BT gets thumbs up from Ofcom to roll out new wholesale broadband pricing May 24, 2023 BT has been given the all-clear to roll out its discounted wholesale full-fibre offer to broadband providers after the telecoms watchdog found the proposals were not anti-competitive. BT’s network arm Openreach, which runs the UK’s only national broadband network, put forward plans for a pricing deal that would give lower prices to wholesale customers, such [...]
Explainer: How Rishi Sunak is trying to strike a balance on AI regulation May 19, 2023 World leaders’ meetings like the G7, taking place in Japan right now, are not only about cringy photo ops and bilateral diplomatic statements. They’re also an opportunity for politicians to set out strategies and deliver messages to their foreign counterparts and their own domestic audience. Rishi Sunak has proven a sleek player on the foreign [...]
Royal Mail delivery target failures to be investigated by Ofcom – and a fine could be dished out May 15, 2023 Regulator Ofcom said it has launched an investigation into Royal Mail’s failure to meet its delivery targets in the past year – and could hand out a fine. The British delivery firm fell short of its performance targets across the 2022 to 2023 financial year for first and second class mail and deliveries. Some 73.7 [...]
Britain badly needs a godfather of AI regulation, but we’ll never be able to afford him (or her) May 4, 2023 The so-called Godfather of AI has quit Google over fears of the technology. He’s the kind of person who should be designing our laws - if we could afford him.
Wikipedia won’t comply with Online Safety Bill if passed, its charity warns April 28, 2023 Wikipedia will not comply with aspects of the Online Safety Bill if passed, the website’s charity has warned. The bill — currently sitting in the House of Lords — will compel social media platforms and tech companies to police and remove hateful content. It will also require platforms to keep adult content out of reach [...]
Sunak’s challenge is to design flexible but firm rules for artificial intelligence April 28, 2023 ChatGPT has thrown artificial intelligence into the mainstream, and now it's Rishi Sunak's job to design rules which don't prevent its growth, but keep us safe.
Millions of low income households are overpaying for their broadband, says Ofcom April 24, 2023 More than half of low-income homes who qualify for cheaper broadband tariffs are missing out on the deals, according to the UK communications regulator. Only 220,000 households were on a social tariffs as of February 2023, meanwhile 53 per cent of people receiving benefit payments were completely unaware of cheaper deals, Ofcom revealed in a [...]
Whatsapp and Signal warn UK bill could open door to ‘indiscriminate surveillance’ April 18, 2023 Encrypted messaging apps, including Whatsapp, Signal and Viber, have warned that the Online Safety Bill could lead to “indiscriminate surveillance” of people’s personal messages and called for end-to-end encryption to be protected at all costs. The bill is intended to protect underage users on the internet by clamping down on illegal material and placing a [...]
Amazon’s $1.7bn bid for iRobot faces questions from UK’s competition agency April 6, 2023 The UK’s competition regulator has launched an investigation into Amazon’s proposed $1.7bn acquisition of the Roomba manufacturer, iRobot. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced today that it will investigate whether the merger will result in “substantial lessening of competition” in the UK market. Amazon and iRobot announced the merger back in August 2022. The [...]
John Lewis’ partnership model put it on a pedestal, now it joins the rest of us April 6, 2023 John Lewis has had an easy ride because its almost mythical shared ownership structure, as it looks to dilute it, it joins every other businesses in Britain in facing a hostile environment.