No net gains as BT snubs region
RURAL campaigners have criticised BT for not including Suffolk in a list of places earmarked for broadband upgrades in the region. BT announced this week that more than 74,000 homes and businesses in East Anglia will have access to faster broadband by next spring. Customers will gain access to broadband speeds of up to 20 megabits per second – more than double the maximum ...full article >>
Government broadband summit aims to boost broadband Britain
Today is the first broadband summit hosted by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which is looking to set out governments ambitions to deliver the best broadband network in Europe by 2015. The government are aware of the hurdles that lie in place and are bringing industry together to see if they can find a way through which will allow the country to receive faster broadband throu...full article >>
Race Online 2012 'Networked Nation' manifesto launched
A manifesto from the UK's Digital Champion, Martha Lane Fox, calls for urgent action to get millions of people online by the end of 2012 and also has an ambition to get everyone of working age online by the end of this Parliament to ensure that when people retire, they will have the skills to reap the benefits that the web delivers. Around 10 million people in the UK have never used the Int...full article >>
Can the Internet cope with The World Cup?
As England fans rejoice beating Slovenia 1-0, Internet Service Providers are carefully assessing the impact of the World Cup on their network capacity. The match between England and Slovenia kicked off at 3 p.m. and this meant that more users were resorting to watching it online on BBC iPlayer or other streaming services whilst still at work. This phenomenon resulted in sharp traffic increa...full article >>
UK urged to up its game in fibre rollout by FTTH Council
The UK is at risk of being left behind if we don't rapidly increase our fibre broadband rollout according the Fiber-to-the-Home Council. The UK has only 5,000 homes connected to directly with fibre connections to the home, rising to 2.5 million in Europe, whilst the Far East steams ahead with 38 million connections. "The Digital Agenda for Europe document goes some way to addressin...full article >>
UK's culture secretary lays out broadband plans
Jeremy Hunt, the UK's culture secretary has today spoken on broadband for the first time and put forward a "series of actions" that he hopes will help boost our broadband infrastructure to be comparable with other countries around the world. The previous governments commitment to roll out 2Mbps broadband to everyone under a universal service commitment (USC) is described as &q...full article >>
What will the new coalition governement do in relation to rural broadband?
Since the arrival of the new coalition goverment, Suffolk Online's focus continues to be on the needs of rural Suffolk in terms of getting 100% coverage and also Next Generation high speed broadband access to as wider area as possible. Clearly the new government will have higher priorities at this particular time but at Suffolk Online we would like a clear direction on how it see's ...full article >>
Suffolk steps up the Broadband Campaign with County Conference
What:Suffolk Broadband Conference When: Wednesday 12th May from 9.30am – 3.30pm Where: Trinity Park, Ipswich Next week the Suffolk Broadband Partnership steps up its campaign to secure better and faster high speed broadband infrastructure for Suffolk by hosting the first countywide broadband conference. High speed broadband is vital to our county’s future p...full article >>
Mcafee Update affects thousands of PCs
A Mcafee update that was recently released as affected thousands of computers around the world as it wrongly identified Windows as a virus. The update paralysed computers and made them continually restart. Commerical customers of Mcafee were mostly affected. Mcafee have sinced apologised and released a new update to fix the issue. Click here for more info.
Rutland Telecom - an example for many rural parishes
Rutland Telecom has today launched a high speed broadband service in the village of Lyddington in Leicestershire. Village residents and businesses will expect to receive broadband speeds of up to 40Mbps, with average speeds reaching 25Mbps, putting the rural village at the centre of Broadband Britain, with services comparable to, if not sometimes better than, those in the centre of London and o...full article >>
Digital Economy Bill Passed
The digital economy bill passed through parliament late last night. What does this mean for you? Essentially this bill is to provide protection for some of the creative industries such as Music, Film & Games against copyright infringement. This bill has the capacity to cut any user off from their broadband connection if there is sufficient evidence that copyright infringement has be...full article >>
Broadband Campaign "Final Third First" launched
A number of organisations including the Country Land and Business Association have launched a campaign called Final Third First with the aim of lobbying government on behalf of those living in what is commonly referred to as the 'final third' of the UK. The Digital Britain Report earlier this year coined the term 'final third' to describe the areas within the UK where a pure...full article >>
Internet access is a fundamental right
Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests. The survey - of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries - found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide. Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens. ...full article >>
T-Mobile and Orange merger approved by EU
Approval has been granted for the merger of T-Mobile and Orange in the UK by the EU. The approval was conditional on an amendment to the network sharing agreement between T-Mobile and Three as the EU were concerned that the merger could threaten the viability of Three, the smallest mobile network operator in the UK. The other concession was that the combined network would have to give up 25...full article >>
ISPs outraged at amendment to Digital Economy Bill
Amendment 120A to the Digital Economy Bill was voted through the House of Lords yesterday that could force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block websites that are deemed to contain content that infringes copyright. Whilst this in itself isn't anything new (section 97A of the Copyright Act allows the same thing), 120A breaks the balance that currently exists under 97A between rightsowne...full article >>
Next Generation Broadband
Speed up Suffolk broadband campaign gets off to flying start The high speed broadband campaign for Suffolk has got off to a flying start thanks to the amazing support from the people of Suffolk! The Speed up Suffolk campaign caught the attention of so many people struggling to work or study online that since January the EEDA EREBUS website has registered the Suffolk voting tally as being on...full article >>
BBC Iplayer goes HD and more
The BBC has recently released information that will excite those that watch BBC Iplayer. It is going HD and also releasing various tools that will help you decide if IPlayer is something that your broadband connection can handle. For more information on this article please click on the link below. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/04/bbc_iplayer_goes_hd_adds_highe.html For the diagnos...full article >>
Free broadband for Swindon
You may have heard about this in various forms of the media, but Swindon Council and partners will be rolling out a wireless broadband network across the borough. The service will be free of charge and should allow for basic web browsing and email but will be limited in some forms. There will be a low cost, less restricted service available. The partners who are operating the scheme, hope to mak...full article >>
Brightspace - A Social Enterprise Park - Coming Soon
Brightspace is a unique concept of a not-for-profit Social Enterprise Park in the heart of Ipswich for organisations and individuals driven by a social purpose. Opening in 2010, Brightspace will be Ipswich's centre for Social Enterprises. Suffolk ACRE is the organisation behind the exciting new venture, providing low cost office space for charities and social enteprises looking to make a diffe...full article >>
Are you happy with 2Meg speed broadband?
A survey that was recently completed by propertytalk Live!, suggests that three quarters of people would not buy a property if the best speed it could achieve was 1Mbps and people would be happy to compromise on a property to get the broadband speed they desire. In terms of the speeds people said they would require, 61.7% required more than 4Mbps, 20.8% 4Mbps exactly, 10.8 requiring 2Mbps and...full article >>
ADSL 2+ Not the Answer for Rural Areas
Norfolk Future Conference this week will see a senior BT executive address the audience, and if the content in terms of BT pushing its ADSL2+ product as reported by Evening News 24 is true, then it is a case of not much change for Norfolk. Many of the exchanges that will be enabled by BT, already have been enabled by other providers, this means Norfolk residents living in Norwich, Kings Lynn and ...full article >>
How a pigeon was faster than Broadband!
A pigeon in South Africa has proven that ADSL from the country's biggest web firm Telkom is not faster than a carrier pigeon. An IT firm in Durban decided to race the pigeon against uploading data over ADSL from the company's call centre in Howick to it's office in Durban. Winston, the pigeon carried a 4GB microSD memory card between the sites which are approximately 60 km apart. To ensure the tes...full article >>
UK Ranks 25th in Broadband Network Rankings
A study looking at the quality of broadband networks has ranked the UK 25th out of 66 countries. The study conducted jointly by Oxford University's Säid Business School and the University of Oviedo's Department of Applied Economics, on behalf of Cisco, looked at whether broadband connections were fit for today's use by looking at applications consumers use such as sharing photos, video calls ...full article >>
Wyverstone Community Cafe
Wyverstone Community Cafe is a regular fortnightly event held at our village hall in Wyverstone, Suffolk. We pride ourselves in serving excellent coffee and home-baked cakes, as well as our popular bacon and egg baps. We also have local produce on sale in a mini farmers’ market – currently organic vegetables and eggs, fruit in season, home-made cakes, chutneys and jam...full article >>
Why don't you get your full broadband speed?
Broadband users aren't getting the speeds they are paying for, says Ofcom. One reason is because the signal degrades over distance when sent through copper wires, so where do the missing megabits go? Nearly one fifth of those on an eight megabits per second (Mbps) connection actually receive less than 2Mbps. They aren't lost in the way that you would lose water pressure through a leaky water pip...full article >>
Windows 7 soon to be released
Microsoft has just confirmed that Windows 7, the new version of it's operating system has been signed off and is due for a consumer release on October 22nd 2009. This is a follow up to Windows Vista which lets say has had a mixed review since it's release. Windows 7 has been trialled by Suffolk Online and our verdict is that it is a improvement on Windows Vista whilst not being vastly diffe...full article >>
Faster Broadband on the way for all of us
BT speeds up fibre rollout BT have announced the next locations where their fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) based broadband will be available. The 69 locations cover areas all across the UK including England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. By March 2010, a million homes will be covered, and by early summer 2010, they expect to have a reach of 1.5 million homes, continuing to 40% of the UK ...full article >>
Is the CD dead? - Maybe not
Is the CD dead - clearly not! Two thirds of music lovers prefer CD's over digital downloads according to research by media and technology research agency, The Leading Question. A survey of over 1000 music fans showed that 73% were still content to buy CDs rather than download music. 66% of 14-18 year olds also prefered CDs, and 59% of music fans still listen to CDs every day. The research sh...full article >>
Digital Britain Report
The highly anticipated digital britain report was released on Thursday 16th June and here is Suffolk Online's and many other comentators main summary of the report. The full report can be found at www.culture.gov.uk The key points to arise from the report are the following: The UK is to have a Universal Service Commitment of 2Mbps (2 Mega bits per second) by 2012, this is to be fun...full article >>
Can't get Broadband - Find out how to Register this
Do you live in an area which either can't get broadband at all, your property can't receive broadband or you are unhappy with the speeds of broadband you currently receive? Visit http://www.broadband-notspot.org.uk/ and register your details so that the respected website thinkbroadband.com can get an idea of the areas of the country where their is either no access or slow access. This data, ho...full article >>
4 things you probably never knew your mobile phone could do
There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it. FIRST - Emergency The Emergency Number worldwide for mobile phones is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the ...full article >>
Safe to use Torrents
Safe to Use Torrents? You may have heard in the news recently that the owners of the torrent download site piratebay.org was recently convicted of copyright offences. Lets get one thing clear…piratebay.org didn’t actually host any legal material it provided the links for users to be able to get the illegal material. Torrent sites work by users of the site hosting files on their own systems ...full article >>
