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Comms Council UK and NTS to Help Crackdown on Telephone Fraud

29th January, 2025 (0 Comments)

The Comms Council UK, which represents the UK’s national Unified Communications and Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) phone industry, has today announced a new “joint information sharing initiative” with National Trading Standards (NTS) that aims to help “crack down on telephone fraud“.

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UK Phones Providers Introduce Tougher Blocking of Foreign Scam Calls

29th January, 2025 (10 Comments)

Ofcom has confirmed that, from today, UK phone providers (fixed line and mobile) are expected to have implemented changes that aim to block scammers who call from abroad and imitate UK landline numbers (i.e. spoofed calls). Further measures are also expected to follow “later this year“, which will tackle spoofed mobile numbers.

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Analyst Warns Mergers Between Smaller UK Broadband Altnets are Not Enough

29th January, 2025 (16 Comments)

A new research note from analyst firm Enders Analysis has warned that mergers between smaller alternative gigabit broadband networks, such as the one that occurred on Monday between FullFibre Limited and Zzoomm (here), will not be enough for the sector to become “sustainable” and “further financial distress may be required” for some realism over valuations.

Competition Watchdog Finds UK Cloud Market “not working as well as it could”

28th January, 2025 (0 Comments)

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has today published the “provisional findings” of their investigation into the UK’s public cloud infrastructure services market, which is currently dominated by Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft (Azure). The probe found that “competition is not working as well as it could” and is now shifting its focus to look at remedies.

Home Broadband ISP iTalk Launch New UK Full Fibre Packages

28th January, 2025 (7 Comments)

Internet service provider iTalk, which is powered by Openreach’s national network, has today announced the arrival of their brand-new “Full Fibre” (FTTP) home broadband packages to complement their existing range of ADSL and FTTC (VDSL2) based packages on older lines. The new tiers are being launched alongside some big price discounts.

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Ofcom UK Propose to Cap the Wholesale Price of Bulk Business Texts

28th January, 2025 (6 Comments)

The communications regulator, Ofcom, has today proposed to cap the wholesale price charged by mobile network operators (e.g. EE, O2, Vodafone and Three UK) for the delivery of automated text messages, known as application-to-person (A2P) SMS, which are widely used by business and organisations across the public and private sectors.

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O2 UK Use Starlink to Bring 4G Mobile to Rural Village of Craster UPDATE

28th January, 2025 (18 Comments)

Mobile network operator O2 (Virgin Media) has harnessed a Starlink based LEO satellite broadband connection for backhaul capacity in order to successfully expand their 4G mobile coverage across the remote rural Northumberland (England) village of Craster, which they say “previously had no coverage from any mobile operator“; 5G and fibre will follow.

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Liberty Global and Juniper Networks Test New Multi Cloud Tech in the UK

28th January, 2025 (0 Comments)

Juniper Networks and European broadband operator Liberty Global, which is one of the parents of Virgin Media and O2 UK, have just completed a joint Proof-of-Concept (PoC) in the UK that demonstrated a “cost-efficient, software-programmable, secure and seamless way” to consistently connect services and applications hosted in disparate locations and across different cloud technologies.

Scotland Tenders for £43m Gigabit Broadband Rollout in Fife, Perth and Kinross

28th January, 2025 (5 Comments)

ISPreview has spotted that the Scottish Government (SG) yesterday published a contract notice for the Fife, Perth and Kinross (Lot 4 – Scotland) area under the UK’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out scheme, which is expected to expand full fibre (FTTP) connectivity to an estimated 28,441 premises in hard-to-reach (rural) locations.

Cross-Party Inquiry Examines Threats to Undersea UK Internet Cables

27th January, 2025 (0 Comments)

The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) has launched a new UK inquiry that will see cross-party MPs and Lords examine the growing threats to undersea fibre optic cables, which are described as being the ‘backbone’ of the world’s internet (broadband, mobile etc.) systems.

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Three UK and Virgin Media O2 Partner to Launch RCS Business Messaging

27th January, 2025 (10 Comments)

Mobile operators Three UK and O2 (Virgin Media) have today announced that they’re partnering with the cloud communications platform, Sinch, to make RCS Business Messaging (RBM) available on iOS (Apple iPhone, iPad etc.) for their customers – previously this was only available to Android based phones and devices.

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Freshwave Deploy 4G Mobile to Firms in London Skyscraper 8 Bishopsgate

27th January, 2025 (5 Comments)

Wireless infrastructure provider Freshwave has teamed-up with Electracom Projects to deliver a 4G mobile signal – from all four mobile network operators (MNOs) – to the 50-storey ‘8 Bishopsgate’ development in the City of London (CoL), which will benefit local businesses inside the property.

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Broadband Networks Zzoomm and FullFibre Limited Agree UK Merger

27th January, 2025 (14 Comments)

Alternative broadband network builders Zzoomm and FullFibre Limited (Fibre Heroes), both of which have been rolling out multi-gigabit speed capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ISP networks across different parts of the United Kingdom, have this morning announced that they’ve agreed to merge to create one of the UK’s largest Altnets.

Data Suggests Storm Eowyn Caused Severe Decline in UK Mobile Connectivity

27th January, 2025 (7 Comments)

New data from Ookla, which runs the popular Speedtest.net broadband connection benchmarking service, has revealed that Storm Éowyn (pronounced ‘Ay-oh-win’) triggered a “rapid, severe and sustained decline” in mobile performance across all operators in Ireland and parts of the UK, particularly Northern Ireland and Scotland, on a “scale not seen before“.

Full Fibre Broadband Network Hyperoptic Suffers More UK Job Cuts

27th January, 2025 (10 Comments)

City-focused ISP Hyperoptic, which since 2011 has built an alternative full fibre (FTTP/B) network to reach “more than” 1.73 million homes in parts of 64 UK towns and cities, has informed its staff that 2025 will see a “reduced volume of work” and thus a potential reduction in their infrastructure teams of nearly 130 jobs (out of nearly 280 potentially impacted roles).

Mobile giant Vodafone UK and Sky (Comcast) have reportedly two among several "groups" that have approached budget conscious fixed broadband ISP TalkTalk about a potential deal (most likely an acquisition), which in theory could create a much larger provider with more influence over the industry. Just to recap. In 2020 TalkTalk became the subject of a £1.1bn takeover by Toscafund - controlled by hedge fund tycoon Martin Hughes (here), which including debt valued the broadband provider at around £1.8bn. The deal took the ISP private and gave them more financial flexibility for their future plans. Since then, they've backed Freedom Fibre (here) and this week made the notable acquisition of Ethernet provider Virtual1 (here). According to the FT (paywall) and Sky News, TalkTalk is now said to have asked investment bank Lazard to review its options after allegedly being approach by several groups, including Vodafone and Sky (Sky Broadband). Lazard is a logical choice as they recently acted as Financial Advisor to TalkTalk on the Virtual1 transaction. Some industry analysts have reportedly suggested that TalkTalk itself could now be worth "at least" £3bn. But this seems rather optimistic for an ISP that doesn't have any significant fixed line broadband infrastructure to call its own (excluding their old unbundled LLU network) and largely just piggybacks off Openreach (BT), CityFibre and Freedom Fibre. But TalkTalk do have a strong business and wholesale side. Funnily enough, Sky Broadband are in a similar position with their own fixed line base, while Vodafone also likes to piggyback off Openreach and CityFibre. At present, Vodafone has a fixed broadband base of 991,000 customers, while Sky Broadband is estimated to be home to around 6.7 million and TalkTalk has approximately 4.2 million. Suffice to say, anybody gobbling up TalkTalk would instantly become a much larger provider, giving them a greater say in how the UK broadband market develops and more opportunities for convergence (Vodafone with mobile, and Sky with mobile and TV). Crucially, TalkTalk's consumer base is mostly made up of those on older copper and hybrid fibre lines (i.e. ADSL and FTTC / VDSL2), which are ripe for a future migration to FTTP. At the time of writing, all of the aforementioned operators have decline to comment on the reports, and TalkTalk has yet to receive any serious formal offers. In other words, we strongly suspect that this is largely just an exercise in spin to help TalkTalk drum up some more productive interest in the idea. But at the same time, it's not unreasonable to suspect that they might succeed, as the interest seems genuine. On the other hand, we see reports like this every year or so and only a very few ever convert into a serious offer. Time will tell. Much may depend upon whether or not TalkTalk’s new owners are more flexible and pragmatic about doing a deal than the previous lot. Arguably, TalkTalk might have gone much further by now had they taken some different decisions a few years ago (e.g. co-investing in FTTP instead of Pay TV).

Budget Broadband ISP TalkTalk Probes Possible UK Data Breach

25th January, 2025 (9 Comments)

Customers of debt-troubled UK internet provider TalkTalk have been given an uncomfortable reminder of the 2015 cyberattack (here), which came after the ISP admitted that it was “investigating” reports on a cybercrime forum that alleged the provider had suffered a new data breach.

Police Arrest After Protestors Cut Vital Fibre Optic Cables in UK Cities

25th January, 2025 (34 Comments)

The City of London Police (CoLP) have arrested a 29-year-old man after a climate protest group claimed to have “[disrupted] the wifi systems of hundreds of insurance companies across the UK“, which they achieved by cutting key fibre optic cables in London (similar events are also said to have occurred in Leeds, Birmingham and Sheffield).