Category: Distribution

The new QuickTime 6.0 is launched by Apple.

Joltage, one of the new WiFi access companies, now have their first UK access point in Purton, a small Wiltshire village a mile west of Swindon.

The Joltage service works by owners of broadband connections attaching WiFi kit to it and allowing roaming WiFi users in the local area to use their connection. The roaming WiFi users pays $25/month Joltage for the privilege and the base station owner gets paid for usage of each packet.

A seemingly neat arrangement, but currently there are two problems for Joltage. Firstly it is illegal in the UK to commercially exploit the 2.4GHz band that WiFi runs on. Secondarily, reselling ADSL is against the terms and conditions of service.

The idea behind Joltage has been running since October 2000 in the UK by a collective, consume.net, who freely share their bandwidth, making it completely legal, as neither of the problems above are triggered. Being a collective they don’t have a marketing budget but do have huge amounts of enthusiasm to see the service succeed. I’ve been watching the progress of consume.net since early 2001 and have been impressed at the way they’ve continued to improve and expand the service.

At E3, Microsoft announces details their online Multi-user broadband gaming network, “Xbox Live”. At just short of $50/year it will initially offer an “Xbox Communicator” – a mike for in game chatting with remote players. Making clear their commitment to the Xbox over the next five years they’ve also pledged a further $2Bn support budget.

BT’s offer to wave the £65 activation fee for new ADSL users has been extended until August 2002 from the end of May.

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.

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’.

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 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.

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.

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.