Home » UK ISP News Archive » Monthly Archives: February 2015 (89 Posts Found)

ISP News Archives for February 2015

Broadband to Benefit as EU Approve GBP3bn UK Rural Development Boost

13th Feb 2015 (27 Comments)

The European Commission has approved a further 18 Rural Development Programmes (worth around £10.6bn between now and 2020), which among other things will be used to improve the competitiveness of the EU’s farming sector and upgrade broadband connectivity for rural areas. Some £2,568m of the total (3.56%) will be allocated by the EU to projects in England.

ISP Wessex Internet Celebrate 500th Customer in Dorset and Wiltshire UK

13th Feb 2015 (5 Comments)

Rural Internet provider Wessex Internet (M12 Solutions), which delivers superfast wireless broadband (50Mbps) and some ultrafast (100 – 1000Mbps) fibre optic services to homes and businesses in parts of North Dorset and South West Wiltshire (Southern England), are celebrating today after connecting their 500th subscriber.

Virgin Media UK in Growth Surge to Top 4.625 Million Broadband Users

13th Feb 2015 (1 Comment)

Aside from today’s big network expansion news (here), Virgin Media (Liberty Global) has also announced its Q4-2014 results and confirmed that they added an impressive +64,000 broadband subscribers last quarter to total 4,625,800 (this compares with +37,600 added in Q3-2014 and a dismal -12,000 in Q2).

Gigaclear Secure Extra £6.5m to Boost Rollout of 1Gbps Rural Broadband

13th Feb 2015 (1 Comment)

Rural fibre optic ISP Gigaclear, which specialises in rolling out 1000Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband services to rural communities across the United Kingdom, has today announced the successful raising of another £6.5 million from investors that will help them to reach an additional 6,000 homes and businesses.

Virgin Media Expand UK Cable Broadband Network – 17Million Premises by 2020

13th Feb 2015 (27 Comments)

Cable operator Virgin Media (Liberty Global) has today announced a massive £3bn expansion (called “Project Lightning“) of their existing 152Mbps capable cable broadband, TV and phone network, which will extend the reach of their fixed line services to an additional 4 million homes and businesses (total of 17 million) by 2020, as a nervous BT looks on.

UPDATE Ofcom UK Finally Approves TV White Space Wireless Broadband

12th Feb 2015 (1 Comment)

The United Kingdom’s national telecoms regulator has today officially given the green light to the commercial use and deployment of so-called White Space broadband technology, which harnesses the gaps in radio spectrum that exist between Digital Terrestrial TV (470MHz to 790MHz) channels in order to deliver wireless Internet connectivity over a wide area.

PM David Cameron Promises FREE WiFi on UK Trains by 2017

11th Feb 2015 (7 Comments)

The UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, has today announced the launch of a new scheme that will see the Department for Transport facilitating a £47.8m roll-out of free wireless Internet (wifi) connectivity on trains across England and Wales by 2017. Other parts of the UK are also being encouraged to do the same.

B4RN Celebrate as 800 Homes Get 1Gbps FTTH Broadband in Lancashire

11th Feb 2015 (28 Comments)

The community built and funded B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) project has announced that they’ve now connected 800 homes (up from 600 in November 2014) to their 1000Mbps (1 Gigabit per second) capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH/P) broadband network in rural Lancashire (England).

UPDATE UK Still Absent from 2015 Global Ultrafast FTTH Broadband Ranking

11th Feb 2015 (21 Comments)

The FTTH Council Europe, which campaigns for the adoption of Fibre-to-the-Home (100Mbps+) ultrafast fibre optic broadband technology, has published its latest global ranking of FTTH/P/B progress and sadly, despite some good growth in the past year, the United Kingdom continues to be a no show.

Cumbria UK Council Agree £5.6m Expanded Superfast Broadband Rollout

11th Feb 2015 (0 Comments)

The Cumbria County Council has approved an additional public funding boost of £5.6m in order to expand the coverage of superfast broadband (24Mbps+) from the current target of 93% by 2015 to 95% by 2017. The contract will now go out to tender, although BT looks certain to win it.

EE UK Commit £1.5bn to Expand and Upgrade their 4G Mobile Network

11th Feb 2015 (8 Comments)

Mobile operator EE, which is currently in the process of being gobbled up by BT (here), has today announced that it will be investing a total of £1.5bn between now and 2017 in order to expand the coverage and speed of their 4G (LTE) based mobile network. The move also includes ensuring that 90% of the UK can access their “double speed” service.

UPD CityFibre Slams Broadband Connectivity in Wales as “not fit for purpose”

11th Feb 2015 (24 Comments)

Fibre optic infrastructure developer CityFibre, which recently announced plans to build a new fibre optic Public Sector Network in the city of Newport (here), has criticised business broadband connectivity in Wales as being “not fit for purpose” because, they claim, the “copper networks that were laid generations ago” are still holding the country back.

UK Hopes for Relaxed EU State Aid Rules to Help Upgrade City Broadband

11th Feb 2015 (0 Comments)

The Government’s Communications Minister, Ed Vaizey MP, has hinted of his tentative expectation that the European Commission might soon relax their rules governing the use of state aid in cities. Such a move would make it easier to upgrade urban broadband Internet infrastructure and there are signs that the EC might indeed be planning just such a U-turn.

Sky and BT Spend £5.136bn on Huge Premier League TV Rights Deal

10th Feb 2015 (33 Comments)

The on-going war between BT and Sky over broadband and TV content took another expensive leap today after both operators splashed a record amount of cash in order to retain their hold over vital Premier League TV football rights for the 2016/17 to 2018/19 seasons.

EE and Three UK Top RootMetrics H2 2014 Study of Mobile Network Quality

10th Feb 2015 (5 Comments)

RootMetrics has today published their report into mobile operator performance across the United Kingdom for the second half of 2014, which sees O2, EE, Three UK and Vodafone battle it out over areas including service reliability, call / text performance and Mobile Broadband speeds.

BT Trials Wireless-to-the-Cabinet VDSL Broadband in the Village of Westow

10th Feb 2015 (17 Comments)

BT has launched another trial of their VDSL2 based ‘up to’ 80Mbps Wireless-to-the-Cabinet (WTTC) broadband technology, this time via the small village of Westow that sits on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors in England.

Hyperoptic Deploy 1000Mbps FTTB Broadband to 100,000 Urban UK Premises

10th Feb 2015 (4 Comments)

Urban fibre optic ISP Hyperoptic has today announced that their Gigabit (1Gbps) capable FTTB/H broadband network has now been rolled out to reach 100,000 premises across the UK cities of London, Cardiff, Bristol, Reading, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle and Nottingham.