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The state aid supported Superfast Northamptonshire project has confirmed that, since the start of their Phase 3 roll-out with UK ISP Gigaclear in 2017 (here), the local coverage of “ultrafast-fibre” broadband has “connected” 10,000 premises (we think they mean premises passed) and “superfast broadband” now covers over 98%.
The Isle of Man Government (British Crown Dependency) has agreed to invest £10m with local ISP Manx Telecom in order to help them extend the coverage of their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network from 25% (10,000) of local premises today to 99% by around the end of 2025.
The latest version (v83) of Google’s popular Chrome website browser has finally made its new ‘Secure DNS’ feature available to all, which by “default … will automatically upgrade you” to use their DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) service. But in order to placate concerns it only does this if your current broadband ISP supports it.
Broadband ISP WightFibre, which is already investing £35m to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network on the Isle of Wight (South Coast of Hampshire, UK), has now extended their full fibre coverage to nearly 20,000 live premises and secured additional investment of £50m to complete their project.
Budget broadband ISP TalkTalk has reported that calls made via landline phones in the UK on their service have increased by 50% during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) lockdown as British people turned to more “traditional methods of communication” to stay in touch with family and friends (not to mention working from home).
The European Commission’s €120m WiFi4EU initiative, which provides vouchers worth up to €15K (£13.42K) to help municipalities install FREE public WiFi wireless broadband hotspots, has announced that it will open up for a fourth and final call for applications between 3rd and 4th of June 2020.
Finnish networking firm Nokia claims to have achieved a “world record” 5G based mobile broadband speed of 4.7Gbps (Gigabits per second) via their live Over-the-Air (OTA) network in the USA (Dallas, Texas), which used the company’s existing commercial software and hardware solutions. Interestingly 4G helped to give it a boost.