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

ISP News Archives for February 2015

BT FTTrN Superfast Broadband Tech Trial Goes Live in North Yorkshire

9th Feb 2015 (14 Comments)

After a small delay some 16 premises in the tiny North Yorkshire village of Ulshaw have become the first in Northern England to get access to superfast broadband (24Mbps+) speeds thanks to BT’s trial of a new broadband technology called Fibre-to-the-Remote-Node (FTTrN). Now if they could just get the power supply issues fixed.

Oxfordshire UK Extends BT Fibre Broadband Rollout via New Contract

9th Feb 2015 (5 Comments)

The state aid supported Better Broadband for Oxfordshire project, which is working with BT to extend superfast broadband access (24Mbps+) to 90% of the county by the end of 2015, has today signed a £5.1m extension contract that will expand this coverage to another 6,500 local premises.

UK ISP PlusNet Slashes Cost of Unlimited Business FTTC “Fibre Broadband”

9th Feb 2015 (1 Comment)

Internet provider PlusNet Business has today reduced the cost of their top ‘up to’ 76Mbps capable (19.5Mbps upload) ‘Unlimited Business Fibre Broadband and Phone’ package from £33 +vat per month to just £12.99 per month for the first 12 months of service.

West Yorkshire Extends Business Broadband Vouchers to More Areas

9th Feb 2015 (0 Comments)

After today’s Scotland expansion (here) we now have West Yorkshire (England) confirming that the Government’s Connection Voucher scheme, which offers grants worth up to £3,000 to help SME businesses in various cities across the UK to get a superfast broadband (30Mbps+) service, has been expanded to firms in Wakefield, Kirklees and Calderdale.

Rural Herefordshire Villages Celebrate Arrival of 330Mbps FTTP Broadband

9th Feb 2015 (4 Comments)

Several remote rural villages in Herefordshire (England), which include Llangarron and the nearby villages of Llancloudy and Llangrove, look set to become some of the first in the county to benefit from the arrival of a new ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network that will offer top speeds of 330Mbps (Megabits per second).

Netradar Finds UK Mobile Internet Speeds Slower than Most of Europe

9th Feb 2015 (2 Comments)

Measurements of mobile Internet speed taken during the course of last year by UK and EU users of the free Netradar.org app have shown that the United Kingdom scored an average download rate of 5Mbps (Megabits per second), which places us below France (8.4Mbps), Germany (6.1Mbps), Italy (5.4Mbps) and many others. In addition, Three UK delivered the fastest speeds for Britain.

UK Business Broadband Vouchers Extended to 4 More Cities in Scotland

9th Feb 2015 (0 Comments)

The Government’s Connection Voucher scheme, which offers grants worth between £200 and £3,000 to help small and medium sized businesses in any of 22 cities across the United Kingdom to get a superfast broadband (30Mbps+) service installed, has today been extended to four additional cities in Scotland.

Gov Helps Put 2 Million Extra UK Premises in Reach of Superfast Broadband

9th Feb 2015 (11 Comments)

The Government’s £1.7bn state aid fuelled Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) project, which is predominantly working with BT in order to make fixed line superfast broadband (24Mbps+) connections available to 95% of people in the United Kingdom by 2017, has announced that its efforts have helped to put the service within reach of 2 million premises (total UK coverage of approximately 80%).

Worcestershire UK Councillors Row over Money for Broadband Advertising

7th Feb 2015 (15 Comments)

The Government’s recent move to launch a major multi-million pound advertising campaign in order to raise awareness about superfast broadband availability under the national Broadband Delivery UK programme (here) appears to have angered some opposition councillors in Worcestershire (England).

The PostOffice Offers 6 Months FREE Unlimited Broadband and Calls

7th Feb 2015 (1 Comment)

The Post Office has started offering their unlimited broadband premium package free for the first 6 months of service (normally £8 per month), although as usual you’ll still need to pay from the equivalent of £12 per month for phone line rental (when pre-paid).

BDUK Project Brings Superfast Broadband to 1,908,725 Extra UK Premises

6th Feb 2015 (80 Comments)

The Government’s national Broadband Delivery UK programme, which aims to make fixed line superfast broadband speeds (24Mbps+) available to 90% of the population by 2016 and 95% by 2017, has now made the service available to a total of 1,908,725 additional homes and businesses (premises passed for December 2014).

UK Tribunal Rules GCHQ and NSA Mass Internet Surveillance Sharing Unlawful

6th Feb 2015 (6 Comments)

The United Kingdom’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which is a court that was setup in 2000 to investigate and determine complaints of unlawful use of covert techniques by public authorities, has ruled that the mass Internet surveillance approach used by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was unlawful.

UK ISP BT Cuts 76Mbps Infinity 2 Unlimited Broadband Price to £20

6th Feb 2015 (40 Comments)

Consumers on good enough lines can now take BT’s superfast broadband Unlimited Infinity 2 (FTTC) service from £20 per month for the first 12 months of service (a saving of 20% reduced from £25), although you’ll still need to bundle in Phone Line Rental from the equivalent of £14.16 per month (when pre-paid).

Openreach UK Testing Faster Harmonised Broadband and Phone Repairs

6th Feb 2015 (0 Comments)

At the end of last month BTOpenreach, which looks after BT’s national telecoms network in the United Kingdom, revealed that they had launched a Proof of Concept trial with ISPs to test a new, faster and simpler engineer repair service for broadband and phone lines. At the time there wasn’t enough meat for a news story but now we have more detail.

Amplifiers or SuperVector Could Boost UK FTTC Broadband Speeds and Reach

5th Feb 2015 (13 Comments)

All the recent talk of BT’s plan to roll-out ultrafast G.fast broadband technology from 2016/17 (here and here), which could deliver speeds of up to 500Mbps to “most homes“, might be overlooking the fact that there’s still room to improve the existing ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) service via special amplifiers and other methods.

Ofcom Publishes Final UK vs EU Broadband Scorecard Results for 2014

5th Feb 2015 (11 Comments)

The national telecoms regulator has today published the final version of their latest European Broadband Scorecard, which is designed to show how the United Kingdom compares with Europe’s other countries in terms of our progress towards the Government’s ambition that we should have the “fastest broadband of any major European country by 2015“.

UPDATE Sckipio Claims to Double the Distance of Ultrafast G.fast Broadband

5th Feb 2015 (14 Comments)

Israel-based semiconductor company Sckipio, which last year became the first manufacturer to release commercial hardware for the next generation hybrid-fibre G.fast (ITU G.9701) broadband technology that BT is also hoping to roll-out in the United Kingdom from 2016/17 (details), claims to have already doubled the technology’s reach.