The ITS Technology Group, which runs a number of fibre optic and hybrid wireless broadband networks across parts of the United Kingdom, has today revealed a brand refresh and new website at the annual 2019 Connected Britain event in London.

Fibre optic network builders Cityfibre and business connectivity provider SSE Enterprise Telecoms have today signed a new strategic partnership, which extends their existing relationship by allowing both sides to take more advantage of each other’s respective networks and services.

Mobile operator Three UK has confirmed that they’ve begun trials of a new 5G based “home broadband” service in Camden and Wandsworth (London). On top of that they’re also upgrading their 4G kit in Croydon (i.e. upgrading sites to new antennas and reallocating 10MHz of 3G spectrum (leaving 5MHz for 3G) to 4G for better performance).

Openreach (BT) has announced two new UK technology trials (i.e. an FTTP Exchange Upgrade process and Digital Voice services) for premises in Salisbury (Wiltshire) and Mildenhall (Suffolk), which forms part of their wider efforts to move toward an All-IP and national “full fibre” broadband ISP network.

The latest data from broadband speed testing giant Ookla (Speedtest.net) has revealed that the United Kingdom is now ranked just 42nd in the world for fixed broadband ISP download speeds (61.75Mbps average) and a dismal 49th for mobile (30.93Mbps), which compares with 29th and 46th respectively in January 2018.

UK ISP Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) has today announced that customers of their Home::1 2TB broadband package, which includes 2000GB (GigaBytes) of monthly usage, will see their monthly prices cut by £5 per month. Meanwhile those with a 300GB allowance on Home::1 300GB will be upgraded to 2000GB for the same price.

The UK telecoms regulator has controversially proposed that it may reserve 390MHz of spectrum in the 3.8-4.2GHz bands, which could be sold to “thousands” of new entrants in order to help them build 5G based mobile broadband networks for local coverage or industrial use (i.e. each license may cover just 50 square metres).

Rural full fibre UK ISP TrueSpeed, which is busy rolling out a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across parts of South West England (e.g. Somerset), has today announced somewhat of a first by pledging to offer an Active Ethernet network that delivers a “dedicated” 10Gbps link to every individual customer.

The national UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today begun a new consultation that seeks views on their plans to create a new Fairness Framework (guidelines), which will be designed to explain to broadband, phone and TV providers how they will consider whether their practices and the way they treat their customers is fair.

In-between skipping TV leadership debates the current front-runner to be the United Kingdom’s next Prime Minister, Boris Johnson MP, has made the rather striking pledge toward “delivering full fibre [broadband] to every home in the land” by 2025. Naturally he fails to say how this would be funded or even possible.

At present the two fastest packages on Openreach’s (BT) Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network are asymmetric options, which offer peak download speeds of 500Mbps or 1000Mbps and uploads of 165Mbps or 220Mbps respectively. The good news is that symmetrical speeds are coming.

Which? has conducted a new “loyalty penalty” study of entry-level “fibre broadband” and phone bundles across 12 of the biggest broadband ISPs in the UK market. This reveals that customers of Virgin Media, TalkTalk and the Post Office are hit by the biggest price hikes (up to 60%) after their initial contract ends.

Customers of broadband ISP TalkTalk are finding that they’ve unable to access their email since mid-morning (around 9-10am) because a connection to the related apps.talktalk.co.uk server has “timed out,” which seems to be affecting both webmail and connections via third-party email software (Thunderbird etc.).

Property developer Persimmon Homes, which says they’ve had “difficulty” ensuring that other telecoms providers deliver broadband to their new build UK housing developments before purchasers move in, looks set to ramp up the rollout of their own Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based “ultrafast broadband” ISP network.

UK ISP BT has changed their gadget offer for June, which means that new customers who take one of their broadband bundles are being offered the choice of either a free Amazon Echo, JBL 650 Live Headphones or Samsung Tablet A when they sign-up to the service. This is on top of the usual reward cards (pre-paid MasterCard).

Customers of both Vodafone’s fixed line broadband and mobile data (3G, 4G and 5G) services from across the UK and Europe appear to be suffering from degraded internet connectivity on their network after an unspecified problem occurred with one of their international transit links, but it’s now being fixed.

Rochdale-based UK ISP Zen Internet has informed us that they’ve discounted the price of their standalone “full fibre” (FTTP) based superfast and ultrafast broadband packages, which offer average download speeds of up to 300Mbps (45Mbps upload); slower and cheaper plans are also available.