This developed a typology of discontinued Internet use by young people:
Ofcom’s decision to make 4G available this year is great news for the UK. Consumers will soon be able to benefit from the much greater mobile speeds that 4G will deliver. 4G will drive investment, employment and innovation and we look forward to making it available later this year, delivering superfast mobile broadband to the UKOFCOM said:
Following a consultation, Ofcom has concluded that varying EE’s 1800 MHz licences now will deliver significant benefits to consumers, and that there is no material risk that those benefits will be outweighed by a distortion of competition.2 Delaying doing so would therefore be to the detriment of consumers.Everything Everywhere is also to launch a new brand alongside Orange and T-Mobile.
Other operators will be able to bid for spectrum for 4G services in an auction later this year.
Vodafone, which must wait for the auction, is quoted by the Daily Telegraph as complaining bitterly:
We are frankly shocked that Ofcom has reached this decisionAs part of the deal to create Everything Everywhere it undertook to competition regulators to dispose of some of its spectrum. According to IT Pro it has now sold that two lots of 1800 MHz spectrum to 3UK (Hutchison Whampoa Ltd). This will, in time, allow 3 to offer its own 4G services.The regulator has shown a careless disregard for the best interests of consumers, business and the wider economy through its refusal to properly regard the competitive distortion created by allowing one operator to run services before the ground has been laid for a fully competitive market.
Cable & Wireless Communications on Tuesday announced that its subsidiary in the Seychelles has completed the rollout of a nationwide fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) network.It seems a little odd to discuss curb (or kerb) in a tropical island.
Nonetheless:
The FTTC network will be supported by the newly-launched Seychelles East Africa System (SEAS) subsea cable network, the first undersea cable to serve the Seychelles. The 2,000-km cable links the Seychelles' main island Mahe with Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania.
We simply will not have a competitive broadband network unless we recognise the massive growth in demand for higher and higher speeds.This appears to be a revision from "best" to "fastest" in Europe, seemingly inspired by the performance of Team GB:Although we have loosely defined superfast as greater than 24 Mbps, I have also introduced a programme for ultrafast broadband in our cities that will offer speeds of 80-100 Mbps and more. And we will continue to develop policy to ensure that the highest speeds technology can deliver are available to the largest number of people here in the UK.
Our working assumption must therefore be that the preferred method of going online will be a mobile device – whether linked to high speed wireless in buildings or networks outside them,
But that in order to cope with capacity, we will need to get that mobile signal onto a fibre backbone as soon as possible. So no false choice between mobile or fixed line, between fibre or high speed wireless: all technologies – including satellite - are likely to have a part to play, and our approach must be flexible enough to harness them all.
Get it right and we can be Europe’s technology hub, bringing together the best of Hollywood and Silicon Valley in one country with huge competitive advantage in both content and technology.
I am today announcing an ambition to be not just the best overall, but specifically the fastest broadband of any major European country.Similar story in The Guardian.
See also the text of his speech.
It expects to complete roll-out of fibre to 42,000 homes within three years.
A number of telecommunications operators, as well as companies and cooperatives set up by local authorities to bring broadband internet service to the most remote villages in rural Finland are voicing frustration at the bureaucracy surrounding state aid for the installation of the networks..Apparently the complexity of the process has delayed processing, in particular a failure by applicants to include all information.The Finnish government and the European Union have earmarked EUR 91 million to the effort bring high-speed broadband cable to sparsely populated areas. Only a fraction of the allocated funds have been spent.
FICORA puts up EUR 66 million of the funding, and the state centres for Economic Development, Transport, and the Environment (ELY Centres) will put up EUR 25 million. So far, FICORA has distributed EUR 2.5 million.
The arrival of superfast broadband connections from BT and Virgin Media has boosted the average residential download speed by nearly 20% during the last six months, to nine megabits per second.See also the OFCOM press release:Speeds have more than doubled in three years, up from 4.1Mbps in May 2009, and are comfortably ahead of last November's average of 7.6Mbps, according to twice-yearly research by the telecoms watchdog, Ofcom.
In May 2012, over two-thirds of UK fixed-line residential broadband users (68%) were on packages with advertised speeds above ‘up to’ 10Mbit/s, an increase from 48% in May 2011.Full details can be found in the OFCOM report.The proportion of broadband connections which are superfast (i.e. they have an advertised speed of ‘up to’ 30Mbit/s or above) has increased in recent months with the launch of new superfast packages. By May 2012, 8% of residential broadband connections were superfast, compared with 5% six months previously and 2% in May 2011.
Residential superfast broadband connections are also getting faster, with average speeds increasing from 35.5Mbit/s in November 2011 to 35.8Mbit/s in May 2012.
Speeds in rural areas had an average of 3.5 and a maximum of 4.0 Mbps, against UK figures of 9.1 and 10.1.
