Jump to content

Internet in the United Kingdom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from UK Internet businesses)

Internet
Visualization of Internet routing paths
An Opte Project visualization of routing paths through a portion of the Internet
General
Governance
Information infrastructure
Services
History
Guides
icon Internet portal

The United Kingdom has been involved with the Internet throughout its origins and development. The telecommunications infrastructure in the United Kingdom provides Internet access to homes and businesses mainly through fibre, cable, mobile and fixed wireless networks, with the UK's 140-year-old copper network, maintained by Openreach, set to be withdrawn by December 2025, although this has since been extended to 31st January 2027 in some areas due to reasons including panic alarms in sheltered housing needing a persistent connection which can't be guaranteed with internet-based DECT systems.[1][2]

The share of households with Internet access in the United Kingdom grew from 9 percent in 1998 to 93 percent in 2019.[3] In 2019, virtually all adults aged 16 to 44 years in the UK were recent internet users (99%), compared with 47% of adults aged 75 years and over; in aggregate, the third-highest in Europe.[4] Internet bandwidth per Internet user was the seventh highest in the world in 2016,[5] and average and peak internet connection speeds were top-quartile in 2017.[6] Internet use in the United Kingdom doubled in 2020.[7]

According to the Office of National Statistics and the Government of the United Kingdom's Culture, Media & Sport and Science, Innovation & Technology departments, the digital sector was worth more than £140 billion to the UK's economy per year, as of 2020.[8][9][10] Research by Adobe suggested the UK spent £110.6 billion online in 2022.[11]

The Internet top-level domain name specific to the UK is .uk, which is operated by Nominet. Four additional domains were introduced by ICANN for locations within the UK in 2014: .cymru and .wales for Wales,[12] .scot for Scotland,[13] and .london for London.[14]

Early years

[edit]
Further information: History of the Internet

The UK has been involved in the research and development of packet switching, communication protocols, and internetworking since their origins.[15][16] The development of these technologies was international from the beginning.[17][18] While the research and development that led to the Internet protocol suite (and the early infrastructure and governance of the Internet) was driven and funded by the United States,[19] it also involved and applied the work of British (and French) researchers. In particular, Donald Davies independently invented and pioneered packet switching and associated computer network design at the National Physical Laboratory starting in 1965;[20] internetworking was pioneered by Peter Kirstein at University College London beginning in 1973 (with new concepts for internetworking developed by Louis Pouzin in France around the same time);[21][22] and Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN in Switzerland.

Precursors

[edit]

Pioneering research and development of computers in Britain in the 1940s led to partnerships between the public and private sectors. These relationships brought about sharing and transfer of personnel and concepts between industry and academia or national research bodies.[23][24][25] The trackball was invented in 1946 by Ralph Benjamin, while working for the Royal Navy Scientific Service.[26][27] At the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Alan Turing worked on computer design, assisted by Donald Davies in 1947.[28][29]

Christopher Strachey, who became Oxford University's first professor of computation, filed a patent application for time-sharing in 1959.[30][31] In June that year, he gave a paper "Time Sharing in Large Fast Computers" at the UNESCO Information Processing Conference in Paris where he passed the concept on to J. C. R. Licklider.[32][33]

Packet switching and national data network proposal

[edit]

After meeting with Licklider in 1965, Donald Davies conceived the idea of packet switching for data communications.[34][35] He proposed a commercial national data network and developed plans to implement the concept in a local area network, the NPL network, which operated from 1969 to 1986.[36][37] He and his team, including Derek Barber and Roger Scantlebury, carried out work to analyse and simulate the performance of packet switching networks, including datagram networks.[38][39] Their research and practice was adopted by the ARPANET in the United States, the forerunner of the Internet, and influenced other researchers in Europe, including Louis Pouzin, and Japan.[40][41][42]

The early Internet and TCP/IP

[edit]

Donald Davies, Derek Barber and Roger Scantlebury joined the International Network Working Group (INWG) in 1972 along with researchers from the United States and France.[43][44][45][46] Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn acknowledged Davies and Scantlebury in their seminal 1974 paper "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication".[47]

Peter Kirstein's research group at University College London (UCL) was one of the first two international connections on the ARPANET in 1973, alongside the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR).[48] UCL thereafter provided a gateway between the ARPANET and British academic networks, the first international heterogenous network for computer resource sharing. By 1975, 40 British academic research groups were using the link.[22]

The specification of the Transmission Control Program was developed in the U.S. in 1974 through research funded and led by DARPA and Stanford University.[49] The following year, testing began with concurrent implementations at University College London, Stanford University, and BBN.[50] UCL played a significant role in the very earliest experimental Internet work. Adrian Stokes and Sylvia Wilbur, among others at UCL, programmed the computer used as the local node for the network at UCL and were "probably one of the first people in this country ever to send an email, back in 1974".[51] Kirstein co-authored with Vint Cerf one of the most significant early technical papers on the internetworking concept in 1978.[52] Further work was done by researchers at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI), at the University of Southern California.[53][a] Kirstein's research group at UCL adopted TCP/IP in November 1982, ahead of ARPANET.[54][55]

The Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) was involved in early research and testing of TCP/IP.[56] The first email sent by a head of state was sent from the RSRE over the ARPANET by Queen Elizabeth II in 1976.[57][58] RSRE was allocated class A Internet address range 25 in 1979,[59] which later became the Ministry of Defence address space, providing 16.7 million IPv4 addresses.[60]

Roger Camrass, with his supervisor, Robert Gallager, at MIT, showed packet switching to be optimal in the Huffman coding sense in 1978.[61][62]

British researchers expressed a desire to use a country designation when American researchers Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris were designing the Domain Name System in 1984. Postel adopted this idea for the DNS, which used the ISO standard country abbreviations except for following the "UK" convention already in use in the UK's Name Registration Scheme, rather than the ISO-standard "GB". The .uk Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) was registered in July 1985, seven months after the original generic top-level domains such as .com and the first country code after .us. At the time, ccTLDs were delegated by Postel to a "responsible person" and Andrew McDowell at UCL managed .uk, the first country code delegation.[63][64][65] He later passed it to Dr Willie Black at the UK Education and Research Networking Association (UK ERNA). Black managed the "Naming Committee" until he and John Carey formed Nominet UK in 1996.[66] As one of the first professional ccTLD operators, it became the model for many other operators worldwide.

The UK's national research and education network (NREN), JANET connected with the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) in the United States in 1989.[67] JANET adopted Internet Protocol on its existing network in 1991.[68][69] In the same year, Dai Davies introduced Internet technology into the pan-European NREN, EuropaNet.[70]

British Telecom's research labs began, unofficially, relaying its internal email to the Internet at the end of the 1980s.[71]

Ivan Pope's company, NetNames, developed the concept of a standalone commercial domain name registrar, which would sell domain registration and other associated services to the public. Network Solutions Inc. (NSI), the domain name registry for the .com, .net, and .org top-level domains (TLDs), assimilated this model, which ultimately led to the separation of registry and registrar functions.

Jon Crowcroft and Mark Handley received multiple awards for their work on Internet technology in the 1990s and 2000s.[72] Karen Banks promoted the use of the Internet to empower women around the world.[73]

Over the period 1980 to 2000, BT and other providers adopted TCP/IP and Internet product strategies when it became commercially advantageous.[74]

Other computer networks and their protocols

[edit]

The South West Universities Computer Network (SWUCN) was an early British academic computer network developed with the objective of resource sharing. After planning began in 1967, work was initiated in 1969 on an experimental network, becoming operational for users in 1974.[75][76] In the early 1970s, the Science Research Council community established SRCnet, later called SERCnet. Other regional academic networks were built in the mid-late 1970s, as well as experimental networks such as the Cambridge Ring.[75]

During the 1970s, the NPL team researched internetworking on the European Informatics Network (EIN). Based on datagrams, the network linked Euratom, the French research centre INRIA and the UK’s National Physical Laboratory in 1976.[77][78] The transport protocol of the EIN helped to launch the INWG and X.25 protocols.[79][80][81]

Building on the work of James H. Ellis in the late 1960s, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson invented a public-key cryptography algorithm in 1973.[82] An equivalent algorithm was later independently invented in 1977 in the United States by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman. The RSA algorithm became central to security on the Internet.[83]

Post Office Telecommunications developed an experimental public packet switching network, EPSS, in the 1970s.[84] This was one of the first public data networks in the world when it began operating in 1976.[85] EPSS was replaced with the Packet Switch Stream (PSS) in 1980.[86] PSS connected to the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS), which was created in 1978 through a collaboration between Post Office Telecommunications and two US telecoms companies. IPSS provided worldwide networking infrastructure.

British research contributed to the development of the X.25 standard agreed by the CCITT in 1976 which was deployed on PSS and IPSS.[87][88] The UK academic community defined the Coloured Book protocols, which came into use as "interim" X.25 standards. These protocols gained some acceptance internationally as the first complete X.25 standard,[89][90] and gave the UK "several years lead over other countries".[91]

Logica, together with the French company SESA, set up a joint venture in 1975 to undertake the Euronet development, using X.25 protocols to form virtual circuits. It established a network linking a number of European countries in 1979 before being handed over to national PTTs In 1984.[92][93]

Peter Collinson brought Unix to the University of Kent (UKC/UKnet) in 1976 and set up a UUCP test service to Bell Labs in the U.S. in 1979. The first UUCP emails from the U.S. arrived in the UK later that year and email to Europe (the Netherlands and Denmark) started in 1980, becoming a regular service via EUnet in 1982.[94] UKC provided the first connections to non-academic users in the early 1980s.[94][95] Several companies established electronic mail services in Britain during the 1970s and early 1980s, enabling subscribers to send email either internally within a company network or over telephone connections or data networks such as Packet Switch Stream.[75][96]

In the early 1980s, British academic networks started a standardisation and interconnection effort based on X.25 and the Coloured Book protocols. Known as the United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association (UK ERNA), and later JNT Association, this became JANET, the UK's national research and education network (NREN). JANET linked all universities, higher education establishments, and publicly funded research laboratories. It began operation in 1984, two years ahead of the NSFNET in the United States and was the fastest X.25 network in the world.[75][97][98][99]

The National Computing Centre 1976 publication 'Why Distributed Computing' which came from considerable research into future configurations for computer systems,[100] resulted in the UK presenting the case for an international standards committee to cover this area at the ISO meeting in Sydney in March 1977.[101] This international effort ultimately led to the OSI model as an international reference model, published in 1984.[102] For a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, engineers, organizations and nations became polarized over the issue of which standard, the OSI model or the Internet protocol suite would result in the best and most robust computer networks.[102][103][104]

Public dialup information, messaging and e-commerce services, were pioneered through the Prestel services developed by Post Office Telecommunications in 1979.[105][106]

Commercial networking services between the UK and the US were being developed in late 1990.[107]

World Wide Web

[edit]
Further information: History of the World Wide Web

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN in Switzerland, wrote a proposal for "a large hypertext database with typed links".[108] The following year, he specified HTML, the hypertext language, and HTTP, the protocol.[109][110][111] These concepts became a world-wide information system known as the World Wide Web (WWW). Operating on the Internet, it allows documents to be created for reading or accessing services with connections to other documents or services, accessed by clicking on hypertext links, enabling the user to navigate from one document or service to another. Nicola Pellow worked with Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau on the WWW project at CERN.

British Telecom began using the WWW in 1991 during a collaborative project called the Oracle Alliance Program. It was founded in 1990 by Oracle Corporation, based in California, to provide information for its corporate partners and about those partners. BT became involved in May 1991. File sharing was required as part of the program and, initially, floppy disks were sent through the post. Then in July 1991 access to the Internet was implemented by BT network engineers using the BT packet switching network. A link was established from Ipswich to London for access to the Internet backbone. The first file transfers made via a NeXT-based WWW interface were completed in October 1991.[112][113]

The BBC registered with the DDN-NIC in 1989, establishing Internet access via Brunel University where bbc.co.uk was registered through JANET NRS and the BBC's first website went online in 1994.[114] Other early websites which went online in 1993 hosted in the UK included JumpStation, which was the first WWW search engine hosted at the University of Stirling in Scotland;[115] The Internet Movie Database, hosted by the computer science department of Cardiff University in Wales; and Kent Anthropology, one of the first social science sites (one of the first 200 web servers).[115] The Web brought many social and commercial uses to the Internet which was previously a network for academic institutions.[116][117] It began to enter everyday use in 1993-4.[118]

An early attempt to provide access to the Web on television was being developed in 1995.[119]

Dial-up Internet access

[edit]
Further information: List of United Kingdom ISPs by age

Pipex was established in 1990 and began providing dial-up Internet access in March 1992, the UK's first commercial Internet service provider (ISP).[120][121] One of its first customers that year was Demon Internet, which popularised dial up modem-based internet access in the UK.[122] By November 1993, Pipex provided Internet service to 150 customer sites.[123] EUnet GB was founded as a commercial ISP in 1993 by a group of academics.[64][94] Other ISPs and web-hosting companies, aimed at businesses and individuals, developed in the 1990s.[124] In May 1998, Demon Internet had 180,000 subscribers.[64]

This narrowband service has been almost entirely replaced by the new broadband technologies, and is now generally only used as a backup.[125] BT trialled its first ISDN 'broadband' connection in 1992.[126][127] The first commercial service was available from Telewest in 2000.[128][120]

Broadband

[edit]
See also: List of broadband providers in the United Kingdom and Broadband in Northern Ireland

Broadband allowed the signal in one line to be split between telephone and Internet data, meaning users could be online and make phone calls at the same time. It also enabled faster connections, making it easier to browse the Internet and download files.[129] Broadband Internet access in the UK was, initially, provided by a number of regional cable television and telephone companies which gradually merged into larger groups. The development of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology has allowed broadband to be delivered via traditional copper telephone cables. Also, Wireless Broadband is now available in some areas. These three technologies (cable, DSL and wireless) now compete with each other.[130]

More than half of UK homes had broadband in 2007, with an average connection speed of 4.6 Mbit/s. Bundled communications deals mixing broadband, digital TV, mobile phone and landline phone access were adopted by forty per cent of UK households in the same year, up by a third over the previous year. This high level of service is considered the main driver for the recent growth in online advertising and retail.[131]

In 2006 the UK market was dominated by six companies, with the top two taking 51%, these being Virgin Media with a 28% share, and BT at 23%.[132]

By July 2011 BT's share had grown by six percent and the company became the broadband market leader.[133]

The UK broadband market is overseen by the government watchdog Ofcom. According to Ofcom's 2007 report the average UK citizen used the Internet for 36 minutes every day.[134][135]

The Ofcom Communications Market 2018[136] report showed 42% of adults had access and use of a Smart TV by 2018, compared to just 5% in 2012[137] exemplifying the extra bandwidth required by broadband providers on their networks.

Cable

[edit]

Cable Internet access uses coaxial cables or optical fibre cables. The main cable service provider in the UK is Virgin Media and the current[when?] maximum speed available to their customers is 1.1 Gbit/s.[138]

Digital subscriber line (DSL)

[edit]

Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) was introduced to the UK in trial stages in 1998 and a commercial product was launched in 2000. In the United Kingdom, most exchanges, local loops and backhauls are owned and managed by BT Wholesale, who then wholesale connectivity via Internet service providers, who generally provide the connectivity to the Internet, support, billing and value added services (such as web hosting and email). A customer typically expects a British telephone socket to connect their broadband modem to.

As of October 2021, BT operate 5630 exchanges[139][140] across the UK, with the vast majority enabled for ADSL. Only a relative handful—under 100 of the smallest and most rural exchanges—had not been upgraded to support ADSL products. Some exchanges, fewer than 1000, had been upgraded to support SDSL products. However, these exchanges are often the larger exchanges based in major towns and cities, so they still cover a large proportion of the population. SDSL products are aimed more at business customers and are priced higher than ADSL services.

Unbundled local loop

[edit]
Main article: Local loop unbundling § United Kingdom

Many companies are now operating their own services using local loop unbundling. Initially Bulldog Communications in the London area and Easynet (through their sister consumer provider UK Online) enabled exchanges across the country from London to Central Scotland.

In November 2010, having purchased Easynet in the preceding months, Sky closed the business-centric UK Online with little more than a month's notice.[141][142][143] Although Easynet continued to offer business-grade broadband connectivity products, UKO customers could not migrate to an equivalent Easynet service, only being offered either a MAC to migrate provider or the option of becoming a customer of the residential-only Sky Broadband ISP with an introductory discounted period. Also, some previously available service features like fastpath (useful for time-critical protocols like SIP) were not made available on Sky Broadband, leaving business users with a difficult choice particularly where UK Online were the only LLU provider. Since then, Sky Broadband has become a significant player in the quad play telecoms market, offering ADSL line rental and call packages to customers (who have to pay a supplement if they are not also Sky television subscribers).

Whilst Virgin Media is the nearest direct competitor, their quad play product is available to fewer homes given the fixed nature of their cable infrastructure. TalkTalk is the next DSL-based ISP with a mature quad play product portfolio (EE's being the merger of the Orange and T-Mobile service providers, and focusing their promotion on forthcoming fibre broadband and 4G LTE products).

Market consolidation and expansion has permitted service providers to offer faster and less expensives services with typical speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s downstream (subject to ISP and line length). They can offer products at sometimes considerably lower prices, due to not necessarily having to conform to the same regulatory requirements as BT Wholesale: for example, 8 unbundled LLU pairs can deliver 10 Mbit/s over 3775 m for half the price of a similar fibre connection.[144]

In 2005, another company, Be, started offering speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s downstream and 2.5 Mbit/sec upstream using ADSL2+ with Annex M, eventually from over 1,250 UK exchanges. Be were taken over by O2's parent company Telefónica in 2007. On 1 March 2013 O2 Telefónica sold Be to Sky, which migrated O2 and Be customers onto the somewhat slower Sky network.

TalkTalk offered customers 'free' broadband if they had a telephone package. Orange responded by offering 'free' broadband for some mobile customers. Many smaller ISPs now offer similar packages. O2 also entered the broadband market by taking over LLU provider Be, while Sky (BSkyB) had already taken over LLU broadband provider Easynet. In July 2006, Sky announced 2 Mbit/s broadband to be available free to Sky TV customers and a higher speed connection at a lower price than most rivals.[145]

Exchanges continue to be upgraded, subject to demand, across the country, although at a somewhat slower pace since BT's commencement of FTTC rollout plans and near-saturation in key geographical areas.

IPstream

[edit]

Up until the launch of "Max" services, the only ADSL packages available via BT Wholesale were known as IPstream Home 250, Home 500, Home 1000 and Home 2000 (contention ratio of 50:1); and Office 500, Office 1000, and Office 2000 (contention ratio of 20:1). The number in the product name indicates the downstream data rate in kilobits per second. The upstream data rate is up to 250 kbit/s for all products.[b]

For BT Wholesale ADSL products, users initially had to live within 3.5 kilometres of the local telephone exchange to receive ADSL, but this limit was increased thanks to rate-adaptive digital subscriber line (RADSL), although users with RADSL possibly had a reduced upstream rate, depending on the quality of their line. There are still areas that cannot receive ADSL because of technical limitations, not least of which networks in housing areas built with aluminium cable rather than copper in the 1980s and 1990s, and areas served by optical fibre (TPON), though these are slowly being serviced with copper.

In September 2004, BT Wholesale removed the line-length/loss limits for 500 kbit/s ADSL, instead employing a tactic of "suck it and see" — enabling the line, then seeing if ADSL would work on it. This sometimes includes the installation of a filtered faceplate on the customer's master socket, so as to eliminate poor quality telephone extension cables inside the customer's premises which can be a source of high frequency noise.

In the past, the majority of home users used packages with 500 kbit/s (downstream) and 250 kbit/s (upstream) with a 50:1 contention ratio. However, BT Wholesale introduced the option of a new charging structure to ISPs which means that the wholesale service cost was the same regardless of the ADSL data rate, with charges instead being based on the amount of data transferred. Nowadays, most home users use a package whose data rate is only limited by the technical limitations of their telephone line. Initially this was 2 Mbit/s downstream. Until the advent of widespread FTTC, most home products were first ADSL Max-based (up to 7.15 Mbit/s), using ADSL G.992.1 and then later ADSL2+ (up to 21 Mbit/s).

Max and Max Premium

[edit]

Following successful trials, BT announced the availability of higher speed services known as BT ADSL Max and BT ADSL Max Premium in March 2006. BT made the "Max" product available to more than 5,300 exchanges, serving around 99% of UK households and businesses.

The maximum download bandwidth for both tiers was 7.15 Mbit/s, with the regular tier having an upload bandwidth of 400 kbit/s and the premium tier having an upload bandwidth of 750 kbit/s. As internet bandwidth depended on the capabilities of local lines, BT's '20CN' system negotiated stable ADSL synchronisation rate limits ranging from 160 kbit/s to 7.15 Mbit/s.

Fibre

[edit]

FTTC & G.Fast

[edit]

In 2015, BT unveiled universal 5 to 10 Mbit/s broadband and the rollout of 500 Mbit/s G.Fast. The aim was to push "ultra-fast speeds" of 300 to 500 Mbit/s to 10 million homes using the existing landline cables.[146] Openreach made the decision to pause the rollout of G.Fast in 2019, as a result of their decision to focus on FTTP.[147]

In 2015, BT began the roll out of G.INP on their FTTC network,[148] the use of G.INP is to help improve line stability and reduce overheads and latency.[149] The roll-out was paused on ECI broadband cabinet equipment due to the lack of support for upstream re-transmission which caused network slowdowns and higher latency.[150][151] The rollout of G.INP on Huawei broadband cabinets was completed in 2015[148] while G.INP on ECI equipment has reentered the trial stage as of May 2020.[152]

In September 2016, Sky "completed" their roll-out of IPv6 with 95% of their customers getting IPv6 access.[153] BT rolled out IPv6 support for "all BT Broadband lines" two months later in November 2016.[154]

FTTP

[edit]

In March 2011, Openreach began the development of an FTTP network in Milton Keynes.[155] As a result, BT began offering eligible customers packages with download speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s.[156]

In October 2011, British operator Hyperoptic launched a 1 Gbit/s FTTH service in London.[157]

In October 2012, British operator Gigler UK launched a 1 Gbit/s down and 500 Mbit/s up FTTH service in Bournemouth using the CityFibre network.[158]

Virgin Media stated that 13 million UK homes are covered by their optical fibre broadband network, and that by the end of 2012 would be able to offer 100 Mbit/s broadband. There are currently over 100 towns in the UK that have access to this service.[159]

During the 2019 General Election, Boris Johnson pledged full fibre for all of the UK by 2025.[160] This was later rolled back to "gigabit-capable" broadband.[161] This means that mixed technologies are allowed, for example Virgin Media can continue to use their cable infrastructure since the DOCSIS 3.1 is "gigabit-capable" and other ISPs can also sell 5G broadband. Vorboss initiated the construction of a full-fibre network in London's business district in 2019.[162] The company deployed 500 km of 800 fiber optic cables[163] in London with 10 to 100 Gbit/s speeds connected directly to premises (FTTP) without a copper-and-cabinet middleman.[164][165]

In January 2020, Openreach announced that they will deploy FTTP technology in 200 rural locations by March 2021.[166] Two months later, in March, the UK government set the universal service obligation to 10 Mbit/s Download and 1 Mbit/s Upload.[167] The following month, Rural ISP B4RN launched their 10 Gbit/s symmetrical home broadband.[168]

Openreach reported that on 29 April they saw a record peak of 10 petabytes of data going through their network in one hour. This increase of internet traffic is the result of the lock-down in the UK caused by COVID-19.[169] The following month, Openreach reported that they had passed 2.5 million premises with its FTTP network.[170]

On 1 September 2023 alternative network ISP YouFibre released an 8 Gbit/s residential service delivered over XGSPON.[171]

The UK landline network is due to be terminated in 2025. The voice over IP replacement is branded as "Digital Voice" in the UK. "Digital Voice" handsets must be connected to a broadband router, rather than the old telephone sockets.[172]

Mobile

[edit]
Main article: Mobile broadband

Mobile broadband is high-speed Internet access provided by mobile phone operators using a device that requires a SIM card to access the service.

4G internet replaced the old 3G technology and allowed download speeds up to 300 Mbit/s.

5G was first deployed in the UK in May 2019 by EE,[173] followed by Three and Vodafone in August 2019,[174][175] and finally O2 in October 2019.[176]

Satellite

[edit]
Main article: Satellite Internet access

Starlink has been available in the UK since 2021.[177]

Speeds

[edit]

2000s

[edit]

Since 2003, BT has been introducing SDSL to exchanges in many of the major cities. Services are currently offered at upload/download speeds of 256 kbit/s, 512 kbit/s, 1 Mbit/s or 2 Mbit/s. Unlike ADSL, which is typically 256 kbit/s upload, SDSL upload speeds are the same as the download speed. BT usually provide a new copper pair for SDSL installs, which can be used only for the SDSL connection. At a few hundred pounds a quarter, SDSL is significantly more expensive than ADSL, but is significantly cheaper than a leased line. SDSL is marketed to businesses and offers low contention ratios, and in some cases, a service level agreement. At present, the BT Wholesale SDSL enablement programme has stalled, most probably due to a lack of uptake.[citation needed]

On 9 April 2003, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled against ISP NTL, saying that NTL's 128 kbit/s cable modem service must not be marketed as "broadband". Ofcom reported in June 2005 that there were more broadband than dial-up connections for the first time in history.[178] In a similar way, on 13 August 2004, Wanadoo (formerly Freeserve, and part of what is now EE), was told by ASA to change the way that they advertised their 512 kbit/s broadband service, requiring the company to remove the words "full speed". Rival companies claimed the phrase were misleading people into thinking it was the fastest service available.

With the merger of NTL and Telewest in March 2006, the resulting NTL:Telewest company created the largest market share of broadband users in the UK. It also brought increases in bandwidth allocations for cable customers, with minimum speeds increasing from the industry norm of 512 Kbit/s to 2 Mbit/s, whilst the company planned to have all domestic customers upgraded to at least 4 Mbit/s downstream and ranging up to 10 Mbit/s and beyond later in the year. In addition to this, it increased the supply of integrated services such as Digital TV and Phone packages.

Also in March, BT Wholesale launched its "up to 8 Mbit/s" ADSL services, known as ADSL Max.[179] Max-based packages were made available to end users on any broadband-enabled BT exchange in the UK.

In September 2007, BT announced trials for an ADSL2+ service. BT's Wholesale and Retail divisions were chosen alongside Entanet to provide the first trials in the West Midlands.[180]

2010s

[edit]

Still in the year 2015 it was common in highly developed areas like the London Aldgate region for consumers to be limited to speeds of up to 8 Mbit/s for ADSL services.[181] This had a major effect in the London rental market as limited broadband service can affect the readiness of prospective tenants to sign a rental lease.[182]

2020s

[edit]

In March 2020, the UK government set the Universal Service Obligation (USO) to 10 Mbit/s download and 1 Mbit/s upload.[183] As of May that year, 96.9% of UK households could receive "superfast broadband" (defined as 30 Mbit/s) whilst 19.29% of households could receive "ultrafast broadband" (defined as 300 Mbit/s) via FTTP or DOCSIS 3.1. 1.07% of households had broadband slower than the USO.[184]

In September, the UK dropped 13 places in the 2020 Worldwide Broadband Speed League, making it amongst the slowest in Europe with an average download speed of 37.82 Mbit/s. Cable.co.uk blamed this on Openreach, with the network provider having focused on the development of an FTTC network,[185] and been slow to begin the deployment of FTTP technologies. The deployment of FTTC/VDSL technologies was largely driven by the lack of political appetite and funding for FTTP at the time.[186]

In 2022, the UK's average download speed of 72 Mbit/s ranked it only faster than Italy in the G7 league of industrial nations for broadband speeds. According to a report by the Worldwide Broadband Speed League, a global leader in internet testing and analysis, the UK had risen to 35th place, having been ranked in 43rd position the year before.[187]

Children's access to the Internet

[edit]

Educational computer networks are maintained by organisations such as JANET and East Midlands Public Services Network.[188]

According to a 2017 Ofcom report named 'Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report' more younger children are going online than in 2016 with much of the growth coming from increased use of tablets.[189]

A survey on UK school children's access to the Internet commissioned by security company Westcoastcloud in 2011 found half have no parental controls installed on their internet connected devices and half of parents said they have concerns about the lack of controls installed on their children's Internet devices.[190][191][192]

Usage

[edit]
  • Internet usage
  • Accessing the internet, by age group
    Accessing the internet, by age group
  • Accessing the internet, by gender
    Accessing the internet, by gender

Regulation

[edit]

In 2015 Prime Minister David Cameron proposed a ban on end-to-end encryption in the United Kingdom.[citation needed]

In June 2018 Tom Winsor, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, argued that technologies like encryption should be breakable if law enforcers have a warrant. Winsor said the public was running out of patience with organisations like Facebook, Telegram and WhatsApp. Winsor opined, "There is a handful of very large companies with a highly dominant influence over how the internet is used. In too many respects, their record is poor and their reputation tarnished. The steps they take to make sure their services cannot be abused by terrorists, paedophiles and organised criminals are inadequate; the commitment they show and their willingness to be held to account are questionable."[193]

The UK government has "for years" continued to press for control of encryption, citing worries about child abuse.[194] The proposed Online Safety Bill was criticised by Apple, Meta and Signal.[195][196]

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ See also the Final Report of the Stanford University TCP project, IEN 151., written by Cerf in 1980. This was originally, in TCP version 2 in 1977 (IEN5), to be entitled "Final Report of the Internetwork TCP Project" and to be written by Cerf [Stanford], Stephen Edge [UCL], Andrew Hinchley [UCL], Richard Karp [Stanford], Peter T. Kirstein [UCL], and Paal Spilling [NDRE]. This title was carried over into version 3 (IEN21) and into the list of references in version 4 but the present title was adopted in the preface (IEN55).
  2. ^ 1 kbit = 1000 bit

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "BT presses on with analogue switch off across UK". ComputerWeekly.com. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  2. ^ Till, Lucy (24 May 2024). "BT Announces Delay in BT Switch Off to 2027". Tel Group. Retrieved 1 July 2024.
  3. ^ "Household internet penetration in the UK 1998–2018". Statista. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  4. ^ "Internet users, UK – Office for National Statistics". www.ons.gov.uk. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
  5. ^ "Internet bandwidth by country, around the world". TheGlobalEconomy.com. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  6. ^ "Connectivity Report" (PDF). Q1 2017 State of the Internet. Akamai.
  7. ^ "UK internet use doubles in 2020 due to pandemic". BBC News. 30 December 2020. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
  8. ^ "Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Regional Gross Value Added 2020". GOV.UK. 19 July 2023. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  9. ^ "UK Digital Economic Research: 2020". Office for National Statistics. 24 May 2023. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  10. ^ "Digital Sector Economic Estimates 2020: annual GVA". GOV.UK. 6 April 2023. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  11. ^ "Adobe Digital Economy Index: UK Consumers Spent £110.6 Billion Online in 2022, Driven by Heavy Discounting from Retailers". Adobe. 11 November 2023. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  12. ^ "New .wales and .cymru domain web addresses go live". BBC News. 30 September 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2024.
  13. ^ "New internet domain .scot goes on general release". BBC News. 23 September 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2024.
  14. ^ Hern, Alex (15 November 2013). "London to get its own domain name in 2014". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 20 February 2024.
  15. ^ Campbell-Kelly, Martin (1987). "Data Communications at the National Physical Laboratory (1965-1975)". Annals of the History of Computing. 9 (3/4): 221–247. doi:10.1109/MAHC.1987.10023. ISSN 0164-1239. S2CID 8172150.
  16. ^ Smith, Ed; Miller, Chris; Norton, Jim (2017). "Packet Switching: The first steps on the road to the information society". National Physical Laboratory.
  17. ^ by Vinton Cerf, as told to Bernard Aboba (1993). "How the Internet Came to Be". Archived from the original on 26 September 2017. Retrieved 25 September 2017. We began doing concurrent implementations at Stanford, BBN, and University College London. So effort at developing the Internet protocols was international from the beginning.
  18. ^ Hauben, Ronda (1 May 2004). "The Internet: On its International Origins and Collaborative Vision A Work In-Progress". Retrieved 25 September 2017.
  19. ^ "BT ad gets into a muddle about the internet's origins". BBC. 15 February 2016. Retrieved 25 September 2017.
  20. ^ Yates, David M. (1997). Turing's Legacy: A History of Computing at the National Physical Laboratory 1945-1995. National Museum of Science and Industry. pp. 132–4. ISBN 978-0-901805-94-2. Davies's invention of packet switching and design of computer communication networks ... were a cornerstone of the development which led to the Internet
  21. ^ "The Computer History Museum, SRI International, and BBN Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of First ARPANET Transmission, Precursor to Today's Internet". SRI International. 27 October 2009. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 25 September 2017. But the ARPANET itself had now become an island, with no links to the other networks that had sprung up. By the early1970s, researchers in France, the UK, and the U.S. began developing ways of connecting networks to each other, a process known as internetworking.
  22. ^ a b Kirstein, P.T. (1999). "Early experiences with the Arpanet and Internet in the United Kingdom" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 21 (1): 38–44. doi:10.1109/85.759368. ISSN 1934-1547. S2CID 1558618. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 February 2020.
  23. ^ Clarke, Roger (29 January 2004). "Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia". www.rogerclarke.com. Retrieved 23 February 2020. Much of the history of computing has been written by Americans. ... More balanced histories reflect the fact that, for all of the U.S.A.'s dominance from about 1950, the early developments occurred on both sides of the Atlantic
  24. ^ "History of Computing in the UK: A Resource Guide". SIGCIS. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  25. ^ "A brief history of British computers: the first 25 years (1948–1973)". BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  26. ^ Copping, Jasper (11 July 2013). "Briton: 'I invented the computer mouse 20 years before the Americans'". The Telegraph. Retrieved 18 July 2013.
  27. ^ Hill, Peter C. J., ed. (16 September 2005). "RALPH BENJAMIN: An Interview Conducted by Peter C. J. Hill" (Interview). Interview #465. IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Retrieved 18 July 2013.
  28. ^ Needham, R. M. (2002). "Donald Watts Davies, C.B.E. 7 June 1924 – 28 May 2000". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 48: 87–96. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2002.0006. S2CID 72835589.
  29. ^ "Donald Davies". NPLWebsite. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  30. ^ "Computer Pioneers – Christopher Strachey". IEEE Computer Society. Archived from the original on 15 May 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  31. ^ "Computer - Time-sharing, Minicomputers, Multitasking | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
  32. ^ Corbató, F. J.; et al. (1963). The Compatible Time-Sharing System: A Programmer's Guide (PDF). MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-03008-3.. "the first paper on time-shared computers by C. Strachey at the June 1959 UNESCO Information Processing conference".
  33. ^ Gillies & Cailliau 2000, p. 13
  34. ^ Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The Evolution of Packet Switching". Archived from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 5 September 2017. Almost immediately after the 1965 meeting, Donald Davies conceived of the details of a store-and-forward packet switching system
  35. ^ Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (May 1995). "The ARPANET & Computer Networks". Archived from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
  36. ^ Scantlebury, Roger; Wilkinson, Peter; Barber, Derek (2001). NPL, Packet Switching and the Internet. Symposium of the Institution of Analysts & Programmers 2001. Archived from the original on 7 August 2003. Retrieved 13 June 2024. The system first went 'live' early in 1969
  37. ^ Barber, Derek (Spring 1993). "The Origins of Packet Switching". The Bulletin of the Computer Conservation Society (5). ISSN 0958-7403. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  38. ^ C. Hempstead; W. Worthington (2005). Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Technology. Routledge. pp. 573–5. ISBN 978-1-135-45551-4.
  39. ^ Pelkey, James. "6.3 CYCLADES Network and Louis Pouzin 1971–1972". Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications 1968–1988. Archived from the original on 17 June 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2020.
  40. ^ Gillies, James; Cailliau, Robert (2000). How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web. Oxford University Press. p. 25. ISBN 0-19-286207-3.
  41. ^ Isaacson, Walter (2014). The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Simon & Schuster. p. 237. ISBN 978-1-4767-0869-0.
  42. ^ Needham, R. M. (2002). "Donald Watts Davies, C.B.E. 7 June 1924 – 28 May 2000". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 48: 87–96. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2002.0006. S2CID 72835589. The 1967 Gatlinburg paper was influential on the development of ARPAnet, which might otherwise have been built with less extensible technology. ... In 1969 Davies was invited to Japan to lecture on packet switching. He gave what must have been a quite gruelling series of nine three-hour lectures, concluding with an intense discussion with around 80 people.
  43. ^ McKenzie, Alexander (2011). "INWG and the Conception of the Internet: An Eyewitness Account". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 33 (1): 66–71. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2011.9. ISSN 1934-1547. S2CID 206443072.
  44. ^ "Vinton Cerf : How the Internet Came to Be". www.netvalley.com. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  45. ^ "Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Vinton Cerf". National Museum of American History. Smithsonian Institution. 24 April 1990. Retrieved 23 September 2019. Roger Scantlebury was one of the major players. And Donald Davies who ran, at least he was superintendent of the information systems division or something like that. I absolutely had a lot of interaction with NPL at the time. They in fact came to the ICCC 72 and they had been coming to previous meetings of what is now called Datacomm. Its first incarnation was a long title having to do with the analysis and optimization of computer communication networks, or something like that. This started in late 1969, I think, was when the first meeting happened in Pine Hill, Georgia. I didn't go to that one, but I went to the next one that was at Stanford, I think. That's where I met Scantlebury, I believe, for the first time. Then I had a lot more interaction with him. I would come to the UK fairly regularly, partly for IFIP or INWG reasons
  46. ^ Scantlebury, Roger (25 June 2013). "Internet pioneers airbrushed from history". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 August 2015; "How we nearly invented the internet in the UK | New Scientist". www.newscientist.com. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  47. ^ Cerf, V.; Kahn, R. (1974). "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Communications. 22 (5): 637–648. doi:10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259. ISSN 1558-0857. The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.
  48. ^ Brown, Ian, ed. (2013). Research handbook on governance of the Internet. Edward Elgar. p. 7. ISBN 978-1-84980-504-9.
  49. ^ "Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program". 1974.
  50. ^ by Vinton Cerf, as told to Bernard Aboba (1993). "How the Internet Came to Be". Archived from the original on 26 September 2017. Retrieved 25 September 2017. We began doing concurrent implementations at Stanford, BBN, and University College London. So effort at developing the Internet protocols was international from the beginning. ... Mar '82 - Norway leaves the ARPANET and become an Internet connection via TCP/IP over SATNET. Nov '82 - UCL leaves the ARPANET and becomes an Internet connection.
  51. ^ Abbate, Janet (April 2001), "Silvia Wilbur", IEEE History Center Interview #634, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
  52. ^ Cerf, V. G.; Kirstein, P. T. (1978). "Issues in packet-network interconnection". Proceedings of the IEEE. 66 (11): 1386. doi:10.1109/PROC.1978.11147. S2CID 27658511.
  53. ^ "Stanford University 'Birth of the Internet' Plaque", web page, J. Noel Chiappa, Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT
  54. ^ Martin, Olivier (2012). The "Hidden" Prehistory of European Research Networking. Trafford Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4669-3872-4.
  55. ^ Cade Metz (25 December 2012). "How the Queen of England Beat Everyone to the Internet". Wired Magazine. Archived from the original on 19 July 2014. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  56. ^ Postel, J. (7 November 1980). "Internet Meeting Notes -- 7-8-9 October 1980". Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  57. ^ Metz, Cade (25 December 2012). "How the Queen of England Beat Everyone to the Internet". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 9 January 2020.
  58. ^ Left, Sarah (13 March 2002). "Email timeline". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 9 January 2020.
  59. ^ Postel, J. (3 May 1979). "Assigned Numbers". USC - Information Sciences Institute. RFC755. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  60. ^ Study into UK IPv4 and IPv6 allocations (PDF). Reid Technical Facilities Management (Report). Ofcom. 2014. Ofcom/140701-00. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 March 2023. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  61. ^ Camrass, R.; Gallager, R. (1978). "Encoding message lengths for data transmission (Corresp.)". IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 24 (4): 495–496. doi:10.1109/TIT.1978.1055910. ISSN 0018-9448.
  62. ^ "Reflections on an Internet pioneer: Roger Camrass". stories.clare.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 1 July 2024.
  63. ^ Milton Mueller (2002), Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, p. 79, ISBN 978-0-262-63298-0
  64. ^ a b c Mansell, Robin (2002). Inside the Communication Revolution: Evolving Patterns of Social and Technical Interaction. Oxford University Press. p. 208. ISBN 978-0-19-829656-0.
  65. ^ Earnshaw, Rae; Vince, John (20 September 2007). Digital Convergence - Libraries of the Future. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-84628-903-3.
  66. ^ Mansell, Robin; Mansell, Dixons Chair in New Media and the Internet Interdepartmental Programme in Media and Communications Robin (2002). Inside the Communication Revolution: Evolving Patterns of Social and Technical Interaction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-829656-0.
  67. ^ Zakon, Robert (November 1997). Hobbes' Internet Timeline. IETF. p. 9. doi:10.17487/RFC2235. RFC 2235. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
  68. ^ Reid, Jim (3 April 2007). "The Good Old Days: Networking in UK Academia ~25 Years Ago" (PDF). UKNOF7. Manchester. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 May 2008. Retrieved 16 April 2008.
  69. ^ "The Adoption of TCP/IP". clivemabey.me.uk. Archived from the original on 9 August 2016. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  70. ^ "Dai Davies". Internet Hall of Fame. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  71. ^ Jeffery, Simon (23 October 2009). "How we used the internet to tell the story of the internet". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 June 2024; "Nigel – Titley Family". Retrieved 21 June 2024; "Biographies". RIPE Network Coordination Center. Retrieved 21 June 2024; "Candidate Biographies". RIPE Network Coordination Center. Retrieved 21 June 2024.
  72. ^ "IEEE Internet Award Recipients". IEEE. Archived from the original on 22 November 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
  73. ^ "Karen Banks". Internet Hall of Fame. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  74. ^ Smith, Edward; Miller, Chris; Norton, Jim (2023). "Evolving and Exploiting Packet Switched Networks". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.4595785. ISSN 1556-5068.
  75. ^ a b c d Rutter, Dorian (2005). From Diversity to Convergence: British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995 (PDF) (Computer Science thesis). The University of Warwick.
  76. ^ Powell, Kit (1 July 1980). "Evolution of networks using standard protocols". Computer Communications. 3 (3): 117–122. doi:10.1016/0140-3664(80)90069-9. ISSN 0140-3664.
  77. ^ Abbate, Janet (2000). Inventing the Internet. MIT Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-262-51115-5.
  78. ^ Hardy, Daniel; Malleus, Guy (2002). Networks: Internet, Telephony, Multimedia: Convergences and Complementarities. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 505. ISBN 978-3-540-00559-9.
  79. ^ Davies, Donald Watts (1979). Computer networks and their protocols. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 464. ISBN 9780471997504.
  80. ^ Hardy, Daniel; Malleus, Guy (2002). Networks: Internet, Telephony, Multimedia: Convergences and Complementarities. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 505. ISBN 978-3-540-00559-9.
  81. ^ Derek Barber. "The Origins of Packet Switching". Computer Resurrection Issue 5. Retrieved 5 June 2024. I actually set up the first meeting between John Wedlake of the British Post Office and [Rémi Després] of the French PTT which led to X25. There was a problem about virtual calls in EIN, so I called this meeting and that actually did in the end lead to X25.
  82. ^ Espiner, Tom (26 October 2010). "GCHQ pioneers on birth of public key crypto". ZDNet.
  83. ^ "British Document Outlines Early Encryption Discovery". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 12 May 2021. The set of algorithms, equations and arcane mathematics that make up public key cryptography are a crucial technology for preserving computer privacy in and making commerce possible on the Internet. Some hail its discovery as one of the most important accomplishments of 20th-century mathematics because it allows two people to set up a secure phone call without meeting beforehand. Without it, there would be no privacy in cyberspace.
  84. ^ Smith, Ed; Miller, Chris; Norton, Jim. "Packet Switching: The first steps on the road to the information society".
  85. ^ Davies, Howard; Bressan, Beatrice, eds. (2010). A history of international research networking: the people who made it happen. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-3-527-32710-2.
  86. ^ Davies, Howard; Bressan, Beatrice, eds. (2010). A history of international research networking: the people who made it happen. John Wiley & Sons. p. 2. ISBN 978-3-527-32710-2.
  87. ^ Schwartz, Mischa (2010). "X.25 Virtual Circuits – TRANSPAC IN France – Pre-Internet Data Networking [History of communications]". IEEE Communications Magazine. 48 (11): 40–46. doi:10.1109/MCOM.2010.5621965. ISSN 1558-1896. S2CID 23639680.
  88. ^ Rybczynski, Tony (2009). "Commercialization of packet switching (1975–1985): A Canadian perspective [History of Communications]". IEEE Communications Magazine. 47 (12): 26–31. doi:10.1109/MCOM.2009.5350364. ISSN 1558-1896. S2CID 23243636.
  89. ^ Davies, Howard; Bressan, Beatrice (26 April 2010). A History of International Research Networking: The People who Made it Happen. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-3-527-32710-2.
  90. ^ Earnshaw, Rae; Vince, John (20 September 2007). Digital Convergence – Libraries of the Future. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-84628-903-3.
  91. ^ "FLAGSHIP". Central Computing Department Newsletter (12). January 1991.
  92. ^ Dunning, A.J. (31 December 1977). "Origins, development and future of the Euronet". Program. 11 (4). Emeraldinsight.com: 145–155. doi:10.1108/eb046759.
  93. ^ Kerssens, Niels (13 December 2019). "Rethinking legacies in internet history: Euronet, lost (inter)networks, EU politics". Internet Histories. 4: 32–48. doi:10.1080/24701475.2019.1701919. ISSN 2470-1475.
  94. ^ a b c Houlder, Peter (19 January 2007). "Starting the Commercial Internet in the UK" (PDF). 6th UK Network Operators' Forum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 February 2020. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  95. ^ Reid, Jim (3 April 2007). "Networking in UK Academia ~25 Years Ago" (PDF). 7th UK Network Operators' Forum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 May 2017. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  96. ^ New Scientist. Reed Business Information. 17 October 1985. pp. 61–4. Archived from the original on 11 April 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  97. ^ Wells, Mike (1 November 1988). "JANET-the United Kingdom Joint Academic Network". Serials. 1 (3): 28–36. doi:10.1629/010328. ISSN 1475-3308.
  98. ^ "1984-2014: 30 years of the Janet network" (PDF). Disc. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2017. Retrieved 23 September 2017.
  99. ^ National Research Council (U.S.). National Research Network Review Committee, Leonard Kleinrock; et al. (1988). Toward a National Research Network. National Academies. p. 40. ISBN 9780309581257.
  100. ^ Down, Peter John; Taylor, Frank Edward (1976). Why distributed computing?: An NCC review of potential and experience in the UK. NCC Publications. ISBN 9780850121704.
  101. ^ Radu, Roxana, 'Revisiting the Origins: The Internet and its Early Governance', Negotiating Internet Governance (Oxford, 2019; online edn, Oxford Academic, 17 Apr. 2019).
  102. ^ a b Andrew L. Russell (30 July 2013). "OSI: The Internet That Wasn't". IEEE Spectrum. Vol. 50, no. 8.
  103. ^ Russell, Andrew L. "Rough Consensus and Running Code' and the Internet-OSI Standards War" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 November 2019.
  104. ^ "Standards Wars" (PDF). 2006.
  105. ^ "Prestel: The British Internet That Never Was History Today". www.historytoday.com. Retrieved 15 April 2022; "Prestel: Introduction: Celebrating the Viewdata Revolution". www.viewdata.org.uk. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  106. ^ "BBC - A History of the World - Object : Prestel badge". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  107. ^ "Briefs". Network World. 7 (38): 2. 17 September 1990. MCI Vnet goes global
  108. ^ Berners-Lee, Tim (March 1989). "Information Management: A Proposal". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 24 August 2010.
  109. ^ "Frequently asked questions". Tim Berners-Lee. Retrieved 3 May 2015.
  110. ^ "Internaut day: The world's first public website went online 25 years ago today". The Telegraph. 23 August 2016. Retrieved 25 September 2017.
  111. ^ Smith, Chris (22 September 2017). "20 things you probably didn't know about the World Wide Web". BT. Archived from the original on 12 April 2019. Retrieved 25 September 2017.
  112. ^ Lloyd, Peter; Boyle, Paula (1998). Web-weaving: Intranets, Extranets and Strategic Alliances. Routledge. pp. 201–8. ISBN 0-7506-3866-4.
  113. ^ BT network engineer Clive Salmon established access to the Internet for the project leader, Richard Moulding of BT, in July 1991.
  114. ^ "BBC Internet Services – History". support.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 19 September 2019.
  115. ^ a b "Jonathon Fletcher: forgotten father of the search engine". BBC News. 3 September 2013. Retrieved 1 May 2021.
  116. ^ In, Lee (30 June 2012). Electronic Commerce Management for Business Activities and Global Enterprises: Competitive Advantages: Competitive Advantages. IGI Global. ISBN 978-1-4666-1801-5.
  117. ^ Misiroglu, Gina (26 March 2015). American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in US History: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in US History. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-47729-7.
  118. ^ Couldry, Nick (2012). Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. London: Polity Press. p. 2. ISBN 9780745639208.
  119. ^ "Couch potatoes armed with Viewcall can surf the Web through the tube". InfoWorld. 18 December 1995. Retrieved 28 November 2016.
  120. ^ a b "How the UK got connected". The Telegraph. 27 October 2016. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  121. ^ "About PIPEX". GTNet. Archived from the original on 1 November 2012. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
  122. ^ Orlowski, Andrew (11 January 2019). "Begone, Demon Internet: Vodafone to shutter old-school pioneer ISP". theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  123. ^ "UUNET PIPEX from FOLDOC". foldoc.org. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  124. ^ Bonsignore, Tony (11 February 2019). "I stole £30,000 from my mum to make millions". Retrieved 11 February 2019. web-hosting companies in the UK at the time were pitched at much bigger companies, ... small businesses and individuals wanted something self-service and easy to use ... Fasthosts was a classic example of the bedroom computer innovation that the UK was so good at in the 80s and 90s.... it also simplified the process of registering domain names and accessing web hosting
  125. ^ Carter, Claire (1 September 2013). "Dial-up internet services shut down". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  126. ^ "Providers race for prize as UK users get demanding". The Independent. 30 November 2010. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  127. ^ "Who invented broadband? How copper telephone lines became high-speed internet connections". BT. 25 July 2018. Archived from the original on 24 January 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2019.
  128. ^ "Broadband: The First Decade". The Independent. 28 March 2010. Retrieved 19 September 2019.
  129. ^ "The history of broadband from the '80s to today". uSwitch. Retrieved 19 September 2019.
  130. ^ www.newstatesman.com https://web.archive.org/web/20061108030007/http://www.newstatesman.com/considerthis/supplements/broadbandsupp.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 November 2006. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  131. ^ "More than half of UK homes have broadband – 22 Aug 2007 – Computing News". Computing.co.uk. 22 August 2007. Retrieved 20 September 2012.
  132. ^ Kitz (7 December 2005). "UK ISP Market Share .::". . Kitz. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
  133. ^ "UK broadband market share". guardian.co.uk. 28 July 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2011.
  134. ^ Williams, Christopher (23 August 2007). "Ofcom: the Internet is for coffin dodgers and girls". Theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 20 September 2012.
  135. ^ "the complete report". Ofcom.org.uk. 23 August 2007. Archived from the original on 31 December 2009. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
  136. ^ "The Communications Market 2018: Interactive report". Ofcom. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
  137. ^ "Smart TV User Patterns – What are Smart TVs Used for in 2018? - BroadbandSwitch". BroadbandSwitch. 8 August 2018. Archived from the original on 13 November 2018. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
  138. ^ "Virgin Media Broadband Only Deals". Virgin Media. Retrieved 9 June 2017.
  139. ^ SamKnows (16 October 2012). "SamKnows – Regional Broadband Statistics". SamKnows. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  140. ^ Ferguson, Andrew (15 June 2006). "Broadband for all – not!". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 5 May 2010.
  141. ^ Williams, Christopher (12 November 2010). "Sky confirms UK Online closure". The Register. Retrieved 14 October 2012.
  142. ^ Wakeling, Tim (16 November 2010). "Tim Wakeling's PC Inner Circle: UKonline closing". Tim Wakeling. Archived from the original on 20 July 2013. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  143. ^ Ferguson, Andrew (11 November 2010). "UK Online to close January 14th 2011 – Official". ThinkBroadband. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  144. ^ LLU VS Fibre. Archived 2012-03-17 at the Wayback Machine Infographic, MLL Telecom 2011
  145. ^ "Phone firm 'plans free broadband'". BBC. 9 April 2006. Retrieved 5 May 2010.
  146. ^ "UPDATE3 BT Unveil Universal 5-10Mb Broadband and 500Mb G.fast Rollout - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 22 September 2015. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  147. ^ "Openreach Put the Brakes on Future UK G.fast Broadband Plans - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 11 September 2019. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  148. ^ a b "UPDATE BT Enable Physical Retransmission G.INP on FTTC Broadband Lines - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 20 January 2015. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  149. ^ "::. Kitz - G.INP Retransmission .::". kitz.co.uk. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  150. ^ "BT Partly Suspends G.INP Roll-out to ECI Fibre Broadband Cabinets - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 19 April 2016. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  151. ^ "UPDATE BT Openreach Brief UK FTTC Fibre Broadband ISPs on G.INP Issues - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 24 April 2015. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  152. ^ "Openreach UK Trial Finally Brings G.INP to ECI FTTC Broadband - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 13 February 2020. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  153. ^ "UK ISP Sky Broadband Officially "Completes" the Roll-Out of IPv6 - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 6 September 2016. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  154. ^ "UPDATE All BT Broadband Lines Now Support IPv6 Internet Addresses - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 4 November 2016. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  155. ^ Fiveash, Kelly. "BT fibre-to-the-premises trial takes 7 hours per install". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  156. ^ "BT rolls out 100 Mbit/s broadband in Milton Keynes". PC Advisor. 18 June 2012. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
  157. ^ "1Gbit/sec broadband lands in London". PC Pro. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
  158. ^ "Gigler launches Gigabit fibre service in Bournemouth".
  159. ^ "Virgin Media offers 100Mb broadband to over 4 million homes". BroadbandIN.co.uk. 10 June 2011. Archived from the original on 7 August 2011.
  160. ^ "Boris Johnson Pledges Full Fibre for All UK by 2025 - Doesn't Say How UPDATE - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 17 June 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  161. ^ Kelion, Leo (14 October 2019). "Ministers dodge 'full fibre for all by 2025' pledge". BBC News. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  162. ^ Padoan, Harry (21 November 2023). "London's Vorboss breaks B2B fibre price-performance barrier for retailers". TelcoTitans.com. Retrieved 10 April 2024.
  163. ^ Jackson, Mark (12 September 2023). "UK ISP Vorboss Discount 10Gbps Price for Small London Businesses". ISPreview UK. Retrieved 10 April 2024.
  164. ^ Maistre, Ray Le (8 September 2022). "FTTP altnet targets London's business broadband market with £250m plan". TelecomTV. Retrieved 10 April 2024.
  165. ^ Sawers, Paul (9 September 2022). "Vorboss brings minimum 10 Gbps enterprise fibre network to London businesses". TechCrunch. Retrieved 10 April 2024.
  166. ^ "Rural communities joining the race for better broadband". www.openreach.com. Archived from the original on 7 March 2020. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  167. ^ "10Mbps UK Broadband Universal Service Obligation to Go Live UPDATE3 - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 19 March 2020. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  168. ^ "Rural UK FTTH ISP B4RN Launches 10Gbps Home Broadband - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 29 April 2020. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  169. ^ "Openreach Records 10 PetaByte Peak in UK Internet Traffic - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. May 2020. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  170. ^ "Openreach's FTTP Broadband Covers 2.5 Million UK Premises - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 2 May 2020. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  171. ^ "Broadband ISP YouFibre Launch 8Gbps UK Home Fibre Package". www.ispreview.co.uk. 1 September 2020. Retrieved 11 September 2023.
  172. ^ Fletcher, Yvette (20 January 2023). "Digital Voice and the landline phone switch-off: what it means for you". Which?. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  173. ^ "EE launching UK's first 5G service in six cities, bringing a new era in faster, more reliable connectivity". EE. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  174. ^ Tomás, Juan Pedro (17 March 2023). "Three 5G network reaches 60% of UK population". RCR Wireless News. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  175. ^ "One year on from 5G launch, Vodafone first to showcase next phase of 5G technology". Vodafone. 3 July 2020. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  176. ^ "O2 launches 5G network in five UK cities and Slough". BBC News. 17 October 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  177. ^ "Starlink Internet UK: How Fast, How Much And Is It Worth It?". Orbital Today. 13 March 2023. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  178. ^ "UK 'embraces digital technology'". BBC News. 13 July 2005. Retrieved 5 May 2010.
  179. ^ "BT Wholesale confirms launch of the Max services". thinkbroadband. Retrieved 30 June 2012.
  180. ^ "BT select three ISP's for System Trial". Thinkbroadband. 14 September 2007. Archived from the original on 17 October 2007. Retrieved 10 October 2007.
  181. ^ Bhanot, Varun (17 March 2016). "Where is the best broadband for your London workspace?". hubblehq.com.
  182. ^ "Imperial study suggests that internet speed has an impact on property prices". Imperial News. Imperial College London. August 2014. Retrieved 17 October 2018.
  183. ^ "10Mbps UK Broadband Universal Service Obligation to Go Live UPDATE3 - ISPreview UK". www.ispreview.co.uk. 19 March 2020. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  184. ^ "Check UK Broadband Performance and Coverage Statistics". labs.thinkbroadband.com. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  185. ^ "Worldwide Broadband Speed League 2020 | Cable.co.uk". Cable. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
  186. ^ Jackson, Mark (23 September 2019). "One of the Last - 5000th FTTC Broadband Cabinet Built in Scotland". ISPreview UK. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
  187. ^ Karabus, Jude. "G7 countries beat UK in global broadband speed test again". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
  188. ^ "East Midlands Public Services Network is now live!". CommsBusiness. Miles Publishing Limited. 14 January 2013. Retrieved 15 October 2015.
  189. ^ "Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report" (PDF). Ofcom. 29 November 2017. Retrieved 28 April 2018.
  190. ^ "UK Filtering Software Company Releases Survey on Kids' Internet Access", Quichen Zhang, OpenNet Initiative, 26 September 2011
  191. ^ "10% of UK elementary schoolkids own an iPhone; 5% own an iPad" Archived 2013-07-01 at the Wayback Machine, Brad Reed, Network World, 23 September 2011
  192. ^ "Westcoastcloud survey reveals 1 in 10 UK primary school children have iPhones" Archived 2011-09-23 at the Wayback Machine, Westcoastcloud, accessed 3 October 2011
  193. ^ "Growing case for forcing internet firms to cooperate, says police watchdog", Vikram Dodd, 12 June 2018,The Guardian.
  194. ^ Clark, Lindsay. "Proposed UK moves to break encryption draw anger of IT world". www.theregister.com.
  195. ^ "Apple joins opposition to encrypted message app scanning". BBC News. 27 June 2023. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  196. ^ Hern, Alex (18 April 2023). "WhatsApp and Signal unite against online safety bill amid privacy concerns". The Guardian.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Internet_in_the_United_Kingdom&oldid=1261500220"