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The UK government has announced that it is adding an extra £362 million to its fund to stimulate broadband expansion in rural areas.

The funding is part of a £530 million package originally pledged by the government back in 2010 to try and secure high speed broadband access for most UK homes and businesses by 2015. The funding will be split between £294 million for English local authorities and some private companies; and £68.8 million for the Scottish government.

The UK arm of business VoIP equipment manufacturer, Yealink, has announced record breaking sales for the year to date.

Incredibly, the company says that the sales total for the first five months of the year up to 31st May actually eclipsed the company’s sales figures for the whole of 2010.

Yealink UK says that it expects this upward trend to continue until the end of 2011; by which time, it argues, the company should have more than doubled its turnover – from £723,000 in 2010 to £1.5 million in 2011.

A major US firm of architects with offices in New York, London, Shanghai and Hong Kong, has arranged for the full implementation of a state of the art internet protocol (IP) telephony service.

Kohn Pedersen Fox architects (KFP) has adopted the new IP telephony system in response to the need to enhance communications between its growing and complex portfolio of business operations covering 40 countries across the globe.

A new research report claims that businesses in China have yet to embrace internet protocol (IP) telephony to the same degree as many other industrially advanced nations.

According to the report, by independent analysts Ovum, only 16% of those companies in China questioned by researchers confirmed they had adopted IP telephony within their organisation.

The way forward for call centres is to embrace internet protocol (IP)-based communications technologies, in order to serve their customers more effectively: this is the conclusion reached by the highly influential independent call centre operations consultant, Jessica Scarpati.

Scarpati arrived at her recommendation following her analysis of the latest developments within some of the industry’s leading call centre operation centres; coupled with her examination of the results of some of the new consumer research undertaken by these top call centre operators.

A survey by USwitch.com has uncovered how different parts of the UK enjoy different broadband speeds, and how even some of those which are purported to have high broadband speeds actually experience far lower speeds in practice.

According to the survey, the towns currently enjoying the fastest average broadband speeds are Belfast at 12.25 Mb; Bournemouth at 11.41 Mb; and Poole at 11.22 Mb.

It is a fact that communications within organizations, and between organizations and their customers, are becoming increasingly complex.

There is, for example, an increasing blurring of the distinction between staff communicating from the office and communicating outside the office.

Business VoIP (voice over internet protocol) has freed up the need for staff to use an office phone number exclusively from within the confines of an office, which has in turn enabled companies to save money on the cost of calls made from outside the office. There may well in future be pressure to extend business VoIP to work with mobile phone usage.

More than 900 public-funded schools in Queensland, Australia, are set to adopt IP telephony, with a view to maximising learning and communications effectiveness whilst also bringing about savings in the schools’ telephony usage.

The new IP (internet protocol) telephony system is to be implemented on a 12-month contract basis, with an option for renewal being offered each year for four years to the preferred local supplier, TT Group.

Telecommunications company, Talk Talk, is to build 16 additional high speed broadband exchanges in the Middlesbrough area, which will greatly increase the number of homes and businesses capable of accessing high speed broadband.

The move is seen as a major boost to an area in which several businesses have lamented missing out on the benefits of high speed broadband; such as fast data transmission, internet protocol (IP) telephony, and business VoIP (voice over internet protocol).

Across the business community there has, for a while, been a palpable sense of urgency regarding the capability to access modern communications platforms such as super fast broadband, business VoIP (voice over internet protocol), and internet protocol (IP) telephony.

Most commentators agree that those businesses unable to access these platforms will find it increasingly more difficult than other companies to both respond to customer needs quickly and effectively, and to maximise operational efficiencies.