Pay Per Click Advertising and SEO » Broadband

BT extends Fast Broadband Service

Matt Thomas — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:00:52 +0000

British Telecom is extending its super-fast broadband services, making the 100 megabits per second service available to double the number of people. The extension of the ‘fibre to premise’ service will make super-fast internet available to in the region of 2.5 million households. This is all coming as part of BT’s £1.5 billion pound investment in broadband networks through which they hope to connect 10 million homes to their fast broadband service by 2012.

However, BT has admitted that most of these connections will not technically be ‘fibre to the premise’ connections, rather ‘fibre to the cabinet’ connections where fibreoptic cables are hooked up to junction boxes on roads. ‘Fibre to the premesis’ connections are likely to be installed mainly in urban areas.

The new BT networks will be offered on a wholesale basis, which means that competitors like Sky and Carphone Warehouse will eventually be able to lease these high speed connections from BT and offer their own services through them.

The government has made high speed internet access a priority over the last few months, with the Digital Britain report even going so far as to pledge universal broadband access, at speeds of at least two megabits per second, across the UK by 2012.

UK Broadband not Future-Proof

Jenny Sanderson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:18:29 +0000

According to recent research from Cisco UK, Great Britain’s broadband service is not fit for the country’s future needs. Whilst the current broadband speed is sufficient for today’s sites and internet capabilities, Cisco believes we will struggle to compete with the next generation, Web 3.0, if you will.

Out of the 66 countries whose broadband signal was ranked, Britain came an embarrassing 25th, putting us behind the likes of less developed eastern-block countries like Latvia and Bulgaria. The one comforting thing to come out of the report is that we are classified as ‘meeting current requirements’, which at least puts us ahead of countries like Brazil, Argentina, and China who have always had a combative relationship with the internet.

The fastest, as if you needed to ask, are Japan and Korea which are approaching the threshold of 1 gigabit a second. That’s right, I said One Gigabit a second. This speed will apparently be universal in Japan and Korea by 2012. Just to give you appoint of reference on exactly how fast that is, the worldwide average speed is 4.75 Megabit per second.

France pushes ‘Three Strikes’ Piracy Law

Matt Thomas — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:25:59 +0000

France is continuing with its hard line stance against Internet piracy, seeking to pass a ‘three strikes’ rule that could see illegal downloaders banned from the Internet if they persist. The proposed new law would seek to revoke the broadband service of anyone caught downloading copyrighted material three times.

The law, thought to be one of French premier, Nicholas Sarkosy’s pet projects, has already been passed once, though it was rejected by the national assembly partially on the grounds that, offenders who were banned from the Internet would still have to pay for their Broadband service. However, Sarkosy and his government are busy making amendments prior to resubmission and it is widely expected that the law will pass in some form or another eventually.

Governments have been struggling to cope with the problem of file sharing and illegal downloading for years now and legislators are watching closely to see whether or not the law can be made to work. If so, it could have a huge knock on effect globally.

Under the current proposal, bans could range from two months to a full year, depending on the severity of the offences.

BT Broadband Trial = 10 times faster Internet

James Oliver — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:45:01 +0000

Thousands of South Wales residents will be amongst the first customers to reap the benefits of BT’s new ‘super-fast’ broadband trial. The Internet users of Cardiff and Taffs will find themselves exploring the Internet and downloading files at unprecedented speeds early on in 2010 after BT have installed the fibrotic broadband.

This being a technology blog, I’d better explain the vital statistics. The internet speed will run up to a maximum speed of 40 mbps (megabits per second) with an even better speed of 60 Mbps available to a lucky 16’000 or so homes and businesses making those connections more than ten times as fast as the current speed in UK homes.

Impressive as it is the trial has not been cheap, a whopping £1.5 billion pounds has been earmarked for the project. This represents the single largest investment in fast Broadband technology ever seen in this country.

A few very lucky computer users in Cardiff and North London will have the opportunity to test out the super fast internet speeds this summer ahead of the main roll-out.

UK will struggle to up Broadband Speed to meet Targets

James Oliver — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 12:31:28 +0000

According to PointTopic, a UK based broadband think-tank, the government is going to have an ‘uphill struggle’ to fulfil its pledge to bring broadband of a minimum speed of 2 Megabytes per second to its Great Britain. The company has produced a breakdown of all the areas in the country that are not yet up to that speed and it makes for troubling reading.

Northern Ireland is the worst placed with more than 30 percent of all households failing to meet the 2Mbps standard. Wales is only slightly behind with 29.9 percent of all homes failing to meet the standard. Predictably, the best area is London, where only 1.2 percent of the population are out of range. However, it is the only section of the UK that falls below 10 percent.

The think-tank has described the scale of the task as massive and has advised the government to seek cooperation between it, the regulator and the operators if it is going to have any success. This crossroads for the UK’s broadband provision comes 10 years after the first broadband connection was established in the UK. Now analysts are predicting that adoption will reach 90% of all UK homes within another 10 years, making a success of it is critically important.

China’s Online Population matches total US Population

Matt Thomas — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:13:27 +0000

If any of you were having doubts about just how big an online market China has become, let me put it into perspective for you. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, China currently have 298 million citizens online, that’s around the total population of the US.

Amazingly, only 22.6 percent of China’s total population are actually online currently. That number is rising year on year meaning that these already impressive figures are set to grow and grow.

Obviously there are still a great many rural and poor Chinese people who have little hope of ever using a computer, let alone the internet. For this reason, China is unlikely to get to the percentages of people online enjoyed by most western countries. Even so, if the number only ever rose to 30 percent that would still make it the largest domestic market in the world, with around 400 million eager consumers online.

The 298 million number represents a 41.9 percent spike from last year. In addition to the general proliferation of the internet in China, the Chinese authorities are putting the increase down to an explosion last year in the number of people accessing the internet via mobile devices like iPhones.

Public hugely reliant on Internet, says Survey

James Oliver — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:00:43 +0000

It’ll come as no great revelation to anyone that the public are more dependent on Internet access than ever before. However, did you know that 61% of American women would rather go without TV for two weeks than Internet for one? Or, that 65% of adults in the US actually say that they ‘could not live without’ Internet access?

So says a survey conducted by Harris Interactive and Intel, which quizzed 2,119 Americans about their Internet usage. The survey aimed to measure reliance on the Internet but ended up revealing some truly startling Stats.

It would appear that of all the discretionary spending that Americans engage in, Internet access is considered the most vital, above gym membership, shopping for clothes, dining out, and even cable television.

The ‘banner finding of the study’ was this: 30% of men and 46% of women would rather give up sex for two weeks than Internet.

These findings are all very amusing, though they also point to a growing shift in the importance of the Internet to people. There are numerous likely reasons for this though first and foremost are probably web 2.0 innovations like Internet TV and social networking that have transferred the Internet from a tool to aid your lifestyle to something approaching a lifestyle in its own right.

Opposition to free US Broadband

James Oliver — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:02:42 +0000

It is widely anticipated that a prominent Democratic lawmaker is to request that the FFC (Federal Communications Commission) postpone the vote on a planned radio spectrum auction. The proposal, as it stands, is that eventual buyer would be required to devote a portion (about 25%) of the AWS-3 segment of airwaves to providing free broadband services across the United States. The vote is currently scheduled for next Thursday.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia, Democrat) thinks that the FCC should avoid taking up major projects whilst it is overseeing the USA’s switch to digital TV which is happening in February 2009.

A delay in the vote would be hugely popular amongst the numerous mobile phone companies that oppose the deal.

T-Mobile have been the most vocal in their opposition due to their ownership of the adjacent airwave section to AWS-3. They claim that the proposed usage of AWS-3 will cause interference with their segment of airwaves. Their annoyance is understandable, seeing as they paid 4.2 billion for their section relatively recently. However, the FFC contest T-Mobile’s claims, stating that after examining the issue they have found no reason to believe there would be interference issues.

USA moves a step closer to free Broadband

Matt Thomas — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:00:53 +0000

The dream of free broadband across the US is a step closer to becoming a reality today after a debate lasting two years has finally led to a vote on the issue being scheduled. If the vote passes and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approves the plan then free broadband could be rolled out across America before 2009 is out.

The free broadband plan revolves around the AWS-3 segment of airwaves which are currently not being used. About 25% of the AWS-3 would need to be designated for free wireless broadband use. Whoever eventually buys the airwaves would be required by the terms of the sale to honour this usage policy. They would not however, be restricted from charging for premium broadband or other services in addition to the basic free connection provide by the state. Ownership of AWS-3 will be decided by auction next year.

The plan is predicted to benefit rural users in particular. Many rural Internet users are still forced by geography to use dial up Internet connections which struggle to handle web 2.0 features like streaming video. As a result, many of them are in danger of being left behind as the Internet advances at a pace they cannot match.

Internet providers on the other hand are, unsurprisingly, not so keen, particularly T-Mobile who bought the spectrum next to AWS-3 for $4 billion dollars in 2006.