Infrastructure & Telecoms
Networks, data centers, connectivity and the switch-offs reshaping them.
UK IT leaders want out of US clouds but only 15% have moved, Civo finds
Civo’s own survey of 1,000 UK IT leaders shows 73% call sovereignty a strategic priority and 28% expect to lean harder on the hyperscalers anyway. A panel at the vendor’s London event blamed inertia and the pull of AI
Nscale’s Loughton AI site slips as 315 data centers queue for the grid
UK Power Networks has reportedly told the company its 90MW connection may not arrive until the early-to-mid 2030s, and Ofgem’s own figures show why: the demand queue is almost three times Britain’s peak load
Customers before capacity: what a UK chip fab can teach distributors
Steve McCue told Raconteur that a deep-tech company should line up its customers before it scales manufacturing. Distributors should apply the same test before stocking any new silicon-dependent line
Cabling bottlenecks leave a third of data centers with wasted AI hardware
Onnec’s survey of 300 data center decision-makers in the UK, Ireland and the Nordics finds 78% cut corners on cabling to deploy AI faster, and 44% have paid for it in delays or remediation
Airband at £4.6m: altnet consolidation is a fire sale, not a merger
Voneus paid £4.6m for a network that absorbed more than £200m of Aberdeen Group money. Buyers of broken altnets, not builders, will end up owning rural fiber, and resellers need a supplier-failure plan before the next one goes
Telecoms security review should end the limbo for smaller providers
The government has opened its statutory review of the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021. But the smallest providers it covers, those under £50m turnover, still have legal duties and no specific guidance of their own
Altnet consolidation is coming, but it will not be tidy
Rajiv Datta told Mobile Europe that without consolidation more altnets will fail. The summer’s evidence says the failures will be messy either way, and they land first on whoever signed the wholesale contract
Quickline passes 60,000 rural premises under Project Gigabit
The regional full-fiber builder has drawn £127m of public money so far, and its four government contracts add up to around 168,000 hard-to-reach premises in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
Openreach warns 350,000 business sites to get off copper phone lines
With the analog network due to close in January, Openreach starts formal notices to providers that still have customers to move, while legacy line rental heads toward double its old price
Openreach can now grow without you: renegotiate value, not volume
BT’s July update shows Openreach losing 192,000 broadband lines while revenue per line rose 7%. Wholesale revenue per line is rising and retail revenue per customer is not, and the gap lands on every reseller in between
Everflow’s £44m raise tests whether SMEs want broadband with their water
Business water supplier Everflow has raised £44m to grow a multi-utility offer that now includes connectivity. But with the copper phone network closing, one bill is a weak reason to choose a line
Openreach trims leased line costs as business fiber rivals spread
Openreach is cutting Ethernet connection and construction fees and offering discounts to customers that re-sign for up to 10 years. But the best deal comes with a lock-in, just as business-only networks expand