Pigeon is faster than broadband connections
Broadband promises to get the world together with high – speed delivery of data but, in South Africa, the internet still seems to be slower than a normal pigeon.
An IT company based in Durban gave a 11 month old pigeon a 4 GB memory stick and pitted it against an ADSL service from Telkom, the biggest broadband provider in the country. Winston the pigeon took just 2 hours to take the data nearly 60 miles, which was the same time that the ADSL connection took to send about 4% of the data.
Telkom shirked responsibility for the slow internet speeds of the firm.
The whole idea for the race came about when a staff at Unlimited IT had complained about ADSL speeds. He said that a carrier pigeon might be faster.
Unlimited’s Kevin Rolfe mentioned to the Beeld newspaper that, due to their reputation for innovation, they decided to put the statement to the sword.
Winston had depart from their call center in Howick in order to deliver this memory stick to their Durban office. There were some rules to ensure that he didn’t have any undue advantage, such as ‘no cats allowed’ and that birdseeds shouldn’t be performance – enhancing.
The firm mentioned that it took an hour and 8 minutes for Winston to get to the Durban office and that another hour was taken up by the data to get uploaded onto the system.
Hundreds of people in SA had followed this on Twitter and Facebook. Rolfe said that Winston was delighted and that he is ‘chilling out’ with his friends at the office.
Telkom said that they were not to blame for the slow speeds, saying that a number of proposals had been made to customers, but they had been rejected.
South Africa is one of a number of countries hoping to gain some benefit by way of 3 new fibre optic cables which are to be laid in the African continent in order to up the level of internet connections.
Source - BBC News
Telstra gets more government pressure to split
Reiterating its older demands, the Australian government has demanded that Telstra break up its retail operations from its wholesale network.
Stressing that the split would mean that the national broadband network roll-out would be much easier, this demand came after warnings of a shaking shift in the telecommunications industry. The government suggests that Telstra break its structure voluntarily.
These series of demands were relayed by communications minister Stephen Conroy, who said they have yet to hear a response from the country’s largest telephone company.
Largely private since 2006, Telstra used to be a state-owned and controlled company. Telstra still owns and operates the old copper telecommunications network which the government sees as duplication to its pursued speedier broadband service all over Australia.
If Telstra gives in, the roll-out of the new network would be much faster and easier, said the communications minister. It was also learned that foundations for the legislative processes for the project will be submitted to the parliament soon. Among the groundwork would be vesting more powers to competition authorities and bar Telstra from adding wireless spectrum among its services, unless the separation is accomplished.
Apart from all this, the Australian telecommunications giant will be pushed to sell off both its cable network and FoxTel, with which they have interests in pay-per-view television. Also included among the legislative measure would be barring Telstra from purchasing more mobile bands than it already have at present.
After such demand from the Australian government, Telstra saw its shares going down the drain. Their profits naturally followed by going downhill, and its mobile operation profits on fixed line business went down as well.
David Thodey, Telstra’s new chief executive, reduced profits targeted even if there was a 10% profit earned for the last year. He added they are pursuing network plans in Canberra and will look into the concerns of their shareholders.
More details related to this this post are available at: BBC News
FibreSpeed gets more and more business sign-ups
Wales’ leader in fibre-optic broadband network recently reported that more and more businesses have signed up for the service. This came after reports from specific business markets shared their easier and faster operations with their connection served by FibreSpeed.
In Wales, no other broadband internet service provider has a 200-mile fibre-optic network across the north, including Wrexham and Holyhead. After the much reported good initial take-up for FibreSpeed in the region, the Daily Post reported a fast growth of consumers signing up with the provider.
On the other hand, FibreSpeed aims to shift business sectors with its offered reliability and speed, foreseeing ahead that the network would bring £29 million each year into North Wales’ economy over the next decade.
The business development and relationship manager of FibreSpeed, Richard Forde-Johnston, shared his enthusiasm with the Daily Post saying their company is delighted over the quality growth in numbers of connections this summer alone.
Forede-Johnston further stated that Excelsior Technologies, a leading food packaging manufacturer, was the latest to sign up for their advanced broadband network. The FibreSpeed head said they see this subscription of Excelsior’s Deeside site as an example of their company helping other industries in their growth. Excelsior hopes to contribute to the delivery of a multi-million contract existing between them and US company Bird’s Eye.
FibreSpeed strongly pursues serving excellently other businesses as well as it stands on its commitment to deliver excellent, speedy broadband connection in this part of Wales. This, said Forde-Johnson, is FibreSpeed’s contribution to making sure that Wales keep its jobs growing, as well as with the business investments.
Inverness Chamber of Commerce chief executive Stewart Nicol reechoed this good development in Wales business picture, saying that the speed of FibreSpeed broadband internet connection is critical for business in Wales, as in other parts of the United Kingdom.
More details about this post is available at: top10-broadband.co.uk
Companies aren’t properly protected against connection losses, a survey finds
A survey conducted recently found that nearly 80% of business users were concerned about the loss in productivity due to a possible outage in their network connection and nearly 56% said that they didn’t have a backup plan for their network connection.
This research also found that the WAN networks and the internet connections of companies in the country could possibly suffer from a lot of downtime if there was no backup plan in place.
51% of the 110 IT executives that took part in the survey admitted that, during the past year, their company has been victim to some form of network outage at least once.
The survey also revealed that at least 57% of outages that harm the primary network links could have been avoided if the company had made an investment in some secondary link in order to steer clear of such problems, the research said, which involved companies that either had to connect to a number of locations or had to support remote workers.
The MD of CI-net, Graham McLean, which is a fully managed wide area networks, hosting and internet service provider, also participated in conducting the survey and said that nearly 56% who participated in the poll said that they didn’t have a backup system to keep connectivity intact in case of an outage. This is shocking, to say the least, because most of these companies were fully aware that a connectivity problem could disrupt connections between branches or even disable access to the network for remote workers, thereby seriously affecting their operations.
The same survey also noted that business continuity was considered as one of the top priorities that IT executives mentioned for their network for the next year. This was considered more important than cost cutting, showing the priority given to connectivity for organizations.
Be Broadband to provide IT support services at your home
Be Broadband have entered into a partnership with Geeks-on-Wheels, providers of on – site IT support to small businesses and homes, to provide similar services for BE customers that want support at their homes. The service could be utilised to get rid of IT problems, which include getting rid of spyware or viruses, recovering data from corrupted hard disks to software and hardware configuration.
The services will be provided at the location specified and will be offered at a discounted price for all BE customers when compared to the usual Geeks-on-Wheels rate. With the exclusive 15% discount for BE members, customers in London will have to pay 63.75 pounds for the first hour and then charged on a half – hourly basis thereafter. For locations in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, the first hour will cost 55.25 pounds and then 25.5 for every subsequent half an hour.
The Head of Marketing at BE Broadband, Oli White, says that BE is happy to be able to provide a top – class service to their customers by teaming up with Geeks-on-Wheels. He also mentioned that this partnership will enable them to maintain the high level of service that customers have come to expect of them.
The managing director of Geeks-on-Wheels, Jamie Shaw, said that this would be an ideal partnership for the company due to the fact that they will be collaborating with one of the best broadband providers in the country in BE Broadband. This, Shaw mentioned, will make their service the best in the country.
In order to start off the service, BE will be providing an exclusive deal for all customers of Geeks-on-Wheels who want to get broadband services from BE. This offer will enable them to have 2 months free broadband and have their connection fee waived for any 12 month contract. This offer can be availed of by entering the code ‘GEEKS’ when asked for on the BE sign-up page.
More information can be found at Be Broadband Blog.
Zen Business Broadband Reviews
Please add your reviews below in order to help others looking to make a decision on which business broadband to choose. All reviews about your experience are welcome, be it positive or negative attributes of the provider or their service provided. All Zen business broadband reviews are the opinion of our users and not Broadband Blogged.
The average Zen business broadband ratings from all of our users can be seen here:
Plusnet Business Broadband Reviews
Please add your reviews below in order to help others looking to make a decision on which business broadband to choose. All reviews about your experience are welcome, be it positive or negative attributes of the provider or their service provided. All plusnet business broadband reviews are the opinion of our users and not Broadband Blogged.
The average Plus.Net business broadband ratings from all of our users can be seen here:
Namesco Business Broadband Reviews
Please add your reviews below in order to help others looking to make a decision on which business broadband to choose. All reviews about your experience are welcome, be it positive or negative attributes of the provider or their service provided. All Namesco business broadband reviews are the opinion of our users and not Broadband Blogged.
The average Namesco business broadband ratings from all of our users can be seen here:
Vodafone Business Broadband Reviews
Please add your reviews below in order to help others looking to make a decision on which business broadband to choose. All reviews about your experience are welcome, be it positive or negative attributes of the provider or their service provided. All Vodafone business broadband reviews are the opinion of our users and not Broadband Blogged.
The average Vodafone business broadband ratings from all of our users can be seen here:
Be Business Broadband Reviews
Please add your reviews below in order to help others looking to make a decision on which business broadband to choose. All reviews about your experience are welcome, be it positive or negative attributes of the provider or their service provided. All Be business broadband reviews are the opinion of our users and not Broadband Blogged.
The average Be business broadband ratings from all of our users can be seen here:
