Welsh Assembly member Russell George, who is chair of the Assembly’s Economy, Infrastructure &Skills Committee, is hosting a Broadband Summit to be held Monday 20th March 2017. Mr George has been a long-term campaigner for improved broadband coverage in North Powys and at the summit community leaders and representatives from across the area will be […]
Whenever your correspondent visits Malmesbury in Wiltshire, it has an unhurried air. This is in spite of some past events that happened very quickly but added to its history, such as Eilmer, the local 11th century monk at the local abbey who made an early yet unsuccessful attempt at a gliding flight using wings, or […]
In the spirit of the 18th Century Longitude Prize – a competition that set the task of determining a ship’s exact location at sea – NESTA‘s Longitude Explorer Prize focuses on how to solve a contemporary challenge using technology. The Longitude Explorer Prize challenges young people to develop innovative, practical solutions that use the Internet […]
Yesterday the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced a £7 mn. programme to arm young Londoners with the skills needed to get jobs in the city’s thriving digital, technology and creative sectors. Called the Digital Talent Programme, the scheme will have a particular focus on boosting the proportion of women in the industry (currently just […]
Some 15,000 households in Stoke-on-Trent (population: 251,000) don’t have an internet connection at present, but Stoke-on-Trent City Council wants to change that, according to yesterday’s Sentinel, by offering cut-price broadband deals. The local authority estimates estimates this “digital divide” is costing the Potteries’ poorest families up to £21 mn. per annum and is looking to […]
Yesterday’s Wales Online reports that Swansea will be first cities in Britain where residents will be able to enjoy ultra-fast broadband with download speeds of up to 330Mbps, i.e. up to 10 times the UK’s current average download speed. Details are still scant, but “thousands” of Swansea premises will be able to access this new […]
Broadband “not-spots” across Shropshire will be tackled in a £12 mn. scheme to connect more than 16,000 properties, Saturday’s Shropshire Star reports. Phase 2b of the Connecting Shropshire broadband programme is now being launched with the emphasis on bringing decent broadband to those Salopians who currently don’t have it. Of the 16,000 properties being targeted, […]
Microsoft announced “important changes for customers buying enterprise software and cloud services in British pound [sic]” in a blog post yesterday. However, private individuals buying MS products will not be affected as these pricing changes will not apply to consumer software or consumer cloud services. Furthermore, these changes will not affect business customers existing orders […]
The strangest occurrences could affect the running of networks. For instance, part of Bristol Wireless’ own network was once knocked out of action by a squirrel trying to store nuts for the winter inside a piece of our hardware. However, it’s not just small operators like ourselves that run this risk as big boys Virgin […]
German IT news website heise and our old friends The Register are joint sponsors of the Building IoT London event to be held in March 2017. The former reported at the end of last week that software developers doing professional work on the Internet of Things have until 7th October to suggest proposals for presentations […]
Earlier this week the Northampton Chronicle reported that businesses in the town could be line for faster broadband. In the early noughties, Yorkshire-based Kingston Communications (formerly the city of Hull’s Telephone Department – the only non-nationalised part of the UK telephone network – and now renamed the KCOM Group. Ed.) laid several kilometres of fibre-optic […]
The Welsh Government in Cardiff Bay has announced new plans to improve children’s IT skills, today’s Wales Online reports. All aspects of the curriculum for Welsh schoolchildren will include digital skills for the first time this term to prepare pupils better for life, with such skills not being confined solely to information and communications technology […]
Billed as “Europe’s biggest event for the leading third sector CRM“, it’s now less than a month until CiviCRM’s Civicon 2016 in London, which is being held on 6th and 7th October. CiviCRM is the leading open source CRM for the voluntary and community sectors. CiviCon is now in its sixth year and the event […]
Yesterday the Labour Party’s digital democracy manifesto (PDF) was launched by embattled party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, The Register reports. For ordinary citizens perhaps the most significant feature is its universal service commitment. We will deliver high speed broadband and mobile connectivity for every household, company and organisation in Britain from the inner city neighbourhoods to […]
Caernarfon‘s Business Improvement District (BID) has secured £20,000 of funding for improvements, today’s Daily Post reports. Of this total, some £10,000 “will pay to develop a town wi-fi which would give visitors a chance to get online“. Measured against the town’s population, the wi-fi scheme represents an investment of just over £1 per head.
Residents of the Somerset villages and hamlets of Ashton, Badgworth and Stone and Chapel Allerton are currently enduring “broadband” speeds as low as 1 Mbps. The Weston Mercury reports that the villagers recently held a meeting to discuss the situation and discovered they were eligible to apply for a grant scheme to improve their connectivity. […]
The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that bulk data collection in the UK – as enabled under the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (Dripa) 2014 is illegal, except in the fight against serious crime, yesterday’s Guardian reports. The case had been brought by Labour deputy leader Tom Watson […]
First the good news. Yesterday’s Sentinel reports that the north Staffordshire villages of Talke (home of Reginald Mitchell, creator of the Spitfire. Ed.) and Talke Pits will be amongst the next 30 communities to benefit from 200 Mbps ultrafast broadband as part of Virgin Media’s £3 bn. network expansion in the UK. Commenting on the […]
Some 2,000 homes and businesses in South Gloucestershire are set to benefit from an investment of £1.49 mn. in so-called “superfast” broadband up to 2017. The South Gloucestershire villages are likely to benefit from this cash injection include Tytherington, Dyrham, Hinton, Littleton-upon-Severn, Oldbury-on-Severn, Cromhall, Elberton, Codrington and Little Sodbury, although surveys will need to be […]
Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet is set to approve a scheme to apply for European funding to provide better broadband for business, today’s Shropshire Star reports. If the bid is successful, the funding will be used to give eligible businesses grants for fibre optic broadband through the Marches Broadband Grant project. Telford & Wrekin Council […]