Month: January 2002

No money from UK Gov for broadband

Douglas Alexander the UK ‘ecommerce’ minister has stated that Broadband is ‘private sector’ affair. From this it’s quite clear that the government delegation that went to Korea recently didn’t learn a great deal, especially not when it comes to putting their hand in their pocket. Let’s hope this isn’t the start of a withdrawal for support for broadband, after they recent actions had looks so promising …

iMac webcast a big success

The launch of the iMac reportedly brought very large numbers of viewer to its Webcast. Of course it’s a totally ideal audience, keen computer users who are passionate about their product being shown the newest toy by their demigod. Obviously there’s no discussion of cost of the event, 11 Terabytes is a lot of data/cash – and the fact that Apple are investors in Akamai must have helped. With actual figures of the bits shipped given this time rather than the vague ten million viewers given for the fabled Madonna concert, it’s far more believable. It’s a commonly held belief in the streaming industry that the Madonna 10m figure given was totally fictitious.

Fibre optics to be placed in gas pipes

This is the kind of forward thinking that should be applauded. You might think that it’s an obvious idea but that doesn’t mean the people normally involved in this process would think of it. By using an internal conduit in the gas pipes, fibre can be passed though the pipes giving a 75 percent cost saving. Currently 60 percent of households in rural North Carolina don’t have a computer but the state can obviously see an advantage in this changing.

BT scrap SDSL before it starts

Amazing, BT announce that they are to scrap SDSL (sends and receives data at the same speed) due to a ‘lack of demand’. Perhaps the lack of demand is due to them not telling anyone about it (amply illustrated by the fact that a search for SDSL on BT.com returns no results). I spend a significant part of every day researching the BB market and I haven’t even hear of the trial. This is typical BT – they don’t want to do it (it would impact their very profitable leased-line business), so they say there’s no demand.