The whole saga raises questions about the ability of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to manage procurement and abut the government’s oversight of the NDA, the report1finds. In March 2017 the NDA was forced to scrap a £6.2bn contract that it had agreed with Cavendish Fluor Partnership for the management [...]

The latest independent data to September 2017 has estimated that “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) capable fixed line networks now cover 93.9% of premises in the United Kingdom (96.6% if you include all “fibre based” lines of any speed inc. sub-24Mbps), with Wales and Scotland both touching completion. The data, which has [...]

The roll-out of “ultrafast” fibre optic broadband services using Gigabit capable FTTH/P/B technologies is continuing to ramp up in 2017, with our latest annual estimate of total premises passed across the United Kingdom reaching 1,084,500 (up from 780k in 2016) and this is set to surge. Related Fibre-to-the-Premises  networks generally [...]

The Government’s Broadband Delivery UK project has published its latest Q2 2017 take-up data for the state aid supported roll-out of “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) services across the United Kingdom, which shows that many regions are seeing 40%+ adoption and that will boost clawback. Just to clarify. The figures reflect % customer take-up [...]

For most of the year, the Gulf of Mexico is a nice place to be. It has warm waters; it doesn’t have ice or winter storms. All things considered, if you insist on attaching spindly structures to the ocean floor to drill for a highly flammable substance, the Gulf of [...]

The Northumberland County Council, which is currently working with Openreach(BT) to expand the coverage of “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) connectivity to 95% of local premises by the end of 2017, has launched a new £2.2m community fund that could benefit a further 2,000 premises. The new fund aims to complement Openreach’s existing deployment contract [...]

Some recent data from BT’s Head of Access Network Research, Trevor Linney, has revealed how much Openreach’s new 330Mbps capable hybrid fibre G.fast broadband technology has already improved since last year’s trial. Mmany more enhancements are on the way. Back in 2015 Openreach predicted that it should eventually be able to deliver 300Mbps over [...]

TenneT is to kick off offshore cable installation for the 900MW BorWin3 grid hub in the German North Sea this month. Cable-lay vessel Cable Enterprise has arrived in Eemshaven, the Netherlands to pick up the first subsea section of the wire, as reported in last week’s subscriber-only reNEWS. Prysmian is [...]

Officially speaking Openreach (BT) hasn’t yet announced the start of their post-pilot commercial roll-out of 330Mbps capable G.fast (ITU G.9700/9701) hybrid fibre broadband technology, yet unofficially the related PCP street cabinet extension pods have been popping up all over the place. Lately all the talk in the media has been [...]

Some fibre optic broadband ISPs in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe appear to be suffering from a shortage in supply of certain high capacity optical fibre cables from major European manufacturers, such as OFS and Tratos, which in some cases is causing huge delays. Over the past week several Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H/B) providers of [...]

The first gravity-based foundation (GBF) built for the Blyth Offshore Demonstrator Project has been installed onto the seabed. The second of the total of five GBFs has also arrived at the site and is ready to be installed. This marks the first time the specialist ‘float and submerge’ method has been [...]

After a lot of negotiation the Government and BT have today proposed a deal that could see the operator fund a new Universal Service Obligation (USO), which will aim to ensure that everybody can request a broadband download speed of at least 10Mbps by 2020. Now for the caveats. At present fixed [...]