SamKnows has been awarded a contract by Ofcom (the UK communications regulator) for the provision of research and data collection in relation to UK fixed-line broadband speeds delivered by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and is now looking for volunteers to join the project.
It’s been over six months since the Ofcom UK Broadband Speeds 2009 report [...]

Virgin Media announced this morning that it is to start rolling out a 100Mb commercial service before the end of the year. The ISP also claimed that it is extending a small trial of 200Mb connections.
Quoting figures from SamKnows’ Performance Monitoring service which, in partnership with Ofcom, measures access speeds across the country, Virgin claimed [...]

TalkTalk is calling on Ofcom to ban BT, and any other provider, from using ‘rolling contracts’ to hook customers in to long-term contracts.
BT came under heavy criticism yesterday in a Which? report for using contracts which tie consumers in to the service for 18 months and are then renewed at the end of the 18 [...]

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 [...]

You won’t be seeing any more of the Tiscali logo as the brand is officially decommissioned.

British broadband, fixed line and mobile prices are among the most competitive in the West, according to research published by Ofcom today.
It has compared the cost of bundling together a fixed line phone with broadband, as well as allowing for moderate mobile phone use and some pay television. The results show that at a price [...]

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.

Ofcom’s just announced its proposals for regulating the UK’s infamously “nascent” video-on-demand marketplace. In line with revisions to European law, content could be regulated as soon as December this year.

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.

While several policies advocated in the supposedly finalised Digital Britain report may be back up in the air, some things are still moving forward. One of them is the public consultation phase for the future of the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom – and the Government wants to hear from you. Meanwhile, Ofcom itself has just released “a guide for students on getting a good deal on communications services.”

TalkTalk is to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority tomorrow that BT’s latest ‘up to 20Mb’ advert is ‘misleading’ and based on poor research.
The crucial point is the advert claims BT’s broadband service is ‘consistently faster even at peak times compared with the industry average’.
TalkTalk claims its investigations reveal just 20 lines were tested, over [...]

Entanet and Plusnet make available the line speed distributions of their customers.

A review of the OFCOM broadband speeds report and subsequent reactions.

Virgin Media is to become the first ISP to use SamKnows’ broadband performance testing technology to discover the speed, quality and reliability of the service it offers to customers.
The SamKnows technology is already being used by Ofcom to monitor broadband performance across the country but this is the first time an ISP has opted to [...]

Behavioural targeting may have been given a rough ride by criticisms levelled at the ill-fated Phorm platform but the technology actually already accounts for around 10% to 15% of the country’s £637m online display market.
Not only is that market share set to increase to around 20% by the end of the year, the practice is [...]

Plans to use ‘digital dividend’ spectrum, freed up by switching off analogue tv, to bring mobile broadband to not spots have two fatal flaws, according to the former Chief Strategy Officer at the GSM Association, Ameet Shah.
Not only will auctioning the airwaves in equal licences leave mobile operators with services that are not economically viable, [...]

Not everyone without broadband will take it up – even if it’s offered to them for free. That’s according to new research from communications regulator Ofcom, which says over forty per cent of “disconnected” adults would be happy to stay that way.

Communications regulator OFCOM has given BT Openreach the green light to operate active electronics in its access network.

BT Broadband has told Ministers it can put high-speed broadband within reach of ninety-three per cent of the UK population just by making inexpensive modifications to its current network. The firm’s currently in talks with Lord Carter ahead of the final Digital Britain report being published later this month.

With the term “bandwidth throttling” almost becoming an expletive in the digital age, if you’re going to sling it around you better have a good reason. The BBC’s currently running an online article called “BT accused of iPlayer throttling” – and guess who’s behind the accusation?