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COVID-19 – Openreach Limit UK Broadband ISP and Phone Work UPDATE

24th March, 2020 (78 Comments)

In a significant development Openreach (BT) has issued a status of Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control (MBORC) across a variety of popular products, which from 23:59 tonight will effectively stop, limit or delay many new broadband and phone provisions (installs), repair jobs and engineer appointments on a “national basis.”

COVID-19 – Ofcom Put the Brakes on New Broadband Regs

24th March, 2020 (8 Comments)

The UK communications and media regulator, Ofcom, has today responded to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis by, among other things, confirming that they’re suspending all existing consultation deadlines and may need to allow for delays in the implementation of new obligations.

COVID-19 – Mobile Operators Close UK Retail Shops and Kiosks

24th March, 2020 (0 Comments)

Last night’s decision by the UK Government to order the immediate closure of all shops selling “non-essential goods” has begun to hit, with mobile operators Three UK, O2 and BT (EE) all confirming that their high street outlets have been shut and must remain that way until told they can reopen.

Virgin Media is First UK Pay TV Provider to Add BBC Sounds App

24th March, 2020 (0 Comments)

Broadband ISP Virgin Media has today become the first Pay TV provider in the United Kingdom to add the BBC Sounds app, which via their v6 set-top-box (STB) platform will give customers access to listen to all of the broadcasters live and on-demand radio, music and podcast content.

COVID-19 – KCOM Won’t Disconnect Users for Non Payment

24th March, 2020 (4 Comments)

Hull-based UK ISP KCOM, which last week introduced some changes to help their broadband and phone customers through the current COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis (here), has this week gone one step further and committed NOT to disconnect subscribers for non-payment of bills.

COVID-19 – A Look at Monday’s UK Internet Traffic and ISP Speeds

24th March, 2020 (14 Comments)

Yesterday was an important day for broadband ISPs in the United Kingdom because it was the first working Monday after the mass closure of schools, which has concentrated the demands of both home (remote) working and family internet traffic on to residential connectivity. But as expected the day was busy, albeit uneventful.

COVID-19 – Facebook and Instagram Reduce Video Quality

23rd March, 2020 (7 Comments)

Facebook and Instagram have today become the latest internet content provider to “temporarily reduce” the quality (lower bitrates) of their video streams in order to help UK and EU broadband ISPs cope with demand during the Coronavirus outbreak. Netflix, YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon and Disney+ have already made such a move.

COVID-19 – Wireless UK ISP Airband Upgrade Old Networks to Unlimited UPDATE

23rd March, 2020 (0 Comments)

At present only those who subscribe to Airband’s most recently built Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband networks can benefit from their unlimited usage packages. But now those on some of their smaller and older rural infrastructure projects may also be able to benefit, thanks to a new pilot project.

Virgin Media UK Add 2,300 Premises in Bury to FTTP Broadband

23rd March, 2020 (4 Comments)

Cable and full fibre ISP Virgin Media UK has today confirmed that they’ve just completed another network expansion of their 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband and TV network to cover 2,300 extra homes and businesses in the Greater Manchester town of Bury.

FibreNation to Begin 1Gbps FTTH Broadband Rollout in Bolton

23rd March, 2020 (4 Comments)

The FibreNation project, which is currently being acquired by Cityfibre from UK ISP TalkTalk for £200m (here), has today confirmed that 100,000+ homes and businesses across the Greater Manchester town of Bolton will be the next to benefit from their roll-out of a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network.

OneWeb Future Uncertain as 34 LEO Broadband Satellites Lofted

23rd March, 2020 (2 Comments)

British space firm OneWeb successfully launched 34 new compact Low Earth Orbit (LEO) ultrafast broadband satellites into orbit on the back of a ‘Soyuz-2-1b Fregat-M’ rocket on Saturday (active total of 74), but despite this progress the company has been sacking staff and is reportedly considering filing for bankruptcy protection.

ISP BT Prices New UK Gigabit and Full Fibre Broadband Plans

22nd March, 2020 (193 Comments)

BT has today quietly revealed how much they’ll charge new customers who pick a package from their refreshed range of “Full Fibre” (FTTP) ultrafast broadband plans, which includes a “gigabit” class top tier that offers average download speeds of 900Mbps+ (uploads of 73Mbps). The good news is that they’re surprisingly cheap.

COVID-19 – Disney+ to Reduce Video Streaming Quality by 25%

22nd March, 2020 (15 Comments)

The new Disney+ streaming service, which is due to launch on Tuesday 24th March 2020 next week, has perhaps unsurprisingly become the latest online video platform to confirm they will reduce their bitrates (image quality) in order to help UK and EU broadband ISPs cope with demand during the Coronavirus outbreak.

Bigger Allowances – EE UK Launch New 4G PAYG Mobile Packs

20th March, 2020 (10 Comments)

Mobile operator EE UK (BT) has once again refreshed their range of Pay-As-You-Go packs, which they say come with “more data than ever before” (i.e. data / broadband allowances up to 60GB) and each one will receive the operator’s “superfast 4G speeds.”

COVID-19 – Amazon Agrees to Reduce Video Streaming Quality

20th March, 2020 (17 Comments)

The latest to join Netflix (here) and YouTube (here) in reducing the bitrate of their streams – so as to help broadband ISPs deal with rising levels of network demand – is Amazon (Prime Video), which claims to be applying a similar measure “where needed,” such as when requested by internet providers and local authorities.

COVID-19 – East Yorkshire ISP KCOM Softens Data Allowances

20th March, 2020 (1 Comment)

Hull-based UK ISP KCOM, which is currently investing £100m to extend their “full fibre” network across new parts of East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire (here and here), has announced that – due to COVID-19 (Coronavirus) – they will be making changes for those customers still on data capped packages.

Virgin Media UK Release New Movies from Universal, Online

20th March, 2020 (0 Comments)

Broadband ISP Virgin Media has joined Sky (Sky Broadband, Sky TV) in reaching a new agreement with Universal Pictures, which means that NBCUniversal titles that are currently in theatrical release will also be available on-demand to customers via Virgin’s Store from today.