Froodee

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British Telecom ups broadband speed

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British Telecom recently announced an upgrade for most of its residential and business broadband subscribers. The company is upgrading 5,300 of its local exchanges to support speeds theoretically reaching upwards of 8 Megabits per second, depending on the distance from the exchanges. This means about 78% of subscribers will be able to reach 4 Megabits per second, while 42% is likely to reach 8 Megabits per second up. Subscribers within close proximity to the exchanges, meanwhile will get a whopping 8 Megabits per second connection speed.

This is welcome news to existing and startup companies alike, especially those that need reliable and fast Internet connectivity for business transactions. We earlier reported that majority of Internet access in the UK—as much as 64% as of 2005—is through broadband lines. While the broadband penetration and speed aren’t at par with, say, South Korea or even the USA, this is, indeed, a good development.

.EU domains up for grabs

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What’s in a name? To many businesses, it’s everything. That’s especially when it’s what identifies you in this virtual world called the Internet.

In December of 2005, the .EU domain namespace—for the European Union—was launched, with plans to open for public sale by April of 2006. The .EU domain registry gave companies a sunrise period to already register their trademarks. But with a lot of companies sharing the same name, this had been a problem.

For instance, POLO is a registered trademark of Volkswagen (the mid-range sedan), Nestlé (the mint candy) and Ralph Lauren (the clothes line). Guess who snagged the polo.eu domain—Volkswagen did! The three were reportedly within only five minutes of each other in registering. And Volkswagen only beat Ralph Lauren by three minutes!

So here’s some advice to those planning to set up a company, or those with existing businesses: make sure you register your domain early!

Do we foresee a golden era in tech?

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2006 may see a lot of newly-minted millionaires from upcoming investments by Venture Capitalists, as we earlier wrote about. While there are still jitters over the possible instability of tech-related investments, businessmen feel that now could be the right time to invest given a better IT environment.

One stark difference with today’s dot-com era (or whatever other appropriate name it can be called) from the 90’s is that the Internet has matured since then. The Web is now more standardized and more usable. People have also begun to trust in online transactions, an important assumption in doing e-commerce. Now we have broadband Internet access at majority of businesses and homes, and multimedia distribution has gone mainstream.

The tech bubble was very easy to burst back then, because there were no foreseeably solid business models, and VCs haphazardly spent their funds on just about any new idea. However, company formation and business solutions experts agree that now is the right time for technologists and capitalists to try building a golden era in tech once again. We advise everyone to proceed with care, though.

The Long Tail in Retail

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We introduced the concept of the Long Tail principle recently. In business parlance, it’s a relatively new idea coined by Wired Magazine to describe occurrences in click-and-mortar retail establishments. The idea was that the Internet has brought forth the power of the Long Tail, in that businesses that cater to niche audiences have found a faster way to reach their clientele (as opposed to businesses with a mass audience, which is more or less a hit-and-miss affair).

However, individual niche products or services alone cannot make the Long Tail principle work its magic. They key is consolidation. The one who can bring in all obscure, niche items under one roof would greatly benefit. For instance, take the business model of Amazon.com. Amazon does not have its own book retail chops, but in its sourcing selling books and other items from various companies and individuals, it’s able to cater to the needs of people who look for difficult-to-find or not-so-popular publications. And selling a large volume of relatively unknown items proved to outperform even sales from the best-sellers.

There are quite a good number of means businesses can cash in on the concept of the Long Tail, and we shall briefly go about with these shortly.

Hello, Broadband

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E-Commerce startups and Internet-related businesses have a reason to be happy. Broadband uptake in the UK is on the rise, as reported by the Office of National Statistics. As of end-2005, 64% of all Internet connections in the UK are through broadband connections, or lines with speeds that exceed 100 kilobits per second (roughly twice dial-up speeds).

Many internet providers nowadays offer connection speeds upwards of 1 Megabits per second, and even offer upgrades to 2Mbps for low or no cost to consumers. With the popularity of broadband, barriers to consumers’ enjoying e-commerce are being brought down, as the World Wide Web will no longer be in a “world-wide wait.”

A high broadband penetration is good for businesses, and is helpful in starting up a company, as business solutions consultants note. While broadband benefits firms with e-commerce setups, brick-and-mortar companies can also stand to benefit in terms of worker productivity—broadband access helps facilitate faster communication within the organization, even with those in the field or those telecommuting.