One of the UK s biggest ISPs Sky has admitted that poor capacity planning is to blame for the severe speed degradation customers in some areas have suffered in the past few months. The Murdoch-owned communications giant acknowledged this week that the severe slowdowns plaguing the ISP have been the result of “a combination of an underlining increase in network traffic as well as an especially high rate of new customer additions. Sky, which has [...]

In Holland, semi-legalizing cannabis led to a flourishing trade in spliff dealing coffee shops; in the UK, the communications regulator, Ofcom, may have given a similar boost to small businesses last week when it clarified the UK s nascent law on illegal downloads. In around a year, give or take a few months of delays, UK ISPs will start sending out letters to individual subscribers they have identified as engaging in illegal downloading. As well [...]

OXFORD, ENGLAND — Gigaclear Limited announced that it has secured the necessary financing to substantially accelerate the pace of its roll-out of ultrafast FTTH broadband networks in rural UK communities. Gigaclear, founded in 2010 by Mathew Hare, designs, builds and operates fiber broadband networks in rural UK communities that deliver ultrafast Internet access at 1 Gbps. In the last 12 months, Gigaclear has built two FTTH networks in the communities of Hambleton in Rutland and [...]

White Space broadband uses the spectrum freed from the transition to digital television to create an entirely new unlicensed connectivity option — one that has taken a long time to develop. Supported by major players like Microsoft but threatened by repeated attacks by broadcasters, the technology so far only exists in the United States as a smattering of niche product trials, despite promises that the technology could be an inexpensive wireless broadband option. According to [...]

The UK has been well-behind the United States in LTE deployment, only just this month seeing their first carrier deploy the faster technology. EE, a joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile UK, was the first carrier to launch LTE across the ponjd this month. While the UK hasn’t mirrored the Unites States’ speed at deploying LTE, they have decided to mirror our high prices. Numerous criticisms have been levied toward AT&T and Verizon LTE prices, [...]

LONDON– Statistics putting the UK near the bottom of fiber deployments in Europe may be ready for an uptick. Tobias Ahl, CEO of Rala, a Swedish specialist in installations of fiber networks, said there has been a real upsurge in the number of UK projects reaching the planning phase. Rala, which has been brought in by two community network projects in the UK, estimates that between 30 and 40 community projects are in the design [...]

DERWENTHORPE, YORKSHIRE, UK – A visionary, award-winning housing development under construction in Yorkshire will deploy gigabit fiber broadband to more than 540 homes using the Calix E7-2 modular Ethernet Service Access Platform. With the Calix E7-2 and point-to-point gigabit Ethernet technology, which will be delivered through value-added-reseller Fibre Options, residents will receive high-speed data services at up to 1 Gbps, advanced television services via Integrated Reception Systems and VoIP services. This project and its powerful [...]

Like the recording industry, the newspaper industry has struggled to adapt to the new broadband age, and spends more than a little time blaming everyone other then themselves for the latency. UK newspaper The Guardian thinks it has a novel solution: applying a tax on all broadband users (no more than 2 a month insists author David Leigh) which is then given to the newspaper industry as a subsidy. That will supposedly save papers, improve [...]

Just like in the States there’s a strong push afoot to require ISPs retain user activity logs for a year or two. In the UK, as part of the Home Office’s communications data bill, wireless and landline broadband ISPs are being required to collect all communications records and keep them for at least a year. According to local news reports, ISPs may be required to route the data via a government-approved “black boxes” which will [...]

Much like in the States, British Telecom has been slow in getting advanced fiber connectivity (or even slightly faster DSL) out to a number of the nation’s more rural markets, often delivering more fiber to the press release than actual fiber. Hoping to get a little attention for the lack functional broadband in the region, one UK town has taken to communicating with smoke signals, semaphore flags and Morse code in the hopes of improving [...]