Broadband

BT Openzone to be available in 4500 more hotel bedrooms

BT Openzone's wireless internet access will soon be available in 4500 more hotel bedrooms, thanks to a just-done deal.

Macdonald Hotels & Resorts has signed up to the BT scheme and will offer the Wi-Fi in all its properties across the UK by the end of 2009.

Daily Tech Deal: Quidco offers cashback on BT Total Broadband

Today's tech deal brings you word of a deal being run by Quidco - apparently the UK's leading cashback website - and BT - the telecommunications behemoth.

Quidco is offering cashback over a wide range of BT's home products, with BT's broadband, phone and BT...

BT Openzone adds 11,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the globe

BT has announced its Openzone customers now have an extra 11,000 Wi-Fi locations to choose from with the addition of a host of new providers to the service across the globe.

Beeline WiFi, ChungHwa, eService Bar, Monzoon, Wireless G and WAYPORT EMEA have all...

Swindon announces free Wi-Fi for all

Swindon has just become a property hotspot - quite literally - as it's been announced it will be the first town in the UK to offer free public Wi-Fi access to its entire population.

The forward thinking members of Swindon Borough Council have revealed plans...

Phones4U stores to offer free Wi-Fi

Technically the Wi-Fi roll-out across Phones4U stores in the UK is meant for staff and customers to be able to test the handsets on sale online, but unofficially there's a new place in town to head if you need a cheeky online fix.

Phones4U has become Freerunner's...

O2 bundles home broadband with iPhone tethering bolt on

An annoucement from O2 suggests the operator is going to attempt to fight the competition, as well as rivals, for iPhone customers by adding value through bundle packages, rather than any price cuts.

O2 has launched the "Total Connectivity" plan for iPhone...

TalkTalk Pro broadband package announced

TalkTalk is launching what it calls a new "high performance" broadband package called TalkTalk Pro. Available this month, it costs £14.99 a month, plus £11.25 line rental and requires an 18-month tie in.

The package offers download speeds of up to 24MB, unlimited...

Survey claims illegal downloaders spend most on music

A survey from London-based think-tank Demos has added weight to the position held by many that file sharers are the biggest music fans, revealing that those who admit downloading music illegally spend an average of £77 per year on music, compared to £44 for people who...

Bittorrent protocol gets anti-throttling update

A new version of the Bittorrent protocol is about to launch. Bittorrent is a distribution technique for online content that's used heavily by both legitimate software publishers (like Activision Blizzard) and illicit file sharing sites (like the Pirate Bay).

The...

Mandelson delivers on three-strikes warning

Peter Mandelson has, as expected, delivered an assault on filesharers at the C&binet Forum. He has laid out his intentions to submit legislation to parliament that would cut persistent file sharers off the web entirely, after a couple of warnings.

The process...

Orange announces 20 meg broadband as standard

Orange has announced that it will be making up to 20 meg download speeds a standard across all its home broadband packages - where such service is available.

As well as introducing the new speeds, Orange has revamped its home broadband packages with the cheapest...

Bluetooth-rivalling Wi-Fi Direct announced

Your Wi-Fi-enabled gadgetry is about to get a whole lot more connected thanks to a new specification just announced by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

We say new, technically it was previously known as Wi-Fi peer-to-peer, however, it is now due with the shiny new moniker...

100Mbps broadband rollout widens

BT has announced that its plans to deliver super-fast, fibre-optic broadband all the way to people's houses have been expanded. The company will now be rolling out fibre-to-the-premises...

Spotify phones coming soon?

Spotify has announced that it has signed a deal with Swedish broadband supplier and mobile network Telia. The two companies have agreed to "co-operate" for 2 years, with Telia helping to develop the streaming music service on computers, mobile phones and eventually onto...

Brits spend 30 hours a week online

Britons are net addicts, if data from a new survey is to be believed.

British web users spend a whopping 30 hours a week online - which works out as over 4 hours a day - according to a survey by comparison website USwitch.com.

As far as the office...

BT trials fibre-to-the-premesis in London and Milton Keynes

BT has announced that it'll be expanding its fibre-optic trials early next year to go all the way direct to the people's homes and businesses - a technology that the company is calling "fibre to the premesis". Currently fibreoptic connections only go through to the cabinet.

UK broadband ranks 25th out of 66 countries

A survey of broadband standards in 66 countries across the world has placed the UK at number 25 - with its broadband labelled as "meeting needs for today", but not "comfortable for today" or "ready for tomorrow".

South Korea and Japan came top, with Korea promising...

£6 broadband tax confirmed

The plans drawn up under the government's "Digital Britain" scheme to tax all UK phone lines are to go ahead.

Stephen Timms, the treasury minister in charge of implementing the Digital Britain plans, has confirmed - despite opposition from the Conservatives...

BT pilots "notspot" solution

A limited number of UK "notspots" are about to be connected up to the world of broadband, thanks to a BT pilot of new technology.

"Broadband Enabling Technology" or BET, can offer broadband with speeds of between 1 and 2Mbps to homes currently stuck on dial-up...

802.11n approved, loses the "draft" tag

You've probably been using the technology for months if not years, but 802.11n, the wireless standard, has finally been approved by the body that approves these things 7 years after its first conception.

More than 2 years after the first 802.11n draft routers...

Freerunner free Wi-Fi fund opens for applications

Freerunner, the free public Wi-Fi network launched in the UK in May, has announced a fund to invest in free Wi-Fi hotpots to serve local communities in "deprived or remote areas".

The fund is enough for Freerunner to set-up 50 free-to-use hotspots in local...

3 MiFi mobile Wi-Fi service priced and dated

3, has confirmed the pricing and availability of its new Mobile Wi-Fi service it announced at the beginning of August as it hopes to entice users away from home broadband.

The new Mobile Wi-Fi, the service allows you to create your own mobile Wi-Fi connection...

BT now operating 500,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots

BT has announced that it's half-way towards its target of putting together a network of 1,000,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots in 2009. 500,000 hotspots are now available at homes, offices and city centres in the UK and Ireland.

That total includes hotspots from the...

BT upgrades broadband speeds for all

BT has pushed the big red "upgrade" button on all its subscribers accounts, pumping up pipes to 20Mb/s in "enabled areas". Those areas cover, according to the company, 40% of the UK's homes and businesses.

Up till now, customers were stuck on 8Mb/s speeds, slower...

"Digital Britain" chief named as Stephen Timms

The man who will be in charge of the government's Digital Britain plans has been named as Stephen Timms, the current treasury minister.

Following the departure of communications minister Lord Carter, author of the recent Digital Britain report, Timms will take...