The Cumbria County Council (CCC) has released an additional £2m of public investment to help keep the current Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) topped-up, which is designed to help rural homes and businesses to get an ultrafast or gigabit speed internet connection installed.

Network operator Freedom Fibre (FF) has today secured a major £84m investment boost from infrastructure investor Equitix, alongside a £16m Santander debt facility, to help fund the expansion of their new 10Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across semi-rural parts of North England.

Network builder FullFibre Limited, which is currently deploying their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across numerous locations in England, has reached an agreement with the Fastershire programme that will see their rollout extend into rural parts of Herefordshire.

The FTTH Council Europe has today released their annual ranking of the European countries with the strongest subscriber penetration and annual growth of gigabit-capable “full fibre” (FTTP/H/B) broadband ISP networks. Happily, the UK continues to show exceptional growth, and has managed to leapfrog over Germany.

UK ISP BT has today launched a new product for their small business customers – ‘Hybrid Speed Boost‘, which is specifically aimed at those still stuck on slower copper broadband lines. The service attempts to “fuse” fixed line and 4G based mobile broadband connections together to produce a faster connection.

Mobile testing firm RootMetrics, which is owned by Ookla (here), has today published the results from their new research into UK mobile calling (voice) performance and trends, which claims that consumers are experiencing “outstanding mobile call performance that’s continued to improve over time“.

The FTTH Council Europe, which is currently holding its annual conference in Vienna (Austria) this week, has today announced the winners of three awards that reflect those who have made “outstanding contributions” to the acceleration of FTTP/B deployment in Europe. One of the headline ‘Operator Award‘ winners was CityFibre.

Customers on the VMO2 (Virgin Media and O2) mobile network are said to have seen the operator’s “highest ever data traffic peak” (mobile broadband) on Sunday afternoon, which was driven by the frenetic final showdown matches of the football Premier League.

A new newspaper report claims that “runaway inflation” is threatening to cause a “wave of bankruptcies” among the new generation of alternative full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP networks, which is said to have triggered Ofcom into drawing up contingency plans with BT for how to handle the fallout, should smaller players start to fail.

SpaceX has informed customers that they’ve launched a new Starlink for RVs (Recreational Vehicles) product via their constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast broadband ISP satellites, which is more than just a combination of their regular package with the new Portability Add-on attached by default.

A new study of live data from nearly 3,000 ISPs around the world, which was conducted by remote Wi-Fi diagnostics firm RouteThis, has claimed that broadband users in the UK and Ireland are facing “significant connectivity issues“, despite increases in connection speeds, due to “device overload overwhelming bandwidth“.

UK ISP Quickline, which runs a mix of Full Fibre (FTTP) and Fixed Wireless (FWA) broadband networks across parts of Lincolnshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, has refreshed their branding, moved their HQ to East Yorkshire and confirmed that their workforce will double again to 200 (it’s already doubled to 100 in the last six months).

Satellite broadband firm OneWeb, which is British-registered and partly owned by the UK Government, has today signed its first long-term distribution partnership agreement for the business aviation market with Gogo Business Aviation. Gogo’s service is widely used by a number of airlines for in-flight Wi-Fi, such as British Airways.

UK ISP Air Broadband, which offers broadband packages over multiple different Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks (e.g. CityFibre, FullFibre Ltd, OFNL, Prime Fibre, Lila / VXFIBER, Connect Fibre and Gigaclear), has today added MS3 to that list in the North of England.

Low-cost UK home broadband ISP TalkTalk is reportedly in talks that could result in the acquisition of Ovo Energy‘s internet access base, which is perhaps better known to consumers as SSE’s broadband and phone division (Ovo’s retail division doesn’t have its own packages). The deal, if agreed, could involve around 100,000 customers.

Mobile operator Three UK this morning claims to have overtaken arch rival EE (BT) for population coverage of their new ultrafast 5G mobile (mobile broadband) network, which they say can now reach 54% of the United Kingdom. By comparison, EE put their own figure at 50% on 10th May 2022 (here).

We’ve just completed a refresh of our Broadband ISP Comparison (listings) section, which makes a few key changes that are intended to help simplify the system and reduce the workload involve with keeping it up-to-date – something that has become increasingly challenging with all the new providers entering the market.