ISP News Archives for February 10, 2016

The state aid supported plan to bring superfast broadband (24Mbps+) services to North Swindon (Wiltshire, England) has been dealt a blow after the local planning committee rejected UKB Networks proposal to erect five new 15 metre tall masts in Taw Hill, Oakhurst, Haydon End and Redhouse.

RootMetrics has today published their latest biannual report into the reliability, call / text performance and Internet (3G and 4G data) speeds of the United Kingdom’s four primary Mobile Network Operators (MNO), which saw EE pick-up the most wins and Three UK come a more distant second.

The latest annual UK Home Broadband Genie 2015 survey has announced that Virgin Media came out top as the overall “Best Broadband Provider“, although Sky Broadband and PlusNet also managed to pick up a few awards in different categories. Sadly TalkTalk often found itself at the bottom of the pack.

Ofcom has today published their tenth annual Consumer Experience Report, which among other things helps to reveal the growing gap between what UK ISPs pay for their line rental and how much they charge their subscribers.

A new survey of over 800 businesses and farmers in the Anglia region of England (e.g. Norfolk) has found that 57% suffer from “poor” or “very poor” mobile phone signals and 31% can only receive a basic home broadband connection that delivers a download speed of less than 2Mbps.

Some of BT’s Broadband customers, primarily those who are trying to use the Netflix app on an LG, Samsung, Sony or Panasonic Smart TV, appear to be running into problems with getting the service to work. In many cases the app will return a UI-113 error, which has also been seen on some Humax based set-top-boxes.

One of the world’s largest online payment services, PayPay, has aided Netflix by ending its payment processing agreements with several Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers. But the move could have unintended consequences for secure financial connectivity.

BT and Sky Broadband have successfully lobbied the Advertising Standards Authority to ban three adverts for Virgin Media’s broadband, which misleadingly claimed that the cable ISP was the best for “streaming” (e.g. Netflix) and that it also offered a “faster wireless hub” (router) than the others.