ISP News Archives for March 25, 2015

The UK Government’s Digital Economy Minister, Ed Vaizey MP, has made public a copy of the letter that he recently distributed to local authorities across England. The letter itself appears to encourage council leaders to ensure that new build housing developments include provision for superfast broadband connectivity.

The High Court in London has once again used Section 97A of the United Kingdom’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) to force major broadband ISPs into blocking their customers from being able to access 17 predominantly MP3 download sites, which were found to be facilitating Internet copyright infringement (piracy).

Akamai has today published their latest global State of the Internet (SotI) report for Q4 2014, which reveals that average broadband download speeds in the United Kingdom increased slightly by 1.4% in the quarter to 10.9Mbps. The data suggests we’re now the 18th fastest in the world, which is up one place from Q3.

The Government’s Connection Voucher scheme, which offers grants worth up to £3,000 to help small and medium sized businesses around multiple cities across the United Kingdom to install a superfast broadband (30Mbps+) service, has so far helped 14,000 SMEs gain access to better connectivity.

BT has today taken the wraps off their new 4G consumer mobile phone service (BTMobile), which is underpinned by EE’s national network and will turn the United Kingdom’s largest telecoms operator into a quad-play monster. The new SIM-Only tariffs start from just £5 a month for their existing broadband customers (prices rise by £5 for non-BT subscribers), which is all good unless you demand data Tethering.

The CSW Broadband project, which recently signed an extended deal to bring BT’s “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) network to “nearly” 94% of Warwickshire, Solihull and Coventry by summer 2019, has revealed the next batch of areas that can expect to receive faster connectivity in the very near future.

The £24.62m Superfast Essex project in England, which aims to make BT’s “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network available to 87% of local homes and businesses by the end of summer 2016, has agreed to continue their partnership with BT and extend the coverage to a further 51,000 premises.