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broadband Business internet Regs

Rural broadband roll out slips by 2 years – National Audit Office #BDUK

Rural broadband roll out schedule slips The National Audit Office Last Week spilled the beans that the rural broadband roll out schedule for the BDUK funded superfast broadband project was going to slip 2 years to 2017. This is not good news. It’s not good news for the rural communities that desperately need faster internet […]

Categories
broadband Business

Cumbrian Broadband Hiccups – Will the Rest of the Country Catch a Cold? #BDUK #digitalbritain

Cumbrian broadband – BDUK Cumbria is the region leading the charge in the implementation of superfast broadband to rural areas using government funding via BDUK. Cumbria has just rejected the bids made by BT and Fujitsu and asked them to retwrite the proposals. Neither bid apparently met the criteria laid down by the Cumbrian authorities. […]

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broadband Business

Some BDUK money should be used to educate rural broadband champions #DEAPPG #DigitalBritain #finalthirdfirst

BDUK broadband money needs partly to be spent  on education. Much has been written on the subject of rural broadband and the digital divide and yesterday it all hit the news again as the Government published details of which areas will get how much money towards taking “broadband to all”. This ranges between zero if […]

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broadband Business internet Regs

Broadband Delivery UK Industry Day #BDUK

Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) is today holding an “industry day aimed at companies and organisations that have skills, capabilities and assets that they believe could be used to help deliver the government’s Universal Service Commitment and superfast broadband market testing projects”. The agenda for the day, which is being held within the BIS offices at […]

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broadband End User

Smaller ISPs are key to the UK’s superfast broadband rollout

The small and humorously named hamlet of Crazies Hill in Berkshire may have a population of only 313, yet it could nonetheless prove to be the key to Government plans to equip 95% of the UK with super-fast broadband by December 2017. Earlier this month, its residents agreed a deal to have fibre-optic broadband cables […]

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broadband End User

Broadband for all – our rights to access utilities

PM promises broadband for all It is fitting considering it is Lincolnshire broadband week on this blog that last weekend Prime Minister David Cameron announced that broadband should be considered an utility and that everybody should be able to request it. He said: “Just as our forebears effectively brought gas, electricity and water to all, we’re […]

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broadband Business

Will the B4RN business model work for Lincolnshire

Will the B4RN business model work elsewhere or is it the result of an unique set of circumstances. B4RN, or Broadband For the Rural North is a community owned provider of internet connectivity services offering 1Gbps fibre to the home technology for £30 a month. B4RN bill themselves as “the world’s fastest rural broadband”. You […]

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broadband Business

Lincolnshire Broadband Programme Update

  Lincolnshire Broadband Programme Update – 31st October 2015 Steve Brookes is Programme Manager at Lincolnshire County Council responsible for the Superfast Broadband project. Status Total Homes Passed (THP) at the time of writing is 137,817 and we are on target to meet the end of Quarter target of 144,794 THP. There are currently 626 […]

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broadband End User social networking

New Facebook group – B4RL

B4RL – Broadband for Rural Lincolnshire Hi all. I’ve learned from the example of B4RDS (fast broadband for Rural Devon and Somerset –https://www.facebook.com/groups/fast.rural.broadband/) ) and decided it would be a good thing to have B4RL as a focal point for people to discuss issues they may have with getting superfast broadband to their homes and […]

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broadband Business

BT throw £129m back into rural broadband pot

BT rural broadband reinvestment Bit of an announcement from DCMS re performance against budget for BT and the BDUK broadband roll out. I was in conversation with someone about the Lincolnshire project and was told that they were coming in significantly under budget and were expecting the remaining funds to be ploughed back in. That […]

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Business business applications fun stuff

How to be a woman in tech

How to be a woman in tech When the wonderful @tref was looking for ‘women in tech’ to write a guest blog I had to answer a few questions: am I in tech, how did I get here, and what can I do to encourage others? What do you do? I perform the pivotal role […]

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broadband Business

Rural Broadband’s disaster – why I care – what’s wrong – what’s to be done

A farmer’s wife speaks – rural broadband solutions why I care – what’s wrong – what’s to be done I am a hairdresser and a farmer’s wife, and I don’t want to run the country, but I do want to set a few facts straight. I got involved with tech in the late 80s, when […]

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broadband Business

B4RN the movie

B4RN storming video 🙂 B4RN as all of you should know is a rural broadband network providing a 1Gps symmetrical service to parts of the countryside near Lancaster. B4RN has produced a video that has been entered into a competition. It features @cyberdoyle plus many volunteers seen out digging trenches high up on the hills […]

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Business ipv6 Legal Net Regs

No matter who you vote for…

James Blessing discusses technology regulatory issues he sees that should be addressed by the next government. Since we have a potential change of government coming up, it might be useful to see how well the current one has been doing in the telecoms and technology space and where the next one might repeat the same […]

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Bad Stuff broadband Business

UK Broadband — Not Fit for Purpose

Ignore the pachyderm! By 2017 100% of the UK will have broadband (supposedly). It would seem that far too many people are happy to skirt around the issues, to deliver platitudes and sound bites to willing journalists who don’t actually feel like investigating the truth or facing the elephant in the country. Particularly in the countryside. […]

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broadband End User internet Net

B4RN, OMR, State Aid and the Witches Ducking Stool

The powers-that-be do not expect an ordinary rural community to roll up their sleeves and build state of the art fibre networks in parts of the UK denounced as totally uneconomic. Trefor.net is pleased to present the following “Broadband Week” post from B4RN Chief Executive Barry Forde. Barry is a networking expert with many years experience of […]

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broadband Business internet Net ofcom Regs

Ofcom to Cut Openreach Prices: Will it Increase Fibre Broadband Take-up?

Openreach’s wholesale prices to drop dramatically, but will it make a difference in fibre broadband adoption? Trefor.net welcomes guest contributor Julia Kukiewicz, Editor of choose.net, a consumer site focused on UK broadband (among many others). Later this year Ofcom will force Openreach to radically cut the wholesale cost of installing a fibre line, from £50 […]

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broadband End User

Broadband Week on trefor.net

Broadband week on trefor.net brings a totally international set of posts that includes contributions from Australia, South Africa and Rochdale. Broadband Week has, in all, over 15 contributors who have written material that covers a very diverse set of subjects. Editorially we do not ask specific contributors to write on particular subjects unless they can’t […]

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broadband Engineer H/W Net

Rural Broadband — a Lesson in JFDI (Part 3)

Rural broadband service deployed by Tim Robinson has made a difference to his local community – Part 3 Readers who not yet read Part 1 and Part 2 of Tim Robinson’s post will want to do so now, whereas those who have done so and who are no doubt eager to plunge right in should […]

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broadband Engineer engineering H/W Net

Rural Broadband — a Lesson in JFDI (Part 2)

Rural broadband service deployed by Tim Robinson has made a difference to his local community – Part 2 Readers who have not yet read Part 1 of Tim Robinson’s post will want to do so now, whereas those who have done so and who are no doubt eager to plunge right in should hesitate no […]

Categories
broadband Business

Broadband funding

Broadband funding for rural broadband projects is not working that well says Lindsey Annison. Recently, I was part of a very interesting discussion on TechQT about funding broadband, particularly for areas where there has been (or where it is perceived that there will be) a level of failure in the superfast roll-out. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHGptEl6_D0] Whilst […]

Categories
broadband Business

Future Broadband Planning Requirements

It seems to be one of those weeks where UK broadband stories are coming thick and fast. Not only that, but more and more people are pitching in with considered opinions on stories and, in fact, the comments are beginning to make for far more valuable reading than the original articles! And perhaps that could […]

Categories
broadband Business

Memorable Gigabit Broadband Day

Gigabit broadband makes for memorable day What with all the kerfuffle over poor broadband in the UK (read: BDUK, BT’s superfarce rollout…and possibly superfalse advertising, too?), it was quite nice to wake up yesterday to good news from the fibre broadband world. There have been far too few of these days over the years, as […]

Categories
broadband Business

RightMove, wrong data?

Broadband speed data used by Estate Agents to sell houses needs keeping up to date. To an ever-increasing number of us, broadband is pretty darn important. So much so, that access to it (or not) can affect major life decisions. Such as where to have a coffee, or even which house to buy or rent. […]

Categories
broadband End User mobile connectivity Net

Call Me a Cynic, but…300Mbps on a Mobile?

Lindsey Annison shares thoughts triggered by an eye-opening pre-Mobile World Summit mobile broadband announcement. Just spotted a pre-announcement for the Mobile World Summit starting Monday in Barcelona. It was on a Spanish TV channel (24h) and said “Surfing the Net at 300Mbps on a mobile is no longer science fiction.” (But in Spanish, obv). 300Mbps on […]

Categories
broadband Business ofcom Regs

Should Ofcom compel BT to publish broadband maps?

Should BT have to publish broadband availability map? We keep hearing complaints from many quarters about the lack of transparency related to the Government subsidised Superfast Broadband rollout into the “final third”. Should BT be compelled to publish broadband availability map? County Councils are apparently seen to hide behind “non disclosure agreements” signed with BT […]

Categories
Business internet ofcom Regs

Business Rates

In the Autumn Statement, Chancellor George Osborne gave small businesses an early Christmas present with some relief on business rates. Welcome news, I am sure, for all of our high streets and favourite independent hostelries. However, when you start to look into the rates regime in telecommunications, things starts to get a little more confusing. […]

Categories
broadband Business

Does FTTP on Demand compete with Ethernet fibre connectivity?

FTTP on demand – will customers go for it? Yesterday was at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton to give a talk on connectivity to a community of businessmen and IT types. Hampshire is, like many counties, very rural and there was a degree of complaining from the audience regarding the availability of decent connectivity. Although […]

Categories
4g Business mobile connectivity ofcom

Analysis of who bought what in the Ofcom 4G spectrum auction #O2 #BT #merger

The 4G spectrum auction results were announced back in February. Five telcos won spectrum: Telefonica O2, Vodafone, EE, 3 and BT. MLL Telecom and HKT (UK) Company lost out. Before looking at the merits of each deal it is worth understanding the pros and cons of each spectrum band. Two bands were up for grabs: […]

Categories
broadband Business Cloud ofcom

How the cloud is changing old business practices

Broadband cloud services make their mark at Olnincolnshire conference Gave a talk this time last week at the The Onlincolnshire Digital Conference (#godigital2013) chatting about what sort of online or broadband cloud services our customers start to use after they have FTTC installed. I was not the only one. Rob Wilmot of BCS Agency (some of […]