For a long time supporters of Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH), me included, have been shouting that service providers need to bite the bullet and invest in FTTH. Seeing the news coming out of this year’s Broadband World Forum, there is still life left in the good old copper. This week, Huawei announced that they are working with BT, the UK’s leading broadband supplier to trial the use of G.fast broadband solution for the UK.
The annual Connected Home Global Summit and Awards Gala returns to London for its 4th and 2nd year. The event offers visitor the opportunity to hear from those at the forefront of the connected home services sector first hand. Speakers at this year’s summit include some of the UK’s and Europe’s leading service providers such as Vodafone, BBC, BT and Telefónica. The event is a mixture of presentations, panel discussions and breaks for you to network, allowing you to learn about the next generation of connected home solutions.
Talk Talk who is a member of the YouView project has announced that they are planning an internal trial of the service. The company said they are hoping to start in the first quarter 2012 before the general go live date in spring. YouView was suppose to have gone live in 2011 but was delayed due to different issues.
Entrepreneurs and house hunters can now check the quality of broadband speed in a prospective area they are planning to move to. The British telecom regulator Ofcom has produced an interactive map that gives an estimate of what speed you can expect from the different administrative regions. They have have also published an infrastructure report highlighting the current state of the UK telecom infrastructure (fixed broadband and wireless 2G/3G) and how it is being used.
Britain has kicked off its 4G trial for mobile broadband. The county of Cornwall was selected by BT and Everything Everywhere two of the country’s leading telecom providers. The technology which promises to offer better wireless broadband speed for those in rural areas where wired is not feasible. The telegraph said Around 200 households in St. Newlyn East and South Newquay are selected to participate in the trial.
O2 is set to join the likes of BT and Virgin media in offering fibre optic broadband service. According to the Cable website, O2 will launch a commercial trial before the end of this year. Felix Geyr, the companies managing director, said they are making sure “the right customer experience” is in place before the pilot starts.
On May 24 the connected home global summit returns to London. This year’s summit like last year will feature a host of industry key players from all area of the connected home sector. There will be presenters from BT, TiVo, Whirlpool, Google and many more; they will be looking at the 'technology choices and business models that will monetise the connected home'. Service providers and operators should attend to gain insight into how this growing market sector can be adopted to create new revenue streams. Users will learn how the devices and media services they buy are changing.
After two years in the making the BBC Trust has formally annoucnced what is to become of Project Canvas, its planned internet TV service. They have renamed it to from Canvas to YouView and said the service is expected to go live in early 2011. The service like Freeview will allow UK households to watch live television except it will be through a Set-top Box via their broadband connection. There is one added partner (Arqiva) to the original five (ITV, BT, Five, C4 and Talk Talk).
BT (British Telecom) is the UKs largest telecom provider and it is one of those companies that you would love to hate but you can’t, because from time to time they do or say something that causes you to love or hate them all over again. This week BT pledged to spend an extra £1bn pounds to bring super-fast broadband to UK homes; this is one of those occasions.
The canvas project is in its final stage of consultation and has been given a provisional approval by the BBC Trust. Project Canvas was setup to allow UK viewers with broadband connection to watch on their Television set on-demand TV such as BBC iPlayer and ITV Player. Homes with compatible set-top box connected to the internet could access content provision through Canvas without needing to pay for the content.