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.
Author: Simon Perry
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.
McDonald’s to offer WiFi in Japan for World Cup
McDonald’s and Softbank will be offering free Wireless Internet access (WiFi) from twenty of their restaurants in Japan for six months, to coincide with the World Cup.
TiVo announce AOL IM deal
TiVo have just announced a deal with one of their current investors, AOL, to include their instant messaging and live chat on to the Series2 TiVo. Interestingly TiVo/AOL users will be able to set their TiVo recording schedule via AOL – I thought it was pretty stunning that remote programming wasn’t build in from the outset.
Sony buys part of Real Networks
Sony has bought 1% of Real Networks to demonstrate how they are getting closer together, in their attempt to fend off Microsoft taking control of digital music.
Cricket to be webcast
In contrast to the football World Cup, all international cricket from India will be broadcast live on the Internet to registered users of wisden.com.
Audio webcasting goes silent
Yesterday the audio webcasting industry went silent for the day, as a protest to the recently recommended fee of 0.14 US cents per track played. Webcasters say they already finding it hard to survive and the additional financial burden of paying, what initially looks like a small amount of money, would add about an extra $9,000 to their monthly cost. Clearly the record companies don’t see it that way and by 21.May, we will all find out what the final figure due will be as that’s when the Librarian of Congress is required to set sound recording performance royalty rates for Web radio stations.
World Cup streaming video pricing announced
The details of the online viewing of the Korean-held World Cup have now been announced. For a cost of $19.95 viewers will be able to watch four-minute video packages at up to 300k of each of the 64 matches and listen to bespoke commentaries in either English, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish or German. They will be available two to three hours after the match finish, to keep the TV stations happy I suspect.