VoIP News: September 2007

Once again BT has seemingly hinted towards an increase in UK broadband speeds, which may include an upgrade to high-speed fibre-optic lines. In an interview with the Financial Times, Ian Livingstone, the head of BT Retail, said that providing the best service for its customers was always a consideration for the firm. "BT remains very interested in further expanding the speed of access for customers, whether that be through faster copper, fibre to the home, [or] fibre to the cabinet," he said.

Londoners are making the best use of the spread of wireless broadband by logging onto Wi-Fi hotspots in their droves. Systems set up in the capital by firms such as BT and hotspot-specialist The Cloud make up a tenth of all Wi-Fi use in the UK and just over one per cent of the total worldwide. This puts it far ahead of second-placed cities such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco on 0.

Broadband speeds in the UK rarely match up to their advertised 'top speeds', according to a new survey by Computeractive magazine. The poll saw 3,000 readers conducting over 100,000 speed tests on their high-speed ADSL broadband connections, with 62 per cent reporting that their connection routinely managed less than half of its advertised top speed. Half of the UK's broadband users currently subscribe to an ADSL service that is supposed to run at speeds of between one and four megabits per seconds.

Cabinet Office minister Gillian Merron has called for the public sector to make greater use of information technology (IT) in order to reduce carbon emissions. Ms Merron believes government departments could benefit in a similar way to large corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who have implemented technologies such as VoIP telephony which allows calls to be made over the internet.

The University of Wolverhampton is to set up unified communications system as it moves to improve the services and education offered to its students. A broadband network carrying VoIP services will stretch between three separate campuses as part of the university's £60 million, seven-year facilities upgrade. Dr Phil Range, the University of Wolverhampton's director of IT services, told the PublicTechnology website that the service will help create "a learning environment fit for the 21st century".