ISP News Archives for January 20, 2015

A new report claims that Sky (Sky Broadband) and TalkTalk have now both entered the ring as a possible merger or, more likely, collaboration partners for Telefonica’s British mobile network sibling, O2 UK. The news comes only a day after Three UK’s parent, Hutchison Whampoa, said that they were still in talks over a possible £9bn acquisition of O2.

Industry sources inform ISPreview.co.uk that BTOpenreach will later today or tomorrow announced another round of seemingly significant price reductions for their business Ethernet services, such as the Ethernet Access Direct (EAD) and Ethernet Backhaul Direct (EBD) products. Better yet, we’ve been given a sneaky peek.

UK ISP Sky Broadband has today confirmed that their network-level filtering (Parental Control) services are now “rolling out” to all of their customers, which in Sky Shield’s case means that existing customers will now be given an option about whether or not to disable the filter and if they don’t make a decision then it will be enabled by default.

The United Kingdom’s broadband and phone price war appears to be reaching a new level after ISP Direct Save Telecom announced that their £1.95 per month unlimited broadband package, which also comes with free evening and weekend calls, would now be offered alongside the markets “cheapest advanced line-rental” from the equivalent of just £11 a month (pre-paid at £132 per year).

Low cost ISP PlusNet appears to have quietly introduced a new wireless broadband router for their new customers in the United Kingdom, which is called the Hub Zero (Sagemcom 2704n) and curiously does not come with an integrated VDSL modem for superfast FTTC broadband lines (i.e. you still need to use Openreach’s supplied VDSL modem via a managed install).

A new report appears to suggest that BTOpenreach has deployed or started to deploy Physical Retransmission (G.INP / ITU G.998.4) technology to improve the performance of their superfast ‘up to’ 40-80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL) broadband lines. Previously G.INP has only formed part of a trial on Openreach’s platform.

Relish, a London-based and focused 4G fixed wireless superfast broadband ISP, has continued to highlight the high cost of landline phone rental by claiming that 30% of UK adults do not know how much they are spending on their landline and estimate their monthly expenditure at £11.39 (well below the £16.77 average of the big ISPs).