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 […]
As part of the strategy to create a single European digital market, the European Commission is preparing to invest €120 mn. to promote access to wireless connectivity in public places under the heading of Wifi4EU. According to Le Monde Informatique, this could see up to 6,000 publicly accessible wifi access points deployed, whilst the Commission’s […]
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 […]
Broadband network providers are expected to bid for six contracts worth a total of £39.5 mn. to improve broadband connections in Somerset and Devon, yesterday’s Somerset Live (formerly the Western Daily Press. Ed.) reports. The investment will provide broadband services between 30 Mbps (sometimes termed “superfast”) and “ultrafast” 100 Mbps to customers, mostly to rural […]
Today the United Kingdom witnessed the annual, anachronistic, Ruritanian pantomime otherwise known as the State Opening of Parliament, an event performed by the unelected in fancy dress which marks the formal start of a session of the UK parliament. The substantial part of the ceremony is the delivery of the Queen’s Speech, written for her […]
Stoke-on-Trent City Council is examining the possibilities of installing free public wifi in the city centre (Hanley), whilst Ludlow Town Council has ruled out free public provision due to lack of funds.
New research by engineers from the Universities of Bristol and Lund (Sweden), working alongside National Instruments (NI), has demonstrated how a massive antenna system can offer a 12-fold increase in spectrum efficiency compared with current 4G cellular technology.
A consortium that includes engineers from Bristol University has been awarded €6.4 million to develop a new type of cloud computing server, which could lead to much faster processing, better resource allocation and lower overall power and cost.
Friday’s Western Daily Press reports that it has come to light that almost half of homes and businesses in rural areas described as “live” on broadband maps are not connected for fast speeds, i.e. a minimum of 24 Mbps. Forty-eight per cent of rural premises – believed to be some 1.5 million people – have […]
News emerged last week that Everest Base Camp in Nepal has better internet connection speeds than some villages in Somerset and Gloucestershire. Research by Cable.co.uk revealed that Brent Knoll in Somerset has a download speed of a mere 1.3 Mbps. This is easily beaten by Everest Base Camp’s satellite internet link which has an average […]
Boost of millions of euro for public sector digital services.
Unicef has a total of US $ 9 mn. to promote start-ups whose technology can improve young peoples’ lives. However, these must involve open source projects.
Zeetta Networks, which focuses on the design, development and marketing of open networking solutions, has received funding of £1.25 million to commercialise Bristol University’s software-defined networking technology to smart enterprises and Internet of Things (IoT).
The British Infrastructure Group (BIG), a cross-party group of 121 Members of Parliament dedicated to promoting better infrastructure across the entire United Kingdom has today released a report (PDF) entitled “Broadbad“, which has determined that some 5.7 million broadband customers (of whom 3.5 mn. live in rural areas0 and 400,000 businesses experience “dire” connection speeds […]
The European Commission has just published three broadband studies examining speed, price and coverage. The first study, on broadband quality, concludes that subscribers are getting 75% of advertised download speeds. The second study, on prices, shows that broadband access has continued to become more affordable, whilst the third report, on broadband coverage, confirms substantial deployments […]
CityFibre, a company which builds, designs and operates pure-fibre networks across the UK and markets itself as “UK’s only nationwide, wholesale provider of dark fibre“, has announced plans to offer super high-speed services at speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s in Bristol, V3 reports. The company will partner with business internet service provider Triangle Networks […]
Back before Christmas, telecommunications regulator Ofcom published its Connected Nations infrastructure report (PDF) which examines connectivity in the UK in 2014 and 2015 and the media have just caught up from their festive torpor. According to Ofcom, “superfast” broadband (30 Mb/s and above) is now available to more consumers than ever before, with both industry […]
As part of our network upgrade work, Bristol Wireless has recently retired a couple of Pentium III-powered Compaq Deskpro EN machines that were acting as network gateways and performing other roles too. As these CPUs were only produced for 4 years between 1999 and 2003, that means our hardware is rather long in the tooth. […]
Today’s Shropshire Star reports that free wi-fi will be provided at Shropshire’s two main hospitals – the Royal Shrewsbury in the county town and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford. The overall scheme will cost some £400,000 with funding provided by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust and Telford and Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Group. […]
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has as its mission “to make the internet work better by producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet“. As part of this work, the IETF develops and promotes voluntary Internet standards, in particular the standards that comprise the Internet […]