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 [...]

Virgin Media announced this morning that it is to start rolling out a 100Mb commercial service before the end of the year. The ISP also claimed that it is extending a small trial of 200Mb connections.
Quoting figures from SamKnows’ Performance Monitoring service which, in partnership with Ofcom, measures access speeds across the country, Virgin claimed [...]

TalkTalk is calling on Ofcom to ban BT, and any other provider, from using ‘rolling contracts’ to hook customers in to long-term contracts.
BT came under heavy criticism yesterday in a Which? report for using contracts which tie consumers in to the service for 18 months and are then renewed at the end of the 18 [...]

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 [...]

European Commission seems happy but rival firms could yet put a spanner in the works.

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 [...]

The X-Factor may have missed out on a Christmas number one this year, but TalkTalk believes the hit show it sponsored played a star role in it more than trebling analysts expectations for net new broadband customers in the last three months of 2009.
Figures out yesterday show that the ISP acquired 36,000 net new broadband [...]

How the anti-piracy measures included in its Digital Economy Bill could work in practice.

The industry body’s commissioned its own research into the costs of the Digital Economy Bill’s copyright clauses.

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.

Be broadband is to launch an up to 40Mb ‘bonded’ ADSL2+ service next month.
The ISP is claiming that uploads speeds should increase to up to 5Mb but is warning that February’s unveiling of the new service will be a soft launch. Bonding two lines together, it warns, may have teething issues, although the service has [...]

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 [...]

You won’t be seeing any more of the Tiscali logo as the brand is officially decommissioned.