Data from Ofcom shows that in the first six months of 2026 alone, 1.2 million more homes gained access to full fibre and independent tracker thinkbroadband puts availability even higher as of July, at beyond 85% of UK premises. Gigabit-capable broadband, which includes full fibre alongside upgraded cable networks, now reaches 91% of the country.

Lauren Davies of VoIP company bOnline comments: “More and more people are waking up to the fact that full fibre, can for some and in some areas of the country be a total gamechanger. Broadband is often the default but sometimes and in cases where the infrastructure exists, full fibre is ideal to minimise disruption and get some good speeds.”

Coverage Is Outpacing Take-Up

While the main coverage stats are impressive, the main headline in 2026 should be the growing gap between coverage and adoption. Switchity analysis of full fibre broadband service take-up found that while full fibre broadband services now pass 82% of UK homes, only 38% of eligible homes have switched broadband services. Roughly, this is a coverage adoption gap of 44 points and industry stakeholders say this will be the main story for the next phase rollout of full fibre broadband.

Openreach, CityFibre And The Altnets

Openreach remains the UK’s largest full fibre network by a long stretch, with a footprint of 22.4 million premises as of April 2026 and the company has set its goal on reaching 25 million homes with full fibre by the end of this year.

The independent network providers, commonly known as ‘altnets’, continue to reshape the competitive landscape. CityFibre recently secured a £2.3 billion financing package to accelerate its own expansion, while consolidation is picking up pace across the sector; Nexfibre’s reported £2 billion move to acquire Netomnia, alongside the merger of Truespeed and Freedom Fibre, signals that the market is shifting from a land grab into a period of mergers and acquisitions as smaller players struggle to compete at scale.

The Good News For UK Residents

Around a third of UK premises can now choose between two or more full fibre networks, rising to over 40% in areas such as Yorkshire and the Humber and Northern Ireland, giving many households real competition on price and service for the first time.

UK Government Targets For Better Internet Connectivity

Project Gigabit, the government’s subsidy scheme aimed at connecting the hardest-to-reach parts of the country, is currently delivering fibre connections to around 750 premises a day. Ofcom’s own forward-looking projections suggest full fibre could reach 28.1 million UK homes, or 92% of residential properties, by the end of 2028.

Regulatory Changes

Following Ofcom’s ban on inflation-linked price hikes taking effect for new contracts, major telecom providers shifted to fixed annual increases, typically ranging from £3.00 to £4.00 a month, giving consumers clearer insight into their future bills, though the shift has faced mixed reviews regarding overall cost impacts.

What These Changes Mean for Consumers and Businesses

For typical users, the speeding up of full fibre is timed to when demand for bandwidth continues to increase. With multiple 4K streams, smart home devices, cloud gaming, remote working now standard practice in a single household, the stability, great capacity and enhancements that full fibre offers over legacy copper and part fibre connections have become very much a requirement rather than a luxury.

For businesses, wider full fibre availability supports everything from cloud-based operations to the hyperscale data centres and AI infrastructure that are increasingly underpinning the UK’s digital economy.

With coverage edging closer to saturation point in many parts of the country, the UK’s full fibre story in the second half of 2026 looks set to be less about laying new cable and more about persuading the millions of eligible households who haven’t yet switched to finally make the leap.

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Lauren Davies of VoIP and broadband company bOnline explains: “Whether internet, Wi-Fi or broadband, there are important distinctions between all of this jargon we all use in our day to day lives. The utility of each is inextricably linked to each in their own way and people actually have less of an understanding than you may think in day to day life. Ultimately, education around this, much like other things, is key.”

Broadband and Wi-Fi are two completely seperate things. Broadband is the high speed wired connection delivered to your premises by your Internet Service Provider. Wi-Fi is the high speed, wireless, radio frequency, router broadcasted connection to devices in your home.

The Main Types of Broadband in the UK

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FTTC stands for fibre to the cabinet and is the broadband technology used in most homes in the UK. FTTC connects a fibre-optic cable from the exchange to a green street cabinet and then uses copper wire to connect from the cabinet to the home. With FTTC, you can achieve a broadband speed of up to 80 Mbps. FTTC is faster than ADSL, but is still bound by the copper ‘last mile’. The farther away from the street cabinet, the slower the speeds. Most homes in the UK that have FTTC can now access full fibre where it is available.

FTTP

FTTP stands for fibre to the premises and is also referred to as ‘full fibre’. FTTP connects a fibre-optic cable directly from the exchange to the home or business. With FTTP, the speeds of broadband can achieve up to 3,000 Mbps (3 Gbps). Since fibre-optic cables are not bound by distance, FTTP is a faster and better connection than FTTC.

Mobile Broadband

4G and 5G fixed wireless broadband uses mobile network signals rather than a physical cable. A router receives the mobile signal and distributes it around your home, with no digging or installation required. Speeds vary significantly by location: 4G typically delivers 20 to 100 Mbps, while 5G can reach 100 to 300 Mbps in areas with strong coverage.

What is a Good Broadband Speed?

Ofcom, UK’s communications regulator, has a four-tier system to define broadband speed. The Universal Service Obligation minimum, which is the speed that all UK homes and businesses are entitled to request, is 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. All broadband of 30 Mbps and higher is classified as ‘Superfast’. ‘Ultrafast’ broadband is 100 Mbps and higher, while ‘Gigabit’ broadband is 1,000 Mbps (1 Gbps) and higher. These definitions have provided a helpful structure, but the broadband speed that is fine for your household is also dependent on how many users will be active.

UK Average Broadband Speed

Ofcom reported that the average broadband download speed in the UK in 2025-26 was 157 Mbps, which was a significant improvement from the 2022 speed of 69 Mbps and attributed to the rollout of full fibre throughout the UK. This average speed continues to improve as more homes move to gigabit packages, while the median broadband speed for most households remains at around 80 Mbps.

Best Broadband Speeds For Home

Someone working alone at home, who is doing video calls and streams video, would find 25-30 Mbps acceptable, but more realistically, 50-100 Mbps would be ideal. A family of 3-4, with multiple devices that 4K streams video, makes video calls, plays games and runs smart devices all at the same time, would find 100 Mbps a more reasonable starting point. Households that frequently download larger files, use cloud storage a lot, or run advanced smart home devices, would benefit from at least 300 Mbps.

HomeÌýBroadband vs Business Broadband

Business broadband packages are designed with different use cases than home broadband packages. For home broadband, the largest concern is how fast the download speeds are compared to how much the package costs. For businesses, the biggest concerns are how fast the upload speeds are, how reliable the connection is, how quickly the support team responds and the SLA of the contract.

The 2027 PSTN Switch-Off

The PSTN switch-off will have particular consequences for business VoIP systems. After January 2027, all businesses will rely on VoIP systems as a result of the decommissioning of landlines. VoIP runs over the Internet, which means that the quality and reliability of broadband directly impact the quality of voice calls. Any business that is, or is likely to be, reliant on VoIP communications, should consider a business broadband solution that includes guaranteed minimum speeds, prioritisation of voice traffic and a robust SLA.

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That division is no longer valid. Recent events have forced us to recognize the inextricable link between the two: power outages disrupt communications infrastructure and the reverse also holds true.

The Structural Shift That Is Changing Connectivity

The UK’s traditional PSTN landline system, which will be switched off in 2027, has one unique characteristic of resilience that many businesses never appreciated until now: it carried its own power. Traditionally, a copper landline continued to work during a power cut because the exchange powered the line directly. When everything else failed, the phone was the last thing standing.

Modern Phone Systems and The PSTN Switch Off

The PSTN replacement’s digital voice services function differently. They are built on broadband, which is built on routers that require A.C. power. No power means no broadband. No broadband means no calls, no VoIP, no services and no business systems.ÌýEvery UK business that is now using digital voice systems has to take that dependency into account in their resilience planning because that dependency did not exist five years ago.

Commercial and Business Connectivity

Communications systems centred on the cloud require constant power.ÌýCloud-based communications technologies (VoIP phone systems, unified communications, video conferencing, cloud-based CRM and ERP) have brought powerful operational advantages to UK firms. However, they have established a model of connectivity that is highly reliant on mains power and broadband.

Broadband Backup is a Must

For most firms, the appropriate response has been to implement broadband backup. This means that a second broadband connection is triggered automatically when the primary connection goes down. Typically, this involves a 4G/5G mobile broadband router that integrates seamlessly with fixed broadband.

Practical Steps For UK Businesses

As UK business move towards the cloud, there are some simple steps to take to ensure connectivity during a power outage. From auditing your dependence chain to investing in a broadband backup:

Audit Your Dependency Chain

Start by mapping every system in your business that depends on mains power to function: router, VoIP hardware, server, PoS terminals, security systems and what happens to your operations if each goes down. Most businesses find more dependencies than they expected and some find single points of failure they weren’t aware of.

Invest in a Secondary Broadband Connection

A 4G or 5G failover router from a different network operator to your primary broadband provider is the most direct protection against connectivity loss. Modern failover solutions switch automatically in under a minute and are effectively invisible to users. The cost, typically £30-£80 per month depending on data allowance, is modest relative to the cost of even a few hours offline for most businesses.

Invest in a Good UPS

Installing a UPS for your Router, VoIP and other critical switching devices protects against network failures caused by brief power interruptions. The average small and medium-sized business will spend between £100 and £300 to buy a UPS for their router and VoIP and this investment requires no additional cost to manage.

Review Your VoIP Failover Configuration

If your business uses a VoIP phone system, check that call failover to mobile is configured and tested. A well-set-up VoIP system should route calls to mobile numbers automatically if the broadband connection drops, ensuring clients can still reach you even when your office connectivity is unavailable. This feature is available on most modern VoIP platforms but is not always configured by default. Test it before you need it.

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Different technologies, like big data, wearable technology, tools for capturing and interpreting data to suggest treatments like Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Machine Learning (ML) are taking women’s health research to new frontiers.

What is Big Data in Health?

Healthcare big data may include sequences of genetic information, numerous insurance claims and hospital records, various images and data collected by wearable and smart devices and more. What makes it ‘big’ isn’t just size but it’s the volume, velocity and variety of information being generated every second across millions of patients.

Big data within women’s health relates to menstrual cycle tracking apps, fertility monitoring, pregnancy records, mammography scans and long term studies that follow thousands of women over the course of decades. This information collectively provides an overview of women’s health that was previously unavailable.

Why is Big Data So Important?

Big data matters in women’s health for a few key reasons, such as closing in on the gap between men and women health, helps reveal patterns and can even craft personalised medications:

It Corrects a Historical Data Gap

Clinical trials have historically underrepresented women, partly due to outdated assumptions about hormonal variability complicating results. Big data lets researchers retroactively analyse real-world outcomes across huge, diverse populations of women, filling in gaps that trials never addressed.

It Helps Reveal Patterns Invisible at a Small Scale

A single doctor might see a handful of patients with unusual symptoms. Aggregated across millions of records, subtle patterns, like early warning signs of ovarian cancer or links between autoimmune disease and pregnancy complications that can become statistically visible.

Large Data Sets Allow For Preventive Care

Preventative care is possible with the use of Big Data and predictive modeling, which may help identify potential risks for conditions such as preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, among other prenatal complications.

Enables Personalised Medicine

With enough data, care can move away from one-size-fits-all treatment. Algorithms can factor in a woman’s genetics, lifestyle and health history to recommend more precise treatments, whether for breast cancer therapy or hormone replacement.

What are the Four Types of Big Data?

There are four main types of big data in healthcare; structured data, unstructured data, semi-structured data and real-time data:

1. Structured Data

This is arranged data that fills in rows and columns such as lab data, electronic health records, demographic data and billing codes. Searching and analysing data of this type is easier since this data is of a consistent format.

2. Unstructured Data

This includes data that is unstructured and unformatted, such as social media posts, observations made by health care providers, patient symptoms and diagnostic images. Healthcare data that is unstructured is more voluminous and harder to analyse and requires more advanced techniques.

3. Semi-Structured Data

This is a hybrid category that has some organisational properties but isn’t as rigid as structured data. Examples include data from wearable devices, fertility-tracking apps and XML or JSON files that log health metrics with tags or metadata but don’t follow a strict tabular format.

4. Real-Time (Streaming) Data

This data is analysed as soon as it is generated and includes real-time data from health monitors that allow health care providers to make clinical assessments and interventions Ìýincluding data from glucometers, heart rate monitors, or a foetal heart rate monitor during childbirth.

How is Big Data Reducing Healthcare Spending?

Big data is helping reduce overall costs of healthcare through preventative care and much more:

Earlier diagnosis means cheaper treatment: Catching conditions like breast cancer or cervical dysplasia at an earlier stage through predictive screening tools is almost always less expensive than treating advanced disease.

Reducing unnecessary procedures:ÌýData-driven risk models help doctors identify which patients actually need invasive tests or surgeries, cutting down on costly, unnecessary interventions.

Improving chronic disease management:ÌýConditions disproportionately affecting women, such as autoimmune disorders and osteoporosis, are expensive to manage over a lifetime. Data analytics helps optimize treatment plans, reducing hospital readmissions and complications.

Streamlining maternal care:ÌýPredictive analytics applied to maternal health records can flag high-risk pregnancies early, reducing the likelihood of expensive emergency interventions and NICU stays.

Cutting administrative waste: Big data tools also streamline scheduling, staffingÌýand insurance claims processing, reducing the overhead costs that make up a significant share of healthcare spending.

Remote monitoring can reduce patient intake: There are a number of remote monitoring solutions that allow patients to monitor their condition and reduce their need to physically go to the hospital.

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As you might expect, the answer is a combination of both. The two are becoming easier to differentiate based on where the funding is coming from.

The Funding Is Real, Even If the Science Is Still Catching Up

Starting with the numbers, there’s one of the biggest players in the field- Vedanta Biosciences. Based in the US, this company has raised over $437m developing drugs that use the microbiome to modulate the gut. Furthermore,ÌýEvelo Biosciences has raised close to $397m and Enterome, a French biopharma, has raised nearly $220m to fund its research into oncology immunotherapies using the gut microbiome. These companies are not wellness apps; each of them is a biotech company in a clinical stage and runs trials for the approval of drugs. Largely, so are their funding rounds.

How Scotland is Driving Microbiome Innovation

EnteroBiotix in Scotland has raised over £47m, including a £27m Series B funded in 2024. The company is developing donor derived gut bacteria to be sold as pharmaceutical grade capsules to replace faecal microbiota transplants. Their leading candidate has shown progress in a Phase IIa trial for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, the type of evidence and progress that cuts the differences between therapeutics and consumer wellness in the industry.

Consumer Side Is Betting on Growth, Not Trials

Then there is the other half of the gold rush. There are direct to consumer companies selling gut health tests, personalised nutrition plans and probiotics where funding rounds tend to be smaller, quicker and focused on company growth rather than achieving clinical endpoints.

ZOE Funding Round

A perfect example of this is the company ZOE which was co-founded by Tim Spector and Jonathan Wolf, a leading epidemiologist and microbiome researcher who helped fund and shape its scientific vision. In December 2022, ZOE launched one of the most successful healthtech equity crowdfunding campaigns in the UK, raising over £7.4 million from its community on Crowdcube. The company has since pursued follow-on community funding rounds alongside traditional venture capital, bringing its total lifetime funding to over $118 million to fuel its international expansion and large-scale nutritional research.

What is BIOHM and How Are They Shaping The Industry?

Another healthtech startup, called BIOHM, raised £1.8 million in seed funding to launch their microbiome focused oral range across the US and Germany. BIOHM, based in Ohio, raised $7.5 million round in early 2025 to scale its platform which which helps food, beverage and some supplement companies formulate targeted microbiome products.ÌýThese deals are answering a real consumer need, but they sit on the wellness side of the spectrum.

Why Investors are Starting to Split the Difference

There is now a clear separation in how investors evaluate science-based companies.

Wellness companies conducting consumer-based product development are increasingly able to raise smaller, but faster capital, as the overall burn rate is much lower than that of a typical biotechnology company and subscriptions are easier to model than a Phase III trial.

Biotech companies, on the other hand, are able to raise larger, slower capital, as the regulatory pathway ultimately results in a defensible, ownable product with true pricing power.

So, What’s The Problem?

The awkward middle ground is where scrutiny is sharpest: companies selling ‘personalised’ recommendations based on microbiome testing, without the kind of peer-reviewed validation ZOE has invested in building. Independent researchers have repeatedly pointed out that the science linking specific gut bacteria to specific dietary outcomes is still young, individual microbiomes are highly variable and causation versus correlation remains genuinely unsettled in large parts of the field.

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Cold therapy, whether delivered through ice baths, chilled tubs, cryotherapy chambers or wearable cooling devices,Ìý has moved from niche biohacker ritual to mainstream wellness habit. And where consumer demand goes, investors and entrepreneurs tend to follow.Ìý

Cold Therapy: The New Mainstream Wellness Category

Cold water immersion has genuine physiological effects that go some way to explaining its appeal. Cold exposure around 14°C has been linked to sharp increases in dopamine and norepinephrine release, which helps explain the mood-lifting, energising effect users report after a plunge. Beyond the neurochemical buzz, advocates point to reduced muscle soreness, improved circulation and stress-resilience benefits, claims that have made cold exposure popular among elite athletes, fitness enthusiasts and increasingly, office workers looking for a morning reset.

The Social Media Boom Behind Cold Therapy

The trend has been turbocharged by social media and high-profile endorsements. Podcasters, biohackers and fitness influencers have spent the last few years turning ice baths into content, while celebrities and professional sports teams have publicly embraced cold immersion as part of recovery routines. That visibility has pulled cold therapy out of elite sports science labs and into everyday wellness culture, sitting alongside saunas, red light therapy and wearable recovery trackers as part of a broader ‘biohacking’ movement.

Crucially, this cultural shift has coincided with real technological progress. Where cold therapy once meant literally filling a tub with bags of ice, a new generation of hardware now automates the entire process, chilling, filtering and sanitising water without manual refills and increasingly offering smart, app-connected controls that let users schedule sessions, track temperature and monitor water hygiene from a phone.

How Big is The Cold Therapy Market?

Market analysts don’t fully agree on the numbers, which is itself a sign of a category still finding its footing- but the direction of travel is unmistakable.ÌýSeveral industry reports place the global cold plunge tub market at somewhere between $350 million and $390 million in 2026, with most forecasts pointing to steady annual growth through the early 2030s. Grand View Research, for instance, values the market at roughly $381.7 million in 2026, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 8% to approach $660 million by 2033. North America currently accounts for the largest share of that spend, around 39% of global revenue, with commercial buyers such as gyms, spas and recovery clinics representing over 80% of sales, though residential demand is growing faster than the commercial segment.

The Startups Already in The Cold Plunge Market

A handful of companies have emerged as the standout names in the space, each carving out a distinct position.Ìý

Plunge

Plunge has become something of the category leader in the US direct-to-consumer market, reportedly crossing $100 million in annual revenue as demand for its app-connected chiller tubs surged. The company has also demonstrated notably efficient paid marketing, with reported customer acquisition costs in the hundreds of dollars against average order values near $5,000- a ratio that has clearly caught investor attention.

Renu Therapy

Renu Therapy, a California-based, handcrafted cold-and-hot plunge maker, has positioned itself at the premium end of the market with products like the Cold Stoic 3.0, a dual-temperature unit combining app controls, a touchscreen interface and enhanced filtration, aimed at buyers who want both recovery and design credibility in their home wellness setup.

Morozko Forge

Morozko Forge, often described by reviewers as the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of ice baths, targets the top of the market with premium-engineered units designed for serious enthusiasts and commercial installations.

Funding within The Market

On the funding side, capital raises in this space so far tend to be smaller than the mega-rounds seen in adjacent digital health categories, but they’re growing more frequent. Clearwater Wellness Co., for example, secured around $1.84 million in funding to support the global rollout of its SnowCap product, a thermoelectric ice bath marketed as requiring no ice, plumbing or external chiller, having already generated roughly $700,000 in pre-sales before its official launch. That pattern,Ìý modest early-stage rounds backing hardware innovation aimed at removing friction from the cold therapy experience, looks set to repeat as more entrants chase the ‘no ice, no plumbing, no hassle’ positioning that increasingly defines the category’s cutting edge.

MedTech is Interested in Cold Therapy, Too

Cold therapy is also drawing interest from adjacent medtech and clinical players. Post-operative cold compression device makers and cryotherapy equipment manufacturers, long established in physical rehabilitation settings, are seeing renewed relevance as consumer familiarity with cold therapy grows, blurring the line between clinical recovery equipment and consumer wellness hardware.

Why Are Investors Paying Attention to The Cold Therapy Market?

Several forces are converging to make cold therapy tech an appealing category for founders and funders alike.

A Crowded But Still-Fragmented Market

Unlike more mature wellness hardware categories, no single company yet dominates cold plunge tech the way a handful of brands dominate, say, smart rings or fitness trackers. That fragmentation creates room for differentiated entrants, whether on price, design, portability or smart features, to carve out meaningful market share.

High Margins and Strong Direct-to-consumer Economics

With flagship products often retailing between $3,000 and $15,000, cold plunge hardware carries healthy margins by consumer hardware standards and reported advertising returns for leading brands suggest real, durable demand rather than a short-lived fad.

Recurring and Expanding Demand

As with home gym equipment during the pandemic, cold therapy hardware benefits from a broader shift toward recovery, longevity and preventative wellness being treated as investments rather than indulgences, a trend that shows little sign of reversing.

Commercial Channel Growth

Boutique gyms, recovery studios, hotels and spas are increasingly adding cold plunge stations as a differentiator, creating a B2B sales channel alongside the consumer market, and giving hardware makers a second, more predictable revenue stream beyond one-off home purchases.

Adjacent Technology Convergence

The integration of app connectivity, water quality sensors, ozone and UV filtration and energy-efficient chiller technology means cold therapy hardware increasingly resembles a connected IoT product rather than a simple tub, opening the door to software, subscription and data-driven business models layered on top of the core hardware.

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What is Causing The Current Competition in Menopause Technology?

More than 47 million women enter menopause each year. By 2030, roughly 1.2 billion women are expected to be menopausal or post menopausal. Further, the global menopause market is expected to be within the range of $15 billion to $19 billion in 2026. Employers are following the trend as well. When PwC research was reported by industry analysts, it revealed that 25% of large US employers planned to provide standalone menopause benefits by 2026 (up from just 4% in 2023). This shift, from a consumer app to an employee benefit, has been the main contributor to the growth of the sector in both the US and the UK.

Early Stage UK Startups Working in the Menopause Sector

Britain has validated its right to first ownership in this category, as menopause support as an employee benefit was launched by Peppy in London in 2018, prior to expanding support to other offerings. The company has raised a Series B round, valued at roughly €41 million, led by Albion VC. Some of their client partnerships include Clifford Chance, Santander and Vitality Health, making this offering available to many employees.

Vira Health’s ‘Stella App’

Vira Health’s Stella app provides personalised, symptom-based menopause treatment plans using cognitive behavioural therapy, pelvic floor exercises and lifestyle changes. While initially launching to consumers, the company heavily prioritised selling through employers and corporate benefits packages to scale its reach. Vira Health has raised funding from Octopus Ventures and Optum Ventures, operating with the long-term view that effective menopause support will help reduce the future risk of osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease and dementia.

The US Scale Play

The US is taking a different approach, with a growing number of FemTech companies moving beyond wellness apps towards clinician-led virtual care. Midi Health has raised more than $250 million to scale its virtual menopause and midlife healthcare model, which combines specialist clinicians with insurance-covered care. Other companies, including Elektra Health, Allara Health and Evernow, are pursuing similar clinically oriented models, combining digital platforms with medical professionals, treatment and, increasingly, insurance or employer partnerships. The shift suggests that the next stage of FemTech may depend less on wellness tracking alone and more on integrating digital convenience with clinical credibility, healthcare reimbursement and measurable outcomes.

What Makes a Meaningful Healthcare Platform for Menopause?

Consensus is forming within this space regarding what separates a meaningful healthcare platform from just a symptom tracker. It comes down to three elements: clinical (on-site, menopause-trained physicians, not generic telehealth), integration with existing systems and personalised care. When looking at the femtech funding space, the firms that raised the larger rounds this cycle were able to cite FDA clearance, clinical trials, hospital partnerships and/or physician-led care models. AI in and of itself wasn’t constructed as a differentiator in these funding rounds. AI is certainly present in pitch decks, but it’s still substantially less important than the other value proposition elements.

Where the Race Is Headed

Given that over a billion women will go through menopause in the next several years and that employers treat menopause benefits as an employment perk for the first time, there is very little chance the funding will run out. The real question is if the market consolidates around a few large, venture capital-backed menopause companies like Midi and Peppy, or if smaller, more focused companies like Alloy or Vira will show that in healthcare, things don’t have to be big to succeed. Either way, menopause has moved from the margins of health tech to one of its most closely watched races.

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The PSTN is the backbone of many systems, such as fire alarms, door entry systems, payment terminals, lift emergency and medical monitoring equipment, all of which are connected to the PSTN. Research has shown that only 18% of small businesses and 26% of large businesses have some sort of solution in place to mitigate the closure of the PSTN and almost 10% of businesses do not know about the closure at all. This means that a significant number of businesses in the UK will have systems that will shut down due to the PSTN closure in January 2027.

Lauren Davies from VoIP company bOnline comments: “So much of our lives and our connectivity relies on legacy PSTN phonelines and connectivity. However, as the landline switch off comes down the track, more people and businesses are realising just how much of our lives require this connectivity. It is increasingly important that businesses and individuals make the necessary switches and arrangements before the switch off, to ensure they retain the required levels of connectivity.”

Fire Alarms and Intruder Alarm Systems Might Shutdown

Many may think that fire and intruder alarms send communications via mobile networks or the internet. However, a large number of systems, most notably the older commercial and residential systems, send communications over the PSTN. When the alarm activates, the system dials out to an alarm receiving centre to facilitate a response. No line means no dial and no dial means no response.

Why Is This Serious?

This is a silent failure as there is no error displayed on the alarm panel. It will look as if the system is operational, however, when the system attempts to send an event and there is no line, the call will be unsuccessful.

Many alarm systems perform routine self-test calls to ensure communication to the ARC. Post PSTN the call will be unsuccessful, but the system will appear operational to those who do not closely monitor the system communications. For all businesses in the UK under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, maintaining fire detection and alert systems is a legal obligation.

How To Fix An Alarm System Before The Switch Off

The solution will vary depending on the alarm system. Some newer alarm signalling systems that allow for IP, dual-path (IP plus mobile), or cellular (PSTN-independent) communications can be used instead of a PSTN. However, some older alarm panels may have to be completely replaced, as they may not allow for a simple communication module update.

The most important thing you can do now is to reach out to your alarm maintenance provider to determine if your signalling is PSTN dependent and if so, what the upgrade options are.

Telecare and Medical Monitoring Equipment

This area has caused the most concern for regulators and the general public in this digital transition and is also the main reason why the landline switch-off was pushed back to 2027, instead of the initial plan of 2025. Telecare is a collection of remote monitoring and alert systems to assist the elderly, disabled and other vulnerable populations. These systems help them maintain a higher quality of independent living in their own homes and the most popular systems are personal alarm pendants.

Power Concerns That Aren’t Addressed

One of the most overlooked issues with the PSTN switch-off is that traditional landlines have their own power supply. The copper wires that make up your phone lines carry a small electric current, allowing landline phones to function even during power cuts. Traditional landlines were the phone you used to call for help when everything else was down.

What About VoIP Systems?

VoIP systems fully rely on your broadband router, which is entirely electric, unlike copper phone lines. So, as soon as your router is powered down, your VoIP phone is powered down as well. This could potentially serve as a safety concern for individuals who live alone and would rely on that VoIP phone to call for help.

Ofcom is working on the implementation of battery back up systems for each phone service provider and BT is set to provide battery back up for their vulnerable clients.

Payment Terminals And EPOS Systems

Card payment terminals, the card readers used in retail, hospitality, healthcare and almost every other consumer-facing business, have historically used PSTN as one of their communication options. When a card is inserted and a transaction is initiated, the terminal needs to communicate with a payment processor to authorise the payment.

In older or simpler terminal deployments, particularly in smaller businesses or sites with unreliable broadband, that communication has historically gone over the phone line.

What to Do and How to Keep Payments Flowing

Reach out to your payment terminal provider and find out if your payment terminal communicates through PSTN and what the upgrade process entails if it does. Most newer payment terminals only use IP and the communication authorisation is done through a software upgrade or hardware replacement. For EPOS systems that have a fallback to dial-up, partner with your IT provider and implement a 4G or 5G failover connection. This will replace the PSTN fallback and in most cases will offer a significantly more reliable backup connectivity compared to a dial-up connection.

Emergency Phones and Entry Systems for Lifts

All lifts in buildings with public or commercial occupancy must have an emergency communication system, meaning that a person trapped in a lift they are able to reach for assistance. In the majority of lifts that have been installed or serviced more than a decade ago, that means is an analogue phone line.

The alarm button connects to an analogue telephone that communicates with a lift monitoring service via the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The Lift and Escalator Industry Association (LEIA) is looking for new methodologies to uphold safety for lift users during this digital transformation.

For building managers and facilities teams: audit every lift in your portfolio for PSTN-dependent emergency communication and engage your lift maintenance contractor now to plan the upgrade to IP or cellular communication. For door entry systems, contact the system manufacturer or installer to assess compatibility with digital voice and broadband, most modern intercom systems can be upgraded to IP-based operation, but older analogue systems may require hardware replacement.

ADSL And FTTC Broadband

DSL broadband, the most common form of broadband used in the UK for the better part of the 2000s and 2010s, is delivered over the copper phone line. So is FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) broadband, where the fibre runs as far as the street cabinet but still uses copper to connect to the premises. When the copper network is shut down, both of these broadband options become inoperable.

Check your broadband connection. If you are on ADSL or FTTC broadband, access an FTTP full-fibre broadband upgrade. Openreach’s coverage checker is the most reliable. If full-fibre is not available, try to see what 4G, 5G, or satellite fixed broadband options are available. For businesses using ISDN, this is a top priority: connect and upgrade your broadband system.

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What Skills Do Employees Need For AI?

Employees need AI literacy (understanding what these tools can and can’t reliably do), strong prompting skills to get useful output, the judgement to critically check AI-generated work rather than trust it blindly, basic data interpretation to make sense of AI-assisted analysis and awareness of responsible use around privacy and bias. On top of that, distinctly human skills, communication, creativity and sound judgement matter more than ever, since they’re what turn AI’s raw output into something genuinely useful.

AI Literacy: Knowing What the Tools Can and Can’t Do

Before anyone is able to use AI effectively, there needs to be a realistic perception of AI and AI literacy involves understanding what the tools can and can not do. ÌýUnderstanding at a fundamental level how large language models are able to generate the answers that AI tools provide and why they sometimes get things wrong or ‘hallucinate’ are all important aspects of AI that must be understood at a fundamental level.

Better Prompts by Asking Better Questions

Quality output from an AI depends largely on the quality of instructions given to the tool. writing clear and concise prompts that are packed with specific context and sufficiently clear constraints is rapidly becoming more important an workplace skill as writing an email. Staff who can identify routine tasks within their own responsibilities and build a simple automation around them (even using no-code tools) will free up time that can be used for work that actually requires a human.

Workflow Automation

An increased proportion of day-to-day administration such as scheduling, initial drafts of messages, meeting notes, report writing and formatting of reports and more, are now automatable with AI. Staff who are able to recognise repetitive tasks within their own roles and build a simple automation around them will free up time for the work that actually requires a human. This is less about coding and more about process thinking: mapping a workflow, spotting the boring bits and knowing which tool fixes them.

Responsible and Ethical AI Use

As AI begins to permeate and control hiring, customer service and decision-making, the basics of data privacy, bias and transparency will no longer simply be the concerns of the compliance team. Staff who are on the frontline of AI applications should understand what data are permitted to input into the system, how to recognise and flag biased or inequitable outputs and a human sign-off should be required when the decision cannot be automatically made.

Data Interpretation and AI-Assisted Analysis

AI tools can summarise data, spot trends and generate charts in a matter of seconds. However, somebody still has to make the call on whether the output generated makes sense, or if the data presented behind the output is even valid. Basic data literacy means reading a dashboard critically and sense-checking a model’s summary against the source numbers which is something a business can actually act on.

Adaptability and Continuous Learning

AI tools are changing fast enough that the specific platform someone learns this year may look different next year. The more durable skill is the habit of continuous learning itself. This means staying curious about new tools, experimenting in low-stakes ways and being willing to change a workflow that’s become outdated. Businesses that build this habit into their culture tend to adapt faster than those relying on a single annual training session.

Human Skills That AI Can’t Replace

Ironically, as AI takes on more routine tasks, distinctly human skills become more valuable, not less. Communication, judgement, creativity, negotiation and emotional intelligence are what turn an AI-assisted first draft into a genuinely good piece of client work, or an AI-generated data summary into a smart business decision. Employers are increasingly looking for people who can pair technical AI fluency with these human strengths, rather than one or the other.

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So, how does Facebook and Meta actually make money? From Instagram Reels and WhatsApp Business Tools, to Meta Quest virtual reality headsets, Horizon Worlds and other virtual reality and artificial intelligence hardware and software, to the quieter but increasingly important business of renting out its own AI models.

Meta’s Two Reportable Segments

Before we dive into individual products, it is helpful to understand how Meta actually reports its finances. Meta splits its business into two segments:

Family of Apps (FoA) – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Threads and related services

Reality Labs (RL) – Meta Quest headsets, AI smart glasses, Horizon Worlds and other AR/VR hardware and software.

In 2025, the Family of Apps segment generated $198.76 billion in revenue, with 98.7% of that coming from advertising. Reality Labs, by comparison, brought in $2.21 billion- a much smaller slice, but one Meta is betting will matter a great deal more in the years ahead.

Meta relies on advertising as one of the main sources of revenue. (Advertising alone accounts for approx. 99% of Meta’s total revenue). This says a lot as Meta is an advertising company. However, we are writing this to discuss how Meta relies on advertising, how this advertising has shifted and how this advertising is not the Facebook News Feed.

Instagram, the Quiet Advertising Powerhouse

Instagram doesn’t release separate revenue figures. Meta bundles it in with the Family of Apps total. Analysts agree it is now Meta’s single biggest earner -likely outpacing Facebook itself in ad revenue.

The advertising dollars come from Reels. Short-form video has restructured how users interact with Instagram and Meta follows the users with ad inventory. Now, Reels make up 50% of all time spent on Instagram, with users sharing 3.5 billion Reels daily across Facebook and Instagram combined. Every scroll through that feed is an opportunity for a sponsored video to appear.

Instagram Also Drives Significant Revenue

Shopping and product tags that let brands sell directly within the app and influencer and creator partnerships, where Meta takes a cut of certain monetisation tools. Further, story and Reels ads, which now rival and in many markets exceed traditional feed ads in performance.ÌýFor UK businesses in particular, Instagram has become the default advertising channel for reaching younger, mobile-first audiences, which keeps demand for ad inventory (and prices) high.

Lite-Touch Monetisation for WhatsApp

With Meta buying the app for $19 billion in 2014, Meta kept WhatsApp free of ads and free to the public for more than a decade. Now things are beginning to change – though in a way which is true to WhatsApp’s original guarantee: Meta makes money when a company pays to send a message through WhatsApp’s API, or when an advertiser pays to place a click-to-WhatsApp ad – not by collecting data about messages people send to their family and friends.

Threads: Meta’s Response to X

Meta’s Threads app was created in 2023, as a text-based competitor to X (previously Twitter). Threads has quickly surpassed the expectations of almost everyone. Threads reached more than 400 million users by late 2025. For the first time, Threads surpassed X in terms of number of active daily mobile users. While Threads still lags behind Instagram and Facebook when it comes to its monetisation potential, Threads provides a valuable monetisation surface as an advertising platform. Meta has built a large and well-established advertising technology infrastructure for Facebook and Instagram that Meta can apply to Threads.

Messenger and Business Messaging

By late 2025, the messaging app Messenger also reached over 400 million users. Like its sibling apps Facebook and Instagram, Messenger is strongly monetised through a variety of advertising and sponsored messaging services. It’s less prominent in Meta’s public messaging than WhatsApp these days, but it remains a meaningful contributor to the broader ‘other revenue’ and advertising totals within Family of Apps.

Reality Labs: Quest Headsets and AI Glasses

This is the part of Meta’s business that gets the most headlines and the least profit- at least for now. Reality Labs covers Meta’s Quest VR hardware, Horizon Worlds, Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta AI glasses and the Orion AR prototype. The numbers tell an interesting story. Reality Labs revenue hit $470 million in Q3 2025 alone, a 74% year-over-year increase driven by holiday inventory shipments to retailers, but the division posted a $4.4 billion operating loss in that same quarter. Across the whole of 2025, Reality Labs brought in $2.21 billion in revenue.

Why does Meta keep giving money to a division that loses billions of dollars a quarter? There are two main reasons:

Meta has already dominant hardware. In Q3 of 2025, Meta’s Reality Labs shipped 73% of the entire global VR headset market, giving it a commanding lead in a market it (likely) believes will eventually be much larger.

Smart Glasses as the New Computing Platform

The Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta AI glasses are Meta’s bet that the next major personal computing device won’t be a phone or headset, but a lightweight augmented reality (AR) glasses computing device with an inbuilt Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent. If they get there first, they will gain control the next great advertising and commerce platform.

AI: The New Revenue Frontier

While Meta doesn’t break out AI as its own segment in reporting, it does centre around how the company offers, and intends to offer, a range of diverse service offerings, in three distinct ways:

1. Improved Targeted Ads Using Advanced AI Systems

Currently, Meta’s AI systems optimize the delivery of ads and, in the process, help advertisers achieve better return on ad spend through improved audience matching and optimisation of creatives, while the overall average cost of each ad increased by 10% year-over-year, according to Q3 2025 results.

2. AI as a Product Surfacing

The AI assistant Meta has created is embedded across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. It may not be directly monetized by subscription as ChatGPT Plus is, but it helps Meta keep users more actively engaged longer within Meta’s applications. More time spent actively engaged on an application typically means more opportunities for ad impressions to be served.

3. Llama and the Open-source PlayÌý

Meta offers its Llama family of large language models to developers largely for free, which seems like an odd business strategy, but it’s a deliberate one. By making Llama widely adopted, Meta positions itself at the centre of the AI developer ecosystem, builds goodwill (and talent pipelines) that a fully closed competitor like OpenAI doesn’t get and keeps its own AI capabilities sharp through community feedback and contributions.

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