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3
Oct 2011 |
A "power failure" at a major exchange in Birmingham has seen huge numbers of BT Broadband customers across the UK cut off.
The company said those affected numbered into the hundreds of thousands - about 5 percent of its total customers.
Business users were particularly badly affected, with many reporting considerable lost revenue as a result.
BT said the service has now been fully restored, advising customers to "turn their hub or modem off and on again".
The first reports of lost connections be... |
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30
Sept 2011 |
With the Olympics just nine months away, the UK's mobile broadband 3G speeds are still in the dark ages, says Broadbandgenie.co.uk - and things don't look like improving in time.
Using data from thousands of speed tests run through its website, Broadband Genie has found that average mobile broadband speeds are still around 1-2Mb across the board for all of the UK's leading providers. This shows a very small increase from last year's figures, with only 3 mobile and O2 making significant speed gains (O2 be... |
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29
Sept 2011 |
ISPs face changes to the way they advertise broadband services.
From April next year, providers will no longer be able to advertise maximum speeds for net packages unless 10% of customers can actually get them.
The new rules come from the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP), the body responsible for writing advertising codes.
But Which?, one of the main campaigners for change, said the new rulings do not go far enough.
Typical speeds
There has been huge pressure from industry and ... |
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28
Sept 2011 |
New figures released today by industry body the Broadband Forum have revealed that global broadband growth remained steady in the first half of this year, with more than 29 million customers added in the six-month period to reach a total of 557.8 million worldwide.
The second quarter of this year also outperformed the previous three-month period, as countries like China continue to ramp up their broadband growth. India, Brazil and Russia were at the top of the growth rankings for broadband in the second ... |
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15
Sept 2011 |
Belgium could be the second European country after the Netherlands to adopt net neutrality for both fixed and mobile networks. Three political parties have joined forces to launch a proposed law (in Dutch), which they hope will be approved early next year.
If accepted, all internet traffic in Belgium needs to be treated equally, regardless of its type, with one exception: ISPs are still allowed to block heavy traffic from p2p or video services to avoid quality deterioration, as well as heavy-duty traffic... |
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15
Sept 2011 |
UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom has just announced a ban on what the industry calls 'rollover contracts.' Rollover contracts are agreements that tie landline and broadband customers into repeated minimum contract periods unless they opt out. These contracts are most often referred to as ARCs, or Automatically Renewable Contracts. Generally, a customer on an ARC will have an opt-out period when their contract is about to roll-over into a new agreement. If you don't opt out of the renewal in that time, you are loc... |
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7
Sept 2011 |
The volume of New Zealand's internet traffic has fallen since the introduction of new copyright laws Thursday, the New Zealand Herald reported, citing an unnamed source.
The new law requires internet companies to issue three warning notices to customers suspected of illegally downloading copyright content. Following the third notice, the rights holders can bring a case against the customer before the Copyright Tribunal.
The Herald reports the unnamed employee, from one of the country's largest interne... |
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5
Sept 2011 |
If the use of internet services is to improve in Uganda, the government has to lobby for better rates, an industry expert has advised. The government needs to lobby for better pricing for the end user so that consumers in the country can get online cheaply, Mr Moses Kemibaro, the regional manager Dealfish East Africa, a new online marketing company, said last week.
Domestic internet service providers (ISPs), charge between Shs4,000 to about Shs300,000 for unlimited or bundles ranging between 1gigabyt (GB... |
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1
Sept 2011 |
Mobile phone operator MTN Uganda, a unit of South African group MTN, has raised tariffs by up to 100 percent due to rising costs, it said, pointing to more inflationary pressures for east Africa's third largest economy.
MTN, the biggest operator in the country with 7.5 percent of the country's estimated 13 million mobile phone subscribers, had said last week revenue this year might be hurt by inflation.
The annual inflation rate rose to 21.4 percent in August from 18.8 percent in July, on the back of ... |
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31
Aug 2011 |
Almost half of UK internet users are going online via mobile phone data connections, according to the Office for National Statistics.
45 percent of people surveyed said they made use of the net while out and about, compared with 31 percent in 2010.
The most rapid growth was among younger people, where 71 percent of internet-connected 16 to 24-year-olds used mobiles.
Domestic internet use also rose. According to the ONS, 77 percent of households now have access to a net connection.
That figure wa... |
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26
Aug 2011 |
Copper theft is a growing problem for the communication network in Northern Ireland, BT has said.
In recent weeks, stolen cables have caused disruption to phone lines in south Tyrone and in Banbridge copper cable was cut at 16 junction boxes.
Also in the last few days cabling has been stolen from poles along a number of roads in Londonderry.
BT's head of security has travelled to NI to meet the PSNI to discuss the use of new technology to combat the crime.
"Copper is contained within our cables ... |
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24
Aug 2011 |
Some residents near Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., are getting the first taste of Google's 1-gigabit-per-second broadband service.
The service has been live in the market for about a month, and it will continue to be rolled out to homes in the community, where mostly Stanford professors and faculty live. The service is free to residents for the first year.
Google is building the Stanford fiber-to-the-home network and a larger network in Kansas City, Kansas, as sort of test beds for ultra-hi... |
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23
Aug 2011 |
Telecommunications companies in 16 states will share more than $103 million in federal funding to help expand broadband Internet access to those areas of rural America that haven't been reached by the high-speed service or are underserved, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday.
Policymakers, public interest groups and telecom companies are seeking to bridge the digital divide by reaching even the most remote pockets of the U.S. with broadband Internet, hoping to improve economic and educati... |
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10
Aug 2011 |
MTN Business Kenya has ventured in to fixed telephone services with the launch of MTN Managed IP PBX service.
The new solution merges data and voice to deliver telephony services to businesses over an Internet Protocol(IP) service making teleconferencing possible.
Tom Omariba, Managing Director, MTN Business Kenya said ,"With the shift to Internet Protocol-driven networks, the possibility of replacing outdated communication technologies with software-driven solutions has become a distinct reality".
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10
Aug 2011 |
A study conducted by broadband optimisation firm Pando Networks has revealed "striking disparities between the theoretical and real-world download speeds for British broadband users".
Having tracked end-user speeds for more than 400,000 broadband customers during the first six months of 2011, Pando's research found UK services to be "far slower than many broadband providers advertise".
Be Broadband proved to be the fastest broadband provider, averaging downloads of 594KBps, followed by Virgin Media's ... |
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