A £6 a year tax will be added to your landline telephone bill, Chancellor Alastair Darling has revealed today. A further 50p per month will be added to the bill for each extra phone line installed in residents' houses.

Following up on the plans made in the Digital Britain report, the poll tax will be used to extend the current network range to remote areas of the UK, and is expected to raise £175 million each year.

"We now want to go further, so we can provide the next generation of super-fast broadband to 90% of the population by the end of 2017," explained Darling. "This will be funded through a duty of 50 pence a month on landlines which will be included in the finance bill."

Firms willing to bring super-fast broadband to remote areas will be granted access to the £175 million funds, though any network created must be made available to every ISP.

Of course we're keen to see the whole of the UK have access to a super-fast broadband connection, but the extra expense to homes which have multiple phone lines (estimated at around 1.7 million households) seems a little unfair. Adding VAT on top of the new tax also seems like a cheap tactic.

Via: Tech Radar

There seemed to be a real kerfuffle on the news this morning caused by Cisco-sponsored research which showed that the UK was 25th out of 66 countries in a broadband quality league table, lower that is than Bulgaria and Latvia. The amazing thing is that anyone was really surprised by our relatively lowly position.

As anyone who has been to South Korea and Japan - the two countries that top the table - can tell you they are simply light years ahead of us in terms of broadband penetration, speeds and quality. Indeed the South Korean government recently promised universal speeds of up to 1Gigabit per second by 2012 while we struggle to meet the global average speed of 4.75 Megabits per second (Ofcom's April research revealed that our average broadband download speed stands at 4.1Mbps.)

Now I haven't been to Bulgaria and Latvia so I can't vouch for their broadband (though one wag commented on the Daily Mail site of course that the roads were much better in Bulgaria than the UK). But again it doesn't really surprise me.

So what's the problem? Why does the UK lag behind seemingly less developed countries when it comes to high speed delivery of internet services. The reason is largely because of lack of fibre-optic cable which is the only way of delivering the high speeds necessary for superfast broadband (currently we rely mostly on old copper telephone wire via ADSL networks). This is because for years there were dozens of tin-pot little cable companies with no money who spent more time squabbling with each other than actually digging up the roads to lay high speed cable. Even today there are large parts of densely populated neighbourhoods in London which still don't have fibre-optic cable.

The good news though is that could be about to change, albeit slowly, with Virgin now the only cable company on the block. It is rolling out a 50Mbps service while 24Mbps ADSL2+ services via BT and others are becoming more widespread. However, it seems there is still some way to go before we reach the average download speed of 11.25Mbps that's needed to handle future applications such as High Definition Video.

Until then Britain will have to be content with the survey's label of 'Meeting Needs for Today', the broadband equivalent of 'must try harder'.

Top 10 - Broadband league table
South Korea
Japan
Hong Kong
Sweden
Switzerland
Netherlands
Singapore
Luxembourg
Denmark
Norway

Femtocells. Get used to that word because you'll be hearing it a lot more in the future. Vodafone's release of their signal boosting hub this week is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what femtocells is capable of.

US company Airvana and Sanjeev Verma, vice president of femtocell business, have just given me a demo of their HubBub femtocells and its 'party alert' application.

Basically, the HubBub sits in the house and, as well as solving any coverage issues by providing a stronger network using an existing broadband connection, it can monitor activity in the house.

The report we've all been waiting for is finally out but, now that the dust has settled, what's actually changed and what does it mean for you? Have a read of the Tech Digest breakdown.

Broadband

What we're expecting

Universal Internet program whereby at least 98% of the UK would be covered by broadband fast enough to stream live TV services, i.e more than 2mb/s - possibly funded by the part of the licence fee set aside to assist the nation with digital switchover which won't be needed by the time the analogue signal has been switched off in 2012.

The freed up funds could be given to BT to help with the huge costs of supplying fixed line broadband to remote locations. It's also possible that the remaining and most difficult to reach communities could receive broadband via satellite although this would mean subsidising subscriptions to services such as Sky.

Mobile broadband is also expected to be widened to much of the nation. Currently only a small proportion has 3G service from the big five mobile operators with large parts of Scotland and Wales ignored.

It's hoped that the part of the electromagentic spectrum currently dedicated to the analogue TV service will be sold off to Vodafone, O2 et al and used as encouragement for them to expand their infrastructure and increase their speeds.

You may remember last week, we published a post regarding BT's apparent throttling of its user's broadband connections. Well, the telecom giant has hit back, going public with its condemnation of online video services like the BBC's iPlayer and YouTube.

Basically this is how the row has unfolded: The BBC releases a story accusing BT of slowing down broadband connections at peak times - to less than 1Mbps between 5pm and midnight - when users should be getting up to 8Mbps. BT responds by sending an email to BBC Radio 4 programme You and Yours stating that content providers "can't expect to continue to get a free ride". They also go public with this stance.

The Beeb have responded today, via their blog, saying that BT's move was a "forthright call for cash" and that the row could end with net neutrality becoming obsolete.

What this means is that ISPs, who currently make no differentiation between types of internet traffic, could begin to charge content providers for their output, particularly bandwidth hoggers like the iPlayer.

The row illustrates how much the net has evolved over the last few years. With the mass introduction of high-bandwidth streaming service like the iPlayer, Spotify, YouTube and the like, the pressure on ISPs to provide a fast and consistent service to their users has increased dramatically.

Lord Carter's Digital Britain review is due next week and should call for broadband at high speeds and low prices. It might just be that content providers are going to have to come to a compromise with the ISPs to make that happen.

Whatever the outcome, the end users should not be the ones who are penalised. If an ISP advertises up to 8Mbps broadband with unlimited data allowance then that is exactly what they should provide. They shouldn't promote a service if they are going to struggle to provide it.

(via The FT)

3 has today announced a one-month contract mobile broadband offering. The package offers 5GB of data allowance a month for £15.

They claim that it's "Britain's most flexible and affordable contract" and we're not going to argue with them. I've had a little look around and it is bloomin' good value compared to the other players in the market.

For the same price and contract terms, Vodafone will only give you 1GB and Orange and O2 will only allow 3GB.

If you're using 3 mobile broadband on pay-as-you-go at the moment, you'll simply need to pop a new, free sim card into your dongle. New customers will need to buy a new dongle - they sell the Huawei MF627, E156g and E1550 for £19.99.

The plan is called "Broadband 5GB 1 Month" - I hope they didn't pay the marketing geniuses too much too come up with that one - and it's available online here.

Mobile broadband is becoming ever more popular and this is certainly a good deal if you want to go down that path. Consider if you really need to though, many 3G phones will allow you to share your 3G connection with your laptop using apps like JoikuSpot. And the iPhone will now allow tethering - even if this might not be a cheap option at present.

Ever nipped to Tesco for some crisps and a pot of houmous and thought, "blinking flip, it's a darn pity Tesco doesn't do broadband."

No me neither. Call me a curmudgeon but I like to get my hardware and broadband from a shop that doesn't also sell equestrian equipment, not that I've got anything against horses, they're fine, just fine, I mean, you can't trust them, but you know, no ones asking you to - sorry I'm tangent-ing. Tesco is selling broadband, laptop and phones - that's what I meant to say.

You can build you own deal from mobile broadband dongles and netbooks to contract phones with free TVs. It's certainly worth a look if you're looking for a new contract phone or mobile broadband service.

Their laptop range isn't exactly up-to-date, but they're by no means antiquated. Head on over there and tell us what you think, the person who can construct the most appealing deal wins. What do you win? The satisfaction of knowing you're the kind of person who can spend 20 minutes of your life looking at broadband deals and make a competition out of it. And that's a very special quality to have. Very special.

The average broadband connection in the UK provides over 4Mbps for the first time according to broadband.co.uk. No particular mention of upload rates but then I guess we're all a bunch of web leechers, right?

The figure are up from 3.2Mbps on last year's study with Virgin Media still the fastest, closely followed by O2. Naturally, quality of service is not included in this accolade but, of course, the real issue is that with the likes of iPlayer, the popularisation of video streaming and now HD in the equation, we're using even more bandwidth than ever. Ergo, we're not actually getting a faster browsing experience.

Having a quick look, I'm getting speeds of an average of 5Mbps plus here at Shiny Towers. What are you getting where you are? Send in your average speeds to @techdigest with an @reply and we'll see who's the winner. In the mean time, I'm off to Korea for some proper internet access. Not North.

Release

Let's start this from the top. T-Mobile UK has had its name plastered all over the business pages of late.. Rumour is rife that they're to sell out or merge in some way since a spokesman from the their parent company, Deutsche Telekom, expressed disappointment at the upcoming results in the UK market. Predications are of a writedown of 1.8bn euros and he said:

"The British market is highly competitive and has comparably low margins. In our view consolidation is a means to take excess capabilities out of the market. Nothing is unthinkable on our side."

Now, on the one hand, this is fantastic non-committal business speak but at the same time it's not the kind of talk you'd come out with if you weren't planning on taking some kind of action. So exactly what is the plan? Well, they could reduce the investment in the UK branch of T-Mobile but then that'll only cause an equally large loss of market share and profit. So, quite rightly, all the talk is of merger or takeover or somewhere in between. The question is, with or by whom?

3

The most obvious candidates are the struggling UK networks with 3 presumably top of the list. 3 seems to have the money, the ambition, the plan, the drive and, to put it bluntly, the bollocks to pick up T-Mobile with whom they already share a network. Now, if they took hold of T-Mobile's huge customer base too, then that old problem of termination charges wouldn't be quite the barrier it's proved so long to be.

Orange

Orange has lost its way. From a consumer point of view, they've done nothing interesting since Orange Wednesdays and that fashionable network image they had in the 90s has all but vanished. All we're left with is a few cinema adverts and bunch of expensive animal tariffs that no one understands or particularly wants to get involved with.

They don't do a lot in the way of gutsy exclusive handsets deals and, although it'd be just the tonic to get them back on their feet, I can't see them getting involved. Hard to tell whether it's a question of not having the cash to play with or the lack of foresight but it's high time Orange made a move of some sort.

Virgin Mobile

Surely this is the moment for the third wheel of the UK networks? There hasn't been any room for a sixth operator and if Branson is serious about this foray into telephony then here's an easy way to finally get a foothold, but does he, or various branches of his media empire, have the cash to back it up? I think not.

O2 & Vodafone

The two biggest kids in the park aren't probably so much interested in what T-Mobile would offer them as what it would take away from the other players if they controlled it too.

Part of me feels that Vodafone is too aloof as an operator to get involved and it's questionable whether O2 has the capital after the extensive market push in the last five years. They'd probably love a piece of T-Mobile. They'd pretty much have the top tariffs and many of the handsets in the country completely sewn up but, as I say, one wonders how much cash they've got left after sponsoring the Dome amongst other marketing spending.

UK ISPs

Mobile broadband is a fantastically growth area at the moment and T-Mobile has been doing an excellent job of getting their 3G solutions out there in the shape of netbooks and dongles. It actually represents quite a shame that DT is looking to sell at all considering their UK department has such a progressive attitude to data, price plans, handsets, offers and advertising but thems the breaks, unfortunately.

It's pretty much a straight up fight for your data between all the mobile networks and just about everyone else who pipes any kind of service into your home. Doubtless the electric and water companies will be on it soon enough but today is the turn of BT to land their latest blow in the shape of the cheapest home and mobile broadband combo package on the block.

They're offering you a dongle, 1GB of mobile data per month at a supposed 7.2Mbps and limited 8Mbps home broadband package for a total of £303.08 over 18 months or just £15.65 a month if that sounds too scary.

The deal's well over £100 cheaper than similar offers from Virgin and Orange and comes with the BT satisfaction of speedy set up and the fact that it'll probably work more often than not.

Out now over here.

UPDATE: Had a couple of good questions from your guys that I've put to BT and the answers are as follows:

1) The deal as quoted is for the basic broadband package, Option 1, whereby you get up to 10GB of downloads per month

2) Sadly, you can only get the one dongle. You can buy another but it won't be connected to the same 1GB data account. No family sharing as yet.

The UK government has signalled its backing of at least one section of Lord Carter's Digital Britain interim report from earlier this year by setting aside enough cash to give everyone in the UK a minimum of 2Mbps broadband by 2012. The cash will come primarily from an underspend in the promotion of digital TV.

It's not yet clear exactly what form that broadband might take - ADSL, cable, wireless and satellite are all options - but that information will hopefully be contained in the final version of the Digital Britain report, which is due out in early Summer 2009.

(via BBC)

Anyone considering mobile broadband might want to rethink their decision today, after BT announced that it would henceforth be blocking access to the Pirate Bay for its mobile broadband customers. The company states that it's in "compliance with a new UK voluntary code".

BT's mobile broadband is based on Vodafone's network and it's being claimed that the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) - who were responsible for a block on Wikipedia earlier this year - are behind the move. UPDATE: IWF claim no role in this. See below. Apparently Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone and 3 have also all agreed to participate.

The move comes after the Pirate Bay's administrators were convinced of assisting the making available of copyrighted content and sentenced to a year in prison. The four are appealing the decision, though I argue that I don't think it'll make the blindest bit of difference.

What we really don't want, though, is an unelected, non-governmental organization like the IWF deciding what content we're allowed to consume online. As OnlineFandom points out, many Swedish labels have found ways to gain considerable commercial benefit out of The Pirate Bay, sharing content on it with full permission. Why should Brits miss out on that?

Update: BT claims that it's nothing to do with the trial, just the fact that people under 18 can sign up for mobile broadband packages and that there's 18+ content on the Pirate Bay. That sounds like a load of baloney to me. Why would they block one site and not a million others that host slightly adult content - starting with YouTube?

Update 2: The IWF have got in touch with us with the following statement:

It's puzzling, therefore, where this has arisen from. We'll dig in a little further and see what we can find.

(via Tech Radar)

EDGE, 3G and HSDPA are all very well, but what will the next jump in technology be for wireless internet? There are two competing technologies - WiMax and LTE. Which one is likely to win the race in the UK?

WiMax is based on Wi-Fi, and doesn't require a SIM card for usage. Its benefits are that it's an open standard - anyone can create the gear required to use the technology without paying license fees. That means the tech can be up to half as expensive as the equivalent LTE tech.

LTE, on the other hand, is based on the existing 3G network technology. In fact, LTE stands for "The Long Term Evolution of 3GPP". Its advantages are that it's well-understood by carriers, and when a device is out of range of an LTE signal, it can drop back to a 3G or 2G service. LTE's currently a little faster, too, but that difference should be addressed by the ratification of a new WiMax standard later this year.

With most mobile service providers given up on trying to con us over the price of a text message, I'd thought it was data they were trying to do us for now. That was before I saw this deal from 3 offering 15GB per month for just £15, and at a pound per GB that makes it the best mobile broadband package in town.

The catch is that you've got to sign up for a whole 24 months which always sounds longer than two years to me. Naturally, they'll chuck in a free dongle of your choice and colour but there's a good chance you might want to pick up another one by month 15. They'll probably be something a little faster by then.

I remember when broadband first became available in the UK. I begged my parents to upgrade our slow, slow AOL dial-up internet access, so I could download bigger files and actually be competitive in online games (it was some years later when I discovered my poor performance was not solely attached to my slow connection). No avail, they were happy with AOL, which is a sentence you don't see very often these days.

Regardless, they have (or had, rather - they got broadband pretty sharpish as soon as I'd left for university) quite a lot in common with 24% of the UK, who also don't see the point in this high speed internet malarkey. That's according to OFCOM's CEO Ed Richards, who made the claim in a speech to the London School of Economics.

Ofcom appears set to give BT the go ahead to start their fibre optic broadband project that will see the UK telecomms giant provide up to 100Mbs speeds to 10 million households around the UK - vast amounts of small print providing.

It's a little odd that Ofcom should have a change of heart given their last statement on the matter but it's good to see that they're cutting BT some slack. You see, the deal is that BT have to share their infrastructure with with everyone else and so, to make all the investment themselves for everyone to just undercut them might be a touch annoying for them.

So, I'd expect either Ofcom has granted BT some kind of licence to charge the other providers what they like in rental or a financial help in doing all the digging up in the first place. Whatever the case, expect underwhelming new speeds, more traffic jams and increasingly bandwidth heavy ads soon.

UPDATE: Yes, it's happened. The man from Ofcom has officially said yes and to make life easier for BT and their £1.5bn outlay, price controls have been removed concerning other operators access to the network.

New builds can expect to have fibre to the home by 2012 with the first fibre to the cabinet packages available next year in Muswell Hill and Whitchurch, South Wales, from next year.

(via Techwatch)

Many broadband suppliers claim that they offer completely unlimited broadband, but when you dig down into the terms and conditions, you find that there's actually some rather severe limits. If you pass them, then you'll find your connection suddenly throttled to within an inch of its life.

Plusnet claims to be different. There's no caps, no 'fair usage limits' and although they employ traffic shaping products, they're completely open about what they shape and when they shape it. Here's their chart:

Basically, as long as you're not torrenting at peak times, you'll not notice any problems, and gamers will squeal with delight at the promised 2Mbps downstream all day every day, even at peak times. VPNers get the same.

It'll cost you a rather low £12 a month, for a 8Mb unlimited service. There's also a 'value' package with a 10GB usage allowance for £6 a month, and if you're a power user, then you can get no traffic shaping at all with the Pro service for £20 a month.

The pro service is a little complicated - it will prioritise your traffic above everything else, BUT you only have a 15GB a month usage allowance, BUT you get to download as much as you like between midnight and 8am. So essentially, you schedule your big downloads for then.

A small round of applause for Plusnet please, ladies and gentlemen, for being honest and transparent about what they do with your connection. Particularly in so much detail. If only all broadband suppliers could be as open with their customers as Plusnet.

Motorola is testing 4G, also known as LTE - the Long-Term Evolution of 3G, at its lab in Swindon. The trials are using 2.6GHz spectrum, just above the range used by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (2.4GHz).

4G is competing with WiMax to replace 3G as the communications standard for the next generation of mobile phones. Vodafone's also testing a 4G service, but it's unlikely that consumers will start seeing this technology for at least a few years.

(via Computer Weekly)

More 4G news: The HTC Max 4G - the world's first 4G mobile with WiMAX technology for 70-megabit downloads | LG crams 4G LTE tech on a mobile phone chip

Since November, Orange has been offering the Eee PC 901, complete with a 3G module, for £25 a month on a two-year contract. It's an interesting blend of the mobile phone and PC business models, and has presumably proved successful, because the company is rolling out more laptops.

The HP Compaq Mini 700 and the Toshiba L300 have been added to the available range. You'll get the former for £30 a month, and the latter for £35. They both come with the 'internet everywhere' service - meaning 'everywhere you can get a phone signal', anyway. That gives 3GB of monthly data allowance - not a great deal for heavy users.

In contrast to our Government's pledge for 2Mb/s broadband for all by 2012, South Korea's government is promising 1Gb/s! At present, they've got 100Mb/s pipes, and as a result their digital culture is more advanced that almost any other nation on the planet.

As well as a wired speed increase, their wireless broadband will be going up to 10Mbps, using Korea's own WiBro standard. The whole plan will cost the country $24.6bn (£17bn) and generate 120,000 jobs. Now if they can do it, why can't we?

(via GigaOM)

Related posts: Digital Britain | Samsung launches their high end Yepp YP-P3 in Korea