The Conservative party have vowed to deliver a super-fast broadband network to UK homes by 2017. Is this a case of pre-election carrot-dangling or do the Tories have some concrete plans up their sleeves?

The Tories plan to end BT's "local loop monopoly" by making changes to the regulatory framework, giving private investors the chance to pay for improved cabling, an approach that has paid dividends in Singapore and South Korea. If investors did not commit to the service, 3.5% of the license fee currently used for the digital switchover would be re-routed to the broadband cause, with aims to become the first European country to have speeds up to 100Mbps.

"In the 19th Century we built the railways. In the 20th Century we built the motorways," said Shadow chancellor George Osborne. "In the 21st Century let's build the super-fast broadband network that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Britain."

Jeremy Hunt, shadow culture, media and sport secretary said: "We are currently one of the slowest countries in the developed world for broadband.

"With the Conservatives we'll become one of the fastest. High speeds will be available not just in our cities but across the rural areas that have been left behind for too long. These regulatory changes will create the right conditions for sustainable growth and ensure that the digital sector plays a leading role in a competitive, balanced economy."

However, Labour accuse the Tories of "playing catch-up" in regards to Britain's flagging broadband network. Financial Secretary to the Treasury Stephen Timms said: "On broadband it's not Britain but the Tories that are playing catch-up. Labour have already announced measures for rolling out broadband across the country - and the Tories have opposed the plans to make that happen."

BT have announced the launch of Infinity, the first consumer broadband package to use their new next-generation access (NGA) fibre-optic network.

For £19.99 a month, customers can get download speeds of 40Mbps and upload speeds of 2 Mbps. Data is capped at 20GB and a £50 installation fee is needed.

Alternatively, customers can opt for a £24.99 a month deal which has the same up and download speeds, but without the data cap or set-up fee.

Both contracts are 18 months long.

Gavin Patterson, chief executive officer of BT Retail, said: "The internet is essential to our customers' lives and they are demanding more and more as richer and even more compelling services become available."

He continued: "BT Infinity gives customers the capacity and reliability they need in an instant and at a great value price they can afford. We want to give our customers the best possible online experience and are committed to rolling out super-fast speeds across the UK."

BT's new NGA network is open access, meaning other providers will be able to use it to boost their own services.

The Infinity service goes live on 25th January. Check it out here.

As of March, network providers O2 will be offering landline phone deals to their broadband customers. It's a move the company hope will help bolster their trailing home broadband position.

"This is the most important launch for us in the home space since we entered the broadband market and is part of our strategy to evolve beyond mobile to a leading connectivity brand ," said Sally Cowdry, UK Marketing Director at O2. "We know how many of our customers value the convenience of paying for their home phone and broadband together with no hidden extra costs, and we will be bringing the same commitment to quality of service with our home phone service as we have successfully established with broadband."

The new offer will consist of two home phone packages available to O2 Home Broadband customers. 'Evening & Weekend' costs £9.50 per month, offering unlimited calls to UK homes on evenings and weekends. £12.50 per month bags you their 'Anytime' service, and offers 24/7 unlimited calls to UK homes, 0845/0870 numbers and landlines in 20 selected international countries. O2 mobile customers will be able to get O2's Standard broadband package and Evening & Weekend phone package for £17 per month, with line rental chucked in at no extra cost.

O2's landline services will come with a range of features. Hide My Number, Last Caller ID, and Last Number Delete will all be available to subscribers. A number of other services including Voicemail, Call Waiting, Caller Display, Call Barring and Ring Back will also be available at additional cost.

For more info, visit www.o2.co.uk/homephone .

The Consumer Electronics show, the behemoth of tech, the Valhalla of gadgetry, has come and gone for yet another year. But this time, rather than arriving with a bang, it slinked into sight with something more like a whimper.

CES 2010 had really had the wind knocked out of it before it had even got into the ring this year. All eyes were already on Apple and their rumoured Tablet in the run up to the event, despite the fact that Apple are traditionally a no-show at CES, instead planning their own top-secret unveiling at the end of January. Likewise, Google delivered a sucker-punch in the shape of the Nexus One, their flagship handset revealed at their own event on the eve of CES 2010's opening.

To make matter's worse, Microsoft's opening keynote speech (delivered by walking personality drain Steve Ballmer) was pretty darn dull. First a power cut, then a load of waffle on the 2 month old Windows 7, Ballmer hardly seemed to be trying to keep our attention. Though the Christmas release date for Project Natal was welcome news, it revealed nothing new about the device, whilst the partnership with Hewlett Packard for the new Slate device seemed merely like a case of keeping-up with the Joneses. Or should that be the Jobs-es?

But the Las Vegas event wasn't without its highlights. Far from it in fact. Maybe it's the recession, or the generally pocket-pinching mood in the air these days, but for once the most sought after tech wasn't in the realms of dreamy aspiration, but was actually fairly affordable.

Take for instance the brand new 3D TVs on show, of which the Sony BRAVIA XBR-52HX900 (video above, courtesy of Ashley) was the pick of the litter. Finally shaping up to the standards set by its cinema siblings, company reps promised that the average 3D TV will cost little more than a top-end Full HD set. Skype and video calling in many TV sets too will help turn your living room into somewhere the Jetsons could only dream of.

E-readers are also looking to be both big and affordable in 2010. As a comic book fanatic I'd have liked to have seen more attempts at a colour screened e-reader (I'm not including the MSI offering, which is really just a dual-touch screened PC, super-cool as it is). Plastic Logic's Que Pro e-reader looked great though, with a massive, durable screen, and was far lighter than the hundreds of books you'd be able to store on the tabloid-sized device.

There were, of course, tablets aplenty. The dual-booting Viliv P3 may be an underdog in the category, but seemed way more exciting than Microsoft's offering. The offer of both Windows and Android on the same device showed a respect for user choice not often seen in the back-slapping world of consumer tech.

There was still time for fun too. The Parrot AR Drone Quadricopter was fun and fresh, combining real-world toys with augmented reality controls. A little less high-tech but full of retro-chic was the Lasonic i931 iPhone dock/ghetto blaster mash-up. Odd's on its at the top of Flava Flav's Christmas list. And there was still some time for the weird and the plain old dumb, too.

Though less prevalent than other years, there were some great examples of brand new tech on show that were genuinely exciting. A real head-turner and my favourite item of the show was the Light Blue Optic Light Touch. Using a pico projection engine and a touch sensitive sensor, it'll turn any flat surface into a touchscreen. It works ridiculously well despite still being in the development stages, and has almost unlimited potential.

Some detractors say that, recession or not, CES looks to be on its last legs. It's sad, but not unlikely, when you consider the audiences that companies like Apple and Google can command for just a single product launch. However, for emerging companies like Light Blue Optics CES is still vital to gain some exposure, not to mention the fact that such a prominent date in the calendar forces the tech giants to have made some significant, competitive advances in their gear, year-on-year.

So here's hoping the old dog's got a bit of life left in it yet. Hopefully next year will kick off the recessionary cobwebs and kick the show back into high-tech gear. It wouldn't take much to tempt us back to the City of Sin once more.

Click here for full CES 2010 pre-show, day one, day two and day three round-ups.

BT have today announced that they are ahead of schedule for their super fast broadband rollout, and plan to have the network ready nationwide in time for the 2012 Olympic games.

BT aim to have a 100Mbps service ready for 10 million UK homes by July 27th 2012. The initial forecast had predicted the network would be ready for March 2013.

Ian Livingston, BT CEO called for further support from the UK government.
"If you look around the world, several governments are pro-actively supporting the roll out of fibre broadband," he said. "There's still a debate in the UK - which is fine - but we need our politicians to decide how much of a priority fibre broadband is."

The news comes with one stipulation however; only homes directly catered for with fibre optic cabling will receive the 100Mbps download speed. Anyone who connects via a BT hub-box somewhere nearby will receive a connection closer to 40Mbps instead, due to the copper cabling used.

Still, 40Mbps is hardly to be sniffed at. Virgin Media had better start watching their backs.

Via: BBC News

D-Link are set to launch the DWA-131 Wireless USB adapter later this month. Little bigger than a 50 pence piece, the tiny adapter connects to a Wireless 802.11n network and can provide download speeds of up to 300 Mbps.

The adapter uses what is known as "smart antenna technology". The device transmits multiple streams of data, which it bounces off walls to minimise interference and help eliminate Wi-Fi dead zones.

"With its sleek compact design and unmatched performance, this ultra-portable USB adapter is an ideal choice for setting up a secure, high-performance wireless connection" explains Andrew Mulholland, Marketing Manager for D-Link UK.

The D-Link Nano Adapter uses 802.11n technology to maximise the speed, strength and range of wireless signals to significantly outperform 802.11g devices, but will still be fully compatible with existing 802.11b/g wireless routers and access points.

The DWA-131 will be available on the 21st December from Play.com for £34.99.

TeliaSonera are today launching what they claim to be the world's first commercial 4G network.

Though their have previously been trials of similar services, this is the first time a commercial 4G network has been available for consumers to use.

The Nordic provider is hoping to deliver speeds of around a whopping 80Mbps. That's ten times the fastest 3G networks currently available.

"The use of mobile broadband in the Nordic countries is exploding and customers need higher speeds and capacity. This is why we launch 4G services in both Stockholm and Oslo," said Kenneth Karlberg, TeliaSonera's President and Head of Mobility Services ."Being first out with new technology gives us unique experience that we can use on all our markets. We will continue the roll-out to offer our customers new communication services for the future."

TeliaSonera are looking to deliver the service across all the major cities of Sweden and Norway, and also have a licence to deliver the service in Finland once they are ready.

Here's hoping someone picks up on TeliaSonera's initiative and rolls out a similar service to UK web surfers.

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.