ISP News Archives for November 2013

Fibre optic ISP Gigaclear has confirmed that broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps (Gigabit per second) should soon become available to 1,500 homes and 4 business parks in Farmoor and Stanton Harcourt (Oxfordshire, England) alongside Underriver and its surrounding villages in Kent.

EE (4GEE) has confirmed that its first trial of ultrafast 300Mbps (Megabits per second) capable 4G (LTE) based Mobile Broadband speeds should get underway in East London (Tech City) today, although the full commercial roll-out isn’t due to begin until summer 2014; once more end-user hardware is available to support it.

Ofcom has revealed that the UK government’s £35 million+ investment to setup a 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) at the University of Surrey, which will be used to develop the next (5th) generation of ultrafast Mobile Broadband technology, is due to be completed by the start of 2015.

The CityFibre backed ISP Gigler, which supplies a 1000Mbps (500Mbps uploads) capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network to 21,000 premises in the south coast city of Bournemouth (England), has today launched a range of new business packages for local firms.

A new survey of 1,534 ISPreview.co.uk readers has found that 89.4% of respondents have at some point needed to call out a telecoms engineer (such as those dispatched by BTOpenreach or Virgin Media) to help resolve a broadband or phone issue. Sadly the majority (75.7%) said they were often dissatisfied with the final outcome.

Broadband and phone provider TalkTalk appears to be preparing to take on rival ISPs by upping its game with the forthcoming launch of a new “Super Router“, which will be based off the latest Huawei HG635 hardware and appears to feature the most recent Gigabit (1000Mbps+) capable wifi wireless networking specification (802.11ac).

A new Vodafone UK commissioned report from consulting firm Frontier Economics has accused BT of being in breach of its regulatory commitments by allegedly making profits of nearly £5bn more than the level that Ofcom is claimed to deem acceptable.

Gigaclear, which specialises in deploying ultrafast 1Gbps capable fibre optic (FTTP) networks into rural areas around the United Kingdom, has told ISPreview.co.uk as part of our exclusive interview that the Government needs to create a more “predictable and useful” Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) scheme that allows more than just BT to bid for contracts.

Remember, remember. The.. fourth of November? The Fibre-to-the-Home Councils Global Alliance has declared that today is officially the inaugural “Gimme Fibre Day“, which has been setup as an annual event to help promote the benefits of true ultrafast fibre optic (FTTH) connectivity as the “only future-proof solution” for broadband Internet access.

The latest anecdotal survey of big fixed line home broadband ISP performance in the United Kingdom for October 2013 has found that the average download speed is now 16.842Mbps and the average upload speed topped 2.896Mbps. Both results have held fairly steady since September.

The UK Government’s Communications Minister, Ed Vaizey, told a debate in the House of Commons yesterday that “half” of the local Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) projects were running “ahead of schedule” and thus there was still a strong possibility of reaching the original target for 90% to be within reach of superfast broadband (25Mbps+) in 2015.

Last week’s announcement that O2 UK were to close their wholesale division (BE/O2Wholesale) in February 2014 (here) has naturally caused problems for ISPs that offer broadband via the platform. Aquiss have now become one of the first to confirm the discontinuation of related services pending a replacement.