Britain received a disappointing rank in the latest global broadband statistics.  It remained at 26th position followed by an average speed of just 3.5Mb.

As stated by the Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report, the topmost position was occupied by South Korea supporting an average download speed of 14.6Mb. Japan grabbed second place with an average speed of 7.9Mb. In Europe, top spot was taken by Sweden with an average speed of 5.1Mb. It was followed closely by Ireland which stayed at an average speed of 5.3Mb.  The telecoms regulator, Ofcom conducted a research last year. According to the findings of the research,  average speed in the UK was 4.1Mb, but that wouldn’t have made the UK to reach top 10.

UK was placed at 21st out of 30 countries by another report formed by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development recently. According to this report, UK possessed slower broadband speeds than Greece and Spain. When ranked in terms of broadband penetration, it came at 13th place.

The Government has made a promise of offering speeds of at least 2Mb to all households in the UK by 2012 whereas the Digital Britain report desires to engender funds for next-generation, superfast broadband networks by means of 50p tax on landlines.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “Many consumers are still not satisfied with their broadband speed. While there are a number of factors that affect your speed – such as the distance from your local exchange and congestion on the network – there are also things that you can do – such as installing an iPlate – to boost your speed.

“However, if you’re still not happy with your download speed, it could be time to “switch broadband provider,” he added. “This can save you a bundle as well as getting you a faster, more reliable service better suited to your needs.”

The Home Access scheme of offering free laptops and broadband to around 270,000 poorer families is now put into practice throughout the UK.

The Government first declared £300 million plan in 2008, it has been conducted in two areas offering grants to a large number of families. Each grant will offer a free laptop, a year’s free broadband connection or both in an attempt for closing the digital divide.

Priority will be given to Children in council care and to those with specific educational needs. However, all the low-income families with children between 7-14 can call at 0333 200 1004 in order to apply for the grant.

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls said: “Families who are most in need cannot be left behind in the digital revolution we’re seeing in education.”

However, the executive director of strategy and regulation at TalkTalk Broadband, Andrew Heaney, stated: “The Prime Minister’s announcement that 270,000 low-income families will receive a free computer and free broadband access betrays some deeply muddled thinking.

“No one would dispute that getting low-income families online is a good thing. But the Government’s other initiatives are working to discourage uptake and make Internet access unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of other families.

“As a result of two Government proposals – the phone tax and copyright protection – families face an extra cost of £30 a year to stay online. Demand modelling shows that this additional burden could lead to 600,000 financially stretched families being forced to give up their broadband connections.”

It has been suggested by a latest study conducted by the Institute of Fiscal Studies that access to a laptop at home could result in increasing the GCSE performance by two grades in once subject.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “If you don’t qualify for the Home Access scheme you can still spread the cost of a new computer by signing up to a free laptop deal from a mobile broadband provider. However, you will need to keep an eye on your download allowances to make sure you don’t exceed your limit – especially if you have kids at home who spend a lot of time online,” he warned.
He further added “There are also loads of cheap broadband deals available – TalkTalk is currently offering a year’s free broadband when you sign up for 24 months and Plusnet broadband offers one of the cheapest standalone packages on the market, starting at just £5.99 a month,”.

Recently, it has been unveiled by the Broadband provider TalkTalk UK that there are more than 34% of people who stated that they spend time working and accessing work-related emails remotely during the holiday period. This percentage is almost equal to around 16m people. Although, the average amount of time which spent by the people during this period came out to be 3 hours and 18 minutes. Around one in ten admit that they use Internet for more than 10 hours.

Internet TV services are getting more and more popularity among the people. It has been stated by 20% of people that they use to watch and download TV from the Internet during the holiday period this year and spent around an average of 2 hours and 30 minutes in doing this task which compares to 28% of those watching clips on YouTube and 19% busy playing online computer games.

Mark Schmid from TalkTalk said:

“As recently as 10 years ago most of our time over the festive period was spent with our nearest and dearest, or slumped in front of the telly. Now we’re spending big chunks of our Christmas time playing games online, watching TV over the Internet or social networking. Now your Twitter followers know what you had in your stocking before you’ve even tucked in to your turkey!”

It further revealed that more than half of the people use to spend time in sending e-mails to their loved ones while around 40% are there who surf social networking sites. There were more than one in 10 who made calls to their near and dear ones by means of Skype. Only 3% people admit to accessing as well as updating their Twitter account during Christmas and New Year.

Despite of a huge coverage of anti filesharing plans of Government, the number of illegal peer to peer downloads has increased to an extent.

According to the findings of a latest research conducted by the music industry body, BPI, the levels of peer to peer (P2P) filesharing has been increased on the last six months. The pirates have made plans to enhance their downloading into 2010. A study was conducted which involved around 3,442 Brits aged 16 to 54. Out of 3,442 Brits, more than 1,000 Brits admitted that they downloaded music in illegal way. It was also found by the study that the number of people taking help of non- P2P methods for downloading music illegally online in 2009 has increased to some extent. For sharing files online, many new methods have been introduced including newsgroups, MP3 search engines and forum, MP3 pay sites, blog and board links to online digital storage sites which are commonly called as cyberlockers.

Geoff Taylor, BPI chief executive, said, “There are now more than thirty-five legal digital music services in the UK, offering music fans a great choice of ways to get music legally. It’s disappointing that levels of illegal P2P use remain high despite this and the publicity surrounding imminent measures to address the problem. It’s vital that those measures come into force as quickly as possible.

He further added “The growth in other, non-P2P methods of downloading music illegally is a concern, and highlights the importance of including a mechanism in the Digital Economy Bill to deal with threats other than P2P,” .

P2P has still maintained its popularity despite of rise in alternative downloading methods. An average of nine songs has been downloaded by the users per month followed by half of the people who download music illegally in this way once a week. A third of respondents stated that they download music by using P2P networks regularly.

A large number of warning letters has been issued by the Government  to illegal downloaders. Not only this, the Government has also warned  to disconnect repeat offenders in case levels of piracy will continue.
Although, the broadband providers are not in the favour of these measures. They think that the steps employed for identifying pirates will bring innocent users at risk of disconnection, and that the cost of policing the net might raise subscriptions by around £25 per year.
Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “Research earlier this year by think tank Demos showed that illegal downloaders could be tempted away from their P2P networks by the right kind of service. 47% of people said that they were interested in legal, paid-for music downloads – a figure that interestingly rose to 72% among illegal downloaders, who were also shown to spend the most money on legal music.
“So what is needed is legal music downloads at the right price – the Demos study found that music sales could be doubled if the price of each track was reduced to 45p – compared to 69p, 79p and 99p, which are still common prices on some websites.”

According to a statement made by the broadband providers the £500 million bill for fighting Internet piracy plans could increase broadband subscriptions more by £25 per year.

Fighting against illegal music, film and software sharing online is the main aim of the Digital Economy Bill. It has now decided to warn the consumers who will be caught using illegal peer to peer sites. Not only this, it also made a promise to throttle or even disconnect the Internet connection of the repeat offenders. For court action, personal details of suspected offenders will be offered to the right holders.

As suggested by the Impact assessments, under the new bill, Internet connection of up to 40,000 homes could be inhibited whereas the cost of letter writing may increase the individual subscriptions up by £1.40.

Thee Government has made the promise of making the copyright holders pay a fixed fee to ISPs  in order to support them to cover their costs but broadband providers are calling them for making more contribution.

Impact assessments were published alongside the Bill indicating that in the next ten years, the move would generate £1.7 billion in extra sales for the music and film industries as well as £350 million for the Government in extra VAT.

Charles Dunstone, CEO of The Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk , told The Times: “Broadband consumers shouldn’t have to bail out the music industry. If they really think it’s worth spending vast sums of money on these measures then they should be footing the bill; not the consumer.”

John Petter, managing director of BT Retail’s consumer division, added: “Put yourself in the shoes of a small businessman who has a rogue member of staff. Your Internet access could get cut off because of the actions of one individual. It really feels like the UK is out on a limb with these proposals compared to the rest of the world.”

There are many ISPs such as TalkTalk broadband, BT Broadband, Virgin media etc who are totally against the Government’s plans. They believe that the methods adopted for finding out the illegal downloaders are not reliable at all.

Presently,  for tracking the  illegal peer to peer activity, IP address is issued to your PC when you go online. According to a warning issued by the ISPs and industry experts,  the IP addresses can easily be copied, enciphered, hidden and even hijacked which can cause disconnection of  innocent people from the net.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “The Government has already admitted that these measures will force tens of thousands of low-income households to give up their broadband connection – even as the Government works to increase take up in disadvantaged communities. Consumers are already facing a £6 a year increase on their line rental, and shouldn’t have to pay for the crimes of a minority of people. ”

With the joining of a chip shop worker, BT has now become the UK’s biggest broadband provider. It become 5 millionth broadband customer of BT.

After signing up Glaswegian chip shop worker Elizabeth Patterson as its “five-million woman”, BT Broadband has now become the biggest broadband provider in the UK. It was stated by BT that this increase of broadband is occurring fastly. In just two years, it signed up its final one million.

According to a statement made by John Petter, managing director of BTs consumer division, he was  pleased with the strong BT take-up when the number of non-fibre optic broadband customers in the UK is 14 million.

He said: “We believe bringing the content of things like iPlayer and ITVPlayer to the TV set via broadband is going to have transformational effect when we launch Project Canvas with our partners next year.”
It  has also been claimed by BT that by summer 2012, the fibre broadband will definitely reach around  12 million homes.

Ian Livingston, BT chief executive, said: “We need our politicians to decide how much of a priority fibre broadband is. BT is the only company currently planning to invest large sums in this area but we can only go so far with our shareholders’ money.”

Michael Phillips, product director at Broadbandchoices.co.uk, said: “It’s a good day for BT, which has had rivals like cable broadband provider Virgin Media and TalkTalk , which acquired Tiscali earlier this year, snapping at its heels.

“It’s taken this opportunity to push the debate on financial public sector support for Digital Britain and it will be interesting to see how the powers-that-be respond.”