The taxpayer-subsidised scheme to provide better broadband in the United Kingdom has run into some difficulty in Shropshire. The Shropshire and Marches Campaign for Better Rural Broadband has severed its ties with the Connecting Shropshire scheme led by Shropshire Council, according to yesterday’s Shropshire Star. The campaign had been working with the council and BT […]
Rural broadband is a really hot issue in South Gloucestershire (news passim), so much so that two local political parties – the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives – are currently vying in the local press as to who provided the biggest gains to residents. Yesterday, S. Gloucestershire Liberal Democrats claimed in the Bristol Post that Liberal […]
It seems that South Gloucestershire shows no signs of slowing down as a source of broadband stories at the moment. Firstly, regular readers will remember the item on a public meeting being called in Horton to discuss abysmal broadband speeds in rural S. Gloucestershire (news passim). The press report of the meeting appeared in Friday’s […]
Residents and businesses in rural parts of South Gloucestershire are campaigning for high-speed broadband to be installed in their areas, according to today’s Bristol Post. The villages of Horton and Elberton seem to be particularly badly affected by poor connection speeds and a public meeting is being organised tomorrow at Horton Village Hall which will […]
Local news site Bristol 24/7 carried a post today on the Super Connected Cities’ broadband connection vouchers scheme. The scheme covers 22 UK towns and cities, including Bristol Under the scheme, companies, sole traders and charities can apply for up £3,000 to gain access to high speed broadband. However, author Rob Buckland omitted one small […]
In a press release issued in the middle of last week, Bristol City Council announced that Bristol’s £5 mn. fund to provide better business broadband is set to move beyond borders the Connection Vouchers scheme is expanded. The change to the scheme means that around 2,300 small and medium-sized businesses (including registered charities, social enterprises […]
PSV Eindhoven supporters launched a vehement protest against the introduction of wifi at the their Philips Stadion ground during their side’s 6-1 home victory over NAC Breda in their opening game of the season, according to today’s Guardian. Fans displayed one banner reading: “F*ck Wi-Fi, support the team”. Placards with crosses running through the wifi […]
The Société d’Expoitation de la Tour Eiffel (SETE) has installed a wireless network infrastructure intended for use as much by its own staff as by the public visiting the monument.
Close on the heels of complaints of poor connectivity in London’s Silicon Roundabout area (news passim) and the roll-out of ‘superfast’ broadband in Wiltshire being described as a ‘scam‘ (news passim), comes more criticism of the UK’s lousy connectivity from closer to home – Thornbury and Yate, the parliamentary constituency of Liberal Democrat MP Steve […]
In the UK, it’s not just rural areas like Wiltshire that suffer from poor broadband connectivity (news passim). London’s much heralded Old Street technology start-ups (in the area known as Silicon Roundabout or Tech City. Ed.) are struggling to expand their businesses because of poor internet connectivity, according to today’s Guardian. Some companies have left […]
A New York-based start-up has produced a portable antenna which can take over communications networks in the event of mobile services outages. The device, which is connected to by Bluetooth Low Energy to a smartphone, enables encrypted messages to be exchanged over distances from 1 to 80 kilometres.
Our friends at the Western Daily Press yesterday published a less than favourable account of the inadequacy of the roll-out of so-called “super fast” rural broadband, as managed by British Telecom. In a deal between Wiltshire and South Gloucester Councils, B.T. were to receive £35.6 million of government grants (our taxes) to provide 91% coverage […]
At the start of the week, China suffered a major internet outage for several hours, Le Monde Informatique reported yesterday. Experts are wondering about the cause; was it hacking (to use the verb ‘to hack’ in its Daily Mail sense. Ed) or a technical problem with the country’s censorship mechanisms? Last Tuesday more than two-thirds […]
Tomorrow Bristol Wireless bids farewell to long-serving volunteer Andy Sabel and his partner Llanos, who are migrating south – and not just for the winter. Llanos has got a new job in Gibraltar with a prominent British betting company and Andy is moving with her (from Windmill Hill to William Hill, as some bright spark […]
Some time ago, FirstBus, Bristol’s major bus operator, introduced free wifi on its services nos. 8 and 9 (news passim). Today the Bristol Post reports that there’s to be a large scale expansion of free wifi for Bristol’s bus passengers, starting next month. Written by the Post’s business correspondent, Michael Ribbeck, the article states: Free […]
Wedged between the M4, M5 and M32 on the northern fringe of the Bristol built-up area, Bradley Stoke has never enjoyed an exactly wonderful reputation locally or even nationally. Started in 1987, the development got caught up in the fall-out from the bursting of the housing bubble in the early 1990s, leading to it being […]
Today’s Bristol Post reports North Somerset commuters travelling to Bristol during November and December will be able to travel to work for free under a scheme set up by North Somerset Council and coach operator The Kings Ferry Ltd. The service will link Weston-super-Mare, Clevedon and Portishead with major employment areas around Bristol, including Aztec […]
The use of graphene in telecommunications could dramatically accelerate internet speeds by up to a hundred times, according to new research by scientists in Bath University’s Department of Physics. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the Centre for Graphene Science at the Universities of Bath and Exeter have demonstrated for the […]
French computing news site Le Monde Informatique reports that online tat merchants eBay will be organising a tour of French beaches from 22nd July to 17th August 2013, during which holidaymakers will be able to benefit from free wifi, as well as a space dedicated to this well-known auction site. On each of the tour […]
Last June FirstBus introduced free wifi on its X1 bus service between Bristol and Weston Super Mare (news passim). In the last couple of days, our sharp-eyed volunteers have noticed that First’s no. 9 service now have large ‘Free Wifi’ stickers in their windows. For those unfamiliar with Bristol, the no. 9 service is a […]