[broadband] Forum Topics

Jumping the queue for BT Broadband is possible, it would seem. Possible, but not easy - unless you happen to be the Chairman of BT that is. Imagine you've been living without broadband for years because BT cannot supply it to your rural residence. Now imagine if the chairman of …

In addition to funding [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story231771.html"]broadband projects[/URL] in the states, particularly in rural areas, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, includes funds for [URL="http://www.ntia.doc.gov/press/2009/BTOP_mapping_090701.pdf"]collection of state-level broadband data[/URL], as well as state-wide broadband mapping and planning. The project, which will also help create …

In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, Congress appropriated $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans, and loan guarantees to be administered by the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The deadline for …

[URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4412.html"]As feared[/URL], the Administration has caved to telecom industry restrictions on mapping the availability of broadband Internet, making it less likely that $7 billion in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, will actually help improve broadband access to people who …

The independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industry, OFCOM, was charged by the government to reveal consumers' experiences of electronic communications services, including broadband provision, and the results do not make for happy reading. The research saw in excess of 60 million separate service performance tests carried …

What happens if you get caught out sharing copyright music or video online? If you live in Hull, in the north of the UK, the answer will probably surprise you. At the same time that most Internet Service Providers are applauding the recent [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22936/53/"]Digital Britain report[/URL] from the government which …

President Barack Obama's administration made two announcements Monday about improved transparency in government: one about IT projects in general, and one about improving broadband access. The announcements were made at the [URL="http://personaldemocracy.com/pdf-conference/personal-democracy-forum-conference"]Personal Democracy Forum[/URL], in New York. Tuesday, White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and White House New Media …

Some people are complaining that the company hoping to map the availability of broadband Internet is too closely tied to the same major telecommunications and cable companies that stand to benefit from the more than $7 billion in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known …

"Universal service" should encompass broadband Internet access in the same way that it originally encompassed telephone access, according to a new report from the Federal Communications Commission to Congress. The [URL="http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-291012A1.pdf"]report[/URL], [I]Bringing Broadband to Rural America: Report on a Rural Broadband Strategy[/I], is written by Michael Copps, acting chairman of …

Strange but true. The 02 [URL="http://dnc.o2.co.uk/home/2009/05/o2-digital-families.html"]Digital Families report[/URL] was commissioned in order to get a grasp on the impact that technology has on family life in the UK. Perhaps unsurprisingly it revealed a nation obsessed by gadgets, with 40 percent of UK families spending 10 percent of their household budgets …

Virgin Media has released the results of research carried out into just how much the British actually understand the Internet, and those results show that on the whole the nation is pretty much baffled by broadband. The study, which quizzed more than 3000 internet users, discovered that broadband jargon confuses …

For American readers this is probably a bit of an ordinary day - you go about your business and there's every chance that when you wake up tomorrow things will be much the same as they were when you woke up today. In the UK that's not the case. In …

The Department of Agriculture's Office of the Inspector General has issued a [URL="http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/09601-8-TE.pdf"]report[/URL] finding that the Rural Utilities Service continues to grant loans to areas that already have broadband service and to communities near major cities. For example, 77 percent of loans were said to have been made in areas …

Although the kind of 1Gbit/s broadband service that is [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3250.html"]a reality in Japan[/URL] remains but a pipe dream for most people, the Brits can look forward to super-fast 60Mbit/s broadband real soon now. National telecoms carrier BT has announced that it will be installing upgrades to no less than 29 …

This is excellent. A map of Britain in which the forthcoming extra-fast Internet is highlighted. It's [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/interactive/2009/mar/23/broadband-fibre-cabinet-bt-map"]here[/URL] on the Guardian website. A number of things become clear from this. First, unsurprisingly, there's a lot of concentration around London and Manchester, with Edinburgh getting a respectable look-in. This is pretty inevitable …

It's official - the regulators are not going to stop British Telecom from going ahead with putting faster Internet in throughout the UK as long as it's financially viable. Some non-UK readers might wonder why the regulator had to get involved - it's because we have a strange and twisty …

This morning I awoke to read news headlines declaring the worst snow the UK had seen for some 13 years, with reports of thousands of minor accidents and major motorway networks grinding to a halt. In London the public transport system collapsed, with London Buses, Underground and trains all being …

A government is rolling out a wireless network, starting with 18 cities, using WiMAX technology that supports mobile networking, for $30 a month. The real news is where it is: Libya. WiMAX, based on similar technology to cell phone networks, offers wider coverage than is possible using wifi. Like wifi, …

Over in the UK the Government has issued what it's calling the Digital Britain Report. There has been a lot of reaction. Essentially the idea is that everyone should have broadband in their house by 2012 (just in time for us to underfund the Olympics) and, er...and they all live …

A recent report from the [URL="http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband%20Barriers.pdf"]Pew Internet & American Life Project[/URL] suggests that even if broadband Internet is made more widely available in the U.S., 9% of adults said they aren't interested in switching from dial-up, and 25% of adults aren't on the Internet at all and are unlikely to …

This is possibly going to be very badly timed. A lot of users are going to get very confused. Essentially in the UK we have a lot of free or very cheap Internet services. We also have a lot of people - Apple, the BBC, many media providers - offering …

I've written about broadband speeds twice lately. Never being one to quit while I'm ahead, here I go again. Yesterday I looked at the forthcoming superfast broadband to the home (or at least as far as the outer wall of the home, the ageing cables inside are another matter) and …

It's starting, then. In the UK we're going to follow some experiments I've seen in France and start getting fibreoptic connections to the home for superfast broadband. The [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7667761.stm"]BBC[/URL] has notes on where this is starting, but what interests me more is just why they're bothering just yet. 18 months …

Sometimes I really love living in the English countryside. The fresh air, the sheep and horses at the bottom of the garden, the lack of crime, the sense of community that still exists in a small village, the lack of seriously fast broadband. Ah, yes, that's not so good is …

...with the idea that the world is coming crashing down around our shoulders, particularly with IT stocks falling and banks making tech staff redundant, let's have a think about one particular story. The EU is going to try to get [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7637215.stm"]broadband to every house[/URL] on the continent from which I …

The UK Government's broadband advisory group has published a report which suggests the cost of deploying fibre based broadband in the UK will be as high as £28.8 billion... The [URL="http://www.broadbanduk.org/"]Broadband Stakeholder Group[/URL] report, produced by Analysis Mason, looks at the various costs of various technological options for providing next-generation …

On a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend, Comcast released its latest volley against its customer base, announcing a 250 GB monthly download limit. According to reports, after the first violation, you will get a message from your friends at Comcast warning you about your dastardly behavior (aka using the …

Yesterday we looked at the 2008 technology spending market from the small business side. To be charitable, things look "iffy" for IT spending -- at least during the first six months of the year. Now it appears that, from the technology side of the market, 2008 could be a mixed …

If McDonalds can advertise, “Over 1 billion served” on each of its restaurants signs, then why can’t Comcast, Verizon, Sprint and the rest of the broadband world say the same thing? Well, technically, soon they can. That after a new report from Strategy Analytics that estimates over one billion broadband …

That depends, to be honest, on which Internet you are talking about. For most of us mere mortals the answer will vary, depending upon how fat the pipe connecting us to the Internet is and how many people are downloading video streams over it at any given moment in time. …