.

Rural broadband ISP and network builder GoFibre (BorderLink), which is deploying a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the North of England and Scottish Borders area, has today announced the first five charity projects to secure funding under their inaugural £50k GoFurther Fund.

Hull-based UK broadband ISP Quickline, which is rolling out their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across North East England, has just completed and gone live with homes and businesses in several more villages across Lincolnshire, including Goulceby, Martin, Timberland and Belton.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we’ve been sent a bunch of additional Black Friday offers this morning, including from UK mobile and broadband providers VOXI, Your Co-op, Vodafone and EE. But instead of writing about each one, we’re just going to summarise them below.

In a hint of what might happen in the UK a little further down the road. Sky Ireland and Virgin Media Ireland recently signed a significant wholesale network access agreement, which will enable Sky’s customers to harness Virgin’s full fibre broadband ISP network in the country.

The Government’s National Underground Asset Register (NUAR), which represents a new digital UK map of underground pipes and cables (broadband, power, water etc.) – intended to help reduce accidental damage, has released a progress update that suggests the map could be expanded and possibly even made accessible to the public.

Low-cost mobile operator iD Mobile (Currys), which uses Three UK’s national 4G and 5G network via a virtual operator (MVNO) partnership, has today announced a 25% year-on-year growth in service subscriptions that has just seen them top the 1.5 million mark – a significant milestone reached ahead of its own projections.