1.
Internet
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The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite to link devices worldwide. The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States federal government in the 1960s to build robust, the primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. Although the Internet was widely used by academia since the 1980s, Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world. In the two decades since then, Internet use has grown 100-times, measured for the period of one year, newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators. The entertainment industry was initially the fastest growing segment on the Internet, the Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries, the Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage, each constituent network sets its own policies. The term Internet, when used to refer to the global system of interconnected Internet Protocol networks, is a proper noun. In common use and the media, it is not capitalized. Some guides specify that the word should be capitalized when used as a noun, the Internet is also often referred to as the Net, as a short form of network. Historically, as early as 1849, the word internetted was used uncapitalized as an adjective, the designers of early computer networks used internet both as a noun and as a verb in shorthand form of internetwork or internetworking, meaning interconnecting computer networks. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably in everyday speech, however, the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large number of Internet services. The Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks, the term Interweb is a portmanteau of Internet and World Wide Web typically used sarcastically to parody a technically unsavvy user. The ARPANET project led to the development of protocols for internetworking, the third site was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of Utah Graphics Department. In an early sign of growth, fifteen sites were connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks, early international collaborations on the ARPANET were rare. European developers were concerned with developing the X.25 networks, in December 1974, RFC675, by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine, used the term internet as a shorthand for internetworking and later RFCs repeated this use. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation funded the Computer Science Network, in 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite was standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s. Commercial Internet service providers emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990
2.
Telephony
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The history of telephony is intimately linked to the invention and development of the telephone. The term is used frequently to refer to computer hardware, software, and computer network systems. In this context the technology is referred to as Internet telephony. The first telephones were connected directly in pairs, each user had a separate telephone wired to the locations he might wish to reach. This quickly became inconvenient and unmanageable when people wanted to communicate with more than a few people, the inventions of the telephone exchange provided the solution for establishing telephone connections with any other telephone in service in the local area. Each telephone was connected to the exchange via one wire pair, nearby exchanges in other service areas were connected with trunk lines and long distance service could be established by relaying the calls through multiple exchanges. Initially the switchboards were manually operated by an attendant, a switchboard operator, when a customer cranked a handle on the telephone, it turned on an indicator on the board in front of the operator who would plug the operator headset into that jack and offer service. The caller had to ask for the party by name, later by number. If the called station answered the operator disconnected their headset and completed the station-to-station circuit, trunk calls were made with the assistance of other operators at other exchangers in the network. In modern times, most telephones are plugged into telephone jacks, the jacks are connected by inside wiring to a drop wire which connects the building to a cable. Cables usually bring a number of drop wires from all over a district access network to one wire center or telephone exchange. Most of the exchanges in the world are interconnected through a system of larger switching systems, today, telephony uses digital technology in the provisioning of telephone services and systems. This advancement has reduced costs in communication, and improved the quality of voice services, the first implementation of this, ISDN, permitted all data transport from end-to-end speedily over telephone lines. This service was made much less important due to the ability to provide digital services based on the IP protocol. The integration of software and computer systems is a major development in the evolution of the automated office. The term is used in describing the services of call centers. Its also sometimes used to describe the ability to use your personal computer to initiate, CTI is not a new concept and has been used in the past in large telephone networks, but only dedicated call centers could justify the costs of the required equipment installation. Dialed Number Identification Service on a scale is wide enough for its implementation to bring value to business or residential telephone usage
3.
Digital television
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Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digitally processed and multiplexed signal, in contrast to the totally analog and channel separated signals used by analog television. Digital TV can support more than one program in the channel bandwidth. It is a service that represents the first significant evolution in television technology since color television in the 1950s. Several regions of the world are in different stages of adaptation and are implementing different broadcasting standards and this standard has been adopted in Europe, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Advanced Television System Committee uses eight-level vestigial sideband for terrestrial broadcasting and this standard has been adopted by six countries, United States, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Dominican Republic and Honduras. Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting is a designed to provide good reception to fixed receivers. It utilizes OFDM and two-dimensional interleaving and it supports hierarchical transmission of up to three layers and uses MPEG-2 video and Advanced Audio Coding. This standard has adopted in Japan and the Philippines. ISDB-T International is an adaptation of this standard using H. 264/MPEG-4 AVC that been adopted in most of South America and is also being embraced by Portuguese-speaking African countries. Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcasting adopts time-domain synchronous OFDM technology with a signal frame to serve as the guard interval of the OFDM block. The DTMB standard has adopted in the Peoples Republic of China, including Hong Kong. Digital TVs roots have been tied very closely to the availability of inexpensive and it wasnt until the 1990s that digital TV became a real possibility. S. Until June 1990, the Japanese MUSE standard—based on an analog system—was the front-runner among the more than 23 different technical concepts under consideration, then, an American company, General Instrument, demonstrated the feasibility of a digital television signal. This breakthrough was of significance that the FCC was persuaded to delay its decision on an ATV standard until a digitally based standard could be developed. In March 1990, when it became clear that a standard was feasible. The new ATV standard also allowed the new DTV signal to be based on new design principles. Although incompatible with the existing NTSC standard, the new DTV standard would be able to incorporate many improvements, the final standard adopted by the FCC did not require a single standard for scanning formats, aspect ratios, or lines of resolution. This outcome resulted from a dispute between the electronics industry and the computer industry over which of the two scanning processes—interlaced or progressive—is superior
4.
Sheffield
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Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough in South Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, its derives from the River Sheaf. With some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its industrial roots to encompass a wider economic base. The population of the City of Sheffield is 569,700, Sheffield is the third largest English district by population. The metropolitan population of Sheffield is 1,569,000, in the 19th century, Sheffield gained an international reputation for steel production. Known as the Steel City, many innovations were developed locally, including crucible and stainless steel, Sheffield received its municipal charter in 1843, becoming the City of Sheffield in 1893. International competition in iron and steel caused a decline in these industries in the 1970s and 1980s, the 21st century has seen extensive redevelopment in Sheffield along with other British cities. Sheffields gross value added has increased by 60% since 1997, standing at £9.2 billion in 2007, the economy has experienced steady growth averaging around 5% annually, greater than that of the broader region of Yorkshire and the Humber. The city is in the foothills of the Pennines, and the valleys of the River Don and its four tributaries, the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin. 61% of Sheffields entire area is space, and a third of the city lies within the Peak District national park. The area now occupied by the City of Sheffield is believed to have inhabited since at least the late Upper Palaeolithic period. The earliest evidence of occupation in the Sheffield area was found at Creswell Crags to the east of the city. In the Iron Age the area became the southernmost territory of the Pennine tribe called the Brigantes and it is this tribe who are thought to have constructed several hill forts in and around Sheffield. Gradually, Anglian settlers pushed west from the kingdom of Deira, a Celtic presence within the Sheffield area is evidenced by two settlements called Wales and Waleswood close to Sheffield. The settlements that grew and merged to form Sheffield, however, date from the half of the first millennium. In Anglo-Saxon times, the Sheffield area straddled the border between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, after the Norman conquest, Sheffield Castle was built to protect the local settlements, and a small town developed that is the nucleus of the modern city. By 1296, a market had been established at what is now known as Castle Square, from 1570 to 1584, Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Manor. During the 1740s, a form of the steel process was discovered that allowed the manufacture of a better quality of steel than had previously been possible
5.
South Yorkshire
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South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in England. It is the southernmost county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region and had a population of 1.34 million in 2011 and it has an area of 1,552 square kilometres and consists of four metropolitan boroughs, Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield. South Yorkshire was created on 1 April 1974 as a result of the Local Government Act 1972 with Barnsley as its county town. The Sheffield Urban Area is the tenth most populous conurbation in the UK, South Yorkshire lies within the Sheffield City Region with Barnsley also being within the Leeds City Region, reflecting its geographical position midway between Yorkshires two largest cities. South Yorkshire County Council was abolished in 1986 and its boroughs are now effectively unitary authorities. As a ceremonial county, South Yorkshire has a Lord Lieutenant, South Yorkshire was created from 32 local government districts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, with small areas from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Although the modern county of South Yorkshire was not created until 1974, prehistoric remains include a Mesolithic house dating to around 8000 BC, found at Deepcar, in the northern part of Sheffield. The region was on the frontier of the Roman Empire during the Roman period, the main settlements of South Yorkshire grew up around the industries of mining and steel manufacturing. The main mining industry was coal which was concentrated to the north, there were also iron deposits which were mined in the area. The rivers running off the Pennines to the west of the county supported the industry that is concentrated in the city of Sheffield. The proximity of the iron and coal made this an ideal place for steel manufacture. Although Christian nonconformism was never as strong in South Yorkshire as in the towns of West Yorkshire, there are still many Methodist and Baptist churches in the area. Also, South Yorkshire has a high number of followers of spiritualism. It is the county that counts as a full region in the Spiritualists National Union. The review was abolished in favour of the Royal Commission on Local Government before it was able to issue a final report, the Royal Commissions 1969 report, known as the Redcliffe-Maud Report, proposed the removal of much of the then existing system of local government. Redcliffe-Mauds recommendations were accepted by the Labour government in February 1970, the Local Government Act 1972 reformed local government in England by creating a system of two-tier metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties and districts throughout the country. The act formally established South Yorkshire on 1 April 1974, although South Yorkshire County Council had been running since elections in 1973, South Yorkshire initially had a two tier structure of local government with a strategic-level county council and four districts providing most services. In 1986, throughout England the metropolitan county councils were abolished, the functions of the county council were devolved to the boroughs, joint-boards covering fire, police and public transport, and to other special joint arrangements
6.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
7.
BT Group
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BT Group plc is a holding company which owns British Telecommunications plc, a British multinational telecommunications services company with head offices in London, United Kingdom. It has operations in around 180 countries, BTs origins date back to the founding of the Electric Telegraph Company in 1846 which developed a nationwide communications network. In 1912, the General Post Office, a government department, the Post Office Act of 1969 led to the GPO becoming a public corporation. British Telecommunications, trading as British Telecom, was formed in 1980, British Telecommunications was privatised in 1984, becoming British Telecommunications plc, with some 50 percent of its shares sold to investors. The Government sold its stake in further share sales in 1991 and 1993. BT has a listing on the London Stock Exchange, a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange. BT controls a number of large subsidiaries, BT announced in February 2015 that it had agreed to acquire EE for £12.5 billion, and received final regulatory approval from the Competition and Markets Authority on 15 January 2016. The transaction was completed on 29 January 2016, BTs origins date back to the establishment of the first telecommunications companies in Britain. Among them was the first commercial service, the Electric Telegraph Company. As these companies amalgamated and were taken over or collapsed, the companies were transferred to state control under the Post Office in 1912. These companies were merged and rebranded as British Telecom, in January 1878 Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his recently developed telephone to Queen Victoria at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. John Hudson, with his premises in nearby Shudehill. As the number of installed telephones across the country grew it became sensible to consider constructing telephone exchanges to allow all the telephones in each city to be connected together, the first exchange was opened in London in August 1879, closely followed by the Lancashire Telephonic Exchange in Manchester. From 1878, the service in Britain was provided by private sector companies such as the National Telephone Company. In 1896, the National Telephone Company was taken over by the General Post Office, in 1912 it became the primary supplier of telecommunications services, after the Post Office took over the private sector telephone service in GB, except for a few local authority services. Those services all folded within a few years, the exception being Kingston upon Hull. Converting the Post Office into an industry, as opposed to a governmental department, was first discussed in 1932 by Lord Wolmer. In 1932 the Bridgeman Committee produced a report that was rejected, in 1961, more proposals were ignored
8.
Internet service provider
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An Internet service provider is an organization that provides services for accessing and using the Internet. Internet service providers may be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, Internet services typically provided by ISPs include Internet access, Internet transit, domain name registration, web hosting, Usenet service, and colocation. The Internet was developed as a network between government research laboratories and participating departments of universities, by the late 1980s, a process was set in place towards public, commercial use of the Internet. The remaining restrictions were removed by 1995,4 years after the introduction of the World Wide Web, in 1989, the first ISPs were established in Australia and the United States. In Brookline, Massachusetts, The World became the first commercial ISP in the US and its first customer was served in November 1989. On 23 April 2014, the U. S, a possible solution to net neutrality concerns may be municipal broadband, according to Professor Susan Crawford, a legal and technology expert at Harvard Law School. On 10 November 2014, President Barack Obama recommended that the FCC reclassify broadband Internet service as a service in order to preserve net neutrality. On 31 January 2015, AP News reported that the FCC will present the notion of applying Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 to the internet in a vote expected on 26 February 2015. Adoption of this notion would reclassify internet service from one of information to one of the telecommunications and, according to Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC, the FCC is expected to enforce net neutrality in its vote, according to the New York Times. On 26 February 2015, the FCC ruled in favor of net neutrality by adopting Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 and Section 706 in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to the Internet. The FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler, commented, This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to free speech. They both stand for the same concept, on 12 March 2015, the FCC released the specific details of the net neutrality rules. On 13 April 2015, the FCC published the rule on its new Net Neutrality regulations. ISPs provide Internet access, employing a range of technologies to connect users to their network, available technologies have ranged from computer modems with acoustic couplers to telephone lines, to television cable, wireless Ethernet, and fiber optics. For users and small businesses, traditional options include copper wires to provide dial-up, DSL, typically asymmetric digital subscriber line, using fiber-optics to end users is called Fiber To The Home or similar names. Wireless access is another option, including cellular and satellite Internet access, a mailbox provider is an organization that provides services for hosting electronic mail domains with access to storage for mail boxes. It provides email servers to send, receive, accept, many mailbox providers are also access providers, while others are not. Internet hosting services provide email, web-hosting, or online storage services, other services include virtual server, cloud services, or physical server operation
9.
Public limited company
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A public limited company is a type of public company under the United Kingdom company law, some Commonwealth jurisdictions, and the Republic of Ireland. It is a liability company whose shares may be freely sold and traded to the public, with a minimum share capital of £50,000. Similar companies in the United States are called publicly traded companies, public limited companies will also have a separate legal identity. A PLC can be either an unlisted or listed company on the stock exchanges, in the United Kingdom, a public limited company usually must include the words public limited company or the abbreviation PLC or plc at the end and as part of the legal company name. Welsh companies may choose to end their names with ccc. However, some public limited companies incorporated under special legislation are exempted from bearing any of the identifying suffixes. The term public limited company and the PLC/plc suffix were introduced in 1981, prior to this, all limited companies bore the suffix Limited, which is still used by private limited companies. When a new company incorporates in England and Wales or in Scotland, it must register with Companies House, Formation of a public limited company requires a minimum of one director and one secretary. In England and Wales and in Scotland, the male/female is under 16 years old, some people who are not British citizens are restricted as to what work they may do while in the UK, which may exclude them from being a director. The members must agree to some, or all, of the shares when the company is registered. The memorandum of association must show the names of the people who have agreed to take shares and these people are called the subscribers. There is a share capital for public limited companies, Before it can start business. A quarter of them, £12,500, must be paid up, each allotted share must be paid up to at least one quarter of its nominal value together with the whole of any premium. A company can increase its share capital by passing an ordinary resolution. A copy of the resolution – and notice of the increase on Form 123 – must reach Companies House within 15 days of being passed, no fee is payable to Companies House. A company can decrease its authorised share capital by passing a resolution to cancel shares which have not been taken or agreed to be taken by any person. Notice of the cancellation, on Form 122, must reach Companies House within one month, no fee is payable to Companies House. A company may have as different types of shares as it wishes
10.
Alternative Investment Market
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AIM is a sub-market of the London Stock Exchange that was launched on 19 June 1995. It allows smaller, less-viable companies to float shares with a more flexible system than is applicable to the main market. At launch, AIM comprised only 10 companies valued collectively at £82.2 million, by 2017, over one thousand companies comprise the sub-market, with an average market cap of £80 million per listing. AIM has also started to become an exchange, often due to its low regulatory burden. As of December 2005 over 270 foreign companies had been admitted to the AIM, the FTSE Group maintains three indices for measuring the AIM, which are the FTSE AIM UK50 Index, FTSE AIM100 Index, and FTSE AIM All-Share Index. AIM is an exchange regulated venue featuring an array of principles-based rules for publicly held companies, aside from granting leeway in regard to regulatory compliance, the Exchange also mandates continuous oversight and advice by the issuers underwriter, referred to as a Nominated Adviser. The role of Nomads is central to AIM’s regulatory model, as these play the role of gatekeepers, advisers and regulators of AIM companies. Theoretically, Nomads are liable for damages from tolerating misdemeanors on behalf of their supervised companies, in 2006, the London Stock Exchange launched a review of Nomad activities, resulting in a regulatory handbook for Nomads published by the Financial Services Authority in 2007. Therefore, AIM-listed companies are subject to manipulation by institutional investors. AIM-listed companies usually are required to adhere to the corporate governance requirements of their home jurisdiction. However, the requirements are more onerous than for private companies. Another important element of AIM’s model is the composition of its investor base, although AIM-listed companies are not start-ups, most are small and potentially more risky than a FTSE listing. As a consequence, AIM’s investor base is composed of institutional investors. The following table lists the 10 biggest AIM companies on 17 May 2012, source, File linked from this page. In March 2007, U. S. securities regulator Roel Campos suggested that AIMs rules for share trading have created a market like a casino, Campos reportedly said, Im concerned that 30% of issuers that list on AIM are gone in a year. That feels like a casino to me and I believe that investors will treat it as such, AIM has since issued new rules requiring that listed companies maintain a website. The calibre of participants in the market has also criticised by fund manager John Hempton of Bronte Capital Management. AIM was criticised for allowing Langbar International to be listed and this was due in part because the Nomad failed to carry out due diligence
11.
John Lewis Partnership
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The John Lewis Partnership is an employee-owned UK company which operates John Lewis department stores, Waitrose supermarkets, its banking and financial services, and other retail-related activities. The JLP group is the third largest UK private company by sales in the Sunday Times Top Track 100 for 2016, the chains image is upmarket, and it appeals strongly to middle- and upper-class shoppers. The Partnership also supplies the Ocado web supermarket with Waitrose own-brand foods, John Lewis opened a drapery shop at 132 Oxford Street, London in 1864. Born in Shepton Mallet in Somerset in 1836, he had been apprenticed at 14 to a draper in Wells. He came to London in 1856 and worked as a salesman for Peter Robinson, there he sold silk and woollen cloth and haberdashery. His retailing philosophy was to buy good quality merchandise and sell it at a modest mark up, although he carried a wide range of merchandise, he didn’t bother much about displaying it, and never advertised. His skill lay in sourcing the goods he sold, and most mornings he would go to the City, later he would make trips to Paris to buy silks. Lewis spurned holidays and games, and devoted entirely to the business. He invested the money he made from it in residential and small retail properties and he never held sales, saying that he was intent on building a sound, permanent business. In 1884, aged 48, Lewis married Eliza Baker, a schoolmistress with a university education, a second son, Oswald Lewis, was born in 1887. After Westminster School, both sons joined Lewis in the business, and he gave each of them a share of it on their twenty-first birthdays. There was constant quarrelling between Lewis and his sons, by 1909, Oswald wanted to leave the business, and Lewis senior reluctantly agreed to buy back Oswald’s quarter share of the firm for £50,000. Lewis had several run-ins with Lord Howard de Walden, his Oxford Street landlord, in 1911, de Walden sued him for libel, Lewis was found guilty, but the jury awarded damages of just a farthing. In 1906, Lewis bought a controlling interest in the Sloane Square-based business Peter Jones Limited, Lewis walked from Oxford Street with the £20,000 purchase price in bank notes. He shortened their working day and instituted a system of commission for each department and he held regular meetings at which staff could air any grievances directly with him. In 1916, after a disagreement with his father, Spedan Lewis exchanged his 25 per cent interest in the Oxford Street business for Lewiss shares in Peter Jones Limited and he made improvements in staff conditions, including granting a third weeks paid holiday each year. He had hot and cold running water installed in the staff bedrooms over the shop, in 1918, he started publishing a fortnightly newspaper telling staff how the business was faring. In 1919, he instituted a council, the first decision of which was that staff should be paid weekly instead of four-weekly
12.
Ebuyer
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Ebuyer is an electronic commerce retailer based in Howden, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is the largest independent online retailer of computer and electrical goods in the United Kingdom, the Ebuyer website is the 210th most visited site in the United Kingdom and has 1.3 million registered customers. Ebuyer has a number of business partnerships in place, most notably with Hewlett Packard. Other partners include Microsoft, Toshiba, Sony and Zoostorm, Ebuyer sponsored The Kingston Communications Stadiums west stand in Hull. Its current Managing Director is Stuart Carlisle, who joined the company in August 2013, in July 2008, Gavin Brent, from Holywell in Flintshire, North Wales admitted stealing goods worth £20,000 from the firm before returning the goods, and demanding full refunds. Brent, whose suspicious transactions were spotted by Ebuyers security team, went on to conduct a campaign against the company. This included menacing Ebuyer staff and an officer from Brents now-defunct blog. During 2005 Ebuyer had significant customer service problems, sheffield Trading Standards received 282 complaints about the company, and the customer service phone number had been removed from its website. After this, the promised to improve its service. Average daily telephone wait times are published, on 28 November 2011, eBuyer ran a £1 promotion via email, offering new deals on the hour until midnight. EBuyer angered customers when their website was unable to handle the extra traffic, when the website did work, many customers were emailed after successfully ordering and paying for items, only to be told they were out of stock. Many customers vented their anger at the company on their Facebook page, in December 2013, eBuyer posted pictures to Facebook of its staff wearing Christmas themed jumpers. However, a Facebook user named Phil spotted that one of the images contained a leaderboard in the background that suggested that staff were rated on the number of returns that they reject. EBuyer responded to accusations by stating that these were RMAs avoided by providing technical advice
13.
Dial-up Internet access
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The users computer or router uses an attached modem to encode and decode information into and from audio frequency signals, respectively. In 1979, Tom Truscott and Steve Bellovin, graduate students for Duke University, the USENET was a UNIX based system that used a dial-up connection to transfer data through telephone modems. Dial-up Internet has been around since the 1980s via public providers such as NSFNET-linked universities and was first offered commercially in July 1992 by Sprint. Despite losing ground to broadband since the late-1990s, dial-up may still be used other forms are not available or the cost is too high. Dial-up connections to the Internet require no other than the telephone network. Dial-up requires time to establish a connection and perform configuration for protocol synchronization before data transfers can take place. In locales with telephone connection charges, each connection incurs an incremental cost, if calls are time-metered, the duration of the connection incurs costs. Dial-up access is a transient connection, because either the user, technically inclined users often find a way to disable the auto-disconnect program such that they can remain connected for more days than one. A2008 Pew research center study stated that only 10 percent of US adults still used dial-up Internet access, the study found that the most common reason for retaining dial-up access was high broadband prices. Users cited lack of infrastructure as a less often than stating that they would never upgrade to broadband. According to the United States Federal Communications Commission, 6% used dial-up in 2010, by 2013, that number had fallen to 3%. Broadband internet access via cable, digital line, satellite. Broadband connections typically offer speeds of 700 kbit/s or higher for more than the price of dial-up on average. In addition broadband connections are always on, thus avoiding the need to connect and disconnect at the start, however, many rural areas still remain without high speed Internet despite the eagerness of potential customers. This can be attributed to population, location, or sometimes ISPs lack of interest due to little chance of profitability and high costs to build the required infrastructure. Some dial-up ISPs have responded to the competition by lowering their rates. Dial-up Internet access has undergone a precipitous fall in usage, in contrast to the year 2000 when about 34% of Internet users used dial-up, this dropped to 3% in 2013. Many newer websites also now assume broadband speeds as the norm, modern dial-up modems typically have a maximum theoretical transfer speed of 56 kbit/s, although in most cases, 40–50 kbit/s is the norm
14.
Demon Internet
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Demon Internet is a British Internet Service Provider currently operating as a brand of Vodafone. It was one of the UKs earliest ISPs, offering dial-up Internet access services from 1 June 1992, in 1998 Demon was bought by Scottish Telecom, a wholly owned subsidiary of the private utility company Scottish Power. Scottish Telecom rebranded as Thus plc in October 1999 and floated on the London Stock Exchange, Thus plc fully demerged from Scottish Power in 2002. Thus became part of Cable & Wireless plc, and then part of Cable & Wireless Worldwide following a split of its parent, the company was purchased as part of the acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide by Vodafone Group on 27 July 2012. Demon now operates as a brand of Vodafone, from 1996 to 2006 Demon operated a subsidiary ISP business in the Netherlands. It was sold to KPN in June 2006 and its operations transferred to their XS4ALL subsidiary, the public telephone number of the company, and many of the dialup access numbers, end with 666, a deliberate pun on the name Demon. When Thus plc was formed as a parent of Demon, its randomly allocated company number also ended in 666, Demon Internet was born out of Demon Systems, a bespoke business software development company formed by Cliff Stanford, Grahame Davies and Owen Manderfield. Dismissing the idea that the Demon name might upset those with religious convictions, the original Demon service was hosted using mainly Apricot servers including a gigantic pair of LSI towers named gate and post. When Demon started, WinSock was still a new concept, most PC users had to use KA9Q or NOS - a command line style client - to establish their TCP/IP connection to use ftp, gopher, telnet, etc. The Worldwide Web had not yet arrived, in the early days MS-DOS users were expected to download Internet connection software based on the KA9Q implementation of TCP/IP. Other platforms able to connect to the service included OS/2 Warp, Amiga, Archimedes, Atari, Linux, in 1995 the company acquired Chris Hall and Richard Claytons Turnpike suite for Windows. Its first service was the standard dial-up - full TCP/IP access on a static IP address with a user chosen 4 to 8 character nodename in the. demon. co. uk domain e. g. example. demon. co. uk. This allowed users to receive SMTP mail and other IP traffic direct to their computers and it was possible to operate independently of Demon or to make use of Demons mail, news and IRC servers. Demon was the first ISP to pioneer SDU service priced at £10 a month plus VAT, the low price attracted enough new customers that it was profitable and served to expand Internet usage in the UK. Demon still offers SDU service at the price today but many customers today use ADSL. The book needed a change to Demons mail systems, schofield demanded and got a POP3 mail option added to the Demon service. The book sold 15,000 copies off the first print run, thanks to Demon Systems, Demon Internet always had a strong programming team allowing it to create solutions to emerging issues in-house. All three directors were programmers and Stanford wrote many pieces of software, writing modules to adapt MMDF to Demons purposes
15.
Telewest
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Telewest, formerly Telewest Broadband and Telewest Communications, was a cable Internet, broadband internet, telephone supplier and cable television provider in the United Kingdom. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE100 Index, in February 2007, NTL, Telewest was rebranded as Virgin Media. Telewest originated in Croydon in 1984 under the name Croydon Cable, in 1988, United Cable, of Denver acquired Croydon Cable. Franchises extended the scope in Edinburgh, and the South West. In 1989, United Cable merged with United Artists Cable International. In May 1991, United Artists announced a deal with their largest shareholder TCI, to form the largest cable operator in the US, deal was valued at $142. 5m. A week later, on 8 June the deal was finalized with ITC acquiring the remaining 46% of United Artists, TCI and US West announced a joint venture, and in 1992, the joint venture company became Telewest Communications. In June 1995, Telewest merged with SBC Communications, adding franchises in the Midlands, during this time Telewest founded a consortium called Cable Internet. This consisted of the cable companies in the United Kingdom working together a provide national Internet access service. Telewest purchased the remaining 50% stake in Cable London from NTL in August 1999, in April 2000, Telewest merged with Flextech, and in November extended its cable network with the acquisition of Eurobell, taking the total number of homes passed to 4.9 million. The company later known as Telewest Broadband in a re brand during 2001. In subsequent years Telewest experienced many problems due to huge debts incurred as a result of constructing its cable network and of acquiring other cable companies. In September 2003, Telewest re structured itself, by swapping its unsecured debt for 98. 5% of its shares, the London Stock Exchange then de listed the consolidated shares. Major Telewest shareholders included Huff and Liberty Media, afterwards the company emerged from financial restructuring and completed a merger with NTL in 2006. On its cable network, Telewest provided several residential services including, there were, however, areas that received an analogue service. Telewest was in the process of converting the remaining areas to digital. The digital television service offered a number of different products including true video on demand, a PVR, on Demand, On Demand was the brand name for Telewests video on demand service. The On Demand service launched in 2005, in contrast to Sky Digital which, due to technical limitations, is only able to provide near-VOD services, Teleport is a true VoD system
16.
Modem
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A modem is a network hardware device that modulates one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information for transmission and demodulates signals to decode the transmitted information. The goal is attempting to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily, modems can be used with any means of transmitting analog signals, from light emitting diodes to radio. Modems are generally classified by the amount of data they can send in a given unit of time, usually expressed in bits per second. Modems can also be classified by their rate, measured in baud. The baud unit denotes symbols per second, or the number of times per second the modem sends a new signal. For example, the ITU V.21 standard used audio frequency shift keying with two frequencies, corresponding to two distinct symbols, to carry 300 bits per second using 300 baud. By contrast, the original ITU V.22 standard, which could transmit and receive four distinct symbols, news wire services in the 1920s used multiplex devices that satisfied the definition of a modem. However, the function was incidental to the multiplexing function, so they are not commonly included in the history of modems. S. SAGE modems were described by AT&Ts Bell Labs as conforming to their newly published Bell 101 dataset standard, while they ran on dedicated telephone lines, the devices at each end were no different from commercial acoustically coupled Bell 101,110 baud modems. The 201A and 201B Data-Phones were synchronous modems using two-bit-per-baud phase-shift keying, the famous Bell 103A dataset standard was also introduced by AT&T in 1962. It provided full-duplex service at 300 bit/s over normal phone lines, frequency-shift keying was used, with the call originator transmitting at 1,070 or 1,270 Hz and the answering modem transmitting at 2,025 or 2,225 Hz. The readily available 103A2 gave an important boost to the use of remote low-speed terminals such as the Teletype Model 33 ASR and KSR, AT&T reduced modem costs by introducing the originate-only 113D and the answer-only 113B/C modems. For many years, the Bell System maintained a monopoly on the use of its phone lines, however, the seminal Hush-a-Phone v. FCC case of 1956 concluded it was within the FCCs jurisdiction to regulate the operation of the Bell System. The FCC found that as long as a device was not electronically attached to the system and this led to a number of devices that mechanically connected to the phone through a standard handset. Since most handsets were supplied by Western Electric and thus of a standard design and this type of connection was used for many devices, such as answering machines. Acoustically coupled Bell 103A-compatible 300 bit/s modems were common during the 1970s, well-known models included the Novation CAT and the Anderson-Jacobson, the latter spun off from an in-house project at Stanford Research Institute. An even lower-cost option was the Pennywhistle modem, designed to be built using parts from electronics scrap, in December 1972, Vadic introduced the VA3400, notable for full-duplex operation at 1,200 bit/s over the phone network. Like the 103A, it used different frequency bands for transmit, in November 1976, AT&T introduced the 212A modem to compete with Vadic
17.
Umbrella company
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An umbrella company is a company that acts as an employer to agency contractors who work under a fixed term contract assignment, usually through a recruitment employment agency in the United Kingdom. Recruitment agencies issue contracts to a company as the agency liability would be reduced. It is estimated that 14% of the UK’s professional contractors are currently managing their business by working through an umbrella company, an umbrella company processes timesheets received from the employee/contractor, then issues an invoice to the client for payment. An umbrella company is an employer and therefore all contractors working with them should sign a Contract of Employment and this contractual arrangement establishes the rights and obligations in such matters as maternity pay, sick pay and employment protection. Contract and Employment law is complicated and there is a body of case law which provides guidance on what constitutes a contract of service. The umbrella company provides payroll on behalf of the contractor and bills the agency for work completed by the contractor, the umbrella company provides all social contribution and tax payments and equivalents and National Insurance returns on behalf of the contractor. The client is effectively the company for whom the contractor works and this may be within any industry and across all levels of employment. The agency, if involved, performs the recruitment process on behalf of the client, some agencies will provide a PAYE scheme as part of their offer. This alleviates the requirement for the company but requires additional capability within the organization including professional accountants. Most agencies elect to utilize an umbrella company, the contractor or employee of the umbrella company completes the actual work, completes a timesheet and submits this along with any expense claims to the umbrella company. All umbrella companies use the same PAYE calculations to ascertain how much tax should be paid, the only difference between umbrella companies will be the margin that they charge and the benefit schemes they run. Some of the most common allowable expenses include, mileage & general travel expenses, hotel and accommodation expenses, food and subsistence is rarely allowed to be claimed, as it is HMRCs opinion that you would eat regardless as to whether you are working or not. The exception to rule is if you were staying away from home as part of the work. The 2008 HM Treasury pre-budget report reported on the consultation on the use of travel expenses in conjunction with being employed via umbrella companies, HMT decided that the legislation would remain as is but suggested additional HMRC policing would be carried out to reduce cases of non-compliance. HMT issued the results of the consultation in December 2008, umbrella companies normally keep a part of the income or charge a margin for processing contractors payroll and for some umbrella companies it will go towards contractors insurances. In France, Belgium and Sweden, it is usually a percentage of the invoiced amount, in the UK, it is mostly a fixed weekly amount. The American professional employer organization PEO offering co-employment for small companies
18.
Leased line
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A leased line is a private bidirectional or symmetric telecommunications line between two or more locations provided in exchange for a monthly rent. Sometimes known as a circuit or data line in the UK. Unlike traditional PSTN lines it does not have a telephone number, leased lines can be used for telephone, data or Internet services. Some are ringdown services, and some connect to a Private branch exchange or Router, typically, leased lines are used by businesses to connect geographically distant offices. Unlike dial-up connections, a line is always active. The fee for the connection is a monthly rate. The primary factors affecting the monthly fee are distance between end points and the speed of the circuit, because the connection does not carry anybody elses communications, the carrier can assure a given level of quality. An Internet leased line is an internet connectivity product, normally delivered over fiber. It is also known as a leased line, dedicated line. For example, a T-1 can be leased and provides a maximum speed of 1.544 Mbit/s. The user can channelize the T-1 to separate the 24 DS0 circuits for voice communication, partial the T-1 for data and voice communications, or multiplex the channels into a single data circuit. Leased lines, as opposed to DSL, are being used by companies, leased lines services became digital in the 1970s with the conversion of the Bell backbone network from analog to digital circuits. This allowed AT&T to offer Dataphone Digital Services that started the deployment of ISDN, leased lines were used to connect mainframe computers with terminals and remote sites, via IBM Systems Network Architecture or DECnet. With the extension of services in the 1980s leased lines were used to connect customer premises to Frame Relay or ATM networks. Access data rates increased from the original T1 option up to T3 circuits, leased lines are used to build up private networks, private telephone networks or access the internet or a partner network. Here is a review of the leased line applications in Network designs over time, note that other Layer 3 protocols were used such as Novell IPX on enterprise networks until TCP/IP became ubiquitous in the 2000s. Today, point to point data circuits are typically provisioned as either TDM, Ethernet, Terminating a leased line with two PBX allowed customers to by-pass PSTN for inter-site telephony. This allowed the customers to manage their own dial plan as well as to make significant savings if enough voice traffic was carried across the line, as demand grew on data network telcos started to build more advanced networks using packet switching on top of their infrastructure
19.
Colocation centre
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A colocation centre or carrier hotel, is a type of data centre where equipment, space, and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers. Many colocation providers sell to a range of customers, ranging from large enterprises to small companies. Typically, the customer owns the IT equipment and the facility provides power, customers retain control over the design and usage of their equipment, but daily management of the data center and facility are overseen by the multi-tenant colocation provider. Cabinets – A cabinet is a unit that holds a server rack. In a multi-tenant data center, servers within cabinets share raised-floor space with other tenants, in addition to sharing power, cages – A cage is dedicated server space within a traditional raised-floor data center, it is surrounded by mesh walls and entered through a locking door. Cages share power and cooling infrastructure with other data center tenants, suites – A suite is a dedicated, private server space within a traditional raised-floor data center, it is fully enclosed by solid partitions and entered through a locking door. Suites may share power and cooling infrastructure with other data center tenants, modules – data center modules are purpose-engineered modules and components to offer scalable data center capacity. They typically use standardized components, which make them easily added, integrated or retrofitted into existing data centers, and cheaper and easier to build. In a colocation environment, the center module is a data center within a data center, with its own steel walls and security protocol. Colocation facilities have many special characteristics, Fire protection systems, including passive and active elements. Smoke detectors are installed to provide early warning of a developing fire by detecting particles generated by smouldering components prior to the development of flame. This allows investigation, interruption of power, and manual fire suppression using hand held fire extinguishers before the fire grows to a large size, a fire sprinkler system is often provided to control a full scale fire if it develops. Clean agent fire suppression systems are sometimes installed to suppress a fire earlier than the fire sprinkler system. 19-inch racks for data equipment and servers, 23-inch racks for telecommunications equipment, cabinets and cages for physical access control over tenants equipment. Overhead or underfloor cable rack and fibreguide, power cables usually on separate rack from data, air conditioning is used to control the temperature and humidity in the space. ASHRAE recommends a range and humidity range for optimal electronic equipment conditions versus environmental issues. The electrical power used by the equipment is converted to heat. Unless the heat is removed, the ambient temperature will rise, by controlling the space air temperature, the server components at the board level are kept within the manufacturers specified temperature/humidity range
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