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The West of England Combined Authority, which is led by Mayor Dan Norris and represents the local authorities of Bristol, South Gloucestershire, and Bath and North East Somerset (BNES), has today invested £2.5m to deliver a “Digital Office” that it hopes will “unlock” a £1.3bn annual boost to the region’s economy “powered by private investment in better broadband and mobile connectivity“.
The government has today released a further £16m of public funding from the UK Space Agency’s £160m Connectivity in Low Earth Orbit (C-LEO) programme, which will be used to develop new satellite technologies that can enhance global connectivity by providing “high-speed internet access” (broadband) to remote and underserved areas etc.
Ofcom has today grant Amazon’s Project Kuiper a UK Earth Station Network Licence (ESNL), which will support their effort to launch a global mega-constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to deliver affordable ultrafast broadband and mobile (4G, 5G) services. The UK telecoms regulator also made more spectrum available in the 28GHz and 32GHz bands.
The Westminster City Council (WCC), supported by the Mayor of London (Sadiq Khan), has worked with wireless technology provider Guglielmo and the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) to launch a free public WiFi network trial with a single sign-on (OpenRoaming) technology. This will be available to anyone living, visiting or working in the city.
Data released by an independent researcher has revealed that SpaceX appears to now be “retiring and incinerating” about 4 or 5 Starlink broadband satellites from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) every day, which is up sharply from before May 2024, when the average was closer to just one per day. But the exact reason for this seeming mass retirement surge remains unclear.
Alternative network operator Grain (Grain Connect), which has built their own Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband network to cover over 220,000 UK premises and 30,000 customers, have maintained their promise of no mid-contract price hikes and also pledged to retain their current price freeze until 2027 (if you sign up before 21st Feb 2025).
Hampshire-based broadband ISP toob, which has already deployed a 900Mbps+ full fibre (FTTP) network across parts of Southern England, have announced that they’ve expanded the availability of their services – under their partnership with CityFibre – to add 16 cities and towns across seven UK counties. We’ve also spotted a new 150Mbps package.