Skydog Kickstarter. Can't see B Sky B liking the name.

Oh Skydog, did you learn nothing from the Sky wifi pen... this is sniffing even closer to the Sky brand than Sky pen was in my opinion and will likely be forced to change their name in the UK.

This would actually be a good buy for B Sky B if the software aspect is patented.




http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/110098832/skydog-your-home-network-reinvented

Update: looking at their coperate website they have a few patents and a small history with the likes of Xerox http://www.powercloudsystems.com/about.php

Try Now TV on XBOX and get 800 MS points.

B Sky B's platform people who don't want / can't have a dish installed and / or prefer a different payment model to the traditional Sky TV offerings:

http://www.neowin.net/news/uk-residents-can-get-800-microsoft-points-for-free-for-trying-now-tv

Ofcom announce the 4G auctions bidders

Interesting not to see Virgin in there as they were running some 4G trials.

BT are in the mix via Niche Spectrum Ventures Limited.

I was kinda hoping for a surprise from a a big name fixed line ISPs but it seems they aren't interested.

B Sky B have The Cloud.

TalkTalk operate an MVNO

So I guess they consider the fix line market a core technology for another generation at least.

Going forward with fibre, the speeds will certainly beat 4G but 4G does bring down the latency on mobile connections. It'll be interesting when there is a mature 4G network in place, we might see more and more people willing to forgo a fixed line to save costs.

Thinkbroadband:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5637-ofcom-announce-the-4g-auctions-bidders.html

The Cloud First to Enable Default UK Internet Censorship on its Public WiFi

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/09/the-cloud-first-to-enable-default-uk-internet-censorship-on-public-wifi.html

Sky breaks the 4 million broadband customer landmark

Think broadband: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5364-sky-breaks-the-4-million-broadband-customer-landmark.html

Roku picks up financing from BSkyB, News Corp and more, keeps eye on the premium streaming crown

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/26/roku-picks-up-financing-from-bskyb-news-corp-and-more-keeps-ey/

Rumours B Sky B might bid on TalkTalk

My personal opinion is:

What a nightmare, but if done right could mean some major pressure for BT Retail / Business.

What a nightmare for B Sky B:
Implementation.Interoperability.
Consolidation
Support
Sky lock down their routers. TalkTalk let you use your own.

Why it could be good for B Sky B:
Increased network capacity
New subscriber up sell potential.
Traffic management experience
Parental controls
IPv4 allocation
Static IP's
IPTV experience (Tiscali TV was a true implementation).

http://www.standard.co.uk/business/business-news/market-round-up-bskybs-mooted-bid-for-talktalk-gets-city-tongues-wagging-7917310.html

I've worked at Tiscali (Freedom2Surf, Nildram, Pipex Business), V Networks (TalkTalk Business) and B Sky B.

New Sky DSL connection.

My new connection was put in yesterday.

Having checked my postcode on thinkbroad's map against the closest telephone exchange (straight line distance about 500meters) I was hopeful of fast speeds on ADSL. When the connection went live I connected locally into the Sky phase 3 router (Sagem) via a web browser using the internal IP of 192.168.0.1 . On the maintenance page you will find a show statistics button at the bottom which gave me the following:  



Here I could see the downstream attenuation which I could put into a attenuation calculator to see if I was near the theoretical maximum. 21,344kbps was suggested as the absolute maximum so I wasn't massively off.

It's likely that I could improve on my downstream sync speed of 17.7Mbps with a couple of tweaks such as going directly to the master socket's test socket, removing other devices from the line such as the phone and trying a different DSL filter / shorter data cable.

Next up was to try some speed testers which test throughput (Note the sync is the connection to the telephone exchange, throughput is what is passing through that connection and is effected by anything else that maybe using the connection at the same time as the test).

The results were not bad either, 14Mbps during the day is very decent. I'll take some evening reading as well to update the blog but I'm very happy for the time being. FTTC is in my area but I can't really justify the cost with these speeds having some from a long line where I had a sync of 4Mbps. It's a shame Sky don't offer static IP's but at least they have put dynDNS.org functionality into there routers which I'm told is a lot of hassel on Virgin Media who I almost had to sign up to.

Here's hoping for IPv6 functionality as well.


EDIT:
An evening speedtest result around 9pm