Deutsche Telekom have just announced that they will be rolling out 50 Mbit/s connection in 50 cities around Germany by 2007.
By mid-2006 the first 10 cities will be connected to the new fiber network, covering around 2.9m households.
More immediately there will be a free six week trial starting in Hamburg and Stuttgart which will run at 25 Mbit/s. If you’re interested, you’d better sign up at their site quickly – it’s expected to fill up fast (not surprisingly).
Project ‘Lightspeed’, as they refer to it internally, will give Germany a leading position in Europe for broadband speeds. The project will provide fiber to the curb and will cost them up to Euro 3Bn.
With an average distance of 700m from the street distribution box to the home, delivery of most of the 50 Mbit/s to the consumer is likely.
During the announcement there many, many references to the ‘necessary framework’ for this size of investment. Despite clear questioning there was no answer from DT as to what the ‘necessary framework was, beyond it would involve the regulator and government (obviously).
The only phrase that was used (once) was ‘investment certainty’, which we can only assume is getting a return on the investment. As to what level of return they are aiming for is undefined, and we’re sure it’ll be the basis for a lot of discussion with the regulator.
The “we’ll make the country globally competitive by installing high speed Internet access, but it needs to be made worth our while” argument has been used before by other incumbent telcos when they are trying to get good, or better deals from the regulators.
DT said they haven’t as yet spoken to the regulator, Bundesnetzagentur about this matter.
From deep within the Microsoft base, Bill Gates has pulled a few levers and dispatched a corporate grabbing tentacle in the direction of Teleo, a privately held provider of VoIP software and services.
The San Francisco-based outfit Teleo was founded just two years ago and got as far offering a beta PC to PC or standard phone Skype-like VoIP service with click-to-call dialing through Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer before Gates grabbed the product.
Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but Microsoft have said that members of the Teleo executive team will continue to work closely with MSN, while some Teleo product developers are expected to shuffle across and join MSN.
Following 
We think that Blu-Ray’s dogged pursuit for high capacity (possibly in the face of Unified DVD), and the fact that Sony are driving Blu-Ray is no coincidence.
Cover layer thickness difference
The long-anticipated launch of HomePlug AV specification has finally reached its public release on Thursday last week.
The body started in Q1 2000 and knocked out its first specification, HomePlug 1.0 in spring 2001. 1.0 was intended for relatively low bandwidth applications, as it ran at 14 Mbps.
They intend the chips and products which are HomePlug Av compliant to be hitting the market in 3-6 months. We find this pretty surprising given how long the idea has been in gestation, and how many of these standards bodies have pretty open secrets as to which spec they’re going to be running with, well in advance its the public release.
Speculation about 
In a making-the-most-out-of-a-difficult-situation way, Kari went on to say, “But since this is based on a computer platform, anybody — including Apple if they so wish — can very easily develop this kind of application and offer it to consumers, via the Internet for example.”
It seems that there’s a never ending supply of companies ready to shell out for surveys asking the most inane questions.
Plundering the depths of inanity further, the survey revealed that 34 per cent of females ranked spouse emails as the most important, and 10 per cent more blokes reckoned mobile email would make their lives easier. Fascinating.
ZyXEL’s new AG-225H Wi-Fi Finder is an ideal tool for hotspot-hunting consumers, hackers, freeloaders and bandwidth bandits.
The AG-225H claims to be the first gizmo to combine an 802.11a and 802.11b/g USB 2.0 adapter with a fully functional stand-alone hotspot detector, allowing users to turn their laptops into an access point and share their wireless access with others.
One of the real benefits of carrying around one of these puppies is that you don’t have to wander about with a booted-up laptop to see if there’s any Wi-Fi in the air, so the US$99 AG-225 could prove invaluable for security professionals looking for any unsecured access points.
A couple of stories have been circulating about the BBC of late, both concerning their adoption of digital TV.