UK notches up 2 million broadband connections

Oftel has announced that the UK now has 2 million broadband connections, a total which has doubled in just seven months. David Edmonds, Director General of Telecommunications, said, 'It took two years to reach one million connections, but only seven months to reach two million, as increased competition and lower prices have boosted connection rates.' Cable companies NTL and Telewest recently announced they had reached the 1 million mark, so the split between DSL and cable connections falls roughly equal, although Oftel does consider BT's monopolistic power to be a powerful factor in taking an increasingly larger percentage of new sign-ups. ...more

HP goes big on grids

HP has announced plans to further embrace grid computing. HP says that it is committed to using open grid standards, such as Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) across its range of enterprise products. And in the 'next few years', according to HP, it will grid-enable a wide range of products, from handheld devices to computers. ...more

Gates announces timely watches

In his keynote speech at the opening of the 2003 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Bill Gates showed of the first fruit of Microsoft's SPOT platform: watches. The Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) platform is designed to 'make everyday objects smarter and better at their core functions', according to Bill Mitchell, general manager of SPOT at Microsoft. During Gates' keynote SPOT watches (or 'wrist-tops' as manufacturer Suunto calls them) were demonstrated from Citizen, Fossil and Suunto. ...more

Itanium chips feature 667MHz FSB

Intel has introduced two versions of its Itanium 2 processors with an enhanced front side bus (FSB) running at 667MHz. Previous versions of the Itanium have been limited to a 400MHz bus. Intel claims (and the maths supports it) that the bandwidth is 65 per cent greater. ...more

Microsoft: licensed to bill

'Licensing 6' program pushes Microsoft revenues above expectations Microsoft has announced results for the financial quarter ending 30 September with revenues of $7.75bn. This exceeds the company's July upper estimate of $7. ...more