British Sky Broadcasting Group plc has agreed to buy the O2 and BE consumer broadband and fixed-line telephone businesses from Telefónica UK. Adding these half a million customers will make Sky the second-largest provider of broadband in the UK.

Sky is paying Telefonica £180 million for the deal, with the option of an extra £20 million if the transfer runs smoothly. It currently has 4.2 million broadband customers and 4 million telephone customers.

Mobile broadband customers want more value-added services to choose from and are willing to pay their network operator for personalisation across these extra services.

Those are some of the findings from a survey sponsored by mobile broadband specialist Tekelec.

Ofcom has announced a consultation about protecting consumers from price rises during fixed-term contracts for landline, broadband and mobile phone services.

It first revealed plans for the consultation in October last year.

Ofcom has launched a consultation about new laws that would allow ‘white space’ technology to be used the UK.

These so-called ‘white spaces’ are the unused parts of frequency bands that have been reserved for other uses, such as TV broadcasting, but could also be used for other applications such as broadband and M2M connections.

EE, formerly Everything Everywhere, has announced tariff details for its new 4G mobile phone service in the UK. It’s launching 4G in the UK on Tuesday 30th October in Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow and parts of Southampton. Coverage will expand to Belfast, Derby, Hull, Nottingham and Newcastle by Christmas.

The new service will be called 4GEE and promises average speeds of 8-12Mbps.