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Customers of budget UK ISP TalkTalk are reportedly struggling to opt-out of the broadband provider’s Error Replacement Service (ERS), which is a system that effectively hijacks typographical errors or non-existent domain (NXDOMAIN) requests when searching for a website (i.e. the ISP returns their own list of monetised search results).
Full fibre and broadband network builder Cityfibre has informed their wholesale partners (UK ISPs etc.) that, in response to the uncertainty being caused by the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis, they will allow the deferring of billing on new Gigabit Ethernet installations for up to 90 calendar days.
Over the past few days we’ve had a small but growing stream of Tweets and Emails from people who have run Cloudflare’s new ‘Is BGP Safe Yet‘ tool and are worried that their UK broadband ISP is “unsafe” because it uses the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and not RPKI. Aside from poor timing with COVID-19, the result can be misleading.
After starting the roll-out in September 2019, it now looks as if Cityfibre’s new £40m and 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband ISP network in the East Midlands (England) town of Northampton, which is initially being supported by Vodafone (and TalkTalk to follow), has finally gone live for their first customers.
The Government has announced that “disadvantaged children” (e.g. those who receive support from a social worker and care leavers) across England are to be given a free tablet or laptop computer and 4G based mobile broadband service, which is intended to help with their education during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis.
The BTWholesale Broadband Checker service, which is really intended for network operators and ISPs but has always been used by savvy consumers to check the capability of Openreach based broadband lines, has been given a new lick of paint and is now mobile friendly.