Colchester-based ISP County Broadband, which is supported by a £46m investment from Aviva and working to roll-out a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the rural East of England, has donated an “initial batch” of 10 new tablets to St Andrew’s Primary School in Weeley.

Alternative broadband ISP Trooli, which is currently deploying their 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across rural parts of Kent, Hampshire and East Sussex in England, has hit a new milestone after their deployment reached 70,000 premises (up from 50,000 in Nov 2020 and 26,000 in Jun 2020).

Mobile operator and ISP Vodafone UK have today launched a new range of fixed line “Pro Broadband” packages for homes, which give you better support, “Super Wi-Fi” (i.e. a mesh based WiFi solution to boost coverage) and a hybrid router solution that seamlessly switches between fixed line and 4G (mobile broadband) to keep you online.

After a long wait the new Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill is set to become law, albeit with a few changes, after passing through parliament. The law aims to make it quicker and cheaper for “gigabit-capable” ISPs to access big blocks of flats or apartments (MDU) when “rogue landlords” fail to respond.

UK ISP Swish Fibre, which aims to rollout a 10Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 250,000 premises in the Home Counties of England, has announced that they’ve broken their first ground in Surrey with a deployment in Farnham. The town is home to around 40,000 people.

Shetland Telecom, which is an arms-length organisation set up by the Shetland Islands Council (Scotland) to develop local telecommunications networks, has this week reported that they’ve just completed the first ever fibre optic link to the island of Yell as part of the £1.91m North Isles Fibre project.

Broadband ISP Virgin Media reports that internet download traffic on their network hit a new record on Thursday 25th Feb 2021, with the average user consuming a whopping 20.77GB (GigaBytes) of data in a single 24-hour period (3.5GB more than the daily average in 2020). An update to the Call of Duty: Warzone game was partly to blame.

UK ISP Jurassic Fibre (JF), which is currently deploying a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across rural communities in Devon and Somerset, last week announced that they had connected their 1,000th customer (a Honiton-based business called MC2 Audio).

Portsmouth-based UK ISP toob has today started to deploy their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to homes and business in the Surrey (England) towns of Camberley and Frimley, which is expected to cover more than 20,000 premises and cost £8m to complete.

The UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak MP, has today published his Budget 2021 statement and sadly there were no new details for the £5bn UK Gigabit Broadband Programme. But we did get a few extra details on their recently confirmed plans for a new UK Infrastructure Bank, some of which had already been confirmed.

A new trial conducted by broadband ISP Virgin Media UK (Liberty Global) has harnessed a prototype of Infinera XR Optics technology in its existing network, which they claim could potentially deliver multi-gigabit speeds to customers by boosting symmetric transfer rates up to 400Gbps in a single fibre.

Lite Access, which specialises in deploying UK fibre optic (e.g. FTTP) broadband infrastructure, has officially appointed FRP Advisory Trading Limited as administrators and confirmed that they intend to “vigorously defend” themselves against Cityfibre’s position that they were in repudiatory breach of contract(s).

ISP Virgin Media UK (Liberty Global) has extended the reach of their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover 5,200 homes in the large South Yorkshire village of Armthorpe, which has a population of around 15,000 and sits just outside of Doncaster.

Greater Manchester-based UK ISP The 4th Utility, which tends to focus on deploying 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband networks to residential properties (mostly new build developments), has acquired London focused provider Vision Fibre Media (VFM) for an undisclosed sum.

CityFibre UK has today announced that construction has started on their new £23 million project to deploy a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the Cathedral City of Chester in Cheshire (England), which is home to around 80,000 people.

As expected, cable broadband ISP Virgin Media UK has today made their new Virgin TV 360 service (platform) available to all existing customers – irrespective of their TV package – via a quick over the air firmware update on existing v6 boxes (Horizon software), which saves a box swap, but there’s still a one off payment of £24.95.

Mobile operator Vodafone UK has announced that they will donate 10,000 “dongle devices” (i.e. mobile broadband modems) to help thousands more children and young people connect to remote learning and online catch up lessons during the COVID-19 crisis. As usual this is focused on those kids who may lack the necessary kit at home.