 The Mayor of London hits out at broadband cable layers as the governement's investment estimates in fiber optic broadband propegation are sneered at:
>> The Country Land and Business Association has recently commented that the expected Government investment of £1bn into next generation broadband, while welcome, does not go far enough for them. William Worsley, the CLA president, stated that the expected 10% of the country which will not be covered will inevitably be rural areas and the government needs to consider ways of funding the right areas. He suggests that the government sets up a private and public partnership to finance a full fibre optic roll out which could cost as much as £15bn.
People living in Norfolk have spoken up, as they are once again left out of BT's list of locations where fibre optic broadband services will become available. The cabinet member for Norfolk, Ann Steward has commented that Norfolk has some large business clusters which would benefit greatly from improvement in broadband services. She says she is surprised at the areas which have been included. A BT director has also recently commented that Norfolk could wait for as long a 5 years before a 2Mbps service could be established there, despite the Government's commitment to provide this speed to all of the UK by 2012.
>> Chris Marling, the editor of the comparison site Broadband Genie, has been suggesting that broadband providers should be more upfront about the actual speeds they are able to offer customers. He says that providers should not necessarily market a product at a particular speed, but make it clear which product is best for certain applications such as web browsing or email. He made the comments following a report from ABI Research which has shown that sales of broadband enabled electronics will increase 55-fold in the next 4 years.
>> Virgin Media's mobile broadband service, which is available on a month by month basis, has been listed by market analyst Tariff Consultancy as one of the developments driving the industry forward. The contracts allows people to get mobile broadband without a continuing contract, while those who opt for a longer contract service can enjoy the use of a free USB modem for instant broadband access. Virgin Media's broadband covers 85% of the country. The tariffs can be set to match the clients needs in terms of hours spent online and size of downloads. In particular Virgin has been praised for being able to deliver on promised speeds.
This comes after research from CCS Insight has revealed that huge growth in Mobile Broadband is expected across Europe over the next year. In fact, they predict subscribers will almost double by 2011 from 22 million to 43 million and that revenue will increase at the same rate. They also found that the UK enjoys the least expensive mobile broadband subscription charges in Europe, due to high competition. They say that France and Spain can expect the highest rate of growth in the next two years.
>> London Mayor Boris Johnson has hit out at private companies who dig up London roads and has suggested that they should be charged for the amount of time it takes to encourage quicker work. He said that 36% of traffic delays in London are caused by roadworks caused by utility and broadband suppliers. London is now launching a permit scheme which will allow companies a set period of time to complete their work. 300,000 holes are dug on London streets each year. A spokesperson for a utility lobby group has commented that the scheme may disadvantage those communities waiting for broadband access and that costs will escalate for the consumer.
>> A customer service agent who works for UK broadband provider Be, has won the Gold Medal for Best Customer Service Agent at the ContactCenterWorld.com awards in Las Vegas this month. Head of Operations at BE Tom Williams, has praised Sam Filipov for the award and said that Be often receives good feedback for the knowledge and commitment of their staff.
>> Research from a gaming and competition site, Winmonkey.co.uk has found that 25% of stay at home mums are on the internet longer than their children. Most of these women spend more time searching online than they spend doing housework or cooking. The most popular sites were social networking, forums, online gaming and shopping. Sam Notaro from Winmonkey commented that Mums need to find a balance between their responsibilities and their leisure time pursuits ... we refuse to comment as our wives might find out what we said. ;)
>> Despite concerns over the number of people who share files illegally, the market in legal music downloads has continued to rise in the last year. A report from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has found that sales of music singles rose by 32% and 98% of those were downloaded. The sales of downloaded albums rose by 56%, while the sales of albums in stores fell by 3.5%. Recent research by the BPI has found that 31% of people who use peer-to-peer file sharing sites, download music on a daily basis. They expect usage of these sites to rise in the coming year. †
    
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