Home » UK ISP News Archive » Monthly Archives: December 2014 (98 Posts Found)

ISP News Archives for December 2014

Hybrid Wireless and Fibre Optic Broadband Service Arrives in Chichester

22nd Dec 2014 (1 Comment)

A new ISP called BLAZE Wireless has today announced the launch of their hybrid fibre optic and wireless broadband network to cover central Chichester in West Sussex (South-East England), which is available to both private individuals (local residents) and business customers.

BT Pilots New Form of Fibre-to-the-Basement Broadband in London

22nd Dec 2014 (10 Comments)

BT has today confused fibre optic connection terminologies a little by detailing their first pilot for a “new form” of Fibre-to-the-Basement / Building (FTTB) broadband technology in the City of London area, which uses VDSL2 over copper like FTTC but is optimised for basements / comms rooms where the operator has a wayleave/permission from the landlord and access to power.

Dorset UK Scraps Costly Kcom Built Fibre Optic Public Sector Network

22nd Dec 2014 (3 Comments)

Rising costs and a lack of uptake have forced Dorset County Council to give up on their Dorset Public Sector Network (DPSN), which became operational via Kcom (KC) in 2012 and has since exceeded its budget by £340k. Another £200k per year could be added to this overspend until the agreement ends in 2018.

Christmas Price War as TalkTalk Offers 12 Months FREE Broadband

22nd Dec 2014 (5 Comments)

The recent spate of Internet access discounts from the big UK ISPs has continued today with TalkTalk matching Sky Broadband by offering their Simply Broadband service free for the first 12 months of service (£3.50 a month thereafter), which includes a £50 Love2shop voucher.

UK ISPs Start Hijacking Website Browsing to Push Censorship Filters

20th Dec 2014 (10 Comments)

As expected all of the United Kingdom’s largest broadband ISPs are now starting to interrupt the website browsing sessions of their existing customers in order to offer them an enforce option about whether or not to enable their network-level filtering (Parental Control) services, which block websites that are deemed to contain “adult content” and is a Government requirement.

UPDATE UK Government Reveals Full BDUK BT “Fibre Broadband” Uptake Figures

20th Dec 2014 (137 Comments)

After repeated Freedom of Information (FoI) requests we’re pleased to report that the Government has finally agreed to release the full consumer take-up figures for their Broadband Delivery UK project’s national roll-out of faster “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) connectivity, which is dominated by BT. The tiny rural county of Rutland dominates with an impressive score of 32.7%.

UPDATE Berkshire Bodges Phase 2 BDUK Superfast Broadband Tender

19th Dec 2014 (4 Comments)

In a curious development the West Berkshire Council in England has withdrawn a major tender that was issued to help find a supplier for Phase 2 of their Superfast Berkshire project, which is currently working with BT to roll-out a “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network to “around” 91% of local premises by the end of September 2015.

Sky Offers 12 Months FREE Unlimited Broadband for XMas

19th Dec 2014 (2 Comments)

Customers who fancy taking out one of Sky Broadband’s standard unlimited (up to 17Mbps) packages for Christmas can now take the service free for the first 12 months (£7.50 per month thereafter), which includes a £50 M&S Voucher, and likewise Sky Fibre Unlimited (FTTC up to 38Mbps) is also free for the first 6 months of service (£20 thereafter).

UPDATE3 Masses of Broadband Routers Hit by Misfortune Cookie Security Scare

19th Dec 2014 (5 Comments)

Consumers and businesses across the world are today being warned that at least 200 different models of broadband router (residential gateway) devices, including some by big name manufacturers like D-Link, Edimax, Huawei, TP-Link, ZTE and ZyXEL, are exposed to a critical vulnerability called the “Misfortune Cookie” (CVE-2014-9222).

ISP Hyperoptic Switches On First 1Gbps Broadband Homes in Manchester

19th Dec 2014 (0 Comments)

Urban fibre optic (FTTB/H) provider Hyperoptic has today announced that the first residents of Greater Manchester to benefit from their new 1000Mbps (Megabits per second) capable broadband network in the area will be those who reside in the two developments (Multi-Dwelling Units) of Sovereign Point and Imperial Point (Salford Quays).

BT and Sky Face Challenges as Ofcom Launch New UK Pay TV Review

19th Dec 2014 (8 Comments)

As expected the United Kingdom’s communications and media regulator has today opened a new consultation into regulation of the Pay TV market, which will predominantly focus on BT and Sky’s (Sky Broadband) impact on sports content (e.g. Premier League football) and will also examine the related impact of new broadband based delivery methods (e.g. NOW TV, Netflix etc.).

UPDATE Mobile Operators Agree £5bn Deal to Extend Geographic Cover to 90%

18th Dec 2014 (16 Comments)

The Government has agreed to drop its controversial push for a National Roaming policy to resolve “partial not-spots” in favour of a new commitment by Three UK, Vodafone, O2 and EE to extend their geographic network coverage (voice and text) of the United Kingdom from 80% today to 90% by 2017. Sadly data (3G and 4G – Mobile Broadband) coverage will only be pushed to 85%.

UK ISP PlusNet Cuts Superfast Unlimited Fibre Broadband Prices

17th Dec 2014 (16 Comments)

Low cost ISP PlusNet has decided to launch some new year discounts early by cutting the price of their top two “Unlimited Fibre” (FTTC) superfast broadband packages, which now start at just £3.75 per month for speeds of ‘up to’ 38Mbps and £8.75 per month for their 76Mbps service (first six months).

Call Flow Deploy New Fixed Wireless Broadband in Rural Hampshire

17th Dec 2014 (5 Comments)

UK ISP Call Flow Solutions, working as part of the Government’s £10 million Innovation Fund pilot(s), has finally started to deploy a new fixed wireless superfast broadband network to help serve communities in the most rural parts (i.e. final 5%) of Hampshire (Southern England).

Utility Warehouse UK Scraps GOLD Unlimited Mobile Data Allowances

17th Dec 2014 (2 Comments)

Existing customers of the Utility Warehouse, specifically those who bundled in all their fixed line broadband, phone and top mobile tariffs to get a ‘Gold’ package with an “unlimited” data (mobile broadband) allowance, have been told by the scrooges that from 1st January 2015 their “unlimited” usage will instead be capped to just 4GB (GigaBytes) of data per month.

10Gbps UK Cable Broadband Speeds Edge Closer After DOCSIS 3.1 Tests

17th Dec 2014 (13 Comments)

Key hardware for the next generation DOCSIS 3.1 cable broadband standard, which could eventually be used by Virgin Media (Liberty Global) to deliver top UK Internet download speeds of up to 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) and 1Gbps uploads via their predominantly urban network, has successfully passed its first interoperability tests.

Northamptonshire UK Sign Second Superfast Broadband Contract with BT

16th Dec 2014 (11 Comments)

The Superfast Northamptonshire project in England, which is currently aiming to make BT’s superfast broadband (FTTC/P) services available to about 90% of premises by September 2015, has finally signed a new contract with BT under the Broadband Delivery UK based Superfast Extension Programme (SEP). An extra 20,465 premises will now benefit from the on-going roll-out.