Roadmap 2005

At this time of year everyone publishes their predictions which generally end up being totally wrong. Nevertheless, having spent December plying key industry figures with drink to discover their plans of the coming year, we have to justify our expenses claim somehow. So here we present our roadmap for 2005. ...more

Virgin to launch UK version of digital music store

Virgin is to launch the UK version of its Virgin Digital online music store 2 September. Already a year into existence in the US, the new store takes over from the UK's existing Virgin.Net service and ties in closely with the company's MegaStore chain. ...more

The price of high-bandwidth services

Oftel has published a survey of international pricing for high-bandwidth services. It covers the provision of high-speed telecom connections to consumers in France, Germany, USA and the UK. The very broad picture for the provision of broad-bandwidth connections is that the UK and France are vying for positions behind Germany and the US in terms of the price and variety of services available. ...more

Hackers face jail

Two US hackers are facing two years in jail after targeting a number of top Internet providers in an e-mail scam. Steve Shklovskiy and Yan Shtok, both 23 and from Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to fraud charges and were jailed for two years for their role in the scam. They were also ordered to pay ?69,000 in compensation and to reveal to the Internet providers they affected, which included AOL, AT&T and Mindspring, how they pulled   off their scheme. ...more

Lightning strikes mobile phones

Forget radiation fears over mobile phone use, it appears callers have something more dramatic to worry about. According to the British Medical Journal, lightning strikes have killed a number of people across the globe and severely injured a UK teen, because of the conductive properties of their mobile phone. According to an article in the journal, people are generally likely to survive a lightning strike: 'the high resistance of human skin results in lightning being conducted over the skin without entering the body,' it states, causing an effect known as 'flashover'. ...more