The Department for Business Innovation and Skills has opened up a three month consultation period to gather views on how the Next Generation Fund could best be used to bring Next Generation Access to 90% of the population by 2017. Estimates suggest the fund could reach as much as a billion pounds within that period.
The [...]

Leaked Government documents appear to reveal that the 50p levy on fixed lines intended to fund Britain’s access to super-fast broadband could cost consumers more than previously thought. Accordingly, not only will Value Added Tax (VAT) come in the equation, but we also now appear to have confirmation that households with more than one phone line will be charged separately for each one.

The Digital Britain team has rejected any suggestion that the 50p copper phone line is to be dropped.
In the face of the Government seemingly cooling on the idea, the Digital Britain team recommitted itself to a 2010 deadline for the 50p levy to become established (digitalbritainforum.org.uk).
The move follows much debate within politics and new [...]

Point Topic have been busy crunching numbers to illustrate how Next Generation Access (NGA) might be implemented.

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 [...]

The Business and Enterprise Committee are to hold an inquiry into Broadband speeds in the UK.

A look at the 50p/month telephone tax and how it will be used to provide next generation access to the “Final Third”.

The Australian Government should shortly be receiving bids for a national “super fast” broadband network with a minimum speed of 12 Mbits/s reaching 98% of the population. The contract should be awarded next spring with work starting late next year with a 5 year rollout and is based on a Fibre to the Node (FTTN [...]

The NextGen ‘08 conference held earlier this month in Manchester brought together a range of opinions and speakers on the subject of Next Generation Access (NGA). The presentations can be downloaded as pdf files from the web site and make interesting reading.
Francesco Caio presented the findings of his recent Next Generation Access Review which concluded [...]