Virgin Media yesterday announced their intention to accelerate the UK’s rollout of fibre optic broadband directly to homes and businesses, by committing to one million new fibre to the premises (FTTP) connections under current expansion plans. (more…)
The European Parliament published this week a briefing referencing the difficulties in revising the EU Universal Service Directive, which sets the criteria for a universal service obligation in the telecoms sector. As part of its review of the EU Telecoms Regulatory Framework, the European Commission is considering extending the scope of the Directive to include broadband. However, the briefing makes clear that setting EU-wide conditions for the introduction of a Universal Service Obligation (USO) for broadband is not without challenges.
Ofcom last week published their annual report into adult use, attitudes and understanding of TV, radio, mobile, games, and the internet, with a particular focus on those groups that tend not to participate digitally. The report is based around research conducted in autumn 2015, and any key changes compared to Ofcom’s statistics from 2014.
In what Openreach describes as “one of the fastest deployments of fibre broadband in the world???, it announced yesterday that its fibre network has passed the 25 million premises milestone, helping to take the UK’s superfast broadband (24Mbit/s) coverage past 90% of premises.
Following the recent (and ongoing) Government consultation on the approach to take to introduce a Broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO), Ofcom is now consulting on its design and implementation. Ofcom was commissioned by Government to produce an evidence-based report by the end of this year which will address thorny issues from the scope of the USO to its funding mechanism.
Doteveryone has announced today that they will be absorbing Go ON UK. (more…)
Ofcom has this week published their Annual Plan for 2016/2017, outlining their planned initiatives to deliver the best outcomes for consumers in the context of changes in the market and ongoing reviews of regulatory frameworks both at UK and EU levels. (more…)
The Broadband Stakeholder Group has agreed it work programme for 2016/17.
The key themes for this year are:
The full work programme can be found below. Stay up to date with our progress on these issues via our newsletter (which you can subscribe to below).
