Internet Service Provider Lothian Broadband has announced that it has received £20 million in funding from the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB). The investment will provide a boost for its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) rollout across rural communities and small towns in Scotland.
Broadband provider KCOM has announced that its total number of broadband customers has grown to 139,700. The company, which recently expanded its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to 250,000 premises covering East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire has published its annual accounts which also show that generated total revenue of £99.6m for 2021 (up from £99.2m in 2020).
Broadband provider Truespeed has secured a second cash injection from Aviva Investors to go towards the rollout of its gigabit-capable full-fibre network. The £100 million investment from the asset management sector of the insurance firm will help accelerate the network's rollout to premises in the southwest of England and follows the £75m which was invested in 2017.
CityFibre has announced that it has appointed Svella Connect to take over construction work on its £32 million Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network rollout in the town of Barnsley.
Broadband ISP toob has secured a funding boost of up to £87.5 million, which will help the company to accelerate its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network build. Following the announcement of the funding, provided by the Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund, toob has moved its target of passing 1 million UK premises from its previous date of 2031 to 2027.
Openreach has announced that it has now connected 100,000 customers in Northern Ireland to its gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises network, through partnerships with various different ISPs.
Internet Service Provider Lit Fibre has announced the latest locations for its 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network. Clacton-on-Sea and Frinton-on-Sea in Essex have both been named as part of the roll-out, the sixth and seventh towns respectively that Lit Fibre has announced for its FTTP rollout.
Telecoms regulator Ofcom has released its latest Connected Nations report, which shows that full-fibre network coverage is now available to 8.2 million premises across the UK (around 28 per cent of total UK premises).
ISP LightSpeed Broadband has announced a partnership with specialist investor Sequoia through which it has secured a further investment of £60 million.
Virgin Media O2 has announced the completion of its gigabit upgrade meaning that 15.5 million homes can now access hyperfast gigabit speeds. The upgrade to Virgin Media’s Gig1 Gigabit broadband has taken just over two years and is ahead of the Government’s target to bring gigabit-capable speeds to a minimum of 85 per cent of the UK by the end of 2025.
Internet service provider Freedom Fibre has announced a further rollout of its full-fibre network across the northwest of England. Four new towns have been added to the provider's plans, including Newton-le-Willow and Earlestown, both in Merseyside, Burtonwood in Cheshire and Leigh in Greater Manchester.
Research from price comparison site Uswitch has revealed the top 10 fastest and slowest streets for broadband ISP download speed in the UK. The slowest street has been named as Wistaston Road, Crewe in Cheshire, which has a speed of just 0.24Mbps. Meanwhile, Haul Fryn, Birchgrove in Swansea topped the fastest list with a speed of 882Mbps.
Lincoln has been named as the next UK city in line for a multi-million-pound investment in a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network from CityFibre. CityFibre is investing £21 million in the new city-wide digital infrastructure that will bring full fibre broadband connectivity within reach of every premises in the city.
Internet service provider Wessex Internet has announced that it has started work to deliver a new gigabit-capable full fibre FTTP broadband network to the town of Blandford in North Dorset. The rural-focused provider says that the network will aim to cover over 6,000 premises in the market town.
Openreach has announced that it has officially added another 170 new towns and villages to the UK rollout plan of its gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network.
According to recent figures from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), close to a fifth of UK schools face a wait of at least five years before they will be able to access a full-fibre broadband connection.
Isle of Wight-focused broadband ISP WightFibre has announced that its Fibre-to-the-Premises network build on the island has now passed 30,000 premises. The provider’s £85 million rollout has progressed from 26,000 premises in April, but remains considerably short of its target of 41,000 by the end of 2021.
Rural-focused ISP Gigaclear has announced that it has completed its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network rollout, undertaken alongside West Yorkshire District Council (WODC). The build means that around 16,000 more premises in rural areas of West Oxfordshire can access a gigabit-capable FTTP connection.
CityFibre has announced that it has commenced work on a £12 million rollout of its gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises broadband network in the town of Horsham, West Sussex. The company says that the rollout will bring full fibre connectivity to within reach of “almost” all premises in the town, which is home to approximately 51,000 residents.
Broadband provider County Broadband has announced that it has started its FTTP rollout in the Suffolk town of Sudbury. Sudbury is home to around 13,000 residents and the rollout is expected to cover 75 per cent of the town’s approximately 8,000 premises.
In its Project Gigabit Delivery Plan: Autumn Update, the government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) has announced that the £5 billion project has passed its halfway mark. The project has now achieved 57 per cent coverage, up from under 6 per cent in 2019, with 17.5 million UK properties now covered.
LilaConnect has announced that it will extend its full fibre network to the market town of Uttoxeter in Staffordshire. The gigabit-capable, open access Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network has so far been built to cover more than 50,000 premises across 4 English counties, with the Uttoxeter rollout part of plans to take the coverage further.
UK ISP Brsk has announced that it will expand its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network into the county of Lancashire, with the rollout starting with 50,000 premises in the towns of Burnley and Padiham.
Broadband ISP Sure has confirmed that it will invest £37.5 million in deploying a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to all premises on the English Channel Island of Guernsey by the end of 2026.
The UK government has announced that 1,084 schools in rural parts of the country have been connected to gigabit-capable full-fibre broadband. The investment began in 2019 under the Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) plan, with £210 million in funding and the support of several network operators and ISPs, including Openreach.
Broadway Partners has announced that it has secured a £145 million investment from Downing LLP to fund its rollout of a new rural Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) network. Through the gigabit-capable network, Broadway Partners’ broadband division (Broadway Broadband) will seek to cover around 250,000 premises.
Hyperoptic has announced that it has struck a blanket-wide wayleave agreement with West London’s Hounslow Council, which will see the full fibre ISP deliver its gigabit-capable FTTP broadband network to around 4,300 social housing residents in the borough.
Poole-based ISP Juice Broadband has announced that it has joined CityFibre’s gigabit-capable FTTP network. Juice Broadband, which provides services including fixed wireless and full fibre on the Openreach network to premises across South Dorset, becomes the first Dorset ISP to partner with CityFibre.
UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has announced that the One Touch Switch process will come into force in the UK, making it easier for broadband customers to switch between providers operating on separate networks. ISPs will have to comply with the rules by April 3 2023.
Jobseekers in the UK are to be offered the chance to apply for six months of free broadband to assist them in their search for a job. The programme has been launched as a joint scheme by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and ISP TalkTalk.
According to a new study carried out by ThinkBroadband, slightly over half of UK premises (50.2 per cent) can now access gigabit-capable broadband. The milestone means that more than 15 million premises can now access broadband speeds of at least 1 Gbps.
The local government district of Fermanagh and Omagh in southwest Northern Ireland has been ranked as the least digitally connected area of the UK in a new study. The research, carried out by marketing firm N.Rich using ONS and Ofcom data from the past three months, found that close to a third of premises in Fermanagh and Omagh have no access to superfast broadband.
CityFibre has announced that it has agreed a deal with Sheffield City Council to extend its 1 Gbps-capable FTTP network to nearly 20,000 council homes in the city. The new extension comes as part of CityFibre’s £4 billion project to cover 1 million premises by the end of 2021 and 8 million by the end of 2025.
According to the latest Ofcom report on the UK’s broadband and mobile coverage, 24 per cent of UK homes (close to seven million) have access to a full-fibre broadband connection. The figure, taken from May 2021, is up from 21 per cent in January of this year.
Openreach has announced that it will allow UK ISPs to waive broadband connection fees for households which receive universal credit as their only form of income and that haven’t been connected to Openreach’s network for the past 90 days.
UK broadband ISP Hyperoptic will connect 4,100 social housing homes in Barnet to its network after the provider agreed to join Barnet Council’s Gigabit Broadband Programme. Through the agreement, Hyperoptic will also provide more than 20 free public connections at sites in the Borough including community centres and libraries.
Exeter-based ISP Full Fibre Limited has announced an extension of its FTTP rollout to 13 new towns. The provider, which is aiming to cover a minimum of 500,000 premises across the UK by 2025, has added towns in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and West Yorkshire to its rollout.
Approximately 20,000 premises across fifteen villages in Constable Country on the Suffolk/Essex border are set to receive gigabit-capable full-fibre broadband as part of a rollout by ISP County Broadband.
Exeter-based Jurassic Fibre, which is rolling out a 10 Gbps-capable FTTP network in the South West of England, has made announcements regarding extensions to the rollout in three counties.
UK broadband ISP Trooli has received £67.5 million in funding from a consortium of lenders as it looks to ramp up the rollout of its gigabit-capable network. The funding, which comes in the form of a senior debt facility, will provide a boost to the provider as it seeks to connect 1 million premises in the UK to its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network by the end of 2024.
In a set of updated rules, the Welsh government has revealed that all new affordable homes that it helps to fund must have a gigabit-ready broadband connection. The rule is one of several new requirements set out in an update to the Welsh Development Quality Requirements, known as WDQR2021.
Broadband provider Fibrus has announced that its rollout of full fibre (FTTP) broadband across Northern Ireland has now passed the milestone of 58,000 premises. The company says it is currently rolling out cable at a rate of 14 kilometres per day.
The UK government has said that migrating to the cloud is one of the steps that businesses can take to help cut their emissions and tackle climate change. The recommendation is one of several issued to businesses as the government pushes them reduce their carbon emissions by 2030.
CityFibre has announced that it will roll out its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to the West Yorkshire town of Halifax, with the build set to start in January 2022. The new rollout will see CityFibre invest £23 million in Halifax, in order to make full fibre connectivity available to "almost every" premises in the town.
The UK government has announced the launch of the £4 million “Fibre in Water” fund, which will be used to back trials running fibre broadband cables through water mains. The fund follows a review in which the government sought to assess how existing infrastructure networks could be used to improve full fibre availability in the UK.
20,000 social housing flats in the London borough of Westminster will gain access to a fibre broadband connection under a new deal announced by provider G.Network. The ISP stated that it had reached an agreement with the local Westminster authority to extend its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to more than 1,800 buildings in the borough.
The UK Government has announced the next phase of its £5 billion Project Gigabit, through which it is aiming to connect rural premises throughout the UK to gigabit-capable broadband. The new details reveal that up to 1.85 million additional premises in 26 UK counties will be connected, bringing the scope to 2.2 million premises so far with more yet to be announced.
Virgin Media O2 has announced that it plans to fully upgrade the approximately 14.3 million UK premises on its Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network to full fibre by the end of 2028. According to the company, the upgrade to full fibre will improve connectivity for customers and bolster its long-term strategy.
According to a new YouGov survey commissioned by Virgin Media O2, 70 per cent of UK house hunters say that they would be prepared to reject their “dream home” if its mobile connectivity wasn’t sufficiently strong.
Telecoms regulator Ofcom has released new research showing that, while customers in the UK are generally getting higher quality connectivity for better value than they previously did, many people are still struggling to afford connections.
