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By Sam Smith Staff Writer
Friday, 26 June 2009
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Broadband News Roundup (19 JUN 09)
SAM Smith's weekly broadband news roundup features Lord Carter's Digital Britain report was released this week. Zen set to roll out new 20Mbps internet connection for its customers and a new study by Ofcom reveals that the internet is simply not wanted by some adults.
Broadband News Roundup (12 JUN 09)
SAM Smith's weekly broadband news roundup features BT's roll out of up to 20Mbps broadband speeds and Phorm's latest endeavor to win back our hearts in this week's broadband news roundup, plus a new survey reveals the government still has its work cut out to implement universal broadband even as 73% now consider it to be essential.
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Away from the over-priced strawberries, expectations and impending perennial under-achievement that is Wimbledon, the internet world kept turning this week.
Be Accidentally Blocks BitTorrents
BE broadband's customers have had their access to popular BitTorrent sites accidentally blocked by the ISP.
Be Broadband - owned by O2 - were accused of implementing Lord Carter's Digital Britain aim of reducing online piracy in the UK, although Be were quick to deny this.
Instead, the apparent blocking of BitTorrent sites is being put down to technical issues.
A message posted on the Be web forum said: "There appears to be an issue affecting some of our IP ranges accessing some networks mainly in Sweden and the Netherlands regions. A lot of the torrent sites may be hosted in this region."
Although the blocking of sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova has been unintentional, it could be a sign of things to come following the publication of the Digital Britain Report last week.
Broadband continues to expand worldwide
BROADBAND's global worldwide reach grew by 16.6 million lines in the first quarter of 2009 according to a report  published this week by the Broadband Forum.
At a time when many industries are feeling the pinch of the economic recession, it seems the broadband industry is yet to feel the effects of the economic downturn.
The biggest broadband growth came in India which increased the number of broadband lines by 13.4% from 2008.
China has the crown of being the most-wired nation while the UK came sixth.
The report makes for an interesting read and lends credence to Lord Carter's view that investment and redevelopment of the UK's broadband infrastructure could be a means of dragging the economy out of the recession.
ISP delays costing Phorm £1m a month
THE controversial US company Phorm has revealed that it is losing more than £1 million a month as ISPs are holding back from using its Webwise program.
The targeted advertising company lost a total of £30 million in 2008 amid claims that its advertising technology is in breach of EU laws on consumer privacy.
Webwise is used by ISPs to monitor the browsing habits of consumers in order to create a more effective advertising system.
Given Phorm's ability to engender controversy on a regular basis, they’re unlikely to receive much sympathy from consumers towards their current plight.
Broadband by Satellite
Satellite broadband firm Avanti plans to launch broadband specific satellites which would serve to overcome the problem of so-called internet 'notspots' in the UK.
The first of the satellites known as Hylas will be a dedicated broadband satellite for Europe and is set to launch later this year.
It will use the Ka-band of radio frequency which enables a more focused beam to be sent back to Earth which will improve upon the hitherto unreliable performance of satellite broadband.
Hylas will offer speeds up to 2Mbps to around 350,000 homes in the UK.
If successful, two bigger satellites known as Hercules will be launched and would have the capacity to provide a 2Mbps to the 2.5 millions homes in the UK currently without access to a 2Mbps connection.
If this new breed of satellite broadband was to prove successful, it would be a major step towards achieving universal broadband in the UK by 2012 as laid out in the Digital Britain report published last week.
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