Tag: snail

BT fined for being too escargot

Posted on March 27, 2017 by - News

Cooked_snailsTop British telco BT has been fined a record £42 million by the regulator, Ofcom,  for failing to install high speed lines for businesses fast enough.

It is likely that BT will have to write out a cheque for £300 million in compensation to customers who suffered from its mega-slowness.

The company was apparently using its terms of its contracts to reduce compensation payments to other providers for failing to deliver Ethernet services on time between January 2013 and December 2014, regulator Ofcom said.

BT’s Chief Executive Gavin Patterson said the company took the matter very seriously, and had put in place measures, controls and people to prevent it happening again.

In other news, Ofcom has revealed new plans which would see consumers who experience poor service automatically compensated, in cash or credit, by their landline or broadband providers.

As part of the scheme, customers who have had to put up with delayed repairs, missed installation or engineer appointments, will be paid up to £30 in compensation, depending on the problem. According to Ofcom, six million landline and broadband customers could receive a total of around £185 million in compensatory payments each year as a result of the policy.

The regulator says every year UK repair technicians failed to show up for 250,000 repair appointments.

Intel’s Skylake is an escargot

Posted on November 5, 2014 by - News

Cooked_snailsWord on the street is that Skylake processors may be delayed.

Intel has been promising that Skylight will be in developers paws early 2015 ahead of shipping “by the second half of the year.”

Digitime’s Joanne Chen claims that Skylake will be held back so as not to dent sales of Broadwell-based notebooks.

The report claims that Intel has set the RTM schedule for the Skylake to the 37-47th weeks of 2015 which is the end of August to the end of October.

The later schedule, Chen claims, would damage the release of Windows 10 notebook sales, because Skylake-based models will not be able to reach retail until late September.

“Windows 10-based notebooks are already facing many negative factors that could impact their shipments in 2015: most enterprises are expected to finish their PC replacement by the end of 2014 after Microsoft terminated support for Windows XP; Microsoft will offer free upgrade to Windows 10 for existing Windows 8/8.1 notebooks; and Windows 10 lacks attractive features,” Chen wrote.

While it is possible that Intel has allowed itself room in September for a later ship date without exposing itself to accusations of breaking its promises, the matter of Windows10 is important. The Skylake delay is expected to worsen Windows 10-based notebooks prospects, and may in turn weaken the notebook market’s performance in the second half of 2015.