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Articles for Category Tag - Internet Law

Legal Dispute Over Mast Disconnects Strathspey Broadband Customers UPDATE2

1st April, 2025 (3 Comments)

Fife-based ISP Transmitair, which specialises in rolling out ultrafast Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband networks to rural parts of Scotland, has confirmed that homes and businesses across their coverage patch in Strathspey (Highlands of Scotland) have been left disconnected for around 5 days due to a legal dispute over a mast.

UK Mobile Operators Attempt to Dismiss GBP3.3bn Overcharging Case

1st April, 2025 (14 Comments)

Mobile operators including EE (BT), Vodafone, Three UK and O2 (Virgin Media) yesterday attempted to dismiss a class action claim worth “at least” £3.285bn. The case, brought by consumer rights champion Justin Gutmann and law firm Charles Lyndon, accuses the operators of overcharging for mobile handsets beyond the end of their contractual term.

Nokia and Amazon Sign Patent Deal to Settle Streaming Dispute

31st March, 2025 (0 Comments)

The long-running pan-European battle over video streaming-related technology between Nokia and Amazon (Prime) has this morning been settled with the announcement of a new license agreement – Nokia’s first patent license deal with a major streaming platform. But the terms of the agreement remain confidential.

Channel Islands 2023 Map - Guernsey and Jersey

Guernsey Court Overturns £3m of Telecoms Competition Fines

18th March, 2025 (0 Comments)

The Royal Court appears to have overturned an earlier decision by the Guernsey Competition & Regulatory Authority (GCRA), which – between 2019 and 2022 – had fined broadband and mobile providers Sure and JT for allegedly breaking competition rules, including by sharing “commercially-sensitive information” and co-ordinating with each other.

O2 UK’s AI Flags 50 Million Suspected SPAM and Scam Calls a Month

18th March, 2025 (5 Comments)

Readers may recall that mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) integrated Hiya’s new AI-powered scam detection service (‘Call Defence’) to help combat fraud and nuisance calls last November 2024 (here). Since then, more than 150 million “suspected” scam and spam calls have been flagged by the new technology, recently rising to more than 50m per month.

Sky Glass Gen 2 TV in a Living Room PR 110225

Confusion Surrounds Sky UK’s Position on End of Contract TV Notifications

10th March, 2025 (19 Comments)

Ofcom’s rules require that all “phone, broadband and pay-TV providers” must “warn customers when their current contract is ending, and what they could save by signing up to a new deal” (usually sent between 10-40 days before the end of your contract). But an ongoing legal challenge makes the situation for customers of Sky TV a bit more confusing.

Court Orders Big UK ISPs to Block Pirated Israel TV Streaming Sites

27th February, 2025 (13 Comments)

Most of the major broadband ISPs in the United Kingdom (BT, Sky Broadband, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, EE and Plusnet) have just been handed a new court order to block an Israel TV video streaming site, which was found to have been facilitating internet copyright infringement (piracy).

Mobile Operator Scores Key Court Win in Dispute Over UK Mast Leasing and Renewal UPDATE2

21st February, 2025 (2 Comments)

Mobile network operator Vodafone UK has won a key court case against leasing firm AP Wireless (inc. the affiliated Icon Tower company). Some operators believe the firm could risk damaging their roll-out of 5G based mobile broadband technology, such as by pushing up their costs and threatening the viability of future deployments.

Court Rejects Appeal Over Dismissal of BT UK Landline Overcharging Case

12th February, 2025 (6 Comments)

The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has rejected an appeal against its earlier dismissal of a £1.3bn class action claim against BT by the Collective Action on Land Lines (CALL) campaign, which had accused the national broadband ISP and phone provider of overcharging 2.3 million of its landline-only phone customers between 2015 and 2018.

Illustration of a VPN Virtual Private Network on UK Computer by 123rf ID184214833

Rights Holders Move Closer to Imposing Website Blocks on VPN Providers

9th February, 2025 (30 Comments)

Rights Holders, having recently succeeded in forcing even some third-party public Domain Name System (DNS) resolvers to block websites that have been found to facilitate internet copyright infringement (piracy), are now turning their attention to major Virtual Private Networks (VPN) like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, ProtonVPN, and others.

Jobs at Risk as Svella Connect and Virgin Media UK Work to Settle Dispute

7th February, 2025 (6 Comments)

Broadband ISP Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre and O2) and civil engineering partner Svella Connect are currently trying to resolve a difficult dispute over “contractual terms“, which touches on issues of worker safety, rate reductions, and work volumes for Nexfibre. But there’s still hope for an amicable solution that may avoid the risk of redundancies.

Analogue-uk-phone-handset-on-red-background 123rf

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“.

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.

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).

Big UK ISPs Ordered to Block More Pirated Book and Journal Websites

20th December, 2024 (18 Comments)

The Publishers Association (PA) has convinced the High Court to force most of the major broadband ISPs in the United Kingdom (BT, Sky Broadband, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, EE and Plusnet) to extend and expand their existing block of websites, focusing on those that were found to facilitate internet copyright infringement (piracy) of books and journals.

Court Dismisses Class Action Claim Over BT’s Alleged UK Landline Overcharging UPDATE

19th December, 2024 (6 Comments)

The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has today dismissed a £1.3bn class action claim by the Collective Action on Land Lines (CALL) campaign against national broadband ISP and phone provider BT, which alleged that the UK telecoms giant had overcharged 2.3 million of its landline-only phone customers between 2015 and 2018.