Broadband Internet Access Grows In Europe

April 23, 2008 – 5:22 pm

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Both digital TV and broadband internet access increased in Europe in 2007. In a study released by the cable television industry in Europe, revenues increased broadly.

t said that digital cable TV customers more than doubled in the past two years to 13.9 million — including a 40% growth spurt in 2007, up from 9.9 million in 2006.

Broadband Internet customers rose by more than 20% to 15.6 million last year, the group said, up from 12.8 million in 2006. Cable telephony services grew 19% to 11.6 million customers, up from 9.7 million in 2006. And the number of unique cable customers rose to 72.7 million from 70.5 million.

“Cable in Europe is successfully leveraging its experience in offering TV services to take the lead in providing interactive high quality digital TV,” said Cable Europe president and Kabel Deutschland chief commercial officer Manuel Cubero.

Cable revenues for all of 2007 totalled over $28 Billion.

Earthlink Redirection Service Under Fire

April 22, 2008 – 7:52 am

Earthlink has a problem on their hands. The company, who is no stranger to controversy, is now under fire for their attempt to redirect typos of URLs into advertising dollars.

The vulnerability was in a service called Barefruit, which Earthlink has been using since August 2006 to return Web pages with search terms and advertising to customers who mistype a domain name in their browser.

Barefruit, which is based in London, operates a service that works with Domain Name Servers, (DNS) which are used by the browser to translate domain names, such as yahoo.com, into numerical Internet Protocol addresses. Typically, when a browser asks a DNS server for a nonexistent Internet address — adsewrds.yahoo.com for example — the DNS server returns an error message indicating that no such address exists. With Barefruit’s servers, the user is told that the address does exist, and is then sent to a Web page that displays advertising and suggested search terms

Earthlink claims it has already patched the bug and made no effort to explain why the service was no safe.

1 Million Users Use LG Powercomm 100Mbps Internet service

April 8, 2008 – 6:23 pm

LG Powercomm has announced that they’ve signed up 1 million users to their 100Mbps Internet Service. The service is much faster than traditional means of accessing the internet, and people are signing up in droves.

LG Powercomm is Korea’s largest ISP and 54 percent of its’ estimated 1.82 million users access their network using 100Mbps Internet service

The network is fast. When the speed drops below 60MPS, the company automatically fixes it.

LG Powercomm is now pushing phones to make the most of this fast access.

TalkTalk Broadband Service Stands Up To Music Industry

April 4, 2008 – 1:32 pm

The music industry wants ISPs to police their customers, and one broadband isp says that is clearly not his job. Carphone Warehouse runs the TalkTalk service, and they say it isn’t their job to prevent users from downloading music.

“Our position is very clear. We are the conduit that gives users access to the internet. We do not control the internet, nor do we control what our users do on the internet.

“I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would voluntarily disconnect a customer’s account on the basis of a third party alleging a wrongdoing, ” said Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse.

The debate has been picking up a head of steam lately as more legislations makes it way through the courts. So far, none of the past strategies used by the music industry to discourage downloading of music has worked.

BBC Decides To Get Tough On ISPs

April 3, 2008 – 3:37 pm

In a move that has been expected for awhile, the BBC has gotten tough with ISPs.

But instead of giving the ISP’s a sympathetic ear the BBC’s Director of Future Media and Technology, Ashley Highfield has been reported as posting a blog which could only be described as “Threatening” as he said that he would “Name and Shame” all those ISP’s who have against or unhelpful when it came to the launch of the iPlayer.

In the past ISP’s have suggested that the BBC help towards to cost of the increased traffic, but the BBC see it as charging content providers, this would mean that they could charge users for the connection as well as charging the content providers too. The BBC feels that the ISP’s need to restructure their pricing to take into account the additional traffic that individual subscribers are using.

How this will translate into action remains to be seen.