Facebook’s popularity among children wanes as social media safety concerns deepen January 29, 2019 Facebook’s popularity among children slipped in 2018 as more young people look to Instagram for their social media updates, according to an Ofcom report. While Facebook remains the most popular social media site among 12 to 15-year-olds, only 31 per cent of people in this age range named it as their main site or app, [...]
Openreach to hire 3,000 new engineers to boost full-fibre broadband rollout January 28, 2019 Openreach today said it will hire 3,000 new apprentice engineers across the UK to support its rollout of full-fibre broadband. The roles, just over half of which are newly-created, will be filled over the next 12 months and are an extension of a huge recruitment drive as the telecoms firm looks to build its new [...]
Netflix leads the way as UK on-demand video subscriptions soar January 24, 2019 The number of UK homes that subscribe to an on-demand TV service has soared in the last year, with Netflix the most popular choice, new figures have revealed. A total of 11.6m UK households had a subscription to at least one of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Now TV in the third quarter of 2018, [...]
City suffers slowest broadband speeds in London, report finds January 22, 2019 Broadband speeds in the City are the lowest of any London borough, new research by consumer group Which has revealed. Average internet speeds in the Square Mile are just 9.9Mbps, lagging far behind other boroughs and below the government’s minimum speed of 10Mbps. Read more: City leads London full fibre rollout league table The report also [...]
South Korean broadcasters team up to create streaming service rival to Netflix January 15, 2019 South Korea’s largest broadcasters are teaming up to create a streaming service to rival Netflix as the race to create on-demand platforms shows no signs of slowing. Broadcasting firms Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) have joined with SK Telecom to set up the new venture this year. [...]
Mobile data use increases tenfold while landline phone use falls by half January 5, 2019 Landline telephone use has been halved in the last six years while mobile data has increased tenfold during the same period, according to a study by Ofcom. The number of minutes of calls made from a landline has decreased dramatically, from 103bn in 2012 to 54bn in 2017. During the same period the number of mobile [...]
Record digital sales of The Greatest Showman boost UK home entertainment market January 3, 2019 Hit movie The Greatest Showman helped the UK home entertainment market grow by 10 per cent in 2018, new figures have revealed. The popular musical, which stars Hugh Jackman as the head of a circus troupe, was the best-selling film of the year, with more than 2.7m copies sold. A majority of the film's sales [...]
Ex-Virgin Money boss among two women replacing men on Bank of England’s financial policy committee January 3, 2019 Former boss of Virgin Money Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia has been added to the Bank of England’s financial policy committee alongside the chair of the Banking Standards Board Dame Colette Bowe, chancellor Philip Hammond announced today. The pair will replace Richard Sharp and Martin Taylor, who are stepping down at the end of the first quarter [...]
Russian regulator retaliates against Ofcom with legal checks on BBC December 21, 2018 Russia's media regulator has said it will carry out checks on the BBC following an announcment from Ofcom that it was considering imposing sanctions on Russian state-financed media service RT. The Russian regulator, Roskomnadzor, released a statement on Friday saying it would check whether the BBC's World Service and internet sites complied with Russian law. “The results of our check [...]
RT broke broadcasting rules on impartiality, says Ofcom December 20, 2018 Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT broke impartiality in news programmes after the Salisbury novichok poisoning in March, Ofcom said today. The media regulator said RT, formerly known as Russia Today, failed to preserve due impartiality in seven news and current affairs programmes over a six-week period. “Taken together, the seven breaches represent a serious failure of compliance with [...]