UK broadband scheme does not offer value for money, claims Virgin Media

(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Aslan Alphan)

Virgin Media has sent a complaint (PDF) to state aid officials in Brussels claiming the UK government's £68 million taxpayer-funded BDUK scheme does not offer value for money in today's market, and will just lead to wasteful overbuild. 

The company uses other European markets as supporting evidence in the opening summary of its complaint; pointing towards Britain having a less consolidated market than France, Spain, Italy,...

30 November 2015 | Legislation & Government

Regulator Ofcom releases complaints figures

UK regulator Ofcom has released figures of complaints towards all the major telecoms and pay TV providers between January and March 2013.

In general the outlook is looking positive with complaints in pay-monthly mobile dropping slightly despite the rollout of LTE (or lack of in many cases) where many would predict some amount of negative feedback.

Landline Services

Operator TalkTalk has had less than a great feature in the report however, hitting the top of the complaints at...

27 June 2013 | Networks

Microsoft partners with Telefónica to boost WP against Android and iOS

Although gradually rising, Microsoft has had nowhere near the success with Windows Phone the Redmond-company had surely hoped by this stage.

It’s truly a shame, as whilst Android – the market share leader – could be called an iOS clone, and iOS is still being called “stagnant” in features; Windows Phone has both brought both brand-new design and software innovations to the table.

Now the software giant is looking to Telefónica to help...

26 June 2013 | Networks

Streaming movies whilst still in theatres, enough to combat piracy?

Piracy is an issue which has plagued studios of various mediums for years, and controversially, sometimes helps to push boundaries, as was the case with the music industry. Now Disney and Sony wish to do the same with film and are trialling streaming brand-new titles whilst they’re in theatres.

First, let’s take a look at how music rose, fell, and has got back stronger than ever.

When music had to be obtained from your local record shop; you had to think long and...

25 June 2013 | Legislation & Government

Hutchison Three buys O2, now owns 40 percent of Ireland’s market

In a drastic acquisition, Hutchison Three has bought O2’s share in Ireland’s mobile market; resulting in 40 percent ownership of the entire country’s networks.

O2 Ireland, previously owned by Telefónica, was acquired for a hefty €850 million ($1.1 billion) this morning. The company is sure to hope this will help to ease the company’s current huge debts.

Announced via press release (PDF), Robert Finnegan, CEO of Three Ireland, took to...

24 June 2013 | LTE

Interview: Telefónica’s Pavan Mathew on “Connected Cars”

This week Pavan Mathew, Global Head of Automotive Telematics at Telefónica, privileged me with an exclusive interview about a report released by the company on how the “Car industry must remodel itself to exploit the connected future.”

As we move towards a fully digital lifestyle we expect devices to be connected; with not just access to the wider world via the internet and services that entails, but also seamlessly with one another.

Our smartphones rarely...

21 June 2013 | Legislation & Government

Deutsche Telekom launches M2M Developer Kits

In order to help promote M2M (Machine-to-Machine) development based in the cloud, vendor Deutsche Telekom is providing developer kits to get started.

TelecomsTech spoke to DT’s Ruslan Ismailov at Mobile World Congress back in February to discuss the telco’s M2M strategy going forward – and now we’re beginning to see some progress.

Consisting of an Arduino or a Cinterion board with a GSM chip, and of course a SIM card for access to the network; the kit...

20 June 2013 | Telecoms

Avoiding tax on Bitcoin? Think again, friend

Bitcoin has been getting plenty of coverage, ourselves included, but for those of you who don’t know, it’s essentially a decentralised virtual currency. Many people are under the illusion that because of this fact, it doesn’t accrue tax, but I’m sure the IRS would beg to differ.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report (PDF) which gives a clear example:

Bill is a Bitcoin miner. He successfully mines 25 Bitcoins. Bill may have earned...

19 June 2013 | Legislation & Government

Shopping on your mobile? Transactions to exceed $3.2 trillion by 2017

The latest research from Juniper shows commerce transactions on mobile will reach an incomprehensible $3.2 trillion by 2017, fuelled primarily by mobile banking.

However, by comparing to all financial transactions in the US it suddenly seems insignificant. In the U.S alone the total for 2012 exceeded $4,400 trillion.

As an increasing number of NFC-enabled devices reach consumers’ hands, along with easy online payment solutions such as PayPal, it’s quite easy to...

19 June 2013 | Research

“LTE-Advanced” Galaxy S4 on the way, users ready for 4G switch

The latest research shows many customers can’t wait to switch to LTE and have capable devices in preparation; however Samsung, looking to get ahead of the pack, is introducing a refreshed Galaxy S4 in South Korea supporting LTE-Advanced.

Users outside of the country aren’t likely to utilise the “advanced” iteration for some time, so we’ll dream of its theoretical capabilities for now.

The standard by 3GPP should offer a download speed up to 3Gbps...

18 June 2013 | LTE