Analysis: Back on the broadband wagon

ADSL2+ might be making the headlines, but Britain isn't catching up with the leading broadband nations, reports Stephen Bruce Everyone from telephone companies and ISPs to early adopters and broadcasters are talking up the next generation of DSL broadband services. But how long will we have to wait for these services to arrive? Broadband uptake has spread across Britain (nearly doubling last year and now totalling some five million connections in the UK), but bandwidth-hungry users are already impatiently waiting for the next raft of services - such as television on demand - which could be carried over high-speed ADSL2+. These connections are already widely available in Europe, with France and Italy leading the way, but the first trials in the UK were launched only last month. ...more

Beeb bundles multimedia into search

The BBC has added the ability to search audio and visual content to its relaunched and reinvigorated search engine for its website. Visitors to bbc.co. ...more

Hynix intros GDDR4 DRAM

Korean memory manufacturer Hynix Semiconductor has announced the availability of the world's first 512 Megabit GDDR4 DRAM. The company claims that new chips provide the world's fastest and highest density graphics memory. The foundation of the blazingly fast graphics from the major suppliers such as ATi and NVidia GDDR is an ultra-high speed graphics DRAM that processes movie quality animations and graphics data for personal computers and game consoles. ...more

IT budgets increasing, but vendors still face challenges

Despite layoffs and the general air of doom and gloom surrounding the IT industry, yesterday's survey by Gartner revealed that 56 per cent of companies are increasing their IT budgets this year. Early adopter industries, including governments, showed the strongest growth, with their IT spend up 18 per cent between 2000 and 2002. Telcos also showed good form, with a 13. ...more

Cost of redundancies and the Kodak Java dispute weigh down Sun

Sun Microsystems pulled ahead of analyst expectations in its latest quarterly results, but overall revenues were shy of targets. Analysts had predicted revenues to average $2.71bn for the quarter ending 26 September, but Sun pulled up short of that to the tune of $2. ...more