Tag: broadband

BT on course with its super-fast broadband project

ngafibremain.jpg

BT has announced that an additional 69 towns will be receiving their super-fast fibre-based broadband by this time next year – meaning the service will be available to 1.5 million homes and businesses.

BT’s Steve Robertson said: “We had aimed to get fibre to half a million homes by next March but we’re now being far more ambitious. We’ve received a tremendous response to date and so we’re keen to get on with the job.”

Their overall goal of the project, which is costing the telecommunication giant £1.5billion, is to have 10 million homes covered by 2012 – 40% of the country.

BT will be offering access to ISPs on an open, wholesale basis thereby supporting a competitive market. The first areas to have access to the network went live earlier this week. Trials are taking place in Muswell Hill, London and Whitchurch, South Wales and involve 16 different ISPs.

The plan is great news for internet users and makes a bit of a mockery of the plan set out in the Digital Britain report to ensure that the country is covered by a broadband network capable of 2Mbps. The super-fast network being developed by BT should be capable of speeds of 40Mbps – 100Mbps. No wonder MPs are to open an inquiry into whether the 2Mbps plan is ambitious enough. Clearly it isn’t.

(via BT & Computing.co.uk)

Paul Lamkin Internet

MPs to investigate Britain's broadband speeds

The Digital Britain report, published earlier this month, proposed that all homes would have access to broadband speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2012.

Now for a country that has Virgin advertising up to 50Mb via their cable network and O2 advertising up to 20Mb on the existing phone-line network that doesn’t really sound very ambitious. It seems that some MPs may also be thinking just that.

So, MPs who work in the Commons Business and Enterprise Committee are to open an inquiry into broadband speeds in the UK. They will also look into whether the proposed 50p broadband tax is fair or not – the charge would be added monthly to anyone with a fixed telephone line.

Their concern is that by not aiming higher, the UK will fall behind the rest of the world in terms of broadband speeds. This handy chart courtesy of the BBC shows just how far we are behind already:

_45830094_broadb_day_gra466.gif

Even the French are beating us – sacre bleu. Also, South Korea has set a target of a minimum of 1Gbps for all homes. That kind of blows our target out of the water.

(via BBC)

Paul Lamkin Internet

BT hits back in iPlayer throttling row

bbc-iplayer.jpg

You may remember last week, we published a post regarding BT’s apparent throttling of its users broadband connections. Well, the telecom giant has hit back, going public with its condemnation of online video services like the BBC’s iPlayer and YouTube.

Basically this is how the row has unfolded: The BBC releases a story accusing BT of slowing down broadband connections at peak time – to less than 1Mbps between 5pm and midnight – when users should be getting up to 8Mbps. BT responds by sending an email to BBC Radio 4 programme You and Yours stating that content providers “can’t expect to continue to get a free ride”. They also go public with this stance.

The Beeb have responded today, via their blog, saying that BT’s move was a “forthright call for cash” and that the row could end with net neutrality becoming obsolete.

What this means is that ISPs, who currently make no differentiation between types of internet traffic, could begin to charge content providers for their output, particularly bandwidth hoggers like the iPlayer.

The row illustrates how much the net has evolved over the last few years. With the mass introduction of high-bandwidth streaming service like the iPlayer, Spotify, YouTube and the like, the pressure on ISPs to provide a fast and consistent service to their users has increased dramatically.

Lord Carter’s Digital Britain review is due next week and should call for broadband at high speeds and low prices. It might just be that content providers are going to have to come to a compromise with the ISPs to make that happen.

Whatever the outcome, the end users should not be the ones who are penalised. If an ISP advertises up to 8Mbps broadband with unlimited data allowance then that is exactly what they should provide. They shouldn’t promote a service if they are going to struggle to provide it.

(via The FT)

Paul Lamkin Broadband, Internet

Scandal: UK's appaling internet speeds exposed

uk-internet-speeds-map.jpg

The UK’s woeful internet speeds were exposed today after it was revealed that three million homes in the UK have broadband speeds of less than 2Mps.

These so called, notspots, are not merely confined to rural communities but extend to streets in major towns.

The limiting affect of a bad broadband connection on a user’s internet experience is marked. Those people in poor connection areas can’t view certain webpages or use certain web tools such as Flickr, Facebook and iPlayer.

Samknows.com have compiled this handy map so you can see roughly what speed you’re getting in your neck of the woods.

Stroud appears to have a reasonable connection speed or 16Mps, which seems a tad pointless being that nobody in Gloucestershire owns a computer, I’m kidding they have computers, but they all use dial-up. Broadband is banned in Gloucestershire, they think its witchcraft.

The UK’s average connection speed of around 5Mps is a full 15Mps slower than world-leader Singapore, who enjoy blistering 20Mps internet, but even that is still a full 20Mps slower than the fastest domestic connection in the world which belongs to Sigbritt Löthberg, a 78-year-old from Karlstad, Sweden. But apparently all she uses it for is to go on garfieldminusgarfield.net. Bless her.

(Via BBC)

TechDigest writer Internet