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22
June 2010 |
O2, Orange, and Vodafone will conduct joint U.K. trials of a new mobile broadcast technology called Integrated Mobile Broadcast (IMB), which will let the operators offer better mobile TV and radio services, they said on Tuesday.
The pilot will start in October in central London and Slough, and run for three months, the three operators said. Their goal is to assess how mobile broadcast services can be deployed using a shared network infrastructure.
It is too soon to say when IMB-based services will be ... |
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21
June 2010 |
Kenya has started to register all mobile phone numbers in a bid to cut crime.
Users will have to supply identity documents and proof of address before they get a number.
Any numbers still unregistered at the end of July will be disconnected, the government says.
The BBC's Odhiambo Joseph in Nairobi says many people there support the move, hoping it will make life more difficult for criminals.
Kidnapping gangs often use unregistered mobile numbers to text ransom demands, he says.
Information m... |
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21
June 2010 |
British Telecom (BT) said that it will allow unlimited access to 1.5 million BT FON and BT Openzone WiFi hotspots across the UK for millions of its Total Broadband users.
This will include O2's mobile customers who are about to have their 3G access rationed as they upgrade to new devices.
It will mean that millions of people with smartphones, laptops, netbooks and burgeoning numbers of other devices such as Ipads and notebooks can still have fast, reliable Internet access when away from their homes an... |
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18
June 2010 |
The three big landline telephone firms - BT, TalkTalk and Virgin - have agreed to make big cuts to the cost of ending their deals early.
The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has told them to cut their "early termination" charges by up to 85 percent.
The one-off fees levied on their customers will fall from as much as GBP33 to as little as GBP2.
The firms agreed to the change despite arguing that their fees were not unfair.
All other landline phone suppliers have been told to follow the example of the ... |
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12
June 2010 |
AUSTRALIA is one of only two developed countries where the take-up of broadband internet connections went backwards last year, according to new data.
The latest figures for 31 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show the number of broadband subscribers per 100 people slipped 0.55 last year in Australia, with only Finland recording a bigger slide.
In contrast, broadband take-up grew by 1.39 in the US, 1.69 in South Korea and 2.96 in Germany, leaving the OECD a... |
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11
June 2010 |
Companies in Australia which provide customers with a connection to the Internet may soon have to retain subscriber's private Web browsing history for law enforcement to examine when requested, a move which has been widely criticised by industry insiders.
The Australian Attorney-General's Department yesterday confirmed to ZDNet Asia's sister site ZDNet Australia that it had been in discussions with industry on implementing a data retention regime in Australia. Such a regime would require companies provid... |
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8
June 2010 |
The UK has a lot of work to do to catch up with Europe when it comes to rolling out fibre broadband to its citizens.
So claims Hartwig Tauber, director general of the Fibre to the Home (FTTH) Council, who is pushing for more FTTH connections, but still has concerns about British broadband altogether.
In an interview with IT PRO Tauber said: "Summer last year South Korea announced it wanted to become a 1Gb country" and there was a clear push from Government. At the same time the UK released the [Digita... |
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8
June 2010 |
The UK's culture secretary has been talking tough on broadband in his first major speech on the issue.
Jeremy Hunt said that the previous government's commitment to a "paltry 2Mbps" (megabits per second) universal net speed was "pitifullly unambitious".
He added that it was "a scandal" that nearly three million households cannot access even this speed.
He said that his goal was to provide Britain with the "best superfast broadband network in Europe".
Details on how this would be achieved were sc... |
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4
June 2010 |
BT will have to give rival internet providers physical access to its fibre infrastructure, the European Commission has said.
The Commission gave its approval to an Ofcom proposal that would compel BT to 'virtually unbundle' its network, but said this would have to be a "transitional measure". Full fibre unbundling should be imposed on BT "as soon as technically and economically possible", the Commission said on Wednesday.
BT is already virtually unbundling its next-generation access network, letting r... |
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29
May 2010 |
O2 has told customers on its "unlimited downloads" tariff that they should aim to use less than 10GB per month.
The company, which in the past has been praised for it's excellent internet service (take note Virgin) has put these restrictions and traffic management policies on the service of customers using its Home Access package.
The move follows O2's scheme back in March where it started out sending letter to people it deemed as among the "heaviest users" on its Home Broadband Access service. It sa... |
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27
May 2010 |
The UK ranks just 33rd in the world for average broadband speeds, behind the likes of Liechtenstein and Slovakia and only marginally above the worldwide average.
Broadband metrics group Ookla has revealed its Net Index, which ranks countries based on data collected by its Speedtest and Pingtest online connecting-testing utilities.
According to the index, which examined more than 1.5 billion records in total, South Korea has the world's fastest broadband, with the average connection zipping along at do... |
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27
May 2010 |
The Union is currently balloting up to 60,000 of its members to decide whether or not to strike. It's looking for a two per cent pay rise for staff by Friday next week. If staff at the telecommunications company do decide to carry out industrial action it will be the company's first national strike for 23 years.
Speaking on the effect this strike could have on home broadband customers across the country, spokesman for the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Kevin Slocombe, told the Metro newspaper: "Many ... |
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25
May 2010 |
Poor enforcement of telecommunications rules in the European Union is keeping prices high for businesses and consumers in some EU member states, the European Commission said in a report on Tuesday.
Inconsistent regulations across the 27-nation bloc were responsible for the sharp differences in wholesale and retail prices and were hindering the bloc's single market, the Commission said in its electronic communications market report.
"Consumers and business still face 27 fragmented national markets. Nat... |
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25
May 2010 |
A new cloud over Dublin is raining technology.
The city and a local company, HighSpeedAir Inc., have completed a wireless-network project that began more than four years ago.
Now, a Wi-Fi cloud blankets Dublin - about 24 square miles - giving residents new options beyond their personal cell-phone plans for the paid service. It also will help municipal workers do their jobs better, said Dana McDaniel, deputy city manager and economic-development director.
Dublin has invested nearly USD1 million sinc... |
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24
May 2010 |
EIRCOM WILL from today begin a process that will lead to cutting off the broadband service of customers found to be repeatedly sharing music online illegally.
Ireland is the first country in the world where a system of "graduated response" is being put in place. Under the pilot scheme, Eircom customers who illegally share copyrighted music will get three warnings before having their broadband service cut off for a year.
The Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma), whose members include EMI, Sony, Univ... |
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