London Region ICT Champion

Rural areas of the UK are better connected to broadband than their urban neighbours, a new Ofcom report published here today reveals. England only summary here and full PDF (916kb) here.

Here are the edited highlights:

Rural vs Urban
Across the UK as a whole, 59% of households in rural areas now have broadband compared to 57% of urban areas.

• In Northern Ireland its 54% of households in rural areas with broadband and 52% in urban areas.
• In Scotland, 59% of rural households have broadband compared to 52% of urban households.
• The biggest difference is in Wales where 51% of rural households have broadband, in contrast to 43% of urban households.

Broadband take-up
Overall, broadband is in 57% of households across the UK - up from 45% in twelve months - and take-up has also increased steadily in the nations and regions.

• England saw the highest growth, up 13% to 58%.
• Sunderland is the UK’s most connected city with 66%
• In London and Edinburgh 62%, Newcastle 55%, Liverpool 40% of households have broadband
• The East of England region has the highest proportion of broadband households at 68%.
• East Midlands is at the lower end of the scale with only 37% of households having broadband.

Mobile-only homes on the rise
At 12%, more UK households than ever before now rely solely on a mobile phone.

• Some 12% of homes in England are mobile-only, an increase of 3%.
• In the UK’s cities, Greater Manchester has the highest levels of mobile-only homes at 28%, followed by Londonderry/Derry at 27%. Elsewhere, the mobile-only proportion of homes is Birmingham (22%), Yorkshire and Humber (18%), Greater Manchester (28%), and Liverpool (21%).
• However, in London the proportion relying on mobile telephony is lower than average (7%).
• Wales saw the highest growth of mobile-only homes up 9% with around a fifth of all homes (20%) mobile-only.
• In Northern Ireland, around one in ten households (11 %) are mobile-only, up 1% per cent in 12 months.
• Scotland was the only nation where the number of mobile-only homes fell slightly from 14 % to 12%.

Mobile 2.0
People in England are using their mobile in different ways other than to make calls.

• Some 21% use it to access the internet, rising to 32% in London. Birmingham is highest with a third of people using mobile internet. People living in rural parts of Devon and Cornwall are least likely to go online via their mobile at just 7%.
• Watching television or video on a mobile phone is also becoming more popular with 4% of adults in England now viewing content this way. The figure rises to 10% of adults in Liverpool and 15% in Birmingham.

A new report surveying the adoption of web 2.0 technologies by non-profit organisations found that “blogging was viewed as a sure, effective way to reach net citizenry”, whilst non-profits were “less optimistic about the prospects of social networking technologies to help raise significant monetary or goods donations for their organisation.”

The report also found non-profits were:

• optimistic about the value of social networking technologies to “organize an event” and “spread news” about the organisation.
• increasing their “web traffic” through use of various technologies.

Read more below the fold.. Continue Reading »

Abilitynet’s latest “State of the e-nation” report says social networking websites  - like Yahoo, Youtube, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo - are either difficult or impossible for disabled people to use.  In many cases users were not even able to register with websites.

Facebook is described as “a professional looking exterior belies a range of accessibility issues”, and gets a 1 star out of 5 review.  MySpace is also slated as having “significant accessibility and usability issues across the website”, and likewise scores a miserable 1 out of 5.

However, Yahoo does better with 2 stars and is praised for using serif fonts and resizable text to make reading easier.

Sadly, the Brave New World trumpeted by social networking sites is not as democratic and inclusive as it appears, so roll on accessible Web 2.5.

You can download “State of the e-nation” reports all the way back to 2003 from here.

We stumbled across this Wall Street Journal story on the 10 things your IT manager won’t tell you, whilst researching a post on IT security risks.

The tips cover tricks such as:

• sending large files
• visiting blocked websites
• running applications your organisation won’t install
• clearing your Internet surfing tracks

Continue Reading »

Released today, Web 2.0 - More than Social Networking, is a research study conducted by Bournemouth University that looks at current levels of web 2.0 adoption and understanding among UK businesses.

The study suggests that misconception amongst managers is slowing down the adoption of web 2.0 or social media tools.

• almost half of UK senior managers do not understand the business benefits associated with embracing web 2.0 technologies, while almost a third of IT managers lack an understanding of the capabilities of web 2.0.
• only 11 per cent actually purchased the technology to achieve increased collaboration, process change and more streamlined systems. The rest relied on the advanced web capabilities of such technology to improve content management and search facilities.
• less than 20% cited improved content and document management as a benefit

On the upside, 55.6 % of respondents cited working together more efficiently and uniting workers across different locations (52.9%) as the biggest benefits of web 2.0, while 50 per cent cited more openness in the organisation.

Over on Kablenet, Liberal Democrat MP Dr John Pugh (nice open source web site, sir) believes that the government is unwittingly creating a Microsoft monopoly in its delivery of online services because, in many cases, the public can only access them by using Windows software.

In a Commons debate last week, Pugh went on to outline a “damning” range of preferential treatment, which he said was tantamount to advertising and product placement.

• The Driving Standards Agency driving theory CD-Rom can be used only on Windows computers.
• The Inland Revenue website has limited functionality for the Firefox web browser
• The Department for Work and Pensions online benefits system can be accessed only by those who have a Windows computer.

Winding up, Pugh said “Those who have Unix or Linux computers or who use Mac computers should simply not bother.”.

In response, the Treasury’s Angela Eagle said that whilst the DirectGov site (6.5m hits per month) used open source components, “some open source projects cannot meet our needs for quality or security, and we are not prepared to compromise on those.”

As we all know, Windows and other proprietary software is well known for its quality, security and ability to deliver value for money to the great British taxpayer.  Indeed, we’ve quite forgotten government IT projects have a long history of soaring costs, failed projects, and regular security breaches.

Discuss…

NCVO’s Third Sector Foresight has launched a new site today bringing together a variety of resources to help voluntary and community organisations plan their strategies with insight.  Those looking for help with technology planning should head straight for the section on technology drivers for insight into lowering the cost of ICT, increasing access to the Internet, digital exclusion and more.

3S4 is organised into 4 main sections:

• Drivers: summarises the key political, social, economic and technological drivers shaping the voluntary sector;
• Tools: Examines strategic drivers and how to apply them to your organisation
• Network: Discuss strategy and planning on the 3S4 forum
• Share:  Share resources and expertise

The 3S4 site is part of NCVO’s new Leadership Services programme - also launching today - which will bring together networking services and personal development opportunities.

We think the 3S4 site is a great idea - the Foresight pages were previously buried deep inside the NCVO site - and wish Megan and the team good luck.

Hot off the presses from the ICT Hub…

The ICT Hub is seeking to commission an individual or organisation to update the sources of funders research carried out in 2006/07. The successful applicant will be required to source at least 45 funders who have funded ICT initiatives/ projects in the VCS and who were not covered in the first phase of the research. The results from the second phase of the research will be combined with the first phase information and used to populate a searchable funder directory on the ICT Hub website (in development).

The first phase of the research can be found here.

If you would like to received the tender documents for this piece of work, then please send an email with “sources of funders” in the subject field to louise.brown@icthub.org.uk. The deadline for applications is 5.00pm on Friday 28th September 2007, interviews will be held in London on Thursday 4th October 2007.

And rounding off our brief look at new studies and surveys emerging lately….

A new study from Ofcom has found that Voice- Over-Internet- Protocol (VoIP) services - like those offered by Skype, Vonage, BT Broadband Talk and Tesco - have failed to capture the public imagination.

Ofcom found that only 17 per cent of broadband-connected adults said they’d used VoIP services at least once, with only 14 per cent of that total using it every day.

Other research found that folks were still hanging on to their mobiles and landlines for calls - so much so that web-based callers were more likely to have both mobiles and landlines than the average UK adult.

Whilst tech analysts have been busy predicting that web-based phone services are ready and waiting to kill off regular land-line services, the reality seems to be that that the technology is still firmly stuck in the ‘early-adopter’ phase.

Checkout this article on the ICT Hub Knowledgebase for more on VOIP.

Source: Net4Now

According to a new survey from Pipex, people over the age of 60 tended to use the Internet for e-mail or searching and very little else, with just 7% having downloaded music compared with 84 per cent of 16-20 year olds.

The Pipex survey of 500 surfers - as flagged up by PC Pro and ISPreview UK - found significant differences in what various age groups do online.

• Older web users are more likely to spend time checking emails and using search engines.
  
• Only 7% of the over 60s download music compared with 84% of 16-20 year olds.
• Nearly 60% of 16-20 year olds want the ability to order a takeaway online compared to more than 70% of over 60s wanting to be able to make appointments with their doctor, hospital, dentist or taxidermist.

The survey of over 500 broadband users was carried out by independent market research company, Pure Profile, and included customers of AOL, BT, Orange, Pipex, Sky, TalkTalk, Tiscali and Virgin.