New Zealand plans to provide a minimum 5Mbits/s to 97% of rural households and 1 Mbits/s to the remaining 3%.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has unveiled its plans today to give 100m American households 100Mb by 2020. The National Broadband Plan would bring next generation access speeds to 90% of Americans and also give schools, hospitals and military facilities a 1Gb connection.
It is estimated to cost in the region of $350bn or £233bn but [...]

The government needs to ensure the new universal service commitment of 2Mb is met throughout rural communities before funding next generation access to urban areas, according to Charles Trotman, Head of Rural Business Development at the Coutry Land and Business Association (CLA) and leading voice behind a newly-formed pressure group, Final Third First.
He, and fellow [...]

Broadband should be marketed far more for its benefits, rather than an end in itself, and ISPs should be more creative at coming up with affordable packages which include computers.
That is the summary of Jill Pitt, researcher at Consumer Focus, a body part-funded by government which researches consumer issues. Presenting research at the House of [...]

If fibre is to reach deeper penetration and small and medium businesses, providers are going to have to start getting better at showing boards how they can pay for faster internet connections through reduced call charges.
So argues Adam Beaumont, Managing Director of AQL which has extended the fibre network it runs to support its Voice [...]

Jose Socrates, Prime Minister of Portugal, has announced that he want to bring next-generation fibre networks to the whole country as quickly as possible.

The Government’s plan to introduce a 50p levy on all telephone land lines has run in to heavy criticism from an all-party group of MPs.
The Business Innovation and Skills Committee has labelled the tax as “ill-directed” because it takes money from everyone to deliver a gain that not all will see. As the committee concluded:
“We [...]

A laptop that ‘even your granny’ is supposed to be able to use and which comes with broadband and support for just under £35 per month became available today in a bid to get more silver surfers online.
Andrew Holmes, co-founder of The Broadband Computer Company claims its Alex laptop (named after Alexander Graham Bell, inventor [...]

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has outlined one of the key goals of the National Broadband Plan – to deliver 100 Mbps connections to 100 million households.

BT’s decision this week to open its fibre ducts to competitors has been given a cautious welcome by rivals.
However, the overriding concern is that there are no firm details from BT about how access will be given and under what terms. With the growing politicisation of fibre, for its ability to bring ‘next generation’ broadband [...]

BT is to open its fibre ducts to allow third parties to roll out their own fibre networks.
In a move its Chief Executive described as ‘unlikely to be the silver bullet that will get fibre in to every home’, the broadband giant has arguable pre-empted future legislation that would have forced it to open its [...]

The Tories have been unveiling their digital ambitions.

Sky’s half yearly results show that although the ISP is outperforming arch rival TalkTalk on net new broadband additions, its rate of acceleration is showing signs of slowing.
Ironically, television seemed to dominate both ISPs’ results for the last half and last quarter of 2009. While TalkTalk publicly acknowledged its sponsorship of the X-Factor of nearly [...]

The Independent Spectrum Broker admits moves toward Digital Britain came at “wrong point in the electoral cycle.”

Virgin Media has hit back at claims from BT that its newly-announced Infinity fibre service is better than the alternative from Virgin Media, particularly on price and upload speeds.
The cable telephone, television and broadband operator has taken the unusual step of going through BT’s claims one by one and also adding a few pointers on [...]

BT has Virgin Media firmly in its sites today as it launched its highly-antipicated fibre product, BT Infinity.
With scant details of availability, other than a promise to roll it out to 4 million homes and businesses by the end of the year and 10 million by the summer of 2012, the corporation was concentrating on [...]

Less than 10% of IPv4 addresses remain and it could have “grave consequences” for the future of the net.

Residents and businesses in part of Manchester are a step closer to having a “true open access network which will revolutionise ways of working and using digital communications.” That’s according to the Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA), which has announced the appointment of a firm to deliver its next-generation fibre-optic broadband project.

Government says one in four of its Digital Britain recommendations have been achieved.

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills has opened up a three month consultation period to gather views on how the Next Generation Fund could best be used to bring Next Generation Access to 90% of the population by 2017. Estimates suggest the fund could reach as much as a billion pounds within that period.
The [...]