European Commission seems happy but rival firms could yet put a spanner in the works.

Vodafone will see in the New Year with a concerted push to encourage pay-as-you-go customers to use data to coincide with its launch of the iPhone.
Although the network has not announced a date when it is allowed to start selling the iconic smartphone, it is widely believed to be from the first week of January [...]

More than 50 free Wi-Fi hotspots are due to be switched on in not-spot areas by a company based around the premise there is more to the technology than fleecing businessmen in airport lounges.
The locations, which include remote Scottish Islands, will be named next week. They won a competition run earlier this year by Freerunner, [...]

BT Group and O2’s parent company Telefónica have both just released their results for the past quarter. With O2 UK now having breached the half-million mark in terms of its broadband subscribers, BT Retail has revealed it now has almost ten times as many people on its books.

With mobile data traffic set to increase twenty-five fold by 2012, our mobile networks could soon be overloaded. That’s according to data analysts Informa Telecoms and Media, which says we’re facing online traffic jams on our phones if the network operators don’t take action.

A host of internet service providers are upping their top speeds to 20Mbit/s. ISPs Orange, Plusnet and Zen Internet have all announced they’re raising their respective bars over the past few days. In doing so, they’re making up ground on the likes of Virgin Media, BT, BE and O2, which all already offer “up to” 20Mbit/s services.

As progress is made on one of the Digital Britain proposals, it’s emerged that if the current Government loses the next election another will be abandoned “as soon as possible.”

A new report’s been released that highlights the problems consumers and small businesses are having with their mobile operators. The Communications Consumer Panel (CCP) says that, as things stand, not even 2G coverage across the UK is up to scratch – never mind networks capable of supporting mobile broadband.

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.

The merger of Orange and T-Mobile is almost certain to cast further doubt over the speed of mobile broadband roll-out plans and further delays are possible if 3 were also bought.
That is the conclusion of Matt Hatton, Principle Analyst at Analsys Mason. He has been looking at the current consolidation in the UK mobile market [...]

O2 has announced it’s going into partnership with BT to set up its first fixed-line service for businesses. Meanwhile, BT itself has finally been shown to the green light to put together its own telecoms bundles that include a fixed-line component.

The UK’s third and fourth biggest mobile phone companies are merging, creating a British telco juggernaut that would become the country’s biggest network. While the Orange and the T-Mobile brands will survive as separate entities until at least 2012 under the terms of the deal, the aim is for £445 million per year to be cut from their combined expenditure by 2014. Meanwhile, the move is another setback for the slow-moving negotiations on the role mobile broadband with play in Digital Britain.

The Ashes approaching and then reaching a dramatic climax at the same time as the Premier League season got underway has given Sky a record number of new customers for its Sky Sports and News mobile television package as well as its 24-7 football goals and highlights service.
The surge in interest is bound to put [...]

Vodafone and O2 can breathe a sigh of relief. A Government spectrum farming report has decided that neither company should be forced to give up any of its most valuable mobile broadband spectrum. However, the carrot of spectrum released by switching off analogue tv in 2012 remains in front of the pair to tempt them [...]

O2 is to provide mobile broadband contracts with inclusive “free” laptops as part of a new Pay Monthly deal from the end of this month. Two Samsung models – the NC10 mini-laptop, shown below, and R510 laptop, will be available online and in O2 stores nationwide, from 27 February 2009.
Two different 24 month contracts will be [...]

Felix Geyr is to begin sharpening Be Broadband’s focus this spring on the core interests for which he believes people come to the LLU provider.
In a bid to spread its service vertically, so it does not just provide access but is involved in content provision, he is planning to provide a gaming service and is [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Mobile broadband is not just about the handset and the connection but also what people can do with that connection.
If proof were needed one need only look at the success of the iPhone App Store which Apple founder Steve Jobs claims achieved 100m downloads of games and applications within just two months of its July [...]