Glasgow tops the bandwidth charts

Glasgow has superseded London as the UK's leading city when it comes to broadband bandwidth provision. An average 2,395Kbps are available to each Internet user in the Scottish city, a figure that is significantly higher than the average 1,943Kbps on offer in London. The figures, gathered by Dutch research firm iPing, show that despite an overall 23 per cent increase in bandwidth, the average available download speed per subscriber in the largest conglomerations is steadily decreasing. ...more

PlusNet introduces variable broadband pricing and first 2Mbps service

PlusNet has unveiled a new set of broadband services that take advantage of BT's new capacity charging model. The model lets ISPs create a variety of services, each with a specific maximum download limit and price them accordingly. PlusNet's Broadband Home portfolio comprises 512Kbit/sec, 1Mbit/sec and 2Mbps connections with a variety of download limits. ...more

And also today (17-Apr-2001), for the record...

Here, in brief, are some of the day's other stories. Intel doubles DSP speeds Intel has demonstrated what it claims to be the world's fastest digital signal processor (DSP) architecture for wireless handheld devices. Incorporating DSP and micro controller functions on a single chip, the Intel Micro Signal Architecture (MSA) can run at speeds of up to 400 MHz, which is more than twice as fast as other DSPs for wireless handheld devices, the company asserts. ...more

Intel goes 64-bit for MMX for mobiles

With the boom in 3G phones and video streaming to mobile devices showing no sign of abating, Intel has said that it has developed a new version of its MMX multimedia technology for mobile devices. The new version, Wireless MMX2, offers 64-bit extensions to improve video streaming and offer better battery life to a new generation of mobile phones. MMX2 is a set of 64-bit Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) instructions similar to the Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) that Intel introduced for the x86 instruction set. ...more

Joint venture pushes forward digital cinema age

While "Star Wars: episode II" is filmed solely using digital technology, Mr Lucas must be wondering how the masses will see the film as it is meant to be seen, in a digital theatre. A joint venture between Qualcomm and Technicolor is set to allay these fears as it will underwrite part of the $150,000 estimated cost of converting celluloid cinemas to digital dens. Mobile communications company Qualcomm and film processor Technicolor, a division of Thomson, have formed a joint venture called Technicolor Digital Cinema is offering to pay for installing and maintaining the digital projection systems in return for a 12. ...more