News

03 Apr 2013

CEO’s monthly update – Cabinets, elephants and a battle-ready Commissioner

Pamela LearmonthFirst up, March saw the some lengthy debates in the House of Lords on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill regarding relaxed regulations for the siting of broadband cabinets and poles. We were pleased to see the Government’s amendments adopted which removed potential problems of contention that new precedents would be set with ramifications to AONBs and national parks (we issued a response to the DCMS consultation on this last month). (more…)

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28 Mar 2013

Lords publish report on Media Convergence and ‘the elephant in the room’

The Lords Select Committee on Communications has published its report on Media Convergence yesterday, after months of evidence sessions with some of the big hitters from the media world (including our very our Chair Richard Hooper). The report is available here with accompanying information here.

The Chair of the Committee, Lord Inglewood, commented on the report that “The elephant in the room has been the impact of technological change – the Internet. Sitting over most of the media we consume is a complicated framework of rules and regulations. These are supposed to make sure the content the UK public engages with meets their expectations. However, the simple days have gone.???

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28 Mar 2013

Well intended, ultimately burdensome? EC proposes new rules to cut costs

Despite the setbacks faced by the Commissioner Neelie Kroes last month with the significant cut to the Connecting Europe Facility, there is still significant political will to push through the vision of the Commission’s Digital Agenda for Europe. Wednesday’s announcement of a series of regulations aimed at ‘burning red tape’ in high-speed broadband roll out across Europe can be seen very much as part of that will in a way which has no direct implications for the EU Budget. (more…)

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20 Mar 2013

Budget 2013 – staying the course on broadband

There was next to no mention of broadband in the Chancellor’s budget speech today, and not much more in the full 2013 Budget document itself.

“We’re giving Britain the fastest broadband and mobile telephony in Europe??? declared George Osborne and perhaps we should view the lack of additional initiatives flagged in this year’s budget as an indication that Government is staying the course on its previous intentions, albeit ones that do not look beyond 2015 at this stage. (more…)

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20 Mar 2013

National average fixed download speed reaches 12Mbps

Last week saw the release of Ofcom’s bi-annual UK fixed-line broadband performance from November 2012, which gave latest figures on residential speeds across ISPs. Much of the recent coverage (including in the Telegraph, BBC and Cable) has focused on the surge in speeds over time, with the main headlines being that the average fixed download speed was 12.0Mbps. This figure was 34% higher than the 9.0Mbps from six months prior, and a whopping 234% faster than the 3.6 Mbps average in November 2008. (more…)

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19 Mar 2013

Guest blog: Matt Powell, Broadband Genie

Full Fibre Broadband

The UK’s broadband infrastructure is undergoing an important period of change. We’re moving away from a reliance on outdated copper lines in favour of future-proof fibre optic links. In place of a creaking phone network which was never built with the internet in mind, the fibre lines spreading throughout the country can provide far greater connection speeds without the signal degradation which affects copper cabling over long distances. (more…)

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20 Feb 2013

Ofcom announce winners of UK 4G spectrum auction

Ofcom today announced the winners of its 4G spectrum auction, with Everything Everywhere; Hutchison 3G UK; Niche Spectrum Ventures, a BT subsidiary; Telefónica (O2); and Vodafone, emerging as winning bidders.

In 50 rounds of bidding, a total of 250MHz of spectrum was auctioned in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands. It is thought that the combination of the two bands will allow networks to deal with concentrated demand in urban areas as well as provide widespread network coverage. (more…)

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