Article

High School Teacher Holds Class Via Videochat While in Coronavirus Quarantine | Gizmodo

Coronavirus precaution sees Darwin teacher adopt a different kind of screening while teaching from home | ABC News

My Comments

Over the many years, technology has played an important role within education in many forms. It is more underscored through its role within distance education, which tends to be focused towards people living in rural or remote communities.

Radio earned its keep in Australia since 1944 with outback communities benefiting from the School Of The Air with classes held over distance using two-way radio technology. That technology, driven by pedal-operated two-way radio setups, was being used as a way for the cattle stations and other communities to keep in touch with each other and the outside world.

The UK integrated radio and TV as key course-delivery technologies to drive their Open University concept (Wikipedia article) for post-secondary education which began in 1967. Other technologies like computers, home video recorders and DVDs earnt their keep in this role as they came about.

Similarly, the outbreak of World War II created the concept of an “over-the-air” class for kindergarten-aged children due to the wartime closure of Australian kindergartens. This radio show, known as “Kindergarten Of The Air” ended up being broadcast nationally on ABC radio and continued until the 1980s. No doubt a significant number of Australian Baby Boomers would have remembered hearing this program on the radio when they were little kids. Some overseas stations even ended up syndicating this radio-based kindergarten class with others following the ABC’s example by running their own pre-school educational radio programs on their networks.

What Australia’s ABC had done with “Kindergarten Of The Air” was effectively contributing the idea of educational content delivery via broadcast radio to the world of broadcasting. Here it opened up the doors for the likes of Play School and Sesame Street. schools-focused radio and TV broadcasts that tie in with lesson plans including the BBC’s computer-education project centred around the BBC Model B computer  and the newer micro.bit board computer , the aforementioned Open University in the UK and now in Australia, amongst other things.

Many education-technology futurists over the many years envisioned the use of video conferencing and allied technologies as a regular part of the classroom. Most of us would see this peculiarly for the distance-learning sphere where one is studying at home receiving their tuition by post, email or similar transmission methods; perhaps with a smattering of other use cases like exchange students communicating with the school community they are normally based at.

But the recent coronavirus outbreak had iegitimised the use of video conferencing by allowing a teacher to continue giving mathematics classes while he was in self-imposed quarantine at home thanks to his visit to the affected parts of China for the Chinese New Year. Here, he was able to use common personal computing and Internet technology along with the school’s AV and IT setup to teach maths “over the wire” and assure his students learning continuity. Other teachers in the same predicament whether in China or Australia were using similar technology to work around any necessary quarantine requirements thanks to this coronavirus plague.

Just like with the ABC’s “Kindergarten Of The Air” using radio as a way to deliver pedagogical content during a wartime scenario where educational facilities weren’t available, the recent videoconferencing application by the schoolteacher to continue teaching maths to his students while under quarantine due to the disease outbreak is underscoring the use of technology as a workaround to deliver education when disaster strikes.

With videoconferencing and allied technologies, it could be about augmenting learning in a range of ways such as cost-effective access to specialist lessons.  It can also benefit teachers and students travelling away from their home place of education by allowing them to share knowledge from that trip with students back at that place of education.

Who knows what this could lead to in the sphere of education?

Introduction

The Brother MFC-J5845DW is the first Brother printer that combines the INKVestment tank-based printing technology previously seen in the Brother MFC-J1300DW printer with the landscape (lengthways) printing method that Brother had pioneered. Here, like most of the Brother printers that use this printing method, it has an expandable paper tray so you can load it with A3 paper. It can scan A4 pages and can print both sides of an A4 or smaller page.

A step-up model known as the MFC-J5945DW has, as an extra function, two separate paper trays rather than one, which can allow you to have A3 paper or a different media type “on the ready”. There is a more expensive variant known as the MFC-J6545DW that is equipped with A3 scanning and the ability to print on both sides of an A3 page which could be seen as a way to make more utility of the booklet-printing function in the supplied print driver software in the context of printing A4 multipage documents on A3 paper.

These printers have a two-year manufacturer’s warranty and they come with a supply of ink that will last for two years under average usage conditions. This is in the form of a set of high-capacity ink cartridges and a set of extra-high-capacity ink cartridges in the box as well as the starter cartridges to get your machine going. But with these machines, I always list out the cost of the cartridges because you may end up replacing the cartridges sooner than estimated due to practices like using them as the “short run printing press” including printing many photos or presentation materials which this printer is very adept at as you will see later on.

Print	Scan	Copy	Paper Trays	Connections
Colour	Colour	Colour	1 x A3(standard)	USB 2.0
Piezoelectric Ink-Jet	1200dpi on glass platen 600dpi using ADF	ID Copy Book Copy Thin-Paper Copy other special copy features	50 Sheet A3 Multi-purpose tray	Ethernet Wi-Fi 4 (802.11g/n) Own-access-point Wi-Fi 4 (802.11g/n)
Auto-Duplex (A4 only)	ADF			IPv6 capability

Document Send/Receive
Real-Time	Super-G3 Colour Fax via phone
Email-based	T.37 IP Fax Scan-to-email	TIFF-FAX JPG PDF
Walk-up Printing	USB	PDF JPG TIFF
Driver-Free Mobile Printing	Apple AirPrint MoPria support
Online Services	Print From	Scan To
	Dropbox Box.com OneDrive Google Drive OneNote Evernote	Dropbox Box.com OneDrive Google Drive OneNote Evernote
Multiple Users for Online Services	No
“Own Account” Guest Access for Online Services	No

 

Prices

Printer

Recommended Retail Price: AUD$699

Inks and Toners

	High Capacity		Extra High Capacity
	Price	Pages	Price	Pages
Black	AUD$41.00	3000	AUD$74.00	6000
Cyan	AUD$41.00	1500	AUD$123.00	5000
Magenta	AUD$41.00	1500	AUD$123.00	5000
Yellow	AUD$41.00	1500	AUD$123.00	5000

The printer itself

Connectivity and Setup

The Brother MFC-J5845DW INKVestment multifunction printer connects directly to the host computer via USB 2.0. Or it can connect via a network using Ethernet or Wi-Fi with a best-case performance for a Wi-Fi segment being 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4).

It didn’t take long to get the Brother MFC-J5845DW INKVestment printer set up, thanks to the instructions that came with the machine. This even included the use of the machine’s display to show how to prepare the ink cartridges and load the paper.

You still have to open the lid to connect the printer to any wired connection other than its power. This is something that has been common with all of the recent Brother multifunction inkjet printers, but it can confuse people who aren’t used to this kind of connection arrangement.

Paper Handling

The use of Brother’s landscape-printing approach for printing on common office paper sizes has allowed the printer to turn out documents very quickly. It also allows for a relatively-compact printer even though there is some overhang thanks to the INKVestment cartridges.

There is still a straight-through bypass feed on the back of the printer for using occasionally-used paper sizes and types.

Walk-up functions

There is the ability to copy as well as scan to or print from USB memory keys. As well, this printer has the ability to work with online services, mainly the “big-name” file-storage services and the main cloud-driven online notebooks like Evernote and OneNote.

The digital copying functionality supports book copying and ID-card copying but it still has the same problem associated with the rest of the Brother multifunction stable. That is where the scanner doesn’t scan to the edge of the glass platen, which is a limitation for most of us who line the original up against the edge of the glass in order to stabilise it during scanning or copying.

The fax-machine functionality which works with the plain-old telephone service or the T.37 email-based setup is very similar to what is offered in recent Brother multifunction printers. This includes the ability to use Dropbox, OneDrive or similar services to store received faxes but it could support a more comprehensive “fax-vault” function with the ability not to print incoming faxes out as they are received or to store to local storage media that can be encrypted.

Computer functions

I downloaded the Brother MFC-J5845DW printer’s drivers from Brother’s support Website and installed them from the downloaded package, with it working out properly. This meant it didn’t take long to get the printer up and running.

I have used the Brother MFC-J5845DW printer for Mopria-based driver-free printing from my Android phone and this worked very smoothly. Here, the printer was quickly discovered using the Mopria print software on the phone very quickly and I was able to immediately turn out a PDF file very quickly.

Print / scan speed and quality

I have used the Brother MFC-J5845DW to turn out a large print run and found that this printer is quick on the mark. I even noticed negligible dwell time between printing each side of a page when it turned out an auto-duplex print job with it printing on both sides of the paper. The documents came out very sharp for an inkjet but some people may not find them as sharp as a business-grade laser printer’s output.

I created a test page with lines at each margin on each side of the page and used that to identify if there is any page shift when the printer is printing on both sides of a page. This is important for those of us who take advantage of auto-duplexing for purposes beyond paper economy. This is where you use the printer for desktop-publishing jobs where you are creating things like luggage tags, door hangers and the like where you need to cut out a particular shape but you have the design on each side.

The Brother MFC-J5845DW exhibited a slight shift of a few millimetres between the front and the back along the long edge during this test. There wasn’t any of that shift on the short edge, illustrating that this kind of shift happens in the same direction as the paper is fed.

I have printed some test photos through the Brother MFC-J5845DW INKVestment multifunction printer and they have come up on a par with the same images printed on the Brother MFC-J5720DW multifunction printer.

There is still strong colour saturation, which will earn its keep with brochure and presentation printing. But on this printer, the skin tones come up without being too red and that is without taking away the vibrancy from primary colours that exist in the same image. As well, the Brother MFC-J5845DW shows increased sharpness and definition which can underscore a perceived improvement in how accurate it reproduces the photos, proving that the four-ink inkjet printers like what Brother offers can yield some very good photo-printing output.

This test was showing that Brother is improving on how their office inkjet printers can handle presentation-grade and photo-grade print jobs where visual appeal and quality do matter. The MFC-J5845DW and its current INKVestment peers are working towards that holy grail of being the desktop short-run printing press for small businesses and community organisations.

Limitations And Points Of Improvement

Brother could then have their inkjet printers use Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) or Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) technology in order to allow the printers to work with these networks without reducing the network segment’s throughput and performance. This may be something that will come about in a subsequent product generation once the necessary silicon arrives.

As well, Brother could have their multifunction printers work as T.38 IP-based real-time fax endpoints especially as most phone setups are moving away from the “plain-old telephone system” technology to VoIP. They can also support a full “fax-vault” function especially as faxing is still valued by the medical and legal professions as a preferred means for exchanging highly-confidential documents “over the wire”.

Conclusion and Placement Notes

What I have seen of the Brother MFC-J5845DW INKVestment multifunction inkjet printer and its peers is that it combines Brother’s inkjet printer technology improvements in one value-for-money unit. This is the high ink capacity approach offered by the INKVestment tank+cartridge ink-delivery platform alongside the landscape printing approach that improves printing speed for standard-size documents and provides the ability to print to A3 or similar-sized paper.

I would seriously consider the Brother MFC-J5845DW as a value-for-money high-ink-capacity inkjet multifunction printer that works well as a general-purpose A4-based printing workhorse but you want to occasionally turn out A3 print jobs.

The fact that it works on inkjet technology can be a bonus if you are placing emphasis on media flexibility especially when it comes to making hard copies of digital photos or printing presentation-grade work. This is where it performed exceptionally by yielding high-definition hard copies of the test photos.

I would also consider the Brother MFC-J6545DW full-A3 model as an ancillary “A3 specialist” printer for workplaces where an A4 colour laser printer or multifunction is being used as a regular document printer while you use that printer for the large paper sizes.

Article

Sonos extend support for legacy products after backlash | PC World

From the horse’s mouth

Sonos

A letter from our CEO (Blog Post)

My Comments

Recently, Sonos sent some shivers around the Internet regarding their multiroom audio products’ life cycle.

This started with them installing a “Recycle” mode in their speakers and other devices, which would effectively take the devices out of action, with it being tied in to a rebate on new devices if the old equipment was returned to them for e-waste recycling.

It worried some social media users because they want to keep the extant equipment that functioned properly going for as long as possible, including “pushing down” older equipment to secondary areas, selling it in to the second-hand market and giving to friends, relatives and community organisations while they upgrade to newer Sonos gear. Here, they really wanted the Sonos device to be detached from the user’s Sonos account and prepared as if ready to set up within a new system for whenever it is given away or sold.

Then this past week, Sonos raised the prospect that multiroom-audio equipment made prior to model-year 2015 won’t get software updates after May 2020. This wasn’t conveyed properly in that the affected equipment won’t benefit from feature updates but will benefit from bug-fixes, security updates and anything else to do with software quality.

There was also issues raised about a Sonos-based multiroom-audio system that consists of the legacy equipment as well as newer equipment, which is a result of someone effectively “building-out” their system by purchasing newer gear. An example I referred to in an article about the IKEA SYMFONISK speakers which work on the Sonos platform is to use the SYMFONISK speakers as a low-cost way of adding extra speakers for another room like the kitchen while you maintain the Sonos speakers in the areas that matter.

The concern that was raised is the availability of software-quality updates including incremental support for new or revised API “hooks” offered by online-audio services; along with the ability for the devices to stay functioning as expected.

Then there was the issue of logically segmenting a Sonos multiroom audio system so that newer devices gain newer functionality available to them while older devices keep the status quo. At the moment, a Sonos multiroom system which works across the same logical network is divided in to logical rooms to allow speakers in one room to play the same source at the same volume level. Here, it may be about determining the upgradeability based on the existence of newer speakers in a room, where older speakers in the same logical room work as “slave” speakers to the newer speaker.

What is being called out here is how long a manufacturer should keep new software available for the equipment and what kind of updates should be available for equipment that is long in the tooth. It focuses especially on keeping the older devices function at an expected level while running secure bug-free firmware. Let’s not forget how older and newer devices can coexist in a system of devices based on a particular platform while providing consistent functionality.

This is more so where the equipment can enjoy a long service life, something that is expected of kit that costs a significant amount of money. It applies also to the fact that people build out these systems to suit their ever-changing needs.

Companies that observe the Sonos debacle could look at the mistakes Sonos made in properly conveying the issue of feature-update cessation for older products to their customer base. As well, they would have to look at how Sonos is tackling the issue of maintaining software quality, stability and security in their devices’ firmware along with catering to the reality of platform-based systems that have a mix of older and newer devices.

Article

Ask About A Hotel Or Airbnb’s WiFi Before You Book | Lifehacker

My Comments

When you book that hotel, motel or holiday-rental house like an AirBnB, it may be worth inquiring about the kind of Wi-Fi service the venue has. This is more so where they advertise the availability of Wi-Fi as a headline feature.

In some of these venues, you may come across situations that may impact your online life during your stay.

For example, you may come across a short-term holiday rental that is set up with an el-cheapo Internet-service plan where there isn’t much in the way of included data allowance and the use of multimedia content like Netflix, Internet radio or YouTube; or IP-based voice and video telephony by guests may chew through this allowance. Similarly, the facility may only be provided with a connection that doesn’t have much in the way of bandwidth, a reality with properties located out of major towns.

Hotels and similar locations can have their fair share of Wi-Fi Internet limitations. For example, they could include baseline Wi-Fi Internet for one device as part of the accommodation deal but charge extra for higher bandwidth or concurrent use of more devices. Or you may find that it is an optional extra that is charged for separately.

Similarly you may find that the hotel’s Internet service underperforms during peak occupancy especially when many guests are streaming online multimedia content like Netflix concurrently.

Some of us may see this as a deal-maker or deal-breaker when it comes to booking that accommodation facility depending on what level of priority we give to Internet access while on the road. It may be more important when we engage in videocalling as a way to “touch base”, upload photos to an online album or social media, or enjoy online video content during the evening. As well, it can be of concern where multiple people like a family are using the connection concurrently.

The venue may also see your interest in its guest-access Internet as a way to improve their offering especially when they are in a position to “re-contract” their Internet service to a better tariff. If they are in a truly-competitive market, they could easily end up placing the service on a tariff that offers a “better bang for the buck”. This is by offering more bandwidth and data usage (where applicable) for the same amount that they previously paid or for less.

As well, it may appeal to rental-premises owners who want to see value in renting out their short-let venue for longer periods at a time. It can also help them to court the business community who may use these places as a base to stay while doing business in the local area.

Similarly, an accommodation venue can see their guests’ interest in the quality of their on-site Internet service amenity as an excuse to invest in the associated Wi-Fi and other local-network infrastructure. This can be about filling in Wi-Fi “dead spots” with extra access points or reworking the network for higher throughput such as using equipment with newer Wi-Fi and Ethernet specificcations.

It is still worth it to raise questions about the Internet service you may end up with while on the road. This is because it can benefit both you and the venue owner in various ways.

Article written in January 2020, updated in January 2023 to factor in the local network aspect for guest-amenity Wi-Fi networks.

Articles – From the horse’s mouth

Lenovo

Lenovo’s Five Must-Have Devices for the Digital Creator (Press Release)

My Comments

At the Consumer Electronics Show 2020, Lenovo launched their Creator series of desktop and laptop computers focused towards the “prosumer” user class. But what is this user class?

What is a prosumer?

The word “prosumer” is a portmanteau of the words “producer” and “consumer” in which the user produces something as well as consuming other things. For example, the person may end up taking a lot of photos not just for their personal family album but to create things like exhibitions or slide shows or illustrate books.

In the context of product positioning, it is a portmanteau of “professional” and “consumer” where products of that class stand between professional-class products pitched to business users who use it as part of their trade; and consumer-class products pitched to ordinary householders. Those products were effectively pitched at “serious users” who wanted what professional users were benefiting from without the huge price tag associated with that product class.

Here, the prosumer is a technology user who primarily create content but aren’t doing it as part of a regular day job. Typically they would do this as a personal hobby or as an effort to support a non-profit organisation. In some ways, it may also augment another hobby or other effort like making music or building a social-media presence.

They could also be making money creating content but on a “job-by-job” basis for various end-users but not have the volume of valuable work to be considered a professional content creator. An example of this may be photographers, videographers or entertainers who gain most of their work during particular seasons or a budding film producer who is building up their work until they gain a reputation.

The last few decades of the 20th century saw companies involved in the consumer photography and AV industries research technology and create affordable products that satisfy the needs of this kind of user. Here, it is about turning out high-quality work that can be presented to people, especially paying customers.

This class of relatively-affordable “prosumer” equipment led to an easier entry path for people wishing to make money out of this kind of work like the photographers or videographers who you hire to photograph or film that special event; or project studios who prepare demo tapes for various live acts.

As well, it opened up a path for small businesses and community organisations to turn out high-quality creative material that can further their efforts with such things as a church having sermons available for the faithful to hear at a later date or a small business creating their own long-form advertising videos.

How is the computing world answering the prosumer user class?

But the computing market caught up slowly with this user class’s needs initially through the Apple Macintosh and laser printers facilitating desktop publishing in the late 1980s. Apple then took this further with optimising the Macintosh platform for multimedia production and acquired a reputation in this field across the prosumer and professional space.

But prosumer users found that companies who manufactured Windows-based computers didn’t really cater to their needs. The initial effort was to create multimedia-grade computers with advanced graphics and sound subsystems. I have reviewed a few examples of this computer class with the Toshiba Satellite P750 being one of them. But this product class ended up being focused towards high-stakes gaming where the goal is towards responsiveness especially in a first-person-shooter game.

A few manufacturers like Sony made “flash-in-the-pan” efforts with computers that offered features and specifications that appealed to prosumer-class users, such as implementing OLED displays with very-high colour gamut. But these models didn’t stay on the market for a long time.

Nowadays, the prosumer would end up using a gaming-grade computer that may be seen as underpowered and unreliable for content-creation, audio-production or similar software. This is if they wanted the kind of performance necessary to edit or “finish” their creative work. If the gaming rig in question is a traditional desktop unit that can have its graphics card replaced, the user may substitute the gaming-optimised display card with a workstation-class or content-creation-class display card. Similarly, if the gaming rig is a laptop, all-in-one or low-profile desktop unit with a Thunderbolt 3 connection, they would use a “card-cage” external graphics module equipped with a workstation-class display card for this purpose.

Or, if they are in the market for a traditional three-piece desktop computer based around a system unit of a standard form-factor, they would go to an independent computer retailer. Here, they would specify a custom-built store-brand computer that works with this software in an optimum manner.

On the other hand, they would be suggested to use a “certified workstation” computer that was proven by the software vendors to work with this kind of software but these would be considered very expensive and have too many features like managed-IT functionality that they wouldn’t need. In some cases, it would lead towards buying an entry-level model in a manufacturer’s workstation-class product range.

Lenovo’s initial Creator range of prosumer-class computing products ticks the necessary boxes. Here, they are based on the manufacturer’s consumer-class product range but have the necessary configuration that is proven by the software vendors to work with their modestly-priced content-creation software. They are offering two portable computers (IdeaPad Creator 5 clamshell and Yoga Creator 7) and a traditional-style desktop tower computer (IdeaCentre Creator 5) that is optimised for this kind of work.

This could lead on to other computer manufacturers who provide “certified-workstation-class” performance computers and peripherals pitched towards these “prosumer” users. Here, they would be based on the manufacturer’s consumer or small-business product lines but have the necessary hardware specification to work with the affordable content-creation software.

One of the key factors in the design of these computers is that the graphics infrastructure would be optimised to work at standard refresh rates rather than the high refresh rates associated with gaming and not be suited to the kind of image-painting associated with fast-paced games. In a lot of cases, the graphics processor will be roped in as an auxiliary processor to facilitate rendering or transcoding.

Could the “prosumer-class” computer appeal to all users?

I would see these computers appeal to people who frequently create content on their computers and they use or intend to use highly-capable image, video or audio editing software for this purpose. They can also earn their keep with people and organisations who use advanced audio and video playback setups such as computer-based DJ/karaoke setups with advanced playback effects or multiple video channels.

The computers can offer high-end gaming performance which can please those users who are wanting to play a video game for their rest and relaxation. But I wouldn’t necessarily expect them to satisfy an expectation of esports-class gaming.

I could also see these computers appeal to students who are studying multimedia production, architecture / engineering, statistics and the like and want a low-risk entry point when it comes to technology. It would work alongside the fact that the software vendors are offering reduced pricing on the software associated with these studies for students who are currently studying these courses. This is to cater for the fact that the student may be very fickle about their course and wouldn’t justify a full-bore workstation-class computer if they don’t see themselves completing the course and following that career path.

So it is becoming a situation where other user classes are being discovered when it comes to marketing personal and small-business information technology solutions. This time it is the creative types who create content on an ad-hoc basis rather than as a regular day job and they would want to have something that offers “certified-workstation” performance standards for the cost of a gaming rig.

Before Apple upgraded the tvOS operating system in your Apple TV set-top box to version 13, you used to see at the top row a photo-gallery view of shows you were working through from some of the content providers you set up with your Apple TV. This function, known as “Up Next” mainly happens with most broadcaster-operated video-on-demand services who have Apple TV client apps but doesn’t work with all other video-on-demand services like Netflix.

Here, you would see which episodes of these shows you were up to, including whether you were working through a particular episode of a show. That would be highlighted with a bar that indicates how much of the episode you have seen. This arrangement would actually represent your tastes properly.

The tvOS 13 upgrade replaced this with the ability for Apple to promote its own content or those it has strong business relationships with and promote it in a Hollywood fashion. Here, it didn’t really sit with some viewers who saw it as a form of TV advertising, especially if it is about content that really doesn’t reflect their tastes. It then led towards most of us who know what we are after heading to the video-on-demand services’ apps to find the content we are after or continue watching our favourite series.

Thanks to user feedback, Apple has answered this problem properly by restoring the “Up Next” functionality as a user-selectable option for tvOS-based Apple TV devices when upgraded to tvOS 13.3. By default, this will happen when you are not using your Apple TV box with it downloading the upgrade from Apple’s servers, installing it and restarting.

How to set this up

Software update

Confirm that the Apple TV is on tvOS 13.3 by selecting “Settings”, then “System” then “Software Updates”. Under the Apple TV logo, you will see the operating system version for your device. If it’s not up-to-date, select the “Update Software” item on that screen to commence updating to the latest version of tvOS.

Selecting the right option

Head back to the Settings menu on your Apple TV device, then select “Apps”. This will show a list of apps installed on your Apple TV device whose settings can be managed through the Settings menu. Highlight the TV app, which will show an Apple TV logo in a black rectangle, then select this app to adjust its settings.

Highlight the “Top Shelf” option, which will determine what appears at the top of your Apple TV’s main screen menu if you highlight the Apple TV icon. Select this option to toggle between the “What To Watch” option which shows the trailers and other Apple-driven recommendations, and the “Up Next” option which are the shows you are working through. In this case, make sure you are selecting “Up Next” to have what you had before the tvOS 13 update.

You may find that the “Up Next” view is out of sync with what you are viewing on the compatible video-on-demand services. But, as you use the regular apps for these services to continue watching your content, this view will update itself to what you watch now.

Article

Owner of Multi-Million Pound UK Flat Sues Over Poor Broadband | ISP Review

Millionaire travel tycoon sues luxury flat owner for £100k over lack of broadband | Evening Standard

My Comments

In the UK, a person who bought a London apartment worth multiple millions of pounds is litigating the owners of the apartment building it is in because of substandard Internet service within the building.

They took up the lease on the apartment after being sold on the fact that there was to be proper Internet coverage to all rooms therein along with proper service within the building. But the service was below par before Hyperoptic ran fibre-optic Internet connectivity through the building in 2016. This led to him using public-access Wi-Fi at a local library and cafe as well as the home network and Internet service at his brother’s home before that installation.

This case, although litigated within the UK, touches on contract-law issues especially when it comes to the description of a premises that is subject to a lease or sale agreement. Here, it is pointing to the expected standard of broadband Internet service and network wiring that is provided within the premises. It is also of importance concerning what is being provided within high-density developments like apartment blocks that based around multiple premises being integrated in few buildings.

But the court case held at the Central London County Court is part of a larger conversation regarding access to multiple-premises developments like apartment blocks by communications infrastructure providers within the UK. This is no matter whether the development is at the budget or premium end of the price scale.

Concurrently, the UK Government are working on regulations regarding the provision of this infrastructure, whether to provide communications and Internet service to the premises in the development or to establish a mobile-telecommunications base station especially where a landlord or building committee who has oversight regarding the building won’t respond.

I see this case bring in to scope issues regarding how the standard of telecommunications services available to a premises is represented in its sale or lease contract. This will have a stronger affect on apartments and similar premises that are integrated within a larger building. It will also be part of the question about infrastructure providers’ access to these buildings and the premises therein.