Category: Broadband

In a speech at the Alternative MacTaggart lecture the leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has suggested a digital licence fee that would be paid by tech giants and Internet Service Providers and used to fund the BBC and fund a resurgence of the questioning from local journalists that appears to be on the wane.

An article in The Spectator makes the suggestion that the solution to a lot of the broadband woes in the UK would be for broadband providers to charge for what speeds they actually supply and a return to the days of usage based charging.

Two exchanges that had previously only had a very limited 0.5 Mbps ADSL service a year ago have started to see full fibre arriving. When this network build is complete 140 homes across 26 miles should have access to ultrafast broadband.

Knowing what others say about their broadband providers is an important part of the process when deciding who to switch to and to help in that regard this article shows the ratings people have given for 12 of the most popular UK broadband providers.

The pace of the superfast broadband roll-outs has changed dramatically in 2018 and with an increased emphasis on the commercial roll-out of full fibre there is a danger that the focus on pushing the BDUK projects further may be lost. We take a look at what our prediction is for a date to reach 98% superfast coverage.

DCMS has published a report that has looked at the impact of the roll-outs under the BDUK umbrella from 2012 to 2016 and identified a surge of £9 billion in turn over for businesses.

Celebrations have been taking place in rural Perthshire where the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity Michael Matheson has met with a local business that has benefited from the roll-out and is just one of the 900,000 premises helped since the first VDSL2 cabinet went live in March 2014.

Posting the fastest speed test is not the only way of looking at the performance of a broadband connection and our monthly round-up of the difference between single and multiple downloads for the larger providers gives people a chance to see how they compare to others at their provider.

The ONS carries out periodic surveys on broadband use within households and the latest dataset has been published, but we are writing this news item because some are not interpreting the results correctly.

Another month has passed and all the promised deadlines for 2020 are edging closer so it is time to make our monthly summary of what is going on with broadband coverage across the UK.