News roundup December 2016

Further to this month’s UK broadband update, the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) published a call for evidence on approaches to extending full fibre networks. It is the government’s intention that investment in fibre networks should be delivered in partnership with local areas, prioritising funding for new business connections. The call for evidence sets out a number of approaches to stimulating investment, including aggregation of public sector demand, voucher schemes and supply-side interventions. It follows on from announcements made as part of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement in November 2016 and closes on 31st January 2016.

Other developments this month:

• The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced that broadband should now be considered a basic telecommunications service for all Canadians, who should be able to access unlimited data options and speeds of at least 50 Mbit/s download and 10 Mbit/s upload. See this previous post for more on recent UK broadband universal service obligation (USO) developments.
• The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published its sixth Measuring Broadband America report (press release here); also see commentary from Ars Technica.
• In a blog post Netflix described its new encoding techniques to improve video quality over mobile networks (also see commentary from ISP Review).
• Finally, Virgin Media announced that the average Virgin Media household had five different internet-enabled devices connected to their network on Christmas Day. More than 25.7 million devices such as TVs, tablets and smartphones were used across 4.9 million active broadband connections between 5pm and 10pm on Christmas evening.