Benchmarking firm nPerf has today published the results from their latest annual crowdsourced study into UK mobile broadband (4G, 5G) performance for the first half of 2022, which once again crowns EE as the best network operator for internet connectivity. But Three UK is starting to threaten and delivered the fastest download speeds.

The Telecom Acquisitions Group (Global4) has today announced that they’ve acquired yet another UK broadband ISP and phone provider in the shape of Poole-based Hive Telecom, which follows a series of prior acquisitions that included Home Telecom, Eclipse Broadband, Fleur Telecom and Weekly Broadband.

Full fibre builder and UK ISP Brsk has announced that their rollout of a new gigabit-capable and “open access” Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network is being extended to parts of the West Midlands, with the operator anticipating that they deployment in the region will cover approximately 250,000 homes and businesses.

The European Commission recently published their annual 2022 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), which charts how the EU’s fixed line broadband ISP and mobile networks compare across all of its 27 countries. The UK was removed from this report post-Brexit, but it’s still possible to see how we compare by using Ofcom’s data.

Mobile and broadband provider BT (EE) and Nokia claim to have achieved somewhat of a “European first” by aggregate four channels of radio spectrum in a live 5G Standalone (SA) network. In theory, this could make their UK mobile network capable of delivering some exceptionally fast download and upload speeds.

In a surprise development, new and existing customers who sign-up to one of Sky Broadband’s superfast, ultrafast or gigafast (FTTC, G.Fast or FTTP) powered internet access packages are now being given a “Wall to Wall WiFi guarantee” at no extra cost. Sky’s Wi-Fi Guarantee is normally only available as part of their paid ‘Boost’ add-on.

UK ISP Virgin Media (VMO2) has been spotted expanding their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across a number of new towns and villages to the south of Edinburgh in Scotland, which appears to be taking place at the same time as they upgrade some existing areas to XGS-PON technology.

UK ISP 4th Utility, which building a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to more homes (SDU) and large residential blocks (MDU), has today announced the full launch of their cheaper social tariff for those on benefits. The move is intended to help vulnerable users with the cost-of-living crisis.

The recent two-day national strike by up to 38,000 of BT and Openreach’s unionised workers (here) – due to a dispute over pay – does not appear to have caused any significant problems for either the operator or its customers. At least that is the feedback we’ve had from UK broadband ISPs and alternative networks.

Low cost focused UK ISP TalkTalk has finally reached an agreement to acquire around 100,000 broadband and phone customers from rival operator Ovo Energy, which is perhaps more familiar to consumers by the brand name of SSE (i.e. OVO’s retail division acquired that base in 2020 and has retained the brand under licence).

BT Wholesale has launched a new 100Gb Data Centre Connect (DCC) product, which enables network operators to benefit from a single 100Gbps data centre port, which marks a nice improvement on the current approach (i.e. achieving such speeds would normally require the aggregation and management of multiple 10Gbps circuits).

Scotland-based pureLiFi, which is developing the new Visible Light Communication (VLC) based networking method called LiFi (Light Fidelity) – using light instead of radio waves to transmit data – has informed us that the latest release of the Linux Kernel (v5.19) includes their LiFi drivers for the first time.

Mobile operator Three UK has today reported their latest financial results, which among other things revealed that the average 4G / 5G data usage (mobile broadband), per customer, per month on their network had reached 21.3 GigaBytes in June 2022 (up from 19GB in Dec 2021).

UK ISP Zzoomm has today announced that they’ve decided to adopt Iskratel’s XGS-PON based Optical Line Terminals (OLTs) and Optical Network Terminals (ONTs) to help power their UK rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which already covers 50,000 premises.

Full Fibre network builder Netomnia, which is supported by broadband ISP partner YouFibre, has today revealed that their new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) network now covers 210,000 UK premises (up from 130,000 in April 2022) and they’ve also published their rollout plan to 2023.

The UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) and consumer magazine Which? have today called on the Government to help tackle the cost-of-living crisis by enabling ISPs to cut Value Added Tax (VAT) on broadband and mobile bills from 20% to 5%, which is naturally a move that will attract wide support.

UK ISP Plusnet will today finally make their new range of cheaper Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) powered home broadband packages – via Openreach’s national network – available to new customers. The packages were first quietly introduced in May 2022 (here), but only to existing customers who were willing to phone up and ask.