[news release] The cost of Internet services has inched downward across the globe in 2022, according to Facts and Figures, the annual worldwide overview on the state of digital connectivity from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
European telecoms providers are set to win their decade-long fight to make Big Tech pay for network costs, thanks to sympathetic EU regulators and the bloc’s efforts to rein in U.S. tech giants, according to industry and regulatory sources, in the EU’s strongest move yet to set a global standard.
When the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic in March 2020, slightly more than half of the world’s citizens had access to the internet. Connectivity allowed many people to work, receive services, and socialize without physical contact—a key factor in limiting the virus’s spread. Did people with internet access, then, benefit from reduced exposure to COVID-19?
France, Italy and Spain are stepping up pressure on the European Commission to come up with legislation that ensures Big Tech firms partly finance telecoms infrastructure in the bloc, a document showed on Monday.
A decent internet connection – essential for many basic tasks in the COVID-19 era – is out of reach for 90 per cent of people in low- and middle-income countries, a report has warned.
The Internet has become a global, complex, layered, and increasingly indispensable ecosystem. For purposes of this column, “Internet” includes the underlying digital transport infrastructure including subsea and land-based fiber and cable, orbiting satellites, the networks of routers, the Domain Name System, datacenters and their networks, edge devices of all kinds (laptops, desktops, pads, smartphones, Internet-enabled devices, and sensors), the World Wide Web, content distribution systems and, for all I know, the kitchen sink.
The submarine internet cable connecting Tonga to the rest of the world has been repaired, five weeks after an underwater volcanic eruption hit the tiny Pacific island nation.
An undersea fibre-optic cable which connects Tonga to the rest of the world was severed during the eruption of a volcano.
New Zealand’s ministry of foreign affairs says it could take more than a month to repair the 49,889km (31,000miles) of cable in the South Pacific.
Recently, my colleagues and I swung a half-tonne telescope onto the roof of the physics building at the University of Western Australia.
For a tense moment, my career hung from a crane hook.
The telescope is the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere and represents a new generation of space communications using lasers.
Across the Pacific, undersea cables weave between island nations, bringing them online and, in some cases, connecting them to Australia, but some governments fear this interconnectivity comes with risk.