Category Archives: In the News

Tech news and opinions

Sod the Digital Britain broadband tax – mobile broadband is the way forward

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Earlier today I was thinking about the benefits (if any) of the 50p phone line tax. There clearly aren’t any.

And then it made me think. Why the hell is the government trying to make us pay phone line tax when it’s become very clear the way forward is mobile broadband – not landline broadband?

I only realised today, but the 50p phone line tax is a total load of rubbish, because statistics have shown mobile broadband is rapidly becoming more popular and at this rate mobile broadband will overtake landline broadband in a very small amount of time.

To be totally honest, I think the 50p phone line tax is a waste of money and it, frankly, will get the country nowhere. In ten years time I suspect our mobile broadband networks will be huge and everybody will be using their phones or minuscule laptops to browse the network wherever they are. Why should the government make us pay a tax that nobody seems to agree with? There’s no evidence whatsoever that the tax will get Britain anywhere and there are too many people who are against it. What is going on?

Could 150Mbps broadband be on the way next?

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ISPReview UK has reported that O2 have successfully trialled 150Mbps broadband in the Slough area of the UK.

This is great news because this means that we could be seeing extremely high broadband speeds within the region of 150-200Mbps by the end of 2010. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

However, it’s not all good news quite yet. For starters, the tests weren’t conducted with a large number of people so (as ISPReview says) it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll be getting 150Mbps speeds if the bandwidth has to be split between several customers.

On the bright side, it would be nice to be seeing my download speed in the hundreds of Mbps. It’s about time our broadband speeds rose – I’ve been coping on 2Mbps broadband for years now.

Ah well, we’ll just have to see how this progresses. It looks like we could be getting some nice new technological services next year – not least with this faster broadband and Freeview HD.

TAX to be added to 50p per month phone line TAX – confirmed

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Yes – it’s been confirmed – those annoying people we call government have decided that they are going to add VAT to the proposed 50p per month phone line tax. With the VAT rate about to rise back to 17.5%, that makes the tax 58.75p per month or £7.05 per year.

This is seriously frustrating. The government just wants to reel in the money. Has anyone realised that it is impossible to revolutionise UK broadband networks in under 10 years. Frankly, I’d call this idea more of a scam, and sadly it looks like it will become a reality.

I really think the government has no idea what it is talking about. How the hell does the goverment expect to upgrade 5000 exchanges (5600 exchanges in UK approximately) to next generation broadband in under 10 years. With our government, there isn’t a hope in hell.

The Treasury has said approximately £175 million per year with this tax and I suspect very little of it will actually get spent on upgrading our broadband.

It has also been confirmed that the tax has been given the “green light” so it looks like the government will be pickpocketing more money from us within the next few months.

TVCatchup for iPhone gets loads more channels!

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Great news iPhone and iPod Touch owners! TVCatchup – the UK’s brilliant online TV streamer – has just launched a huge bundle of new channels for their site.

Many more of the Freeview channels are now available to stream free, anytime.

Just some of the new channels include Channel 4+1, BBC Four, ITV3, ITV4 and Fiver.

The service is still totally free and works over 3G or Wi-Fi so don’t miss out!

Head straight over to iphone.tvcatchup.com to get started.

Browser market share outlook: November 2009

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Here’s the outlook on November’s browser market share, thanks to HitsLink.

Internet Explorer’s market share has fallen from 64.64% in October 2009 to 63.62% in November, which follows the usual suit of loosing about 1% per month.

Firefox’s market share continues to rise, from 24.07% in October to 24.72% in November.

Safari has lost a bit of popularity this month, with it’s market share falling from 4.42% in October to 4.36% in November.

On the other hand, Chrome and Opera have both gained users over the last month. Chrome’s market share went from 3.58% in October to 3.93% in November, and Opera went from 2.17% in October to 2.31% in November.

There’s your round up.