Internet approaching its full capacity - Deloitte

Internet bottlenecks, due to the due to lack of investment and growth in video traffic, will become noticeable this year, according to a new report by Deloitte The report says that one of the key possibilities for 2007 is that the internet could be approaching its capacity. 'The twin trends causing this are an explosion in demand, largely fuelled by the growth in video traffic and the lack of investment in new, functioning capacity,' said Igal Brightman, global managing partner at Deloitte. 'Bottlenecks are likely to become apparent in some of the Internet's backbones, the terabit-capable pipes exchanging traffic between continents. ...more

Pretty Poor Privacy

Researchers in Germany have discovered a major security vulnerability in Network Associates' Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption software. The flaw allows unauthorised third parties to decode encrypted e-mail messages, and stems from the way that PGP handles public certificates. It is possible for a hacker to modify a PGP user's public certificate to add an additional decryption key (ADK), and then use that key to gain access to the encrypted data. ...more

Skype Pro comes to UK and Europe

Skype is offering its fixed fee Pro service across the UK and Europe. For a monthly fee of €2 (?1.34), Pro users in the UK get free national calls to fixed line numbers, free voicemail services and discounts on other products. ...more

Income the chief bar to Internet access

Income is the main barrier to Internet access, according to a new report by the Greater London Authority. The London Household Survey found that 45 per cent of homes in London have Internet access, but those homes are much more likely to be occupied by people in the higher income brackets. For example, in households with an income over ?52,000, 80 per cent have access. ...more

IBM gives voice to Open Source

IBM has donated key parts of its voice-recognition software to two Open Source organisations - the Apache Foundation and Eclipse. The company hopes that by opening up areas of the software to the thousands of developers in the Open Source community, it will steal a march on proprietary rivals such as Microsoft, speeding up development and adoption of its speech technology while ensuring standards-compliance. 'This is the latest step in IBM's contribution to open source and to speech technology,' said Gary Cohen, General Manager, IBM Pervasive Computing, 'By giving more standards-based speech resources to the development community, IBM hopes to accelerate development and drive innovation in all areas of the speech ecosystem - from speech vendors, to ISVs, to platform providers. ...more