While all the industry, parliamentary and media attention currently appears to be on Clause 17 of the Digital Economy Bill, another clause could mean the “Government will be able to take increased control over the Internet and what passes over it.” That’s according to Francis Davey, a practising barrister and legal advisor to the technology sector, who says Clause 11 of the Bill could allow the Secretary of State to block groups of websites and implement “technical measures which could be imposed by stealth.”

TalkTalk is to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority tomorrow that BT’s latest ‘up to 20Mb’ advert is ‘misleading’ and based on poor research.
The crucial point is the advert claims BT’s broadband service is ‘consistently faster even at peak times compared with the industry average’.
TalkTalk claims its investigations reveal just 20 lines were tested, over [...]

We knew it was going to happen sooner or later, and it has. Using SamKnows’ methodology, Ofcom has spent the past six months testing ISP speeds. And today the media and telecoms watchdog made the results public.
Over 1,600 users were tested and 60 million readings taken in the study, which confirmed what many people had [...]

Virgin Media is to become the first ISP to use SamKnows’ broadband performance testing technology to discover the speed, quality and reliability of the service it offers to customers.
The SamKnows technology is already being used by Ofcom to monitor broadband performance across the country but this is the first time an ISP has opted to [...]

Be has rebranded its identity today in a bid to, it describes, get closer to its users by appearing less ‘corporate’.
The O2-owned company is centring its new identity around the theme of ‘Create The New’ through which it is promises its main priority will be to put its member community at the heart of its [...]

You may have noticed that SamKnows is looking a bit different this morning. As well as a bright, shiny new front page, we’ve redefined some of our sections — news and features have been beefed up, as have our various research projects we’ve undertaken.
Since the beginning of the year, people have been asking us what [...]

The latest “State of the Internet” report by research firm Akamai has thrown up a number of concerning figures regarding the UK. The report reveals that, while the average Internet speed around the globe is a disappointing 1.5Mb, nearly 20% of the world’s broadband users have access to speeds greater than 5Mb. However the situation [...]

The European Commission has today joined the debate between Internet users, ISPs and online advertising companies. In a blunt message to the Internet industry Meglena Kuneva, the Consumer Affairs Commissioner, warned ISPs, major websites and advertising firms that they are violating “basic consumer rights in terms of transparency, control and risk.” The European Commission has [...]

Lord Carter, the Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting has suggested a “music tax” to cover artist royalties. The government is looking to a £20 charge per internet user, which would be added to the customer’s ISP charges, for access to “unlimited content”. The initial idea would be on a voluntary basis but there are [...]

Controversial targeted advertising company Phorm has announced a deal with Korean Internet service provider KT. This will see the company’s behavioural targeting advertising system replicated in Korea after successful trials in the UK. However, there are fears that the Phorm system infringes privacy laws and it has attracted a number of legal challenges.
In simple terms [...]

A routine check of the offices of exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama has opened the doorway to a massive espionage ring in China. The ring was uncovered by security experts at two Canadian universities, the University of Toronto and Cambridge University, who found malware and spyware on the spiritual leader of most of the [...]

Carphone Warehouse is considering a last-minute bid for the UK broadband arm of ISP Tiscali. The company, which is on the verge of administration and has been suspended from the Italian stock exchange, was being wooed by BSkyB until the deal appeared to fall apart on pricing issues. However, the media behemoth has recently renewed [...]

IT specialists in Australia have discovered a botnet that is capable of controlling both routers and cable or DSL modems. The “Psyb0t” or “Network Bluepill” is capable of attacking and infecting around 50 models of routers and modems - including popular Netgear and Linksys models. So far, traditional router protection measures have not managed to [...]

Phorm is refuting suggestions that strategic differences have caused four senior board directors to quit and is also denying the departures show it is giving up on the America market.
Despite the departing American-based chairman and chief operating officer being replaced by non executives directors based in London, a spokesman for the company is adamant that [...]

I am pleased to announce that our first Performance Monitoring report is ready (finally!).
The report is available in PDF format using the link below. Apologies for the relatively large file size – many of the images are at a higher resolution, so you can zoom in for a better look. A one page “executive summary” [...]

Long time readers of the site will be aware that our Availability Checker is available as an XML web service, and this web service is used extensively by the comparison websites, amongst others. Indeed, this is primarily how we fund the operation of the website.
One flaw, from a retail perspective, with our existing Availability Checker [...]

Yes that’s right, in order to support our ever increasing developments we’re hiring a new full-time programmer.
There’d be opportunities to work on all aspects of Samknows, including the website, the availability checker API and the rapidly growing performance monitoring network.
The ideal candidate would:

Have excellent PHP, shell scripting and SQL skills (particularly MySQL)
Be very proficient in [...]

Yes, it’s finally happened – we’ve had a face lift. I’ve frequently received comments on the design, but the final nail in the coffin was when someone answered the survey and said that the style was “just too geeky”!
Seriously though, we’re just trying to make the website a bit more usable, particularly for new users. [...]

Firstly I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who answered the survey we put up on the site in February. The response has been far better than expected and I can only apologise that I can’t respond to everyone individually.
I thought I’d share some of the most pronounced results below:
1. Predictably, the [...]

It’s a brand new year and I’d like to bring some brand new features to the website. I’ve already added the mapping engine and the address based availability checker since the start of the year, and now I’d like to get your feedback on what else you would like to see.
In this spirit, I have [...]