 As arguments from politicians, businessmen and celebrities rain in on the Digital Economy Bill local people and councils are taking matters in to their own hands:
>>>> A remote rural village in Cumbria has taken matters into their own hands and installed their own 20Mbps fibre optic broadband cable link. The Alston Moor village had been told by BT it would not be viable for them to get even basic broadband service. BT did relent and eventually installed limited service in 2005. The village paid £350 per household for the fibre optic equipment and £65 for the connection. As a result house prices in the area have increased by 20-25%.
>>>> Eclipse Broadband has announced it will providing its customers with up to 40Mbps using BT's fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology. The means that fibre optic cabling is used to the street level cabinet and existing copper wire to the home. 60 Eclipse customers will take part in the trial which is hoped to provide a faster and more reliable experience. It will also ensure the network is able to handle future improvements.
>>>> Tesco has announced it has struck a 5 year deal with Cable and Wireless to provide wholesale broadband. Tesco will now be able to offer it's own broadband service and, more importantly, it can enter the home phone/broadband bundle market alongside Virgin and Talk Talk. Tesco say they hope to provide excellent customer service and new network capabilities.
>>>> YouGov's Dongle Tracker survey has found that Orange is top of nine categories when it comes to portable web facilities. It received excellent feedback on its quality, coverage and value for money. For the second year in a row it was also voted the best internet firm.
>>>> The Digital Economy Bill is due to be published next week. It will set up proposals on how to tackle file sharing and will set up a consortia to allow regional news to be shown on ITV. The bill falls far short of what was expected, but is defended by the culture secretary Ben Bradshaw, who points out that without it, ITV will not have regional news in 12 months (due to the digital switch over), nor will anything be done about file sharing. He also points out that the 50p tax on phone lines will be set out in the budget and copyright laws will be changed to protect online copyright.
The UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) and a number of ISP's have expressed opposition to the Governments Digital Economy Bill. The bill will allow the Government to introduce punishment to people who infringe copyright, forcing them to prove their case in court. The ISP's are worried that the Government will have too much power to impose sanctions on costs and may oblige ISP's to use certain technical features. They say that the problem needs to be tackled at source rather than by imposing sanctions on their users. The ISPA wants an independent body to assess the situation.
Stephen Fry has urged his Tweeter followers to sign a petition to overturn the legislation. 8000 people had signed the petition, which was originally launched by TalkTalk, within the first 24 hours.
The Federation of Small Businesses has expressed opposition to the Governments 50p a month tax on broadband. They believe it could have a negative effect on the industry and could stop the private sector from making improvements. Instead, relying on Government. They believe that opening up the market to more providers would increase competition and drive down cost. TalkTalk have said recently that the tax may encourage more than 100,000 UK low income families to give up their internet connection completely.
The Tories have said that they would scrap the broadband tax and focus on a market driven approach to upgrading. They would encourage telecoms companies to focus on cities first, followed by rural areas once the higher premiums from cities are rolling in. The Liberal Democrats point out that this could mean that rural areas may miss out for years to come. They do support deregulation however.
>>>> The East of England director for BT, Peter McCarthy-Ward has warned that Norfolk may not achieve the Government target of 2Mbps by 2012. He was speaking at a conference on Shaping Norfolk's Future. He warned that the money from the European Regional Development Fund and the 50p tax on broadband would not be enough to cover the area. It was also suggested that many other parts of the country may face the same problems, leading to the adoption of satellite services as a quick fix. This is a costly solution with variable performance.
>>>> Councils appear to be taking note of the importance of fibre optic broadband with both Gateshead council and Plymouth City council launching open access services in their areas. Gateshead has introduced the service to the Baltic Business Quarter and Plymouth is in talks to introduce a similar scheme. This is seen as a sign that councils are realising the economic impact having fibre optic networks can have. †
    
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