Mobile broadband is set to go from strength to strength but you can pretty much write off Wi-Max networks, according to the latest research from telecommunications researchers at Analysys Mason.
Its latest report predicts that mobile broadband use will grow rapidly along the same lines as we see today with subscribers using a mixture of 3G [...]

The elegantly named Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform is consulting on how best to address illicit P2P file-sharing via a 3-month online consultation.
We recently covered the Memorandum of Understanding between six large ISPs, BERR and the BPI however this consultation looks beyond that to questions like “what about the other ISPs” and “what [...]

P2P (peer to peer) traffic is seldom out of the news either because its most popular use is for pirating copyright material or because ISPs are throttling it to reduce the impact on their network.
In the USA a bit of deep academic thinking has gone into seeking ways of addressing the traffic issue, while potentially [...]

The BBC News site recently discussed the concept of communities left out of plans for “superfast broadband” to take the initiative and set up their own infrastructure.
A potential scheme in Cumbria will build on the wireless Cybermoor project and is looking to install a fibre based system with help from the Community Broadband Network – [...]

The ice cold relationship between the music industry and the ISPs it expects to police the internet is showing signs of thawing, but only a little and only after the threat of government legislation.
The six leading ISPs have agreed to send out educational letters to subscribers the BPI believes have been downloading music illegally. BT, [...]

Late adopters are going to treble mobile broadband penetration over the next five years as more than one in three of net newcomers foregoes a fixed line contract in favour of a go-anywhere broadband dongle.
The latest findings from technology researchers at Forrester suggests that of the 48m Europeans that are expected to sign up for [...]

The introduction of BT’s 21CN network and Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) has caused unexpected problems for some Entanet customers who have found their connection being migrated over to the new system.
It appears that Entanet have taken the opportunity at some WBC equipped exchanges to move IPStream customers onto the new infrastructure. About 4% of customers [...]

Last week we broke the news of a BT letter to Tiscali customers, marketing themselves as a safe haven for Tiscali customers concerned about the ISP’s future.
After hinting to us last week that they were considering legal action, Tiscali have this afternoon provided confirmation in the form of the following statement:
Tiscali UK Limited has issued [...]

BT reiterated its intention to roll out behavioural targeting technology from Phorm at its AGM this week as protesters outside the event admitted they were disappointed with the turn out of privacy campaigners.
However, there are three developments which will mean the furore over Phorm will not go away any time soon.
Mid week, and coinciding with [...]

We’ve been rather quiet on the progress of the Performance Monitoring project we’re carrying out, and for that I apologise. The process of deploying nearly 250 units, managing the data collection and fielding queries from users has certainly been an enlightening one!
That said, we’ve now collected all of the data for the first set of [...]

BT have caused a bit of a stir this week by mailing a personalised letter to current or former Tiscali group broadband customers (these include Pipex, Freedom2Surf and Nildram). A photograph of one of the letters is available here, having been discussed in various forums earlier this week.
The letter points out the attempts by Tiscali [...]

Yesterday’s news about FTTH created a stir, but what might a fibre service cost ?
Part of the answer is already in the public domain, from BT Openreach and BT Wholesale announcements relating to the Ebbsfleet pilot.
The fibre connection charge will be £130 and the monthly rental for a 10Mbits/s downstream (bursting to 30M) service will [...]

BT have today announced plans to roll out a £1.5bn investment in fibre based high speed broadband offering a range of services with top speeds of up to 100Mbps. Headline speeds of “more than 1,000Mb/s in the future” are also mentioned in the BT announcement.
The full press release sets out the financial details and explains [...]

Ahead of tomorrow’s crunch BT AGM where online privacy campaigners are vowing to protest and report the company to the police for running tests on a small group of users’ accounts without permission, the CEO of behavioural advertising technology company, Phorm, has been defending its technology.
Kent Ertugru believes the company has been unduly targeted by [...]

After its prime billing as the day NebuAd, Microsoft and Google would get a severe grilling from the US Senate, this week’s two hour hearing on online privacy proved a rather damp squib.
In stark contrast to the UK where the information Commissioner has told behavioural advertising technology company, Phorm, its network can only operate if [...]

Entanet launches their “2Plus” range of broadband services on Tuesday 15th July. These are variable rate ADSL2+ products that will connect to the telephone exchange at speeds as high as 24 Mbits/s or as low as 288 kbits/s depending on line length, interference, extension wiring and the usual constraints of physics. In other words an [...]

Sky (Easynet) are reportedly trialling a Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) system in East London, which according to ZDnet doesn’t involve any customers but is more of a “proof of concept” trial of sub-loop unbundling (SLU).
SLU involves Openreach making available tie pairs at the street cabinet level, allowing 3rd party operators to connect ADSL or [...]

The EU has introduced an amendment to a telecoms law which campaigners and IT lawyers fear could bring in the controversial “three strikes and you’re out” approach to file sharers.
British ISPs have been united in their opposition to the approach heralded by copyright holders, in particular the BPI which represents record labels, which would see [...]

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 [...]

BT’s patent pending iPlate is becoming available to end users via Ebay (search for iPlate) and at least one ISP.
The iPlate is a slot-in “interstitial” filter that fits between the faceplate of a BT master socket (type NTE5) and the backplate that is screwed to the wall. It filters out potential interference from the bell [...]