UK Going For Technology Golds

The UK Government appear to be determined to raise the internet bar to win gold medals for the UK. Culture minister, Jeremy Hunt, claimed that the UK will have the "fastest broadband of any major European country by 2015. Like the Olympics the government is obsessed with speed and records and have released a further £300 million of funding. He claims some golden Olympic moments:

·         700GB/s were delivered from the BBC website delivered 700GB/s when Bradley Wiggins won gold.

·         On a peak day, 2.8PB (petabytes, over 2.9 million gigabytes) were downloaded.

·         Nearly a million people watched Andy Murray win gold online, with nine million following coverage on their mobiles.

·         London2012.com received over 20 billion views.

Mr Hunt has also stated intent to break the one gigabit speed barrier by supporting private firms in delivering fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) from 2016.

The mobile market is also to get faster. From October Orange and T-Mobile, which is the UK’s biggest mobile operator, with some 27% market share, will rebrand under the name Everything Everywhere (EE) in October. From the end of the first quarter 2013 the Orange and T-Mobile brands will be dropped and all existing customers will be migrated to EE. More importantly it will also launch 4G superfast mobile internet this year ahead of its rival UK operators.

4G is seen by many as vital for the further development of video, gaming and downloading and EE has been allowed to use its existing 1800 MHz spectrum to enable them to deliver first to the market. Its rivals have to enter into a 4G at the end of this year, which will then enable virtually everyone with the appropriate devices to be able to access to the faster network.

Have They Been Tango-ed?

Do you change your name when you get married or stick with the one everyone knows? Do you create the new double barrelled name so loved by some circles?

Today we see a huge media marriage in the UK between Orange and T-Mobile. Shall they call themselves Orange or T-Mobile? After all they have both built good brands and invested heavily in brand building. No decision is likely on the brand issue until the merger gets full clearance from EU regulators. With 28.4 million customers or 37% of market share the new marriage will overtake the likes of O2 and Vodafone. It will result in redundancies in the workforce and obvious tagets are call centres, high street retail stores and a welcome reduction in mobile phone masts (some 5,000 less).

So do we like; Orange Mobile, T-Orange, Torange, Tango (we think that one may be a problem)?

Android Moves

The G1 was the first Google Android phone to launch in the UK through T-Mobile and sales are reported to have exceeded their expectations with 100,000 UK sales in the first 6 months and in the US the G1 device has sold 1 million units. Android was designed by Google and a host of partners to make it easier to surf the web and carry out complex computing tasks on mobile devices.



During May, T-Mobile users will be able to update their G1 handsets with the latest Android 1.5 ‘Cupcake’ update. The ‘Cupcake’ software update offers G1 owners enables users to use the 3.2magapixel camera to film videos and upload them straight to YouTube. Photos can similarly be uploaded straight to a user's personal Picasa web album. There are new widgets for the calendar and the music player, new zoom functions on the G1’s camera, a speedier acquisition of GPS location and improvements to the email client and web browser. The update to the G1's Android platform includes an on-screen touch keyboard, giving users a choice of input methods.


Now Vodaphone have launch the new HTC Magic Adroid phone in the UK with no keyboard just a touchscreen. It comes with Gmail and Google Search support and a range of other bundled applications, widgets and access to the Android Market for further applications.




T-Mobile has also announced it will launch another Android phone later this year and Samsung has unveiled its first Android phone, the I7500, which is due to launch in June. So unlike Apple, Google have clearly spread their reach to use multiple manufacturers and carrier networks, whilst retaining the operating system and application marketplace.

At the end of the day its going to be down to the fickle consumer to choose or the killer application to seduce.