A group of 20 altnets within INCA have decided to join forces and establish an asset sharing framework that will work in a similar way to Openreach’s PIA (Physical Infrastructure Access). The companies have been working on developing an industry framework to enable altnets to commercialise ducts, poles and fibre to allow other operators to […] The post Altnets join forces to share an alternative to Openreach PIA appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Broadband altnet Zzoomm posted a circular through postboxes of residents which the ASA took issue with. The item was a ‘window’ envelope with the address and the envelope contained the statement: “Important notice. Disruption in your area.” The letter clarifies this “Not the disruption you were expecting…But it’s the best kind. Homes across your area […] The post ASA rules against Zzoomm circular appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Openreach has published an update to its programme build, which reports the status of its full fibre exchange build programmme. ISPReview spotted the new release, which includes data up to October 2025. The PDF format is not very helpful for tracking changes in the data, although Openreach does mark fields that have updates with an […] The post Openreach FTTP build update for October 2025 appeared first on thinkbroadband.

A recent judgment has been issued by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in relation to a Dyfed Powys Police raid at an incorrect address due to ‘crossed wires’ in the telephone network that led them to the wrong property. This was reported by ISPreview and originally TheRegister. The IPT is the legal mechanism by which […] The post Deep dive: BT “Crossed wires” in street cabinet led to wrong house being raided — What went wrong? appeared first on thinkbroadband.

It looks like there is an ongoing outage with Amazon Web Services is impacting many services that people are used to using seamlessly. While social media sites like Snapchat experiencing issues is annoying, more important services like card payments are seeing payments being declined to the problems with the cloud services. Some VoIP services appear […] The post AWS outage affecting multiple apps and services appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Our weekly news brief is out with some stories that we haven’t covered as full news articles this week. New Chief Security and Networks Officer at BT BT has announced that Greg McCall has been appointed as Chief Security and Networks Officer for BT following the retirement of Howard Watson, who had worked for BT […] The post Weekly Brief – 17th October appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Broadband provider GigabitIQ is launching a crowdfunding campaign, giving some individuals an opportunity to invest in the business and its future growth. The business now sells retail services across Full Fibre and F&W Networks’ networks, so it’s becoming a more traditional broadband provider rather than a pure altnet. Investing in a private business is complicated […] The post GigabitIQ launching a crowdfunding campaign appeared first on thinkbroadband.

The Telecoms Access Review is set to govern how Ofcom regulates the market in the period 2026 to 2031 and one proposal included in this was to force the pricing of the 80 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload service from Openreach so that price rises would not exceed inflation. Today a consultation has opened […] The post Ofcom consulting on changes to how Openreach 80/20 product priced appeared first on thinkbroadband.

If your broadband woes are Wi-Fi related with Virgin Media cable broadband then is hope on the horizon. Virgin Media O2 is giving its Hub 5 router out to select customers who have the older Hub 3 and Hub 4 models. “Providing our customers with the very best broadband experience sits at the heart of […] The post Virgin Media O2 upgrading older hubs to a WiFi 6 capable router appeared first on thinkbroadband.

The results of Ofcom’s mmWave spectrum auction, which took place yesterday, have been released by Ofcom. Wavelength across two bands, 26 GHz and 40 GHz were up for grabs with this intended to provide additional network capacity in crowded locations over short distances of typically a few hundred metres. There are 68 “high-density” areas where […] The post £39m spent in Ofcom’s mmWave auction appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Complaints about new broadband poles being installed in residential streets have been common over the last couple of years as alt-nets try to build new networks to compete with Openreach in an efficient and cost-effective manner. This has led to new telegraph poles being used to help deliver this, and in some cases, the alt-nets […] The post House of Commons Library publishes explainer on UK broadband telegraph poles rules appeared first on thinkbroadband.

We covered the news on 12 months notice being given to another 94 areas where Openreach is planning to stop selling part-fibre and copper based services the other day. Alas some outlets are leading with headlines that make it sound like existing services will suddenly stop working in 12 months and worse this will happen […] The post Openreach Stop Sell programme will not see traditional broadband services stop working appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Vodafone in the UK appears to be suffering a network outage affecting both broadband and mobile-broadband data services (phone services seem to be working). A quick check has also shown that their website is down, and this appears to be due to a routing issue. (For the technically minded – the DNS servers appear to […] The post Vodafone suffering network outage in UK appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Regulator Ofcom has this morning provided an update of its enforcement activity under the controversial Online Safety Act. In total it has begun 21 investigations (into 69 web sites and apps) and 5 enforcement programmes. The update covers 11 of these investigations. File-sharing services Ofcom launched an enforcement programme in March 2025 against file-sharing services […] The post Ofcom update on Online Safety Act investigations appeared first on thinkbroadband.

The last 30 days has seen us find and add 510,223 premises to the network operators full fibre footprint. This is just shy of the record amount for a single months deployment which we covered in March 2025 with a monthly change figure of 518,745 premises. Combined with the previous two months the quarter saw […] The post EXCLUSIVE October 2025 update on Openreach full-fibre roll-out appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Slight weekend tangent which may be of interest. In this weekend’s LBC Legal Hour with Barrister Daniel Barnett took a call from an employee who used to work for a ‘fairly large fibre optic company’ which was interesting, but also a bit surprising. The company isn’t identified, but the former employee expressed concern after they […] The post Fibre network running cables without wayleaves appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Here are some news articles that may be of interest which we did not cover in the last week. Ofcom rejects competition harm from Openreach proactive upgrades to FTTP Ofcom has put out a letter to the industry saying that it does not yet see evidence of clear competition harm from the Openreach offer, where […] The post Weekly Brief – 10th October appeared first on thinkbroadband.

The Openreach Stop Sell programme aims to transition areas with high FTTP coverage (over 75%) to full fibre connectivity. To achieve this, Openreach halts the sale of analogue and part-fibre services in “stop sell” exchanges where full fibre is available. Customers are moved to full fibre when they change service providers or upgrade their broadband […] The post Tranche 22 of exchanges for Stop Sell announced by Openreach appeared first on thinkbroadband.

In December 2024, it was announced that Voneus and BDUK had mutually terminated their Project Gigabit contract for Mid West Shropshire. At the time, not much was known about the reasoning. The contract was worth around £12 million and was looking to bring gigabit to some 6,000 premises in Mid West Shropshire. Thankfully, no public […] The post Openreach takes over old Voneus Project Gigabit contract in Shropshire appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Amble on the Northumberland coastline is one of the latest places to find us spotting the nexfibre XGS-PON rollout, currently sold by Virgin Media O2 and giffgaff. The town is not the most northern nexfibre build in England, that crown is held by Berwick upon Tweed and its possible that in time we may see […] The post Amble, Northumberland gains its third full fibre network appeared first on thinkbroadband.

We’ve written about the Age Checks in the Online Safety Act and how VPN sign-ups boomed after the introduction of age checks on websites with content which shouldn’t be accessible to children. We even suggested that privacy-aware users over 18 may wish to consider using a VPN to avoid risking their personal identity data being […] The post Online Safety Act ID Check — Data Leaks appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Virgin Media O2 has announced its Single Visit Install programme is now live across all Nexfibre locations. Over the past few weeks it has already found this sped up installation for customers. This follows training over 1,000 frontline technicians to roll out the new process. Previously, there would be two separate visits with the first […] The post Virgin Media Nexfibre installs to happen in one appointment appeared first on thinkbroadband.

Altnet Gigaclear has announced it has already begun work in Gloucestershire to fulfil its £10.8 million Project Gigabit contract covering subsidies to 3,550 premises (originally 4,400 premises), although commercial rollouts alongside that may add to this considerably. This contract was awarded in February 2024 which does show that planning and logistics from contract award do […] The post Gigaclear begins Project Gigabit work in Gloucestershire appeared first on thinkbroadband.

When Openreach announced that it had made its FTTP service available to 20 million premises our footprint tracking was showing a figure of 19.67 million premises RFS. Jumping forward two weeks and we can now report that the footprint in our database is 800 premises above the 20 million mark. Adding 330,000 million premises in […] The post thinkbroadband data verifies Openreach full fibre now available to 20 million premises appeared first on thinkbroadband.

It’s not unusual for broadband provides to have some packages on offer. Once the offer ends, the package returns to the original price and often another package may be put on offer. It’s quite similar to how carpet stores (or fitted kitchens) always have some carpets on sale, and you’d never want to buy a […] The post When is an ‘offer’ not an offer? appeared first on thinkbroadband.