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Smart TVs sets with the ability to stream online content, run apps and show television channels simultaneously dominated the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) exhibition.At the end of 2011 there were 82 million connected TVs in homes worldwide according to research group Informa. By 2016 it forecasts that number will have ballooned to 892 million.

For years much of the tech industry has pursued a vision of the computer as the home’s digital hub. Owners used their PCs to copy photos off digital cameras, download music and movies and then transfer the material to other compatible devices.
Camera built into Samsung smart TV Samsung’s built-in camera allows its TV to recognise gestures and identify users

Advanced users might have connected their laptop to their TVs or streamed content to the sets wirelessly, but the televisions were at most at the end of a spur coming off the hub, rather than its heart.

The roll-out of cloud services allied to faster internet speeds now offers televisions the chance to usurp the PC’s place, and offers users further freedom from the confines of broadcasters’ schedules.

Samsung – the world’s best-selling TV-maker – has been at the forefront of efforts to deliver this vision.

One of the promotional videos it showed at this year’s event claimed watching television by appointment would become a foreign concept in the future, and its executives talk of the TV being the centre of the home.

Users are offered thousands of apps allowing them to use social networks, play video games, run educational software and follow exercise routines.

But smart TV makers recognise that people still want a sit back rather than lean forward experience most of the time.

Furthermore they acknowledge that increasing numbers of homes own other connected devices. So users may still find it preferable to tweet about a show via their tablet or smartphone rather than shrink the TV picture to pull up an app alongside.

However, manufacturers insist there are instances where it makes more sense to have everything on one screen.

While Samsung and Panasonic are developing their own system software, Google is taking a second crack at offering its own smart TV service.

At the show, LG and Vizio unveiled new sets with the search firm’s Android-based software built in. Sony also added the facility to two devices – a set-top box and a Blu-ray player.

The first version of Google TV launched in October 2010 to much fanfare, but proved a flop – enabled devices were criticised for being too expensive, and several TV networks blocked the US-only service from accessing their web content.

This time round a focus on apps may tempt content providers to co-operate, but for now it remains reliant on its own YouTube service as well as streams from Netflix, Amazon and several niche operations.

UK-based Canonical was punting a rival Linux-based Ubuntu operating system at the trade show. It says it offers a solution to clients who do not want to develop their own software and content deals, but feel uncomfortable linking up with Google.

Whichever operating system proves most popular, the internet poses a threat to the rest of the pay-TV market.

Furthermore, it says that recent developments have spurred pay-TV providers on to furnish its boxes with more material.

For now, the smart TV market looks fragmented from the point of view of content, and immature in terms of some of the technologies involved.

But as smart TVs become ever smarter, previous generations of unconnected sets may soon appear only slightly less antiquated than the black and white models of yesteryear.

Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo!, has resigned from its board of directors with immediate effect.Jerry Yang founded the online company in 1995 with David Filo and was its chief executive from June 2007 until January 2009.

His resignation comes two weeks after the company hired former PayPal executive Scott Thomson to be its new chief executive.

Mr Yang annoyed some shareholders by turning down a £31 billion ($47.5 billion) takeover offer from Microsoft in 2008.

Since then the value has plummeted and the company’s current market value is only about £13 billion.

Mr Yang has also resigned from the boards of Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group and said in a statement: “The time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo!”.

In addition to leaving the boards, Mr Yang is also giving up his title of “Chief Yahoo”. He also expressed support for the company’s current management.

“I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo! into an exciting and successful future,” he said.

Some observers had seen Jerry Yang as an impediment to the sale or restructuring of the business as it provides a more objective and unemotional approach to the variuos strategic alternatives which are being considered as the company attempts to reinvent itself.

TalkTalk remains the most complained about UK broadband service provider according to regulator Ofcom.The ISP has “topped” the list for four consecutive quarters, although it has been reducing the number of complaints over the past six months.

In the same period, Ofcom found that 3 was the most complained about mobile operator, driven by disputed charges and customer service issues.

Virgin Media also saw an increase in mobile complaints over the past year.

Ofcom bases its data on complaints sent to the regulator rather than to individual operators. In general, mobile services are less complained about than fixed line or broadband.

The regulator’s quarterly report aims to inform consumers as well as incentivise telecoms providers to improve their performance. Ofcom only monitors complaints against telecom providers with a market share of more than 4%.

Complaints about TalkTalk’s broadband service peaked for the first three months of 2011 with an average of 0.81 per 1,000 customers. This fell to 0.55 by the third quarter of 2011.

LANDLINE COMPLAINTS Q3 2011

• TalkTalk – 0.77 complaints per 1,000 customers
• BT Retail – 0.29
• BSkyB – 0.28
• Virgin Media – 0.19

A lot of the problems experienced by TalkTalk are blamed on billing errors following its amalgamation with Tiscali in 2009.

As a direct result of the 1,000 complaints it received last year, Ofcom fined TalkTalk and its Tiscali UK subsidiary £3 million  for incorrectly billing more than 65,000 customers for services they had not received.

It was the largest fine that the regulator has given to a telecoms firm.

TalkTalk has since paid more than £2.5 million in refunds and goodwill payments to affected customers. Last month it admitted that it had lost more than 43,000 customers as a result of customer service issues.

The ISP was also the most complained about provider when it came to landline services, with 0.77 complaints per 1,000 customers in the third quarter of 2011, again driven by billing and customer services issues.

MOBILE COMPLAINTS Q3 2011

• Three – 0.14 complaints per 1,000 customers
• Orange – 0.07
• Virgin Mobile – 0.07
• Vodafone – 0.07
• T-Mobile – 0.06
• O2 – 0.02

The least complained about provider for the fourth quarter in a row was Virgin Media with 0.19 complaints per 1,000 customers.

But in mobile, Virgin Media saw its complaints rise from 0.03 complaints per 1,000 customers from of 2010 to 0.07 by the third quarter of 2011.

It has some way to go to catch 3, which was the most complained about operator over all four quarters. Its complaints have been on the rise, up from 0.09 per 1,000 customers from October to December of 2010 to 0.14 by the third quarter of 2011.

O2 remained the least complained about mobile operator over the year.

Chancellor George Osborne announced £5 billion of spending on infrastructure projects such as roads, railways and broadband networks with £100 million of that is set to boost broadband coverage in London, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff.A further six cities will be identified later.

“For the first time we are identifying over 500 infrastructure projects we want to see built over the next decade and beyond. Roads, railways, airport capacity, power stations, waste facilities, broadband networks,” the chancellor told the House of Commons.

“It means creating new superfast digital networks for companies across our country. These do not exist today. See what countries like China or Brazil are building, and you’ll also see why we risk falling behind the rest of the world,” he said.

“Our great cities are at the heart of our regional economies. And we will help bring world leading, superfast broadband and wi-fi connections to 10 of them – including the capitals of all four nations.

The plan is to create a hub of super-fast cities with broadband speeds of between 80 to 100Mbps (megabits per second) and city-wide high-speed mobile connectivity.

The current average broadband speed in the UK is 6.8Mbps.

Firms including BT and Virgin will be able to bid for the money, which they can use to fill in urban notspots or increase wi-fi coverage, a spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said.

The government wants the UK to be the best place for broadband in Europe by 2015.

BT recently accelerated its superfast broadband rollout and now plans to offer fibre services to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.

Virgin Media has also turned up the speed dial on its services, which is available to half the homes in the UK.

Broadband rollouts in rural areas have been far slower with critics complaining that the £530m set aside by the government to encourage investment in these areas is insufficient.

Much of that money has been allocated to local councils identified as having broadband blackspots but few have yet got projects up and running.

UK broadband speeds drop by an average of 35% from their off peak highs when most people are online in the evening, according to a report.The research, conducted by the comparison site uSwitch, was based on two million broadband speed tests.

The peak surfing times between 7pm and 9pm were the slowest to be online, the report said.

There were also huge regional variations between evening and early morning surfing times.

The report suggested the best time to be online was between 2am and 3am.

Users in Evesham, Worcestershire, fared worst, according to the survey, with a massive 69% drop-off between off-peak morning and evening surfing.

Those living in Weston-super-Mare did little better with speeds falling from an off-peak average of 9.5Mbps (megabits per second) to 3.4Mbps in the evening – a 64% drop.

The difference was often most noticeable in rural areas where even peak speeds were relatively slow. In Wadebridge, in Cornwall, speeds nearly halved from 4.1Mbps at off-peak times to 2.1Mbps at peak times.

“It really is surprising just how much broadband speeds fluctuate at different times of the day, with drop-offs of almost 70% in some areas of the UK,” said uSwitch’s technology expert Ernest Doku.

“Not many internet users enjoy the maximum headline broadband speeds offered by providers, and certainly not during the working week,” he added.

Broadband speed is becoming more important as bandwidth-hungry services such as on-demand TV become more popular.

Telecoms regulator Ofcom recently revealed that British households download an average of 17 gigabytes of data every month over their home broadband connections.

That monthly data diet is equivalent to streaming 11 movies or 12 hours of BBC programmes via iPlayer.

Critics say consumers are being misled by internet service providers who continue to advertise their maximum broadband speeds, even though many users do not get them.

New rules from the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) say that from April next year providers will no longer be able to advertise maximum speeds for net packages unless 10% of customers receive them. They must also make it clear if a significant proportion of users wll not be able to get the headline speed.

Almost half of broadband users are now on packages with advertised speeds above 10Mbps but the average broadband speed is 6.8Mbps according to Ofcom.

The broadband speed test results can be viewed here.

Broadband firms have warned that a new superfast digital divide is emerging.Speakers at the Westminster eForum said that around 10% of the UK will not be able to get superfast broadband in the next decade.

Government funds set aside to address so-called notspots were insufficient, they said.

BT said that EU targets for all citizens to have speeds of at least 30Mbps (megabits per second) by 2020 were “impossible to achieve”.

Meanwhile Fujitsu revealed more about its plans to fill in the UK’s broadband blackspots.

The Japanese electronics giant burst onto the UK broadband scene in April, pledging to offer a fibre-to-the-home network to the third of the country bypassed by commercial broadband rollouts.

Using the £530 million pot of government money set aside for rural broadband, it said that it could create a fibre-to-the-home 1Gbps (gigabit per second) network for around 5 million users within five years.

But it has been slow progress. So far Fujitsu has bid to build fibre networks in just three areas – Wales, North Yorkshire and Cumbria.

In two areas, including the Highlands and Islands, it decided that the sums simply did not stack up.

“Even with government funding there are parts of the UK where the business case will not work,” said Bill MacKenzie, Fujitsu’s business unit director.

The money has been divided out among local authorities who in turn put out tenders to network providers.

Geographical areas benefitting from broadband investments

• Cumbria: £17m
• Devon and Somerset: £31.3m
• East Sussex: £10.6m
• Kent: £9.87m
• Lancashire: £10.8m
• Lincolnshire: £14.3m
• Norfolk: £15.4m
• North Yorkshire: £17.8m
• Suffolk: £11.68m

It was a view backed by rival BT, which is bidding to provide fibre networks in the same areas.

Sean Williams, group director of strategy and policy at BT, told delegates that current funding would reach 90% of the UK.

For those in the 90% the future was bright. He predicted that “over half would have speeds of more than 100 megabits” before 2020.

This would put the UK on schedule to meet an EU goal that half of its citizens should have access to at least 100Mbps by that time as well as propelling the UK to the top of the European speed league tables.

But the other key EU broadband target – to have all member-state citizens on a minimum speed of 30Mbps by 2020 – was “not achievable for any country”, said Mr Williams.

In the UK the 10% left behind might be a small minority but the gap between them and the others would be huge said Alastair Davidson, Arqiva’s managing director of mobile.

“The 90% will have a Ferrari and the 10% a bicycle,” he said.

Broadband and landline contracts which automatically tie customers into long term deals will be banned from December Ofcom has warned.Automatically Renewable Contracts (ARCs) kick in if customers do not actively opt out, and impose penalties if users want to move to another service provider.

Ofcom estimates that around 15% of UK residential customers are on such rollover contracts.

BT is one of those using them. Other residential providers include Adept Telecom, Axis Telecom, Eze Talk and iTalk, while TalkTalk Business, Titan Telecoms and Optimum Calls offer ARCs to business users.

Ofcom’s chief executive Ed Richards said: “ARCs raise barriers to effective competition by locking customers into long term deals with little additional benefit.”

The sale of such contracts will be banned from 31 December.

Michael Phillips, from price comparison website BroadbandChoices, said it was “great news” for consumers.

“Automatic renewal was locking some consumers into services that were no longer suitable for their requirements and were often less competitively priced than newer offerings,” he said.

Ernest Doku, technology expert at price comparison site uSwitch.com said: ”

“Relying on consumer apathy, providers have tried to cling on to customers by forcing people to opt out of a landline or broadband contract.

“Hopefully now the emphasis will be on providing the best service and support possible, so that consumers actively choose to stay with providers, rather than stay with them by default,” he added.

Free wi-fi access in the UK is supposed to be a global leader- but how “free” is the internet access?Recent research by the Office for National Statistics showed that 4.9 million people connected through hotspots such as hotels, cafes and airports over the last year in the UK, up from 0.7 million in 2007.

But there’s a big catch.

These hotspots usually either come with a charge or require you to be a customer – buying a superfluous sandwich or a beer in order to get your internet access.

Wi-fi provider The Cloud serves many cafes and restaurants, including Pizza Express, Eat and Pret A Manger – but their users must be prepared to pay to eat.

And BT recently announced a partnership with Heineken pubs where wi-fi is on the house – starting with 100 pubs in London and expanding to 300 throughout the UK by 2012. But again, you have to be a customer.

Many councils have realised the potential benefits of community wireless access and tried to launch free wi-fi schemes. Many have failed.

Probably the most trumpeted example was in Swindon, which aimed to have free wi-fi emanating from the top of lampposts for the whole town by April 2010. A loan was made to a private provider, but the money ran out and private sponsors were hard to come by, the council says.

Now only one small section of the town is covered.

But while councils and other bodies have struggled in the UK, there are many successful free wireless internet projects around the world.

Many US cities – including Denver, Raleigh and Seattle – have free access in some areas, usually the centre. Bologna in Italy has a similar set-up.  Taipei in Taiwan currently has major public sites covered.

NYCwireless is a non-profit organisation that builds free public wireless networks in parks and open spaces in New York City, including a newly announced outdoor space covering the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

There is some progress in the UK where Bristol has a free and open network in much of the city centre.

The council says this is done at minimal cost because decades ago they purchased old cable ducts allowing them to create their own broadband network.

In 2007, the City of London initiated “free” wireless access, touting its importance for traders, bankers and brokers to access data on the move – but only the first 15 minutes are actually free.

Virgin Media plans to roll out free public wi-fi in London to compete with BT’s Openzone – the catch being that customers must subscribe to Virgin’s broadband service at home to access the fastest speeds at no cost.

Of course, there would be many people who would question the need for free public wi-fi, even in city centres. We don’t expect free electricity or free public transport, so why should people get free internet?

But the advocates see it as a move that could stimulate business and provide a boost to quality of life. But the powers-that-be can’t seem to agree on whether funding of any sort should go to free wi-fi, particularly in these straitened times.

And this attitude is why some people say the private sector is a more viable route. For now, most Britons will have to fork out for the paying for their emails and browsing..

Almost half of UK internet users are going online via mobile phone data connections according to the Office for National Statistics.Some 45% of people surveyed said they made use of the net while out and about, compared with 31% in 2010.

The most rapid growth was among younger people, where 71% of internet-connected 16 to 24-year-olds used mobiles.

Domestic internet use also rose. According to the ONS, 77% of households now have access to a net connection.

That figure was up 4% from the previous year, representing the slowest rate of growth since the ONS survey began in 2006.

Among the 23% of the population who remain offline, half said they “didn’t need the internet”.

Household internet access

Year                           Households (millions)                              Percentage
2006                                         14.3                                                        57
2007                                         15.2                                                        61
2008                                         16.5                                                        65
2009                                         18.3                                                        70
2010                                         19.2                                                        73
2011                                          19                                                          77

Northern Ireland excluded from 2011 survey.

Source: Office for National Statistics

The ONS report is the first since dot-com entrepreneur Martha Lane-Fox was appointed as the government’s UK Digital Champion, with a brief to increase internet uptake.

In a statement, Ms Lane-Fox said: “That so many offline households don’t see any reason to get online reinforces the importance of the digital champions network that the Raceonline2012 partners are creating.”

The figure for domestic connections contrasted sharply with the rapid growth in uptake of mobile services.

However, the popularity of 3G broadband did not necessarily mean that more people were going online overall.

Many of those using mobile phones are likely to already have home broadband connections.

Older users, who the government is particularly keen to get connected, appeared to have been relatively untouched by the phenomenon.

While 71% of 16 to 24-year-old who went online said they used mobile broadband, just 8% of internet users aged over 65 made use of the newer technology.

The ONS survey also found a dramatic rise in the use of wifi hotspots – a seven-fold increase since 2011 – suggesting that the rise of 3G has done little to slow demand for free and paid-for wireless access.

All findings were based on a monthly survey of 1,800 randomly selected adults from across the UK.

Rural areas in England and Scotland have been allocated nearly £363 million to improve their broadband connections.Cumbria gets one of the largest shares of the £530 million pot, with over £17 million to cope with its 96.2% of homes eligible for subsidies.

By contrast, London gets nothing as it assumed that private investment will cover all parts of the capital.

It is a change of strategy for the government which originally asked counties to bid for money with local authorities and residents deciding how the money should be spent.

County councils and private enterprise partnerships will be put in charge of broadband rollouts in their areas, and will be required to draw up delivery plans and find additional funding from elsewhere.

The areas receiving most funds are:

• Cumbria: £17m
• Devon and Somerset: £31.3m
• East Sussex: £10.6m
• Kent: £9.87m
• Lancashire: £10.8m
• Lincolnshire: £14.3m
• Norfolk: £15.4m
• North Yorkshire: £17.8m
• Suffolk: £11.68m

Wales and Northern Ireland have already been given their share of the £530 million broadband fund which was set aside from the TV licence fee.

The government hopes that by allocating money instead it will speed up the process and has pledged to make the UK the best place in Europe for broadband by 2015.

Up to one third of UK homes will not get fast broadband services from the big commercial players without government subsidy.

This is because the number of people living in rural areas versus the cost of creating a next-generation broadband do not represent a good return on their investment for players such as BT and Virgin Media.

So for example Northumberland has 71% of premises that will not be reached by commercial projects. It has been allocated over £7m.

Berkshire, with only 8% of homes unlikely to get next-generation services via commercial firms, gets £1.4m.

But some have questioned whether the £530 million will be enough to fill in the gaps.