In a recent interview BT’s CEO Ian Livingston suggests that the recession and shareholder pressure may jeopardise plans to spend £1.5bn bringing the next generation of super-fast broadband services to 10m British households within the next four years.
The credit crunch and BT’s recent results will have constrained the availability of capital, and there remains regulatory
BT hit the headlines today with a planned 10,000 job losses, mainly from contract and agency staff. The announcement came along with the 2nd quarter results which showed a modest performance from the Global Services business countering gains in other divisions. The elephant in the room of the Group Pension scheme is also heading for
After months of hype, public demonstrations, threatened legal action, a government review and recurring BT promises of a service “in the next few weeks”; Phorm finally launches on BT today under the Webwise brand name.
The controversial technology tracks web surfing histories for ISP customers (who have opted-in) and so can serve more relevant advertising which
Local government is going to be the lynchpin to rolling out future generation broadband networks, according to BT. It believes that local authorities are the key to unlocking pent-up demand for faster connections to hospitals, libraries, government offices and schools which will, in turn, make investing billions in fibre more attractive.
Following on from this month’s
The British government has confirmed to the European Commission that the controversial ad-serving business, Phorm, is legal. In a move that will come as little surprise considering the service was given the go-ahead by the Information Commissioner this Spring, the government outlined that, so long as it remained an opt-in service, it would be legal.
The
Remarks by the Chair of Ofcom’s Consumer Panel that ‘next generation’ broadband should skip a generation to prioritise those without broadband today have been met with a muted response from the two companies that could potentially build the required nationwide network.
Neither BT nor Virgin Media was able to answer positively SamKnows’ question of how people
NebuAd, one of two arch exponents of tracking user behaviour - via their ISP - to deliver more targeted adverts, has suffered a major blow with the departure of its CEO, Bob Dykes.
Using technology similar to Phorm, which is due to be trialled with BT “over the coming weeks”, NebuAd tracks user viewing habits so
BBC engineers have used the lull after frenzied downloading and streaming of the Olympics to fix a bug with iPlayer that was causing BT Home Hubs and O2 and Be wireless routers to reset.
The annoying bug was believed to be a problem in the BBC’s encoding of the system that was affecting wireless routes using
A flaw in the way web addresses are served to computers, which allows criminals to redirect traffic to scam sites, is just starting to be used to trap international bank customers in to parting with account details. However, problems are unlikely to spread to the UK where it appears the flaw has been patched by
BT is still due to press ahead with its ‘technical trial’ of Phorm, despite a letter from the European Commission to the government asking for reassurance, before the end of the month, that the system does not contravene EU data laws.
Despite the caution in Brussels, the broadband provider will “soon” be inviting 10,000 of its
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”
O2 has kicked off a mobile broadband promotions war which will dominate broadband deals this summer and early autumn.
Until the end of October customers taking out its mobile broadband product for £20 per month will now get free home broadband for a year as long as they live with the O2 Home Broadband Network, which
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 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
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 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
We’ve received an awful lot of emails over the past few days from people keen to find out when Be Unlimited and O2 will be offering services in their area. The sudden upsurge in this email traffic is of course because the June 30th RFS (Ready For Service) date for around 150 exchanges has passed.
The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint from BT that Virgin Media’s recent Hate to Wait campaign was misleading.
The advert listed typical download times for a song and television show for its M (up to 2Mb), L (up to 4Mb) and XL (up to 20Mb) packages. The advert was designed to show that whilst