The Korean government have just announced they’ve reached nearly 8.5 Million broadband users with Korea Telecom having nearly half of these. Estimates are 10M by the end of the year.
Month: May 2002
SonicBlue given some breathing space
SonicBlue have been given a stay, until 3rd June, in the court order that will force them to put software in their device that will individually monitor the viewing habits of their customer. The initial demand was made following enormous pressure from the movie and TV media owners. Perhaps the judiciary has remembered, on reflection, that this is in the ‘Land of the Free’.
ADSL complaints in the UK rise
There are reports of users complaining, quite hard, about the quality of service they are receiving from their ADSL provider in the UK. Sadly, some may say this is inevitable during the stampede leading up to 31.May.02 when the free install offer finishes.
NTL provide public IP addresses in Manchester
NTL have just given its broadband cable customers in Manchester public IP addresses to replace their private IP addresses. NTL state that this is to get around P2P and multi-player gaming problems.
This may be the whole reason, or it may be a counter attack on BT. One of the big sales area for ADSL for BT is businesses, which isn’t an area the cable companies have been aiming at up to now. Giving people public IP addresses could be a move towards this, as it will make it easier to run a server on their cable connection.
New Star Wars is double digital
During the inevitable press build up to the release of the new Star Wars film “Attack of the Clones”, there are two interesting news items doing the rounds.
The first is that this is the first ‘major’ film to have been totally shot digitally, but sadly most audiences will see it on film due to there only being eighty screens in the US that have digital projectors.
The other is that DV video cameras are being used to shoot the projection of the film in pre-release showings and theses copies are being distributed around the Internet well ahead of the public release, some say the furthest in advance of any film so far. Hardly surprising given the Star Wars/Geek crossover.
Nintendo announce broadband adaptor
The big Three (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) games platforms producers are all getting excited about broadband gaming. This week it’s Nintendo’s belated turn to announce the launch of their adaptor, due to be release in the Autumn at the cost of ~$35.
Freeserve and NTL broadband deal
UK ISP Freeserve has now struck a deal to sell cable provider, NTL’s broadband product to their client base in an effort to try and make them less reliant on BT. This is a good thing that will start to get BT on their toes and not thinking they rule the broadband roost.
DSL speed test sites
As broadband services become more popular, the fear is that performance will reduce, as more users are jammed through pipes on the Internet side of the ISP that don’t grow as quickly (the Internet provision side is the expensive side for the ISP). If you’re concerned that you’re not getting the bandwidth you expected to get when you signed up for ADSL or your cable service or even dialup, here are couple of speed tests, the World of ADSL and ADSLGuide. If you do find it lower than you expected, contact your ISP, otherwise it will continue to get worse.
BT build Openworld video offering
BT start to build their OpenWorld exclusive video content by bringing ADSL user an early showing of the Ant and Dec video – groan. For the lucky people who don’t know who Ant and Dec are, they are a UK kids pop duo, who happen to have been picked to sing the World Cup song this year. I must admit I’m a bit confused by this, sure in the UK Ant and Dec are well know, but their audience is not the people who will be paying for DSL to be installed at home, so I can only assume BT are relying on children’s pester-power to get the service taken up.
Liberty Media buys into OpenTV
John Malone’s Liberty Media bought an interest in OpenTV yesterday, giving him 87% of the voting rights in the company. I feel this is the type of significant deal that gives the iTV the gravitas it needs.