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23
Nov 2009 |
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SEACOM, the privately funded and over three quarter African owned submarine fibre optic cable system, was named Best Pan African InitiativeӔ at the AfricaCom Awards 2009 ceremony held in Cape Town, South Africa, on Wednesday 11 November 2009. The award recognises an initiative taken by an organisation or a group of organisations to improve telecommunications services at a regional or continental level. The awards ceremony form part of the AfricaCom Congress, a yearly two day pan-African communications |
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5
Nov 2009 |
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Businesses in Glasgow are getting a free taste of what British Telecom's superfast fibre broadband has to offer as part of a trial. BT last year announced it planned to spend GBP 1.5 billion by 2012 to roll out fibre optic broadband to around 10 million homes. Business customers in the Glasgow Halfway exchange area who currently use BT services can take part in the free trial of fibre the the cabinet broadband, offering download speeds of up to 40Mbps and upload speeds of up to 2Mbps. The trial users will |
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4
Nov 2009 |
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On the 1tth to 12th November, the British government will simulate the "total collapse" of the national telephone network. The move was announced at the House of Lords EU Sub-Committee on Home Affairs yesterday. Codenamed White Noise, the exercise has been designed to simulate a countrywide telecommunications failure, which is something that can take place if the UK suffered a cyber or physical attack, or a natural disaster. Geoff Smith, the head of communications security in the Department for Business |
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2
Nov 2009 |
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TalkTalk's chief executive Charles Dunstone has lashed out at the UK government, saying that the "unjust and regressive" plan that will see every phone bill add an extra 50p per month will backfire on the Government whilst delaying the rollout of next-gen broadband services in rural areas. He continued by saying "This is an unjust and regressive tax on all phone customers which will subsidise mostly richer rural households that can afford high-priced super-fast broadband services. As well as being unfair |
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29
Oct 2009 |
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A UK campaign calling for lower mobile phone charges between networks will hand telecoms regulator Ofcom a petition with 114,259 signatures on Wednesday. The campaing, called Terminate the Rate, wants mobile termination rates (MTRs) - which are what mobile network operators charge to handle other networks' traffic - reduced to reflect actual costs. Signatories include 258 members of parliament and 60 businesses, and are calling for the rates to be cut from 5p to less than 1p. The Terminate the Rate campaign |
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22
Oct 2009 |
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Australian telco Optus has reduced excess 3G usage charges for a new range of wireless broadband plans by more than half. The charges have been slashed from 15c (R1) to 6 cents (41c) per MB. The packages now also have larger data allowances as well as lower modem prices, although the increased data allowances are only available to those who sign a 12 month contract. Once the contract reaches its end, the data allowance is halved. The 7GB option is AUD55 (R378) per month for the first 12 months, and drops |
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21
Oct 2009 |
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A study by Top 10 Broadband has found that homeowners are considering the quality of broadband available in their area of interest when looking to buy a house. According to the study, forty percent of people would avoid moving to an area where the broadband connections weren't up to par. Around 60 percent said they would be envious if their neighbour's broadband was faster than their own. Top 10 Broadband has recently launched its one-of-a-kind StreetStats platform, allowing current and potential broadband |
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21
Oct 2009 |
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According to a Cisco Systems survey of more than 20 service providers, over 60 percent of the entire world's internet traffic is generated by only around 10 percent of the world's broadband users, while the average usage per broadband connection is 11.4 Gigabytes of data per month. Cisco also found that more than 20 percent of all traffic is generated by only 1 percent of the heaviest broadband users. Cisco's Visual Networking Index (VNI) Usage report represents activity during Q3 2009 and is aggregated |
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21
Oct 2009 |
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British telecoms company Orange has refreshed its broadband offerings and will now dish out up to 20Mbps broadband to all its customers. The 20Mbps download speed will now be standard for all its packages. The company has now introduced an offering called Home Ultra, which includes Orange's Livebox wireless router, enabling connectivity for up to 6 PC's. At a modest GBP10.50 (R128) per month for Orange's mobile pay monthly customers it also includes anytime inclusive calls to UK landlines.Orange's |
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20
Oct 2009 |
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UAE telecoms provider Etisalat is to launch the region's fastest broadband service which will run at 38 Megabits per second. The company will be installing a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network throughout the United Arab Emirates, which is part in preparation for its future plans that include IPTV and online video. Senior vice president of marketing, Khalifa Al Shamsi, says "We want to develop the UAE as one of the best connected countries worldwide so that it can offer the best services for businesses and |
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19
Oct 2009 |
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Voice over IP calls could be legalised in the UAE by the end of the year, says a senior official at the countrys Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) on Sunday. Mohammed Gheyath, executive director of technology development affairs, confirmed that the telecommunications regulator is busy drawing up a policy on international internet telecommunications, know as Voice over IP (VoIP) and will be published before year-end. "Hopefully by the end of this year a new policy will be out," Gheyath said.
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19
Oct 2009 |
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For the second year in a row, AT&T is to increase the basic price of its landlines by over 20 percent. The telecommunications provider will next week be notifying its customers that the monthly charge for their landline will go up from USD13.50 (R99) to USD16.45 (R121) on the 2nd of January 2010. Around 3.3 million of AT&T's customers will be affected by the increase, while subscribers of bundled services won't be affected. AT&T had its prices capped for 13 years by the California Public Utilities |
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19
Oct 2009 |
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Phone giant Verizon is turning up the heat for cable companies, and are now offering its Northeast and Mid-Atlantic customers a package that includes wireless calling, home phone, TV, and home broadband services. Providers have been heralding the ability to offer "quadruple-play" services for home users as it allows the providers to generate increased revenue per user. Numerous surveys have indicated that consumers prefer this type of bundled offering as it eases billing, and of course the fact that bundles |
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15
Oct 2009 |
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On Tuesday ENISA - The European Network and Information Security Agency - announced that it is now the first European Union agency to start offering internet services over version 6 of the Internet Protocol (IP) protocol. They are now offering their website over IPv6 after upgrading their internal network to provide IP connectivity, DNS lookup and HTTP/S on the new v6 protocol. This move kicks off the European Commission's IPv6 Action Plan, which aims for the widepsread implementation of IPv6 by 2010. |
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15
Oct 2009 |
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The Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications is promising all of its 5.3 million citizens a guaranteed 1Mbps service by July 2010. This 1Mbps minimum speed will increase to 100Mbps by the end of 2015. While this sounds like an arduous task, around 95 percent of Finns already have broadband. The new Government initiative will now have to increase the focus on rural connectivity as they are behind their urban counterparts. Finland is currently 21st in the worldwide broadband leadership chart, |
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