ISP News Archives for December 8, 2014

As seems to be customary at this time of year the Internet Service Providers Association UK (ISPA) has officially started their hunt for next year’s annual Internet industry awards, which are seeking nominations for a string of familiar categories (e.g. ‘Best Superfast Broadband’ and ‘Best Consumer Broadband’) and several new ones.

The High Court in London has today granted permission for a Judicial Review of the United Kingdom’s controversial and semi-recycled Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIP), which is the law that among other things governs how much information the security services can collect from Internet and phone providers.

Customers of TalkTalk’s home broadband service can now download a new Talk2Go app for Android and iOS (iPhone etc.), which allows them to make and receive calls (i.e. using their landline minutes) whilst out and about on 3G or 4G based mobile broadband or over Wi-Fi connections (charged at the same rate as if they were at home).

Budget Internet provider TalkTalk has praised the success of their “ground-breaking” Project Genesis system (not to be confused with the world-colonising ‘Genesis Device’ from StarTrek 2), which helps to tackle broadband and phone connection faults by carrying out thousands of line checks every day and automatically raising fault tickets if it finds a problem. Sadly it cannot currently resurrect Vulcan science officers.

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today published their annual 2014 Infrastructure Report and revealed that 75% of premises are now within reach of a superfast broadband (30Mbps+) connection (this falls to just 22% superfast coverage in rural areas or 33% for raw NGA reach), with take-up of related services hitting 22% (up from 16% last year).

Oh no, not again. Once more customers of Virgin Media’s cable broadband service across the United Kingdom have spent the best part of the weekend having to complain after the curse of buffering on Internet video streams returned to strike down the entertainment value of services like YouTube (Google) etc.

Data focused mobile operator Three UK has announced that their new 4G (LTE at 1800MHz) based Mobile Broadband network is, after its first year of physical deployment work, now available to 48% of the United Kingdom and their next enhancement could help to significantly improve that figure.

Customers of Relish’s new superfast 4G (LTE at 3.5 / 3.6GHz) based fixed wireless broadband service in central London, which offers an “unlimited” connection with Internet speeds of up to 50Mbps from just £20 per month (no line rental required), have continued to complain about frequent connection drops and unresponsive support.