The company discovered that Wi-Fi was present in 439 million households across the world at the end of 2011, representing a total of 25% of all dwellings.

This huge figure shows just how far Wi-Fi has come, and how important it is to how people now access the internet in their homes.

The UK did particularly well when it came to the level of Wi-Fi usage. The research revealed that nearly three quarters of all households in the UK are now Wi-Fi enabled, a huge number which puts it up in second place behind South Korea.

South Korea boasted 80.3% Wi-Fi penetration at the end of 2011, and the UK had 73.3%. Behind the UK came Germany, France and Japan.

Somewhat surprisingly, the USA only had a Wi-Fi penetration of 61%, far below the countries at the top of the list.

In addition, China’s level of Wi-Fi penetration was only 21.8%, despite it having the highest number of Wi-Fi connected homes in the world. Over the next five years it is likely to add a further 110 million Wi-Fi households.

Strategy Analytics predicts that by 2016 Wi-Fi penetration will go up to 42%, meaning a total of 800 million households will be connected wirelessly. This is partly due to the growth in usage of Wi-Fi-enabled devices.

This will be welcome news for some of TalkTalk’s 4.1 million customers who will now be able to take advantage of all the benefits that fast broadband speeds bring, such as the fast streaming of videos, better online gameplay and enjoying high speeds even in multi-user households.

However, initially the service will only be available for 1.23 million of TalkTalk’s customers so there are some who will be left disappointed.

Upload speeds are also set to increase by 20Mbps, a huge jump which will be very noticeable for users.

TalkTalk is a wholesale customer of BT, and it will make use of BT’s new fibre-optic network to deliver the higher speeds so that its customers will be able to start to take advantage of faster broadband within a few weeks.

However, despite BT providing the network, the maximum speed currently provided by BT is 40Mbps, and it is not certain when BT will be upgrading its offerings for its own customers.

TalkTalk’s customers who are interested in enjoying these faster broadband speeds are being encouraged to register their interest early to take advantage of the speed boost as soon as possible. They will have to pay £15 extra a month for the top speeds from the FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) service, but for many this will be well worth it.

Despite the huge increase in speed provided by TalkTalk, it is still below the speeds currently offered by rival Virgin Media. Virgin’s customers can take advantage of 100Mbps download speeds if they are willing to pay a premium.

The campaign, called ‘Say Yes to Better Broadband’, was launched two months ago by Norfolk County Council and Eastern Daily Press. Campaigners say that there is a huge demand for high-speed broadband in the area, and this is an opportunity for residents of Norfolk to make their voices heard.

The large number of sign-ups has been achieved through a number of techniques including workshops, local activism and the opportunity to sign up online.

However, although 10,000 is an impressive figure, more sign ups are still needed to show how much demand there really is across the region. The campaign comes to an end at the end of March, and after that the council will be asking private companies to bid to become a project partner in the roll-out.

The number of people who sign up will be used to show how much demand there is, and the more people who register, the more effectively the council will be able to negotiate with private companies.

The organisations behind the campaign have stated that the broadband picture is pretty grim in the region, where about 50,000 commercial and private premises still suffer from only being able to get access to broadband speeds of 2Mbps or under.

Superfast broadband was defined in the report as anything over 24Mbps, and the level of UK uptake looks pretty low when compared to countries like Japan with 40% and the USA with 10%. However, compared to other countries in Europe it is actually quite high. For example, Germany has an uptake of 3%, Spain 2.2% and Italy just 1.5%. As a result, Ofcom said that the UK is overall “standing up well against international benchmarks”.

Despite the somewhat low figure for superfast broadband uptake, the report revealed that the UK is still very active online, especially when it comes to shopping. The report found that 89% of people who use the internet said they had visited shops online, and 79% said that they had purchased something online during 2010. This means that in the UK we shop more online than any other European countries.

Ofcom also highlighted the fact that in the UK we can enjoy cheaper broadband than many other countries. In fact, the only cheaper country in Europe is France. Online TV is also growing in popularity, due in large part to services like the BBC iPlayer. The report found that over a quarter of people in the UK watch online TV each week, which is the highest level of all countries surveyed.

One of the key criticisms of the report was the slow speed in which the next generation of mobile broadband, 4G, is being unrolled. This is due to problems between the network operators, and it may be as late as 2015 before it is widely available.

The development of superfast broadband across the country is itself going fairly well, with many areas now able to take advantage of speeds of up to 100Mbps.

However, it has been the rural areas which have been least likely to enjoy faster speeds, and the Countryside Alliance is worried that this trend is set to continue.

It has highlighted four parts of the country which have been designated as test sites for the implementation of superfast broadband in rural areas, and has claimed that work has yet to begin on them.

North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Herefordshire and The Highlands were all designated as special test areas for superfast broadband, and were set to receive a share of the £530 million pot allocated by the government for the broadband rollout.

But according to the Countryside Alliance they have yet to receive any money from the government and the projects have not yet started.

However, the government says that the projects are all making progress, and that it still has the goal of making sure that by 2015 Britain has the best superfast broadband in Europe.

Alice Barnard is the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, and is not convinced by this. She says that people living in rural areas have to put up with slow and unreliable broadband on a daily basis, and she is worried that “the digital divide will continue to grow” if rural broadband is not given the attention it deserves.

Although some places in the country will be able to start using it sooner, Ofcom is now estimating that 2015 is the date when it will become widely available.

The disappointing news was broken in its Draft Annual Plan 2012/13, and means we’ve got three more years of 3G before we can start to enjoy the benefits of 4G.

These benefits include much faster mobile broadband with speeds predicted to be up to 100Mbps, and greater capacity than 3G which is important due to the huge growth of mobile broadband usage.

The news is even more disappointing seeing as many countries already have 4G up and running. Japan and the USA are well ahead of us, but a number of smaller countries are also getting their 4G networks going, which is all a bit embarrassing for the UK.

The main problem is that the auction of the spectrums to the mobile networks has been delayed from its original date of September 2008. This is mainly due to the networks’ concerns as to how it will be shared out, with the larger ones worried that Three will end up getting help from the state because it is smaller.

Ofcom is now saying that it will hold the auction in the 2012/13 financial year, so hopefully there won’t be any more delays. But it’s all still very disappointing.

He recently spelled out his company’s vision for the changing broadband landscape across the UK to none other than the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister heard exactly what BT is hoping for when he visited the company’s research centre in Adastral Park in Suffolk along with members of his cabinet, and he must have been very pleased by what he heard.

According to Mr Livingston, 90% of the country should be able to receive high-speed broadband by 2017.

What’s more, the majority of homes and businesses should be able to access speeds of 100Mbps and more.

He also stated that the number of homes and businesses which have to suffer miserable download speeds of less than 2Mbps will fall from 12% to 2%, making it practically a thing of the past.

He confirmed that BT had recruited a large team of engineers recently to help to deploy the new generation of broadband.

Some critics have already doubted that super-fast broadband can be delivered to 90% of the country in the next six years. However, BT has said that as long as it receives adequate funding from the BDUK budget, which currently totals £530 million, then it should be able to reach its ambitious target.

We’ll all have to wait and see whether it can really become a reality, but if it does then it will completely change the broadband landscape in the UK and help to make businesses here more competitive on the international stage.

The news comes from Rutland & Stamford Mercury, which stated that BT has started to work on installing the fibre-optic cables which will be needed to transfer the faster broadband speeds.

The move will be welcomed all over Stamford where up to 11,000 businesses and homes will be able to take advantage of the faster speeds. With the fibre cables in place, they can expect to enjoy anything up to 100Mbps compared to the current fastest speed of 40Mbps.

BT has already installed a number of cabinets which means it is ahead of schedule because it was not expected to start providing the new technology until 2012. So residents of Stamford will therefore not have to wait long before lightning-fast speeds become a reality.

But how will it actually affect businesses? BT said that it will “transform their experience of the internet”, and it is now widely accepted that businesses need faster speeds to be able to take full advantage of everything that the internet has to offer.

This makes Stamford the latest area of the country to benefit from the faster speeds being rolled out to many areas. It is great news for everyone living and working in the area who will now be able to take advantage of much faster download and upload speeds which will provide a huge boost to the whole area.

uSwitch carried out a large amount of research to come up with the findings, carrying out a total of two million speed tests right across Britain.

It discovered that there is a definite rush hour period between 7pm and 9pm each evening when the average broadband user can expect to find download speeds 35% lower than those at peak times.

The best time to use the internet was revealed as between 2am and 3am, when the average download speed is 9.6Mbps. However, in the rush hour the average download speed drops significantly to 6.2Mbps.

It also turns out that where you access the internet also affects just how much you will notice the rush hour speed drop.

The research showed that broadband users in Evesham in Worcestershire can expect to see a massive 69% drop in download speeds during the rush hour, down from 15.5Mbps to 4.9Mbps. Weston-Super-Mare and Wadebridge in Cornwall also suffered badly and saw large drops in the download speeds.

Finding that you have a slow broadband connection is one of the most infuriating things that broadband users can experience. It is especially annoying when you have paid for a high-speed broadband package which promised lightning-fast speeds.

However, before you start unplugging cables and jumping up and down in a rage, check the clock first. It could well be that you are accessing the internet at the busiest time of the day when it is under the most pressure.

However, whether you want to stay up until 2am to carry out your browsing is another matter entirely.

The council has now committed to faster broadband speeds for nearly all homes and businesses in the area by 2015 in a scheme to be called the Local Broadband Plan.

This means that by 2015, 90% of homes and businesses in Worcestershire will be able to access super fast broadband.

As well as this substantial investment, the scheme is also set to receive funding from Broadband Delivery UK and the Green Infrastructure Fund amongst others.

It is hoping to receive £3.3 million from BDUK and £400,000 from the Green Infrastructure Fund, and it is also hoping to take advantage of private sector investment.

Super fast broadband is being seen as essential for the UK if businesses are to remain competitive on an international stage. It is therefore hoped that this move will help to boost the economy of the region and the UK as a whole, as well as improve the quality of life for residents in Worcestershire.

The scheme is quite ambitious, but then this is no time for half measures. The UK regularly falls behind other countries in the global broadband speed league, and it is clear that more needs to be done to improve access to faster broadband speeds across the country.

This is definitely a step in the right direction, and now hopefully other councils will be unveiling similar schemes to follow the example being set by Worcestershire.