Reading and re-reading the interim Digital Britain report it becomes clear that less is promised than some headlines would suggest. Broadband ‘in every home by 2012‘ isn’t actually in the report. In fact, 2012 might be the date by which a USO scheme is in place. One wouldn’t expect it to deliver overnight.
As an interim report [...]

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 [...]

TalkTalk is launching an ‘Emergency Plan’ today which gives existing customers six months internet connection and access to their TalkTalk home phone plan for free, leaving them to pay just the line rental each month.
The company claims it has been considering for the past couple of months how it can help customers who are having [...]

Sky unveiled quarterly figures which it suggests makes it the country’s fastest growing broadband provider and warned rivals that it feels there is still much growth yet to come through converting more of its 9.4m satellite television customers to its broadband offering.
The company has maintained fourth place in the UK market (behind BT, Virgin Media [...]

BA is due to launch what it claims will be the first transatlantic mobile internet service from a UK airline when it launches its new London City to JFK business class only route this Autumn.
On the twice daily flights, Sunday to Friday, passengers will be able to use mobile phones or laptops with an attached [...]

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 [...]

The Communications Consumer Panel, the artist formerly known as the Ofcom Consumer Panel, has produced a report on 40 or so fibre based initiatives to provide faster broadband access in various locations across the UK.
Many of these have local authority involvement and range from local regeneration initiatives through to large glacial pace schemes like South [...]

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 [...]

The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (Nesta) is calling on the Government to think more creatively about how it could encourage fibre to be rolled out by rewarding companies with digital radio spectrum for Wi-Max use.
Whilst media coverage of a report its published earlier this week centred on a ‘fibre for spectrum’ [...]

Virgin Media is launching Setanta Replay today which gives its top tier customers free video on demand replays of sporting action for up to a week after it is first broadcast.
XL customers (up to 20Mb for £39 month) are being offered the service for free whilst the rest of the company’s broadband customers can pay [...]

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 [...]

Northern Ireland’s DETI have funded Avanti Communications to the tune of £1.1m to provide satellite broadband services to NI residents and businesses unable to access fixed line broadband. 
The 5 year contract with BT to provide 100% coverage of 512k broadband is coming to an end in March 2009 and the Avanti contract will provide continuity [...]

The CLA have drawn attention to rural broadband notspots in a press release in which Dr Charles Trotman is quoted as saying that the organisation “still receives inquiries from members frustrated they cannot take advantage of these services because they live in remote rural areas”. There are of course plenty of non-rural notspots and individual [...]

Sky customers are the least likely to switch their ISP, independent research from Strategy Analytics reveals.
The American research company found that, despite most UK consumers reporting satisfaction with their existing ISP, 70% would consider churning in favour of a rival supplier if the right deal were on offer. Crucially, speed is the most important factor [...]

Privacy campaigners have ushered in the new year with warnings that new EU rules compelling ISPs to keep a record of email communications for a year are an infringement of civil liberties.
However, Alex Brown, a partner at Simmons & Simmons’ and data privacy expert believes that the new law, which comes in to effect in [...]

O2 Broadband are offerring 3 months free service up to the end of January for subscribers to their Premium and Pro “up to 20M” LLU services, costing £9.79 and £17.13 per month respectively to O2 customers and a fiver more to non-customers. The O2 customer discount includes PAYG mobile users subject to a £10 minimum top-up [...]

BeyonDSL has tweaked its 2-way satellite offerring using Astra2Connect – bringing the price of a basic 256/64k service down to £19.99 per month equivalent if paid annually, otherwise £24.99 per month.
As usual with satellite the high cost of bandwidth leads to restrictions, the above service includes 800 MB of “priority bandwidth” per month and if [...]

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 [...]

The Vat reduction was passed on by most major ISPs at the end of last year with the notable exceptions of TalkTalk and Sky, and it looks likely to stay that way for the time being.
TalkTalk initially told SamKnows it had not immediately passed on the reduction because it was working on increasing its £4 [...]

At the end of Q1 2008 OFCOM reported 16.2 million residential and SME broadband connections, a figure that probably exceeds 17 million today. This is about half the total number of fixed line telephone connections.
Sky report some 9 million subscribers to their TV service, and O2 are listed by OFCOM as having the largest number [...]