If you’re looking for a way to get Internet around your house using ethernet, this can provide a very workable solution.
The Netgear XAVB101 Powerline kit comes with two powerline adapters and two Ethernet cables.
The units look a bit like a phone or camera power supply except they have a few flashing lights and an Ethernet socket on the side.
The price of connecting every UK home to a super=fast fibre-optic broadband network could be set at a cool £30 billion according to the government’s broadband advisory group.
Continue reading UK Fibre Optic Broadband Network Could Cost £30bn
H2O Networks, of Merseyside UK, have got an interesting idea for providing high speed Internet access to homes and businesses – by running fibre optic cables through the sewer.
This apparently initially grubby idea isn’t new – we first wrote about the concept back in December 2001, when a company called CityNet was talking about the idea (we notice that their Website has disappeared in the intervening time).
It’s good to see that it’s actually happening in the UK.
It’s been announced that, for the first time, rural broadband installations across the UK have overtaken those in Urban areas, according to Ofcom.
The whole of the UK breaks down to 59 per cent of households in rural areas now have broadband compared to 57 per cent of urban areas.
Broadband industry bigwigs are meeting with government bods to see what can be done to stop good ol’Blighty falling into the “slow lane”.
Although over half of UK homes are hooked up to a broadband connection, motoring along at an average speed of four megabits a second (Mbps), this looks decidedly stately compared to the ultra-fast networks proposed in other countries.
Continue reading UK Broadband Could Fall Into Internet Slow Lane
The ITU claims there were nearly four billion phone subscribers worldwide by the end of 2006.
In their “Trends in Telecomm- unication Reforms” report, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said this figure was made up of fixed and mobile connections, with the largest growth in mobile.
Continue reading 4 Billion Phone Subs Worldwide
It’s been a busy time for Solwise of late. Near the start of this week their high-speed HomePlug, the AV 200Mbps / PL-200AV, passed the HomePlug AV certification testing at the recent PlugFest in France, giving them the right to display the “HomePlug AV Certified” logo.
Continue reading Solwise HomePlug AV Price Drop & Certification
ChinaCache, a Beijing-based provider of Content Delivery Network services, has received an additional $31.5m dollar investment, from Western companies, including Intel Capital, reports the China Daily Newspaper.
They’ll be using part of the investment to further expand their current 50-city strong network to cope with the growing demands for audio and video, with the rest of it to purchase competitors to maintain its market position.
Continue reading ChinaCache, Dominant Chinese CDN, Gets $32m Investment
BT are rather pleased with themselves today as they’ve gained the number one position, as Britain’s most popular broadband retailer.
They now got 3.66m broadband customers which, in their words “leapfrogs” them over Virgin Media (NTL/ Telewest as was).
BT are of course running a reduced price scheme for the first six months of sign up – as are Virgin Media. The big difference between the two offers is the entry price – BT £8.95/month and VM £14.99. We would suggest that this has had a major impact in achieving BT’s current number one position (as well as buying PlusNet a short while back).
We’ve just a little, quick maths on the number of BT’s subscribers.
There’s healthy cash flows for BT in this game. Even taking the customers to be on the lowest package, they’ll be clawing in £66m _per month_. This rises to £91m if people are on the highest package.
On a yearly basis that’s broadband subscriptions earning for BT of between £792m and 1.092 Billion a year! Don’t forget you also _have_ to have a phone line with them to have their broadband, so extra earning there.
Not a bad little business broadband has turned out to be for them really. Makes you wonder why they were so reluctant to get going back in the late ’90’s/early 2000’s.
Vint Cerf is well known as being one of the founders of The Internet.
One of his roles (besides being Google’s ‘Internet evangelist’) is as chairman of ICANN.
ICANN performs a number of central roles in the inner workings of the Internet (explained), but is best known for handling and controlling domain names.
Well, this years he’s stepping down and is taking the intervening period to try and encourage many other people to get involved with ICANN.
Vint has issued a video giving an overview of ICANN and the sort of people he’s looking for to join. He calls it “a grand experiment”, and underlines its need to co-ordinate standards as, “in the absence of interoperability, we don’t have an Internet.”
There’s nine places becoming available within ICANN this year, including three at board level. Those hoping to jump from their jobs and join the ICANN payroll will be frustrated as the roles are “uncompensated effort,” although the travel arrangements look pretty good (see vid below).
We found it interesting that Vint referred to ‘Internets’, in the plural, a few times in his video (about 3:10 in), where most people rarely think of it as more than a blob called ‘The Internet’.
If you’ve got a bit of downtime, take a watch, or listen to Vint, may be you’ll be inspired, but act quickly because you have to get your application in by 16 May.
I’ve been on committees of this sort before, so here’s some personal advice – Getting change to happen through them can sometimes be like walking through thick mud, so make sure you’ve got a whole heap of patience.