Broadband and UK mobile giant BT Group (EE, Openreach, Plusnet) has recently issued their annual sustainability report, which among other things reveals that they’ve so far managed to cut their carbon emissions by 42% since 2016/17 (target reduction is 87% by 2030) and are making progress in other areas too.

Customers of Sky TV UK (Sky Broadband) might like to know that they can now play 20 classic video games for free on their Sky Q set-top-box, such as Tetris, Doodle Jump and Crossy Road. But according to our sources Sky’s delayed High Dynamic Range (HDR) upgrade is also due to appear sooner than expected.. next week.

Rural ISP County Broadband, which is being supported by a £46m investment from Aviva and working to roll-out a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the rural East of England, has just completed their latest deployment to Eight Ash Green, Aldham and Dale Close in Stanway near Colchester (Essex).

Rural operator Broadway Partners (ISP Broadway Broadband) has today announced that they will aim to roll-out their “gigabit-capable … fibre” network to cover 500,000 UK homes and businesses by the end of 2022, starting with 5,000 in Wales (Monmouthshire) and Scotland (Perth & Kinross, Stirlingshire and Ayrshire).

Cable broadband ISP Virgin Media has today confirmed that they’ve completed their network expansion to 34,000 homes and businesses in Barnet (London), which can now benefit from access to their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) platform and related TV services.

Openreach (BT) has today expanded their supplier agreement with Finnish telecoms giant Nokia to include GPON and XGS-PON based fibre access technologies, which will support their UK roll-out of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP technology and make 10Gbps symmetrical speeds possible in the “future.”

Broadband ISP iDNET, which has already built up a good reputation for service and support quality, have announced that they’ve just become the first telecommunications company in the United Kingdom to be certified as a “B Corporation” – a new kind of business that balances purpose and profit.

The state aid supported Superfast Northamptonshire project has confirmed that, since the start of their Phase 3 roll-out with UK ISP Gigaclear in 2017 (here), the local coverage of “ultrafast-fibre” broadband has “connected” 10,000 premises (we think they mean premises passed) and “superfast broadband” now covers over 98%.

The Isle of Man Government (British Crown Dependency) has agreed to invest £10m with local ISP Manx Telecom in order to help them extend the coverage of their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network from 25% (10,000) of local premises today to 99% by around the end of 2025.

The latest version (v83) of Google’s popular Chrome website browser has finally made its new ‘Secure DNS’ feature available to all, which by “default … will automatically upgrade you” to use their DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) service. But in order to placate concerns it only does this if your current broadband ISP supports it.

Broadband ISP WightFibre, which is already investing £35m to deploy a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network on the Isle of Wight (South Coast of Hampshire, UK), has now extended their full fibre coverage to nearly 20,000 live premises and secured additional investment of £50m to complete their project.

Budget broadband ISP TalkTalk has reported that calls made via landline phones in the UK on their service have increased by 50% during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) lockdown as British people turned to more “traditional methods of communication” to stay in touch with family and friends (not to mention working from home).

The European Commission’s €120m WiFi4EU initiative, which provides vouchers worth up to €15K (£13.42K) to help municipalities install FREE public WiFi wireless broadband hotspots, has announced that it will open up for a fourth and final call for applications between 3rd and 4th of June 2020.

Finnish networking firm Nokia claims to have achieved a “world record” 5G based mobile broadband speed of 4.7Gbps (Gigabits per second) via their live Over-the-Air (OTA) network in the USA (Dallas, Texas), which used the company’s existing commercial software and hardware solutions. Interestingly 4G helped to give it a boost.

Fixed wireless and fibre optic broadband ISP Voneus has appointed industry veteran Mike Quinn to lead the development of their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) roll-out across parts of the United Kingdom, which is being fuelled by last year’s injection (here) of up to £30m from Macquarie Capital.

The Chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, Sir John Armitt, has written to the UK Chancellor in order to encourage the Government to “bring forward” their roll-out of “gigabit broadband” – particularly for towns and cities outside the South East of England – and to support this via a new National Infrastructure Bank.

Ofcom has published their latest Q4 2019 consumer complaints data, which reveals that UK ISP Vodafone attracted the most gripes for broadband, while Plusnet were the worst for landline phone and Virgin Media sat on the naughty step for Pay TV. On the flip side Sky (Sky Broadband, Sky TV) attracted the fewest moans from consumers.