Intel COO has told a group of Indian business leaders that Worldwide there is a WiFi access point installed every three seconds, equating to 27,000 every day.
Simon Perry
China fund BB video phones
This is an interesting step in the use of broadband connections.
The China External Trade Development Council (CETRA) is setting up free broadband video phone service between their offices local and oversea offices in an effort to minimise the affect of SARS on the flow of business with Taiwan.
Five CETRA office in Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung will make their connections available to certified businesses at zero cost for one hour per day until the end of October. These offices will have the ability to connect to CETRA’s oversea offices in San Francisco, Toronto, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, Warsaw, Osaka, Dusseldorf and London.
Over 1m UK ADSL customers
BT are trumpeting the news that they now have over one million ADSL customers in the UK. It is important to recognise that these aren’t all customer who have bought directly from BT but include all of the ADSL customer who have bought an ADSL product from ISP’s who resell BT’s wholesale product. With this knowledge it makes this quote from their press released slightly misleading
“The UK is the most competitive broadband market in the world. There are more than 100 ADSL providers – and cable companies have more than 50 per cent market share”
The UK is competitive to a point, but only as far as the resellers fighting for tiny margins on top of BT’s fixed wholesale prices.
Sixteen months ago BT pledged to have half a million customers connected to its own product, BT Broadband, by this summer but it noticeable that this isn’t mentioned and it is believed they will fall significantly short of this.
Sony UK release PS2 online – 11 June
Following the recent UK trial, Sony is starting to sell the online Network Adaptor kit from 11 June, priced at £24.99.
Sony’s adaptor works both on dialup and broadband, where as the Xbox version is broadband only.
There will only be two titles available initially; SOCOM: US Navy SEALs and Twisted Metal Black Online, but they are both highly rated. In the US Twisted Metal Black Online was given away with the Network Adaptor but Sony UK have not decided to do this.
Lufthansa provide broadband on-board
Lufthansa are going to be Lufthansa deal in December 2001.
Broadband Entertainment News – now back online
Apologies for the recent lack of access to Broadband Entertainment News this week. Register.com failed to inform us that our domain, simonperry.com, was due for renewal. Placed in a position of possibility losing the domain, we were forced to pay them $235 to get the domain back, although they were the ones who had passed it for deletion. It not a very reasonable business practise and we would suggest avoiding them at all costs.
Oftel – 2 million UK broadband users
Oftel, the UK telecom regulator has announced the UK now has two million broadband subscribers, which is encouraging. Sadly they’re currently including connections as slow as 128k in their calculation — not commonly thought of as broadband. At least the numbers are moving in the right direction and the take-up is accelerating.
AOL chatting on PS2
AOL and Sony have got together to make content and Instant Messenging available on broadband-enabled Playstation 2’s. Suits both parties I would have through, a good boost in publicity for Sony and a catch move by AOL against Microsoft. The “AIM Talk” voice-enabled Instant Messenger service is a trump of Xbox Live’s in-game talking.
2m and Counting for Apple iTunes Music Store
When will this stop? Apple have passed two million track sales in 16 days of service. This time they’ve provided more detail about the sales — half of the purchases have been as complete albums.
TiVo gets busy again
The first product to come out from the TiVo/Toshiba deal, the Toshiba SD-H400, has been announced which combines a PVR and DVD player.
They have also used this opportunity to announce their TiVo Basic service. This free, non-subscription service is a cut-down version of the normal TiVo service, that only looks forward three days rather the normal fourteen days and cuts out features such as the ability to auto-record a TV show based on it’s actors or director. TiVo’s monthly subscription has often been held up as a reason that the public has been hesitant about jumping on to PVR’s.