The government’s plans to disconnect the accounts of illegal file-sharers have been labeled as a threat to the rights of broadband users, according to chief executives of major broadband providers.
In a letter to The Times, Ian Livingston of the BBC, Tom Alexander of Orange UK and Charles Dunstone of TalkTalk all criticised proposals to [...] CONTINUE
Lord Mandelson has ordered the UK’s five major mobile networks to attend a summit meeting, in an attempt to secure government plans for fast broadband roll-out by 2012
Chief executives of the networks O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone and 3 will attend the meeting, which is designed to ‘bang some heads together’, the Guardian reported.
The business secretary [...] CONTINUE
David Cameron has called on the government to hand £175 billion of public work over to small firms – contracts which are typically given to big businesses.
The Tory leader was speaking in Northwich as part of his ‘Cameron Direct’ roadshow, which is touring the country ahead of next year’s General Election. He suggested that a [...] CONTINUE
The removal of fees on the site www.supply2.gov.uk means every small business in the UK will now have access to thousands of lower value government contracts
For the past three years, the website has advertised thousands of public sector procurement opportunities worth up to £100,000 – making the website ideally suited to small and medium sized [...] CONTINUE
UK landline owners will be charged a levy of £6 per landline each year to help pay for the roll-out of high-speed broadband across the country.
Details of the proposal were laid out in Communications Minister Lord Stephen Carter’s Digital Britain report on Tuesday.
According to the report, the tax would add 2 per cent to the [...] CONTINUE
Government schemes to help out UK small businesses are nowhere near good enough, a survey carried out by SME website cmypitch.com has found.
Ninety percent of the 2,000 entrepreneurs and business owners surveyed by the site said that the government is not supporting SMEs sufficiently, and the majority of respondents were not even aware of the [...] CONTINUE
The UK government has announced that they will spend £1m on research into gaining faster broadband speeds.
The money from the Technology Strategy Board will go towards a dozen projects, which could boost browsing speeds to between 1 and 10 gigabits per second.
All of the research will be focused on technologies that use fibre-optic cables.
A number [...] CONTINUE
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is urging prospective councillors in the local elections to put small businesses at the heart of their campaign and remember they play a vital role in fighting the recession.
Launching its Local Government Manifesto in England, the FSB is calling on council candidates to focus on small businesses – which [...] CONTINUE
The government has decided to enforce certain restrictions on Vodafone and 02, the two mobile broadband providers who dominate the 900 MHz spectrum.
The idea is to exclude the two providers from bidding on any future auctions of the 800 MHz spectrum, unless they agree to let go of some of the 900 Mhz spectrum that [...] CONTINUE
As many UK households struggle to afford broadband, the government is being urged to do more to bridge the growing “digital divide”.
Back in March, telecoms regulator Ofcom revealed that broadband take-up is presently below 60 per cent of UK households.
Although broadband is becoming an essential tool for Brits, an investigation by campaigning group Consumer Focus [...] CONTINUE
