Government opens consultation on £1bn broadband scheme
Lord Mandelson seeks views on Proposed Next Generation Fund, paid for by a levy on telephone lines, to bring broadband to rural areas
A government consultation on a proposed £1 billion broadband fund, raised via a 50p per month tax on all telephone landlines, has been opened by Business Secretary Lord Mandelson.
The controversial plan is intended to ensure that 90% of the UK’s population are able to access superfast broadband speeds of up to 50Mb within seven years. Enterprises in the country’s most rural locations are among those to be specifically targeted.
In the consultation document, the government outlines that substantially increased connection speeds and reliability could encourage adoption of cloud computing and high-quality video conferencing, technologies that can bring cost savings to the enterprise.
“Already the market is delivering superfast internet speeds of 50Mb to half the country but we cannot be certain that it will reach the communities that are not currently served, which is why we are putting in an extra £1 billion to support the market,\\\" said Mandelson. \\\"By upgrading our networks we will put the UK at the fore of rapidly developing technologies which will bring jobs, boost business potential and grow our digital economy.”
The 50p landline tax needs to be signed into law before this year’s general election, to be held in June at the latest, if the scheme is to go ahead. The Conservatives have already pledged to abort the project if elected.
Figures published by telecoms watchdog Ofcom last month showed that 16% of UK businesses with five or more employees that are connected to the internet rely on dial-up or ISDN services, highlighting the poor broadband coverage still prevalent in some areas of the country.
London Mayor announces public ‘data store’
City Hall to make civic data freely available online to encourage transparency and to open commercial opportunities to software developers
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has announced a plan to make 200 data sets owned by the Greater London Authority and relating to the administration of the capital freely available online.
The so-called ‘datastore’ is modelled on a similar initiative by the US government, named data.gov. Johnson said that it would not only stimulate greater transparency in city government, but also present commercial opportunities for software developers to build services around the data.
The plan is to be unveiled this afternoon during an event that (quite inexplicably) will be linked via satellite to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The datastore itself will be live on January 29th 2010.
In a statement prepared for the press, Johnson said that “the US has led the way on this idea of setting their data free for anyone - students, campaigners, software developers – to use. Now it’s time for Britain to get up to speed and I want London, as the greatest city in the UK, to be at the forefront of this revolution”.
Although it is true that the Obama administration has more than any other national government exploited the power of Internet and database technologies to make information publicly available. But the UK has already made a significant contribution to the field dubbed ‘government 2.0’, most notably the work of mySociety.org.
A number of recent announcements from the current Conservative party leadership, whose connections to Silicon Valley technology companies once earned them the soubriquet ‘the California Tories’, have addressed the use of Internet technologies in government.
Earlier this week, for example, a draft ‘healthcare manifesto’ from the party revealed plans to unleash an \'information revolution\' - a phrase also used in the material to promote the London datastore - in the NHS by \"making detailed data about the performance of trusts, hospitals, GPs, doctors and other staff available to the public online\" and by putting \"patients in charge of their own health records, with the ability to choose which providers they share them with\".
Cisco acquired most start-ups during the past decade.
Network equipment manufacturer tops an IT-dominated list of companies that acquired venture-backed start-ups during the \'noughties\'
Cisco Systems, the world’s largest networking equipment maker, acquired the most venture-backed companies in the last decade, according to new research.
Dow Jones’ VentureSource industry tracker shows that Cisco made 48 acquisitions between the start of 2000 and the end of last year, way ahead of second place IBM, which acquired 35 start-ups. Microsoft came in at third with 30 acquisitions during the decade.
Major deals involving Cisco included the purchase of LAN switching firm Arrowpoint Communications for $5.7 billion (£3.6 billion) in 2000, digital cable provider Scientific-Atlanta for $6.9 billion (£4.3 billion) three years later and web conferencing business WebEx for $3.2 billion (£2 billion) in 2007.
The VentureSource index was dominated by major IT organisations, with Google, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard among those also appearing, underlining the nature of an industry that demands constant development and innovation.
Despite heading up the leader board for the decade, Cisco saw a slowdown in deal activity last year, making just two acquisitions in 2009. Software giant Oracle was the most acquisitive company in 2009, having made five acquisitions during the year.
Both Cisco and Oracle have begun this decade in similar fashion to the last, with reports suggesting the former has acquired data centre and cloud security start-up Rohati Systems, while the latter this week announced a deal to acquire data quality firm Silver Creek Systems
