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UK.gov finally admits it will MISS superfast broadband target
Spending Review The UK's coalition government now plans to invest an extra £250m to bring "superfast broadband" to 95 per cent of Brits by 2017. It also finally confessed today that its original 2015 target will not be met.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander made the pre-election pledge in the House of Commons this morning as part …
Help El Reg welcome our new boss
As Australia shambles towards the next election – no longer guaranteed to be September 14, since that date was the responsibility of former prime minister Julia Gillard, not new-old prime minister Kevin Rudd – the country's telecommunications industry now has the certainty of a brand-new minister regardless of when the election …
First quartet of low-latency broadband satellites now in space
Internet-to-the-world's-poor satellite backhaul provider O3b now has four satellites in orbit, ready to offer latency-free internet access to the three billion humans unable to see Facebook - by November if all goes to plan.
There was a day's delay to the scheduled launch, caused by high winds at the launch site in French Guiana …
UK.gov to grab fistful from £150m city broadband pot to pay for digi skills
One of Neil Berkett's final acts as Virgin Media chief was to lobby the government to rethink its broadband spending plans in urban areas - and instead demand that at least some of the £150m set aside by the Treasury be plowed into digital skills for small businesses.
The telco, which was recently scooped up by telecoms giant …
Oz telco competition still lagging
The Competitive Carriers Coalition, lobby for non-Telstra telecommunications companies in Australia, is concerned that competition reform in Australia is losing steam.
Releasing a study into the state of competition in the Australian market, the CCC had a long list of measures by which it says Australia's telecommunications …
SURPRISE! BT bags more gov broadband cash - this time in Bucks & Herts
BT continues to be the only telco winning any government cash to deploy its fibre network to the British countryside, after it confirmed today that it had won an £18m contract in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.
Meanwhile, the narrative about this particular win followed previous deals signed by BT in the past few months, …
UK telcos chuck another £1m at online child abuse watchdog
Britain's largest ISPs have agreed to contribute a further £1m to the Internet Watch Foundation, following a meeting with Culture Secretary Maria Miller about child sex abuse images and videos found online.
BT, BSkyB, Virgin Media and TalkTalk will collectively stump up the extra cash over the next four years. Each telco thus …
You don't need phone lines or cable for ANYTHING, says Dish
Dish wants everyone to know it can do broadband too: using LTE kit and radio spectrum it plans to acquire from Clearwire, the TV broadcaster has been pushing 50Mb/sec into homes.
The trials ran in rural Virginia, using two towers to deliver between 20 and 50Mb/sec to homes using a 40cm receiving box fitted by the same chap who …
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
Nearly the whole science and tech world is turning cartwheels at Google's “Project Loon”, Google's audacious “bring the Internet to the world using weather balloons” test that kicked off in New Zealand over the weekend.
As Wired notes, having flown to New Zealand for the launch, Project Loon came out of the same “Project X” …
UK.gov's £530m bumpkin broadband rollout: 'Train crash waiting to happen'
The UK government's ploughing of taxpayers' cash into deploying countryside broadband networks has been branded a "train crash waiting to happen".
That's the view of a well-placed Whitehall insider who revealed that Blighty's public spending watchdog will next month publish a scathing report into the crashingly expensive …
Comcast expands public Wi-Fi net using customers' modems
Comcast, the US's largest broadband provider, has announced plans to expand its public Wi-Fi network by turning millions of customers' cable modems into open wireless hotspots, as well as providing new wireless home automation capabilities.
As Comcast explained in a blog post on Monday, the newest version of its Xfinity Wireless …
Who's the daddy of Virgin Media now? That would be Liberty Global
US cable giant Liberty Global has completed its takeover of Virgin Media in a $24bn (£15.5bn) cash deal.
VM boss Neil Berkett - now £42m richer - has been replaced by one-time News Corp man Tom Mockridge.
The telco's new CEO told the city that he was glad to be "joining the company at this important inflection point in its …
All major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters
Analysis TalkTalk - it would seem - has blazed an unlikely trail for Britain's big name ISPs by being the first telco to switch on network level filtering of web content. Now, after many months resisting the urge to apply such controls to their services, the other major providers - BSkyB, Virgin Media and BT - have all decided to follow …
BSkyB-owned BE slams into traffic pile-up over 'unlimited' broadband lie
Telco BE - now owned by BSkyB - has been admonished by Blighty's ad watchdog for misleading its customers with unsubstantiated claims about its broadband.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld gripes from three complainants who challenged the ISP's claims that it offered "unlimited usage" to customers - despite having …
Steelie Neelie: Crack down on wicked ISPs so we can Skype
Brussels' vice president Neelie Kroes hopes to stop European ISPs from supposedly being anti-competitive by blocking or throttling rival services.
The commissioner, whose brief includes the digital agenda in the EU, lobbied the European Parliament today with her "net neutrality" proposals.
Kroes claimed that "many Europeans" …
No FTTH under alternative Oz NBN plan, says Oppn. leader
The last possible imitation of sanity has abandoned Australia's National Broadband Network debate, with opposition leader Tony Abbott accused of abandoning his party's “DIY fibre” policy to save Australians from exposure to asbestos.
Which it cannot possibly achieve.
The FTTN-plus-DIY policy was already subject to criticism on …
Asbestos finds interrupt NBN preparations
Updated The rollout of the National Broadband Network has uncovered some nasty secrets: the use of asbestos cement in old Telstra pits, and the endemic dodginess of Australia's construction sector.
Asbestos has been turning up in pits all over the country, with reports coming in from Penrith in NSW, Ballarat in Victoria, Launceston in …
Hey, O2 punters: Kiss goodbye to 4 MEELLION* Openzone hotspots
O2 customers will be kicked off BT Openzone, the UK-wide public Wi-Fi network, from 1 July.
By ending its wireless sharing deal with BT, O2 will be reduced to relying on just 8,000 hotspots nationally, whereas Openzone has four million or so sites*. The Wi-Fi hotspots can be used by nearby laptops, phones, tablets and other …
Woolwich beheading sparks call to REVIVE UK Snoopers' Charter
Nick Clegg has been warned that his opposition to the controversial Communications Data Bill could leave Britain "at risk" after a soldier was beheaded in Woolwich, London.
The deputy prime minister is coming under increased pressure to rethink his stance on the draft law, dubbed the Snoopers' Charter. The bill, if passed by …
Virgin Media slides fat 10Gbps pipes into Murdoch's BSkyB
The business end of Virgin Media has revealed more details about a £49m deal to beef up BSkyB's broadband network.
Virgin Media announced last month - in what is likely to be its final quarterly report to the City before being acquired by US cable giant Liberty Global - that it had bagged "major backhaul contract wins" from …
George Soros pumps £50m into fibre-gobbling ISP Hyperoptic
Hyperoptic - a relatively new player in the UK's ISP market - confirmed today that it had received a massive cash injection of £50m from investors to help the company expand its fibre-to-the-home business.
The telco, which currently offers 1 Gbit/s fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology to Londoners, was founded in 2010 by Boris …
IiNet offloads fibre network to NBN Co
In a bit of a game of pass-the-parcel, the fibre-to-the-home network assets that iiNet bought when it acquired TransACT Communications last year has been passed on to NBN Co for a minimum of $AU9 million.
The FTTH was a relatively small part of TransACT's network assets: it also had (through its own acquisition of Neighborhood …
Give porno danger classes to Brit kids as young as FIVE - parents
Schoolteachers should warn British children as young as five about the "dangers" of finding pornography online, say families.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) asked parents to suggest what schools should be doing to protect kids from smutty websites: nearly half (42 per cent) of 1,009 respondents believed …
'Momentous year' for TalkTalk as it surges from 3rd place to, er, 4th
TalkTalk has reported a slight fall in revenue and pre-tax profit for the full financial year.
The budget telco told the City that sales for the 12 months to 31 March had slipped by one per cent to £1.67bn compared with £1.68bn a year earlier.
Profit before tax dipped four per cent to £122m, the company added.
TalkTalk CEO …
Australia downloads a limping 13 Mbps, says Ookla
There are, it seems, 44 countries in the world with better broadband download speeds than Australia, according to the latest Netindex release by Ookla.
This has brought a predictable round of soul-searching, particularly as Mongolia appears higher on the list than Australia (it scored an average speed of 13.79 Mbps, while …
Murdoch hate sparks mass bitchin', rapid evacuation from O2, BE
Boycotting Rupert Murdoch-owned stuff - such as the media baron's newspapers - is nothing new.
But now that Telefónica UK has sold its O2 and BE home broadband businesses to BSkyB, customers are either fleeing the networks or moaning bitterly about who they perceive to be their looming "nasty old" overlord.
O2 and BE punters …
More Wi-Fi in the sky: FCC to help keep US flyers tweeting
The US spectrum regulator wants to release 500MHz of radio spectrum for aircraft backhaul, creating cheaper connectivity for passengers taking their entertainment into their own hands.
Seventy per cent of American flyers take electronic devices with them, making the screen-back displays increasingly redundant, but mid-air …
TalkTalk's tiny package most certainly not 'best value', tuts watchdog
TalkTalk has been ordered to never brag again about its "best value" broadband, telly and phone package after BSkyB complained to the ads watchdog.
The Advertising Standards Authority berated budget ISP TalkTalk for claiming its service was directly comparable to its rivals' products but at a lower price. In fact, TalkTalk's …
FTTN cabinet survives Kiwi car crash
Update Maclolm Turnbull will be smiling today. The communications spokesperson for Australia's opposition recently advanced a fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) plan for the nation's multi-billion National Broadband Network. That plan calls for tens of thousands of roadside cabinets to be constructed as the node to which fibre connects, before …
NBN rollout to reach 1.3m new premises by late 2016
The timetable for rollout of Australia's national broadband network (NBN) has been updated. The nation's terminal-looking government, which faces an election on September 14th, has unveiled plans to provide an additional 1.3m premises with a fibre to the premises (FTTP) connection by December 2016.
A canned statement about the …
BSkyB seeks 100s of Geordies to deal with broadband customer growth
BSkyB is looking to fill 550 job vacancies to meet what it described as "strong demand" for its TV and broadband services.
The move comes after the British broadcaster confirmed that it had completed its takeover of O2 and BE's home broadband networks on Wednesday.
BSkyB, which is 39 per cent-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp …
Ofcom probes BT over fibre pricing after repeated gripes from TalkTalk
Former jockey Dido Harding has convinced communications watchdog Ofcom to investigate BT, after the TalkTalk boss repeatedly complained about her rival's stranglehold on the fibre broadband market.
The regulator opened a case on Wednesday to probe "alleged margin squeeze in superfast broadband pricing". The allegation is that BT …
ISPs: Get ready to slurp streams from Murdoch's fat pipe
O2 has begun telling its home broadband customers that they will soon be shunted over to BSkyB's network.
As exclusively revealed by The Register earlier this year, O2 - the trading name of Telefónica UK Limited, which is majority-owned by Spanish parent company Telefonica - was in talks with BSkyB about a possible sale of the …
Plusnet's 'Everyone's a winner' claim is a plus-sized whopper
BT-owned ISP Plusnet misled would-be customers by boasting in a telly ad that its broadband service was available to "everyone", says a watchdog.
And the blurb wrongly gave the impression that all of its products were part of a half-price sale.
The Advertising Standards Authority ruled the Plusnet ad in question, which stated …
The NBN questions Malcolm Turnbull won't answer
In the nearly three weeks since Australia's opposition parties released their policy for a faster-and-cheaper-to-implement national broadband network (NBN) reliant on VDSL to bring 50Mbps connections to most homes and businesses, oceans of digital ink have been spilled analysing the plan.
We've been trying to add to them in …
'Your infernal cable pipes come up from Hell, Virgin!'
Quotw This was the week when Virgin Media was forced to grovel publicly after a deceased man's family posted the firm's demand for a £10 "late payment" when his direct debit was denied because of his death.
The new bill clearly states that the direct debit was denied because the payer was deceased, but that didn't stop Virgin from …
Virgin Media: SO SORRY we fined your dead dad £10 for unpaid bill
Virgin Media has apologised after charging a dead man £10 for being unable to pay his broadband bill.
The bloke's son-in-law Jim Boyden posted a photo of the demand for the tenner on Facebook, along with an open letter accusing the UK internet provider's staff of a "special kind of meanness".
Almost 100,000 people have now …
Google's $1 fiber deal will cost Provo, Utah $1.7m
Google's sweetheart deal to take over the city of Provo, Utah's loss-making fiber network will come with hidden costs, the city's mayor has revealed.
Last week, The Register reported that the Provo city council was planning to vote on a deal that would allow Google to take ownership of the city's multimillion-dollar municipal …
Oz broadband speeds collapsed in 2012
Akamai's State of the Internet report reveals a sharp slowdown in Australian Internet download speeds to the end of 2012.
According to the report, which is gathered by analysing traffic through Akamai's content distribution networks, global connections got faster, with 2.9 Mbps on average and 16.6 Mbps average peak connection …
Voda wants NBN access to boost regional 4G spread
Vodafone has said it's hoping that the rollout of the National Broadband Network will give it the chance to improve country mobile services.
In evidence to the Joint Parliamentary Inquiry into the National Broadband Network on Friday April 19, the junior member of Australia's three-strong mobile carrier club identified Telstra's …
Web minister Maria Miller: UK WILL hit 2015 broadband target
Culture Secretary Maria Miller insisted during parliamentary questioning that the government's £680m Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) project will hit its target of bringing download speeds of at least 2Mbit/s to almost every Brit by 2015.
Meanwhile, her department's rhetoric has changed to reflect the fact that many of the rural …
Turnbull 'flat out' seeking NBN killer blow
Australia's broadband debate is beginning to take on elements of farce.
For quite some time on Friday, April 19, Malcolm Turnbull, the opposition spokesman for communications, quizzed National Broadband Company (NBN Co) CEO Mike Quigley and CTO Greg McLaren about the feasibility of using VDSL for in-building distribution in …
