In a major technological achievement, over half of UK homes now enjoy full fibre broadband access, marking a significant increase from the beginning of this year. This growth reflects the collective effort of both large infrastructure operators and smaller, regional organisations. Surprisingly though, coverage varies across regions, with Northern Ireland leading while Scotland slightly lags behind. Even more exciting progress has been observed in access to Gigabit-capable broadband.
The UK telecom authority, Ofcom, released its quarterly findings revealing increased customer complaints related to telecom and Pay-TV services. With Pay-TV, fixed broadband, landline, and pay-monthly mobile sectors under examination, the report uncovers the underpinning issues like changing providers, billing, and service faults. Notably, TalkTalk garnered the most complaints in the landline and fixed broadband sectors, while BT Mobile led in the pay-monthly mobile domain.
Huawei plans a comeback in the smartphone market with new 5G devices using domestic chip supplies. Concerns persist about the quality of these chips and Huawei’s absence from the Android Play Store. CityFibre challenges Openreach with a faster wholesale FTTH service, while Optus collaborates with SpaceX’s Starlink to expand mobile coverage in Australia’s remote areas. Ofcom investigates O2 Virgin Media over customer complaints, and the European Court of Justice rejects a ruling on the Three-O2 merger, adding to the uncertainty in the telecommunications regulatory landscape.
Ofcom delves into an investigation concerning BT’s recent 999 emergency call service outage. BT’s back-up system reportedly failed in providing efficient location data, intensifying the emergency identification process. This significant service disruption stirred discussions in Parliament, with technology minister Lord Camrose emphasizing the company’s delayed communication to the government about the issue. While BT extended an apology planned a full internal investigation, Ofcom’s survey will spotlight possible breaches of regulatory norms mandating constant network access to emergency organizations. The potential consequences are yet unclear.
Ofcom falls victim to Clop ransomware attack, compromising personal data of 412 employees and confidential information of regulated companies. The breach exposes vulnerabilities in MOVEit software, prompting industry-wide reevaluation of cybersecurity measures.
Recent survey reveals nearly 1 million UK residents disconnected broadband due to financial constraints, with low-income individuals most affected. Ofcom urges telecom companies to offer affordable social tariffs, but progress remains slow, raising concerns for internet access and affordability.
Broadvoice recognized as a top UCaaS provider by TrustRadius In its Winter 2023 “Best of” awards, TrustRadius named Broadvoice, a provider of hosted voice and unified communications as a service (UCaaS), as one of the top three products for Best Relationship, Best Value for Price and Best Feature Set in the UCaaS category. The awards are based on key data and unbiased user ratings from July 1 to December 31, 2022. The b-hive unified communications technology from Broadvoice offers virtual contact centers, cloud PBX, UC, collaboration tools and the next-generation b-hive Communicator for employees to use in streamlining communications and collaboration capabilities. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/237r7ms2 Zoho announces their Trident UC platform Trident, a new platform for collaboration, productivity and communication experiences, has been unveiled by Zoho Corporation. Trident provides users with a single platform and lessens tool ambiguity by bringing together mail, messaging, audio/video conversations, calendar, tasks, and more…
As the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, prepares revised regulations that will hold telecom companies to a higher standard, the UK operator BT is stepping up its efforts to fight scammers. In order to achieve this goal, Hiya Protect, a network-level monitoring system that can detect and reject suspicious calls, will be used by the company. This technology will be available to both fixed-line and mobile EE subscribers. According to a study done by the Hiya team, 29 percent of all phone calls in the UK are spam. 50 percent of those calls are fraudulent, making the UK the most fraudulent country in Europe. This demonstrates the scope of the problem, which affects a vast number of people in the UK. Naturally, Ofcom is aware of this problem. According to calculations made by the telco regulator, a quarter of UK adults dealt with at least one instance of suspicious…
The UK telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, has announced new regulations that will force phone companies to take action against fake phone number usage by detecting and, where possible, banning spoofed calls. This action tries to address an issue that has led to 40.8 million people becoming the subject of fraudulent calls and messages throughout the summer of 2022. Technical steps to combat nuisance calls have already been put in place by the vast majority of the large ISPs, phone companies and mobile network operators, although these measures are not always successful. Furthermore, there are still many operators that could do more, notably smaller providers and some VoIP carriers. According to the telecom watchdog, preventing such calls without substantial international cooperation and coordination is technically complex and frequently risks intercepting legitimate communications as well. According to Ofcom, around 700,000 UK residents have fallen victim to spoofed phone calls in…
Following a period of public debate, the UK government has decided on new security requirements for telecom providers. It now intends to introduce the Electronic Communications (Security) Measures Regulations 2022 and an accompanying Telecommunications Security Code of Practice to Parliament before the regulations take effect. The new rules seek to better secure UK telecoms networks from cyberattacks. Once in effect, telecoms businesses will be expected to follow tight standards around network failure or the theft of sensitive data, with the regulatory agency Ofcom receiving additional powers to verify providers are adopting suitable and proportional security measures. The government declared that the new telecommunications security legislation, designed in collaboration with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), will be among the toughest in the world and will provide the UK with much stronger measures. They will strengthen the UK’s cyber resilience by incorporating strong security practices into providers’ long-term investment…
