Home » UK ISP News Archive » Monthly Archives: March 2021 (141 Posts Found)

ISP News Archives for March 2021

Openreach UK Raise Copper Line Prices to Fuel Full Fibre Rollout

31st Mar 2021 (75 Comments)

As expected (or feared) Openreach (BT) has today announced a series of wholesale price increases for UK ISPs that use certain legacy copper line broadband, FTTC (VDSL2, G.fast, SOGEA) and phone products, which are intended to help the operator to afford their £12bn roll-out of 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology.

Sky UK TV Update Adds New Voice Features to Sky Q Boxes

31st Mar 2021 (41 Comments)

Sky (Sky Broadband) has today announced that they’ve begun to roll-out a new firmware update for their Sky Q TV boxes and service, which adds a bunch of new voice features (e.g. Voice Guidance). On top of that their Sky Go app has gained new ‘Continue Watching‘, ‘Sky Channels‘ and ‘Browse by Category‘ rails to make it easier to use.

CityFibre Deal Brings FTTP Broadband to 18,000 Citizen Tenants

31st Mar 2021 (1 Comment)

Some 18,000 tenants and customers of Citizen, a social housing provider in the West Midlands (England) city of Coventry, look set to gain access to a 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network as part of a new agreement with CityFibre.

SSE Enterprise Telecoms UK Rebrands to Neos Networks

31st Mar 2021 (5 Comments)

Network operator SSE Enterprise Telecoms (SSEET), which manages a large business focused fibre optic network (Ethernet, Dark Fibre etc.) that spans across the United Kingdom, has decided to start the new financial year by rebranding themselves as Neos Networks (meaning “new network“).

Report Claims Labelling Could Help UK Uptake of FTTP Broadband

31st Mar 2021 (41 Comments)

A new report from WIK-Consult, which was commissioned by CityFibre, has claimed that the introduction of a new UK labelling system, with better information on broadband services, could increase consumer take-up of gigabit Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ISP products by 40% (i.e. an extra 1.6 million homes by 2025).

CEO of the Government’s Building Digital UK Team to Leave UPDATE2

31st Mar 2021 (3 Comments)

The CEO of the Government’s (DCMS) key Building Digital UK programme, which oversees everything from the new £5bn Project Gigabit scheme to rural broadband vouchers, Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN), 700MHz clearance, SRN and the prior £2.5bn Superfast Broadband (SFBB) project, Raj Kalia, has decided to stand down.

Quickline and Pure Broadband Live on Doncaster’s Cityfibre FTTP UPDATE

30th Mar 2021 (1 Comment)

CityFibre’s £25m project to deploy a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across the South Yorkshire town of Doncaster, which began in April 2020 (here), has started to bear fruit after two of their UK ISP partners – Quickline (Quickfire) and Pure Broadband – began connecting their first customers.

New Resolver Policy Proposed to Improve Internet DNS Privacy

30th Mar 2021 (0 Comments)

A new industry initiative – the ‘European DNS Resolver Policy‘ – has been established that aims to foster better standards for privacy and transparency across resolver services for the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS), such as those run by UK or European broadband ISPs and third-party services (e.g. Google Public DNS).

Virgin Media Extend FTTP to 5400 Homes in Burton upon Trent

30th Mar 2021 (2 Comments)

A further 5,400 homes in the Staffordshire (England) market town of Burton upon Trent have now gained access to Virgin Media’s new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network. The work reflects a second expansion after 14,000 premises were put within reach a few years ago (here), albeit mostly via their old coax network.

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Openreach Shows BIG Increase in UK Data Traffic Over Past Year

30th Mar 2021 (9 Comments)

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has just posted a summary of the internet download and upload (data) traffic that has passed across their national UK broadband infrastructure between December 2019 and March 2021, which helps to highlight just how much data we’re all gobbling vs before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ofcom UK Makes Changes to Rules for Landline and Mobile Calls

30th Mar 2021 (8 Comments)

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today published a final statement on their latest Wholesale Voice Markets Review 2021–26 (WVMR), which among other things has set some new caps on call termination charges and deregulated other areas.

Former KCOM Boss Appointed CEO of Broadband ISP Quickline

30th Mar 2021 (0 Comments)

UK ISP Quickline (part of Bigblu), which specialises in deploying FTTP and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband networks around Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, has appointed the former Managing Director of KCOM in Hull, Sean Royce, to help lead them forward as their new Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Openreach Trial Progresses FTTP Broadband for Business Plans

30th Mar 2021 (12 Comments)

Openreach (BT) has this week launched a new “Advanced Provision Trial” for their UK gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP products, which so far as we can tell appears to be the next step on the operator’s path toward development of a new FTTP for business product.

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Survey Claims UK Mobile Users Wasting 14GB of Data a Month

30th Mar 2021 (14 Comments)

A new survey of 4,000 UK mobile phone users by consumer magazine Which? has claimed that consumers on SIM-Only plans and contracts are “wasting” an average of 14GB (GigaBytes) of mobile broadband data each month. In short, some people could save money by switching to a plan with a smaller allowance.

Ofcom Probes UK ISP Colt Over Statutory Information Request

29th Mar 2021 (4 Comments)

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has opened an investigation into business broadband ISP Colt Technology Services over a possible failure to comply with its duty to provide information, which was first requested last year as part of the recent Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review 2021 (WFTMR).

Vodafone UK Brings Back 6 Months Free Business Broadband

29th Mar 2021 (1 Comment)

Mobile operator and UK ISP Vodafone has today decided to reintroduce their offer of 6 months free business fixed line “superfast broadband” (FTTC) and phone in order to give an extra boost to small businesses as COVID-19 lockdown restrictions are gradually relaxed. The promotion ends on 30th April 2021.

Future OneWeb LEO Broadband Satellites May Adopt Laser Links

29th Mar 2021 (12 Comments)

The UK MD for Defence and Space at Airbus, Richard Franklin, has reportedly said that future ultrafast broadband satellites from OneWeb could integrate lasers to help create an “unjammable” backstop for if a hostile country (e.g. Russia or China) were to ever launch attacks against our vulnerable undersea fibre optic cables.