Glasgow has UK’s biggest broadband gap

A busy Glasgow street.

Glasgow is the UK’s most unequal city for broadband connections – with its fastest area 866 times the speed of its slowest, according to analysis of 16,500 consumer speed tests by Uswitch.com, the comparison and switching service.

The highest average download speed measured in Glasgow was 840.4Mbps, logged in the Milton district. Yet just four miles away in the suburb of Bearsden, speeds as low as 0.97Mbps were recorded. This is less than a tenth of the 10Mbps download speed...

7 December 2022 | Broadband

Starlink will be available for moving vehicles in December

SpaceX has announced that its Starlink service will soon be available for moving vehicles.

The company’s Starlink for RVs service was initially launched in May but was designed for stationary vehicles.

However, some enterprising folk managed to get Starlink working for moving vehicles anyway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PDVURcvWeg

From December 2022, a new Starlink service is launching that is meant for in-motion use.

The new service...

26 October 2022 | Networks

European telecoms firms call for web giants to contribute to soaring network costs

European telecoms companies have called on the world's web giants to contribute financially to the increasing costs of maintaining internet networks.

16 chief executives of telecoms firms, including BT, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom, released a joint statement this week, in which they said the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Netflix should be made to pay some of the soaring costs for the huge amount of global internet traffic they carry on their telecoms...

28 September 2022 | Networks

FCC authorises nearly $800M from RDOF to Nextlink, Starry and others

The FCC has announced the approval of nearly $800 million from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) that will go to providers including Nextlink and Starry.

Fixed wireless access (FWA) providers are the main beneficiaries of the RDOF fund as the FCC bets on their ability to achieve rural broadband availability targets.

"We are excited to partner with the FCC to deploy gigabit connectivity to households across rural America," said Nextlink CEO Bill Baker in a...

1 September 2022 | 5G

OneWeb turns to SpaceX for satellite launches after Roscosmos snub

OneWeb is turning to rival SpaceX to launch its LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites after Russian space agency Roscosmos snubbed the British firm.

A rocket carrying 36 of OneWeb’s satellites was due to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome earlier this month.

In the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Roscosmos refused to launch the satellites unless OneWeb accepted two demands—for the British government to sell its stake in the firm, and to guarantee they will not...

22 March 2022 | Broadband

Internet backbone provider Lumen joins exodus of Russia

Lumen, a major internet backbone provider, has announced that it will be joining the exodus of Russia.

Russia has found itself increasingly isolated on the world stage after its decision to illegally invade Ukraine—including carrying out heinous acts that are now being investigated as likely war crimes.

The pariah state has already been cut off from global payment systems. Meanwhile, a growing number of companies have taken independent decisions to halt or limit...

9 March 2022 | Broadband

Meta promised free internet but it ended up costing

Meta (formerly Facebook) promised free internet access to cash-strapped users in developing countries, but it ended up costing them.

The company profits from having as many people as possible online and using its services—so while the initiative is welcome to help individuals get connected who may not otherwise be able to afford to, it’s not entirely altruistic.

However, according to documents obtained by whistleblower Francis Haugen and published by The Wall Street...

26 January 2022 | Networks

ITU and Vodafone launch initiative to connect 3.4B unconnected

United Nations agency International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has partnered with Vodafone to launch an initiative to connect 3.4 billion people.

An internet connection is increasingly vital in the modern world to unlock opportunities. Faster connections can mean even greater opportunity, but any connection is better than none.

According to research (PDF) by the ITU last year, of the 3.7 billion people who are not connected to the internet, 3.4 billion live within the...

20 September 2021 | Operators

FCC wants the public to help measure actual broadband speeds

The FCC is encouraging the public to download and use its Speed Test app to help the regulator gain a greater understanding of the speeds consumers are actually receiving.

Data used by regulators is often not representative of real-world experiences. The FCC’s broadband coverage maps, for example, have come under repeated scrutiny for being inaccurate—predominately due to what internet access advocates claim is a weak definition of coverage by the FCC which allows carriers to...

13 April 2021 | Broadband

Tim Berners-Lee: Improve connectivity of the young to ‘build a better world’ post-COVID

World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee is using the 32nd birthday of his invention to call for a global push to improve the connectivity of the young post-COVID.

In a blog post today, as part of the #WebChampions campaign, Berners-Lee celebrates the young people who are stepping up to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges from COVID-19, to inequality, to climate change.

https://twitter.com/webfoundation/status/1370331794789130240

However, many...

12 March 2021 | Legislation & Government