The Ofcom-backed code of practice has won pledges from net firms to give more information about line speeds.
Net firms covering 95% of the UK’s broadband users have signed up to the voluntary scheme which comes into force on 5 December.
Over the next six months Ofcom will monitor net firms to ensure they live up to their promises.
The code of conduct was drawn up in response to research that suggested consumers were confused by adverts that promised broadband speeds that few consumers could achieve.
Almost a quarter of people do not get the speed they expect, according to early results from Ofcom research, which is due to be published in full in 2009.
The code requires net firms to:
- Give new customers an accurate estimate of the maximum speed…
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is proposing giving innovators free unlicensed access to valuable airwaves if the company that buys a license to the channels doesn’t meet tough requirements to build a nationwide Internet network.
The proposal has been added to a pending auction of the airwaves. The FCC is scheduled to vote on rules for the sale on Dec. 18. Mr. Martin wants the company that buys the airwaves to devote at least 25% of the spectrum to free Internet access for 95% of the country. The no-cost Internet service also would be smut-free for users under 18. Adult users could opt out of the filter blocking pornographic content.
Mr. Martin said Wednesday that he has circulated two versions of the auction item — one…
Surprises me, the skepticism of some Bangla friends here about their own broadband potential. The rest of the world seems to think otherwise. In the maps above the country sizes indicate their Internet penetration. Bigger the country more widespread is the net. (Found them sometime back in Cyber Geography, but cannot locate the source anymore.)
Of course, predicted 2015 figures might be based on many assumptions, which may or may not be valid in long term. Still, don’t we see the bottom-line? If these maps were to be believed Bangladesh will certainly be a market leader in 2015. Are we sure to have adequate reasons to question that?
Agreed, none of the South Asian countries, including India, has reached a level to boast about broadband penetration. We…
It is always informative to engage in a retrospective assessment of the use of technology in a terrorist atrocity and see what we can do to make their activities more difficult (and prevent knee jerk reactions that only make the lives of law-abiding people more difficult). The first reports on the use of mobiles by suicide attackers of Mumbai are coming out:
Mr. Muzammil, who is the right-hand man to Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakvhi, the operational commander of the group, talked by satellite phone to the attackers from Pakistan when the gunmen were in the Taj and Oberoi hotels, the Western official said.
The attackers also used the cellphones of people they killed to call back to Mr. Muzammil somewhere in Pakistan, the official said.
One use is clear: they killed…
A British doctor volunteering in DR Congo used text message instructions from a colleague to perform a life-saving amputation on a boy.
Vascular surgeon David Nott helped the 16-year-old while working 24-hour shifts with medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Rutshuru.
The boy’s left arm had been ripped off and was badly infected and gangrenous.
Mr Nott, 52, had never performed the operation but followed instructions from a colleague who had.
The surgeon, who is based at Charing Cross Hospital in west London, said: “He was dying. He had about two or three days to live when I saw him.”
Mr Nott knew he needed to perform a forequarter amputation, which requires the surgeon to remove the collar bone and shoulder blade.
He contacted a colleague who had performed the…
Tags: amputation, BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation, Charing Cross Hospital, David Nott, Greater London, London, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Mobile, short text message, SMS, United Kingdom.
Pakistan is ranked fourth in terms of broadband Internet growth in the world, as the subscriber base of broadband Internet has been increasing rapidly with the total base crossing 170,000 in the country.
The rankings are released by Point Topic Global broadband analysis, a global research centre. According to the statistics, there are around 382. 4 million broadband subscribers worldwide by the end of August 2008 as compared with 317 million in August 2007, showing 17 percent growth.
Regional Broadband trend revealed that Western Europe has the largest share of broadband users with 26 percent followed by North America at 22 percent. South and East Asia regional is in the third place with 22 percent share.
In Pakistan operators are offering wide range of technologies like DSL, Cable,…
Tags: Broadband, broadband Internet, communication services, Daily Times, Internet Protocol, IP, North America, online information, Pakistan, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, Western Europe.
Harsha de Silva discussed LIRNEasia research on ICTs and Agriculture at a Virtual Forum on ‘Mobile Telephony in Rural Areas’, organized by the e-Agriculture.org, from 17-28 November 2008. Consisting of over 145 people from 52 nations, participants at the forum included farmers; NGO representatives; private sector; researchers, scientists and academics; governmental representatives; and UN staff.
A summary report of the first week of discussion is available here.
Telecom says a power fault at its central Auckland exchange caused the weekend’s catastrophic national broadband outage. But the telco has yet to work out the cause of the fault, and there is so far no word from its retail division on customer compensation.
The company says its broadband blackout began at 9pm Friday night, swamping its help lines. Basic internet connectivity was restored for all customers between 4am and 5am, but problems with some services, such as email, persisted into Saturday evening.
Telecom spokeswoman Katherine Murphy says all of Telecom Broadband (formerly Telecom Xtra)’s half million customers were affected by the outage.
Ms Murphy says Telecom Retail will handle the customer compensation issue, but she has yet to hear the division’s compo intentions. Telecom Broadband’s standard terms…
In the remaining weeks of his tenure, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin will push for a free, no-porn wireless Internet network across the nation, according to the agency.
Martin is expected to put his proposal for the free Internet network on the agency’s Dec. 18 meeting agenda despite criticism by wireless operators like T-Mobile, who say using the spectrum could interfere with their new high-speed data network. T-Mobile, a unit of Germany’s Deutsche Telecom, spent $4 billion for nearby spectrum and has disputed a report by the FCC that rejected the firm’s concerns of interference.
For Martin, however, the plan could dispel criticism he’s taken over the country’s fall in international broadband Internet rankings during his tenure and leave him with a legacy of potentially…
Tags: AT&T, AT&T Corp., Broadband, broadband Internet rankings, Deutsche Telecom, Deutsche Telekom AG, Federal Communications Commission, free Internet network, Germany, high-speed data network, Kevin J. Martin, no-porn wireless Internet network, Sprint Nextel, Sprint Nextel Corporation, T-Mobile, T-Mobile Austria, The Washington Post Company, USD, Verizon Wireless, Verizon Wireless Inc, Washington Post, wireless industry, wireless operators, wireless phone market.
A research report entitled, ‘Internet Presence as Knowledge Capacity: The Case of Research in Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure Reform’, authored by Sujata Gamage and Rohan Samarajiva has been published in the Information Technologies and International Development (ITID) journal (Spring 2008). The full report is available online; an abstract follows:
Abstract:
Knowledge is an important driver of development. As the production and dissemination of knowledge become increasingly mediated by the Internet, the Internet presence and connectivity of researchers are becoming more valid than the conventionally used publication- and citation-based indicators. This
article presents a methodology that includes the use of the Google Scholar search engine to locate knowledgeable individuals in Asia in a policy-relevant field, paying particular attention to locating researchers in developing countries or in nonacademic settings in Asia. Internet…
Sakwithi ‘I-was-born-to-teach’ Ranasinghe knew the power of media. Few full page advertisements in Lankadeepa, the largest selling weekly in the island were all necessary to convert the virtually unknown English teacher to a national level businessman. That, with the endorsement from a self-proclaimed media guru was adequate to attract thousands of gullible individuals who deposited their hard earned money with him for attractive interest rates, way above the market. When Ranasinghe disappeared, media conveniently washed their hands. Content of paid advertisement, we were reminded, is not their responsibility. Buyers beware. Ironically Lankadeepa became the newspaper that hit their former client the hardest!
Moral of the story: Rely on media any time to promote your business – don’t worry it is legal or otherwise.
Others too have learnt.…
Supreme Court today (Nov 01, 2008) ordered the suspension of three environmental levies imposed recently, reported Lanka Dissent.
Accordingly, the levies imposed on telecommunication towers, CFC bulbs of more than 40 Watts as well as the levy imposed on vehicles in the Western Province were directed to be suspended.
Should we open a bottle of Champaign? May be not. It was not LIRNEasia that took Environment Ministry to courts. Still we take pride in fighting against these irrational environmental levies which would have served nobody.
Some of our earlier blog posts:
Small Victory for LIRNEasia: Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court issues Interim Order against Tax on Mobile Phones and Telecom Towers (Sept 23, 2008)
Digital cigarettes (Sept 21, 2008)
Sri Lanka: Udaya Gammanpila says Environmental Levy does not burden public (Aug 19, 2008)
Sri Lanka: Road to ‘Dharma…
Tags: cellular telephone, Champika Ranawaka, e-waste, Environment Ministry, Google, Google Inc., Ministry of Environment, mobile phones, Sri Lanka, Supreme Court, Telecom Towers, Udaya Gammanpila.
I was invited by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-D) to present and overview of the Common Alerting Protocol and lessons learned in the Sri Lankan experience in relations to the HazInfo project and the work in progress on the RTBP m-Health project. Further demonstrated the use of the Sahana Messaging Moudule CAP Template engine for generating CAP messages and the SMS/Email Multicasting engine for issuing alerts. Dialog Telekom is the only Sri Lankan organization that has adopted CAP and has embedded CAP in to their Disaster and Emergency Warning Network (DEWN) for communicating disasters. The DEWN solution in being implemented as means for the Disaster Management Center of Sri Lanka to communicate hazard information to their District level disaster centers and local first responders.
CAP surfaced as a standard in 2005 fairly new and…
As usual, media is blamed for their role in Mumbai. Unconfirmed reports claimed the terrorists trapped in Taj Mahal Palace constantly watched TV for news and they might have got a feeling of excitement if not ideas from the live coverage. Stupid guys. They never knew what they missed. The best ball-by-ball coverage was hardly on TV but on Twitter, anybody could have accessed thru a mobile. (Twitter added hashtags to terms like ‘Mumbai’ and ‘Attack’) Indian government at one stage requested ‘Twitters’ not to tweet anything about police activity, but it was more because the mainstream media too started depending on them rather than their own paid correspondents.
However, unlike in case of 9/11 no mobile based interactions with the victims were heard – which was…
Mobile internet use is growing while the number of people going online via a PC is slowing, analyst firm Nielsen Online has found.
Some 7.3m people accessed the net via their mobile phones, during the second and third quarters of 2008.
This is an increase of 25% compared to a growth of just 3% for the PC-based net audience - now more than 35m.
It also found that the mobile net audience was younger and searched for different things.
While Google remains the most popular site for those logging on via the desktop, on mobile internet BBC News is the most visited site, with nearly a quarter of mobile internet consumers using it.
Other popular sites include BBC Weather and Sky Sports.
“This highlights the advantage of mobile when it comes…
Tags: BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation, Google, Google Inc., Kent Ferguson, mobile Internet, mobile internet consumers, Mobile internet use, mobile phones, Nielsen Online, Sports news, visited site.
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