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Openreach Delays Some UK Broadband Installs Due to COVID19

6th January, 2021 (47 Comments)

A touch of deja vu is in the air this morning after sources informed us that Openreach (BT) are now notifying UK ISPs that, due to the latest national COVID-19 lockdown measures, many new installs for their ultrafast broadband and some other products will have to be delayed to 1st March 2021 onwards.

BT and EE Gift 20GB Free Mobile Data to Disadvantaged Families

6th January, 2021 (5 Comments)

BT (EE) has confirmed that, in response to calls for UK mobile broadband operators to help support children’s education during the new COVID-19 lockdown, they too will be joining other operators (here) and the Department of Education by supplying 20GB of free extra mobile data per month to “disadvantaged families.”

Three UK Gift Unlimited Data to Disadvantaged School Children

5th January, 2021 (27 Comments)

Mobile operator Three UK appears to have followed Vodafone’s lead today by announcing that they will provide unlimited data (mobile broadband) upgrades to disadvantaged school children in England, which they hope will enable them to continue their studies during the latest COVID-19 lockdown.

Openreach Test Duct Overlay to Help Physical Infrastructure Access

5th January, 2021 (10 Comments)

Openreach has announced a new ‘Proof of Concept‘ (PoC) to test a change to the current Network Adjustment process in their Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, which could help alternative UK network ISPs to more efficiently rollout new FTTP broadband networks via Duct Overlay.

Vodafone UK Finally Starts to Add SMS Support to WiFi Calling

5th January, 2021 (37 Comments)

It’s been a long.. time coming, but Vodafone has now confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that they’ve finally started to add the ability to send and receive text (SMS) messages via Wi-Fi Calling, which is important news for those who no longer have the option of using a femtocell based Sure Signal (3G) router. Just O2 left to go.

Discovery+ TV Streaming Content Coming to Vodafone UK Mobile

5th January, 2021 (6 Comments)

Customers of telecoms giant Vodafone UK look set to benefit from a new long-term, multi-platform agreement with the Discovery TV channel in Europe, which among other things will see the new video streaming service – Discovery+ (Discovery Plus) – being made available to mobile customers.

Virgin Media UK Notifies Broadband and TV Users of Price Hike

4th January, 2021 (129 Comments)

Customers of cable broadband ISP Virgin Media UK (Liberty Global) will, from today, start receiving a new notification letter that informs them of a forthcoming price hike on their internet, TV and fixed-line phone services, which will see the average price of their services increase by around 4% or £3.63 including VAT.

euNetworks Acquires Manchester’s 180km Full Fibre Network

4th January, 2021 (2 Comments)

Bandwidth infrastructure company euNetworks has acquired 100% of the shares of The Loop from UK ISP Gamma, which is a 180km long Dark Fibre network that rings its way around central Manchester, Salford and Trafford. The network is used to serve major data centre operators, enterprises and public sector organisations.

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Report Claims First UK Customers Receive Starlink Broadband UPDATE2

2nd January, 2021 (99 Comments)

A few weeks ago SpaceX’s new Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband service, Starlink, began sending out beta invites to selected trial applicants in the United Kingdom and now there are unverified indications that the first customer connections may soon be going live. We also know how much it will cost UK users.

Three UK Quietly Pauses eSIM Support for Mobile Smartphones UPDATE

31st December, 2020 (40 Comments)

Mobile operator Three UK appears to have “put a short pause” on eSIM support after first adding it to their network (4G and 5G) for mobile handsets (NOT Smart Watches.. yet) in late September 2020 (here), although the eSIM Support and Activation page on their website does a poor job of communicating this.

Sky Broadband Adds Free Anytime UK Calls and Discounts Prices

31st December, 2020 (12 Comments)

UK ISP Sky Broadband has added a further discount to the monthly price of their “Superfast” (average download of 59Mbps) and “Ultrafast” (145Mbps) broadband packages for new customers. On top of that they’ve also re-added the Free Anytime Talk (calls) plan to these at no extra cost.

Openreach See UK Broadband Usage Double in 2020 to 50,000PB

30th December, 2020 (26 Comments)

Openreach (BT) has revealed that broadband usage across their network of UK ISPs “more than doubled” in 2020 to reach an annual total of 50,000 PetaBytes (PB), which is up from 22,000PB last year. Overall, the average property connected to their “fibre” networks used around 3000 GigaBytes (GB) of data (c.9GB per day).

2020 vs 2019 – UK Broadband and Mobile Speeds vs the World

30th December, 2020 (29 Comments)

We thought it might be interesting to end 2020 by looking at how the United Kingdom’s position has changed since 2019, at least in terms of the top 50 fastest countries for both fixed broadband and mobile broadband (4G, 5G) speeds. Overall the UK jumped from 52nd to 42nd for mobile, while we fell from 45th to 47th for fixed lines.

UK Mobile Operators Confirm No Change to Free EU Roaming

29th December, 2020 (32 Comments)

As expected all four of the UK’s primary mobile network operators, including Three UK, Vodafone, O2 and EE (BT), have now confirmed that they have “no plans” (yet) to remove free roaming when the UK fully leaves the European Union on Thursday 31st December 2020 this week.

InternetTY Bring 1Gbps Broadband to Village of Ulceby, North Lincs

29th December, 2020 (0 Comments)

New UK ISP InternetTY (aka – Internet ThankYou), which is deploying a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to 12,000+ premises in “rural and semi-urbanised areas” (starting in Staffordshire and North Lincolnshire, England), has now gone live in the village of a Ulceby.

The 2020 vs 2019 Top Fastest UK Mobile and Home Broadband ISPs

29th December, 2020 (16 Comments)

As usual we’re ending 2020 by taking a quick look back over the year to see how average download and upload speeds have changed across the top national fixed line home broadband ISPs and mobile network operators. Predictably, the rising take-up of faster connections has resulted in a general improvement.

Airbus May Move OneWeb Satellite Manufacturing to UK After All

27th December, 2020 (11 Comments)

Space firm OneWeb, which is owned by a consortium of the UK Government and Indian conglomerate Bharti Global (here) and is in the process of building a mega constellation of “high-speed” broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), may move their Airbus supported manufacturing base to the UK.. eventually.