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 [...]

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 [...]

BT has Virgin Media firmly in its sites today as it launched its highly-antipicated fibre product, BT Infinity.
With scant details of availability, other than a promise to roll it out to 4 million homes and businesses by the end of the year and 10 million by the summer of 2012, the corporation was concentrating on [...]

The increasing need for bandwidth as companies of all sizes conduct more business through cloud computing lies behind Easynet Connect’s launch this week of a £15k per year uncontended 100Mbps fibre service, according to its Managing Director, Chris Stening.

 
The new service is limited to within the M25 area at the moment but the company is [...]

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.

The BT Group is waging a war on two fronts: versus the Government on one side, battling TalkTalk and Sky on the other.

Not only has BT Retail declared itself the first UK Internet Service Provider to reach the five million customer milestone, it’s also revealed it’s ahead of schedule when it comes to installing its next-generation broadband network

Businesses are driving fibre deployment across Europe at a far greater rate than governments. In fact, corporations and public institutions could even hold the key to widening the UK’s next generation footprint.
That is the conclusion of Lee Myall, UK Regional Director for Interoute, a telecommunications company which claims to have more than 57,000km of ‘lit’ [...]

The people of a remote village that they describe as “England’s last wilderness” have started digging the trenches that’ll grant them Next Generation Access (NGA) to broadband, meaning it’ll be far from being the country’s last NGA not-spot. Meanwhile, it’s emerged broadband is increasingly becoming a deal-breaker when it comes to selling homes in rural areas.

Mobile phone operator O2’s just announced it’s going to start trialling what’s being billed as a 4G network – and it could reach speeds of 340 Mbit/s. Meanwhile, BT’s revealed its first fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) at a UK “brownfield” site. Both are slated to begin next year.

BT has officially announced it’s doubling its so-called “next generation” capabilities – so that it could reach up to seventy-five per cent of UK homes and businesses. But before you get excited with fibre optic dreams, it’s actually talking about ADSL2+.

Four hundred and forty-five million people in the world have broadband subscriptions. More than two million people have fibre to their home in Europe. And seven million people are pirating online media in the UK – or should that be more like half that? Samknows takes a look at some of the numbers racing around the press at the moment.

Broadband writer Bill Thompson’s excitement over where Digital Britain is headed has swung from anxiety to mild optimism back to anxiety, all within a year.
Having worked for Pipex and then headed up the Guardian’s new media business in the ‘90s before going freelance for the likes of the BBC, he has had hands-on experience of [...]

Chris Stening believes success in the business ISP market is different from the consumer sector, relying far more on quality and service than price alone.
While he claims Easynet Connect, where he is Managing Director, will always be competitive in price, he is adamant that value is only one of the three success factors for a [...]

Something very unusual has started to happen in the UK over the past couple of years and it is has been happening in Scandinavia too. Alcatel-Lucent, which rolls out broadband networks and switching equipment across the UK for the likes of BT, among several others, has started to receive an increasing amount of calls for [...]

Adrian Wooster has a simple message for the those stuck in ‘not-spots’; get organised and don’t expect the government or BT to go out of their way to bring fibre to your community.
As Chief Technology Officer for the Community Broadband Network (CBN) he helps communities and, more usually, local councils to plan how to bring [...]

The man in charge of the UK’s biggest ISP says that, when it comes to preventing illegal file-sharing, too much attention is being paid to peer-to-peer networking and the role ISPs can play to stop it. Speaking ahead of the impending final Digital Britain report, Charles Dunstone said “we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.”

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 launched its ‘V Stuff’ suite of broadband subscriber features with the announcement of a new, inclusive back up service which allows customers to set up online photo albums and order up to 100 prints per month for free.
Rival back up services normally start with a free low entry level of 5Gb total storage (BT), [...]