SamKnows

The Business and Enterprise Committee are to hold an inquiry into Broadband speeds in the UK.

A new report is backing alternative models for putting fast broadband into rural areas, arguing the Digital Britain report’s proposed levy on phone lines may not be enough.

The Digital Britain report is out at last and there was a proverbial rabbit in the hat for Lord Carter to pull out; a 50p per month tax on telephone line connections to raise roughly £150m a year to push back the geographic barriers of faster web access.
Other than that, the report was largely as

If you’ve not got time to read the full 245 pages of Digital Britain, Samknows.com is here to help you understand what it means for the country’s online future. Because it’s a special occasion we’ve got our first ever interview with Samknows co-founder Alex Salter.

BT Broadband has told Ministers it can put high-speed broadband within reach of ninety-three per cent of the UK population just by making inexpensive modifications to its current network. The firm’s currently in talks with Lord Carter ahead of the final Digital Britain report being published later this month.

BT Broadband has announced plans to upgrade the connection speeds of its existing customers - as long as they sign up for another twelve months. The firm’s using ADSL2+ technology that should enable it to more than double the (potential) speed of its network without digging up any roads.

With the term “bandwidth throttling” almost becoming an expletive in the digital age, if you’re going to sling it around you better have a good reason. The BBC’s currently running an online article called “BT accused of iPlayer throttling” - and guess who’s behind the accusation?

We take a look beyond the hype and emotive campaign slogans to see what speed broadband is necessary for everyday activities.

ThinkBroadband have launched a survey to collate information on locations without broadband (notspots) or with speeds below 2 Mbits/s (slowspots). A support forum is also available.

A future Conservative government would build Digital Britain with an injection of more common sense and new powers at local government level as well as encouraging community groups to petition local authorities for fibre. Far more controversially, though, Ed Vaizey, Shadow Minister for the Creative Industries, reveals the Conservatives would give private investors access to

Virgin Media has started trialling 200Mb broadband in Ashford, Kent. The ISP claims it is the world’s fastest implementation of the DOCSIS3 technology it is using to provide its current top tier 50Mb service which is being rolled out throughout the year.
The pilot was launched last week to 100 trial participants who will be giving

We’re running out of cyberspace and will all be suffering net “brownouts” in couple of years time, according to an American technology think-tank (and no, it’s nothing to do with the UK prime minister). Nemertes Research says that, because online video providers like YouTube and BBC iPlayer are taking up increasing amounts of bandwidth, we

It had people scratching their heads back in 2005 as to where the reported ‘synergies’ were and so news that eBay is to dispose of internet telephony business Skype next year is not entirely surprising. It comes at a crossroads for the internet telephony company, however, as it tries to convince mobile operators to allow

The BBC and Sky are, perhaps unsurprisingly, at loggerheads as to how central the BBC should be in delivering the government’s vision for Digital Britain.
Last week Sky asserted the government should reconsider its call, through the interim Digital Britain report, for the BBC to play a role in marketing broadband Britain and helping to set

Felix Geyr is to begin sharpening Be Broadband’s focus this spring on the core interests for which he believes people come to the LLU provider.
In a bid to spread its service vertically, so it does not just provide access but is involved in content provision, he is planning to provide a gaming service and is

Stephen Carter’s interim Digital Britain report was published today as more of a conversation starter than a list of proposed policies some may have wished for. The main new commitment outlined in the report is raising the Universal Service Obligation from 28.8Kb to up to 2Mb through fixed line and, where necessary, mobile technology.
The full

There are many people eagerly anticipating Stephen Carter’s Digital Britain report this week but long-time ‘notspot’ campaigner and author, Lindsey Annison, is fearing the report’s recommendations will not go far enough in bringing broadband to rural communities and those on the wrong side of the existing digital divide.
For her, the only option to bring

Sylvain Thevenot can understand why many people believe his appointment last autumn as TalkTalk’s senior director of products and strategy means the ISP is aiming to launch a mobile broadband service.
After all, he comes direct from Vodafone where he worked across Europe rolling out new messaging and voice products, most notably answer phone messages

Be customers are being promised a multi million pound network improvement scheme which should start easing congestion within a month to six weeks.
Be’s Managing Director, Felix Geyr, has revealed to SamKnows that he has just received funding to boost the company’s network to counter concernfrom some customers that Be and O2’s growth, on the same network

UK consumers on average receive a maximum speed of 4.3Mbit/s
Customers with an ‘up to 8Mbit/s’ package received, on average, a speed of 3.6Mbit/s
Consumers living in urban areas receive speeds which are on average 15% faster than those in rural areas

As described by Ofcom, these findings are the result of the most sophisticated and thorough research