Tag: broadband
Opinion: Super fast broadband via the sewers is fine, but ISPs need incentives to improve
Ofcom has decided to conduct a survey of Britain’s pipework to test its suitability for carrying fibre-optic cabling for use in high speed broadband networks.
Bournemouth Council has already tested broadband via the sewers, so it’s possible, but the main problem is that most ISPs don’t have a real incentive to roll out faster services.
Two issues — the growing use of mobile Internet, and Internet users’ skyrocketing demand for Video on Demand and other bandwidth-intensive multimedia — were never envisaged when the Internet was born.
BT Home Hub defaults to being insecure, sez security firm
With the ongoing marketing push for BT broadband and other integrated goodness via their Home Hub, there’s a good chance that a large section of the population are using an insecure router to access the Internet.
These are generally the same people — he says both stereotypically and self-righteously — who don’t install and keep anti-virus software up-to-date, or have the faintest idea what a firewall is…
3 mobile sees traffic rocket sevenfold thanks to USB broadband adaptors
It’s the future. It’s definitely the future. One little USB dongle that’s your broadband connection wherever you go. No hotspot fee rip-offs, no internet separation anxieties, no worries.
And this attainable futuristic dream has resulted in a traffic bonanza for 3, with its newly cheaper USB broadband adaptor making web traffic on its network rocket by seven times in the last six months alone. Here, look, it’s so happy it’s made a graph about it:
“Sometimes the core network has been running at 102 per cent of capacity, at other times…
ISPs really not happy about iPlayer, Tiscali wants BBC to foot the service bill!
There’s trouble a-brewing between Auntie and the UKs Internet Service Providers over the recently launched video-on-demand iPlayer service.
iPlayer lets users stream or download recent BBC TV shows as a kind of ‘catch-up’ service. In its first month, the Beeb reports that over 1 million viewers downloaded some 3.5 million program. As you can imagine, this caused a bit of strain on the networks…
The internet will stop in 2010 – I'd throw your computer away now if I were you
The internet is going to explode in the three seconds!
No, of course it isn’t but these are the kinds of things some newspapers would like you to believe.
The latest piece of semi-cataclysmic fear-mongery comes from the Metro and – just in case you weren’t worried enough about climate change, terrorism and immigration – they’re asking you to add to the list that the internet is doomed to grind to a halt in 2010…
Vodafone introduces new pricing structure for mobile broadband in the UK
This week sees a new pricing structure from Vodafone for its UK mobile broadband service, with prices starting at £15 per month…
Virgin Media may be first UK ISP to ban illegal downloaders
Following last month’s announcement of an official “three strikes and you’re off the Internet” policy, it seems that Virgin Media could be the first UK ISP to implement the scheme.
Though the record labels are pushing for such a scheme, there’s no definitive method for ensuring such measures are legal yet. The Government is expected to consult on this next month…
Wi-Fi hotspots are "telephone boxes of the broadband era" claims Ericsson exec
Mobile broadband offerings are growing at such a rapid pace, and becoming affordable enough to make Wi-Fi hotspots irrelevant, according to Ericsson’s Chief Marketing Officer, Johan Bergendahl.
“Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era,” he claimed at a recent conference in Stockholm.
Quite a different viewpoint from the likes of Apple, then, whose latest offerings — the iPhone and MacBook Air — rely heavily on the availability of Wi-Fi to perform at their best…
Virgin Media speed throttling revisited — FAQ
A consistently popular article on Tech Digest over the past year has been about Virgin Media’s broadband throttling scheme, whereby it slaps a speed limit on the customers it deems to be “heavy users” if they download or upload too much during peak hours.
It’s certainly got you hot under the collar, as most of the 80+ comments — plus the search terms you’re using to find the article in the first place — testify.
Here, as a public service, is Tech Digest’s Frequently Asked Questions [FAQ] guide to Virgin Media’s broadband speed throttling.
UK Government to investigate path to next generation broadband
Think your pitifully slow “nowhere near up to eight meg” broadband is a joke? You may be vaguely encouraged that the Government is starting to look at how we move Britain into truly fast, “next generation” broadband.
The Business and Competitiveness Minister, Shriti Vadera, launched the independent review on Friday. It will look at the importance of 100Mbps+ broadband to British businesses, and what the potential barriers are to achieving those kind of speeds.
“The way we will do business, access many government services, as well as information and entertainment, will change beyond recognition over our lifetime. New technologies will push the boundaries of today’s communications infrastructure,” she said. “We need to prepare the way for the UK to adopt groundbreaking new technologies to ensure that we do not get left behind – competitively or technologically.”
