Akamai figures show that the inauguration of President Donald Trump broke all live video streaming records in terms of the rate of data transmission in Terabytes per second (tbps).

Largest Single Live News Event.

The figures from Akami show that prior to President Trump’s inauguration, the largest live streaming event was U.S. Election Day (evening) back on 8th November 2016 when 7.5 Tbps was achieved. President Trump’s inauguration ‘trumped’ that figure with a high of 8.7 Tbps during the opening of his speech.

Context?

To put these figures in some kind of context, other figures from U.S. content delivery network (CDN) and cloud services provider Akami show that the UK 2011 Royal Wedding only managed 1.3 Tbps. It is accepted however that real comparisons over longer periods of time are difficult due to rapid advances in HD video streaming, which now requires higher bitrates and has more viewers.

Better comparisons could therefore be more recent ones such as the 7.3 Tbps and 3.3 million concurrent viewers for the 2016 Euro soccer tournament final which is clearly much closer to the figures achieved during the inauguration.

Mitigating Factors.

In attempting to explain how President Trump’s inauguration broke all previous live streaming records some commentators have also cited possible mitigating factors such as the fact that:

• It was a mid-day event so many people may have been able to watch from computers at work, or they were live streaming the news via mobile devices.
• There are now more mobile devices in use, and increased broadband speeds and more mobile broadband developments since many of the pre-2010 big-hitting live video streaming event records were set.
• Numbers of video sites and services where people can watch big events are now at their most prevalent.
• There has been a trend for some time now which sees people shifting away from traditional TV viewing to spend more of their time online.
• This was an internationally newsworthy event given what some would consider to be some unprecedented circumstances and publicity leading up to it.

What Does This Mean For Your Businesses?

For businesses seeking to host events, one important publicity and participation avenue to seriously consider may be now be live video streaming. Figures show that more people than ever are now watching video online, it’s being done across more devices, and at increasingly higher levels of quality, and this could represent an important channel for business communications, particularly as more services become available and costs fall.

The UK government’s post-Brexit strategy green paper ‘Building our Industrial Strategy’ shows that its previous commitments to more funding for rural broadband and rolling-out and 5G mobile networks is still on the cards.

Commitments Last Year.

Back in his 2016 Autumn Statement, UK Chancellor Philip Hammond said that the government would invest £400m in a digital infrastructure fund in order to boost commercial financing for new small fibre broadband providers / altnets. The Chancellor also committed to investing £750m in local full fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband roll-out in order to help ibusinesses and the public sector, and to help integrated 5G mobile and fibre projects.

The hope at the time was to help boost the economy more evenly across the UK, even in rural areas, rather than just concentrating on areas such as London and the South East.

What Does The New Green Paper Tell Us?

Apart from a re-confirmation of the £400m digital infrastructure fund investment and offering £10m less for the FTTP rollout, the new green paper outlined the expectations of the government in terms of what the investment could deliver in output and growth.

For example, the green paper highlighted research figures which show that better-connected businesses and customers and increased broadband speeds could add an estimated £17bn per annum to UK output. It also suggested that an increase in broadband penetration of just 10% could be responsible for a potential 0.25% increase in GDP growth.

What Doesn’t The Green Paper Tell Us?

Some critics of the new green paper have pointed out that it doesn’t actually tell us any more about what progress has been made with the improvements in the UK’s digital infrastructure since the November 2016 announcements. It also gives little indication of the timetable for the plan.

Met With Approval By Industry Insiders.

It is perhaps not surprising that whatever the green paper may have lacked, its release and the surrounding publicity have been met with noises of approval by telecoms companies such as Telefónica UK.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Although there is still no clear timescale, the post-Brexit government intention to carry on as planned with the UK communications upgrade has to be good news for businesses, particularly those in rural areas and those outside London and the South East who have felt at a disadvantage.

Comments in the media from businesses have so far included positive responses to the news that businesses nationwide could soon be able to benefit from 5G technology and the local growth that it could bring. There has also been recognition that there are challenges to overcome, such as (government) being able to facilitate an increase in the number of antenna sites for 5G, and the need for the right regulatory environment for coverage and data demands i.e. one that encourages investment and competition.

With many businesses now having upgraded to Windows 10, it’s useful to know which of the latest features the O/S can offer that can help you to work smarter, save time, and get better results.

New Features.

Although Build 15007 has just been introduced (and it includes some new additions), many technical commentators agree that the most impact was made by the rollout of Build 15002 a few days earlier. Here are, arguably, some of the better and important changes from 15002 Build as identified reported by ‘Insider’ previews, that we can expect to be using soon:

• Reduced Blue Light Pollution: Medical studies have shown that the blue light produced by your computer display at night could be a contributor to health problems e.g. obesity, and even cancer. Build 15002 allows you to decrease the amount of blue light produced at night.
• Dealing with Tabs in Microsoft Edge: You can now minimize tabs that you aren’t using and then restore them later. You can also preview tabs in Edge by clicking the down-caret icon from the tab list, and then scrolling a tab carousel.
• More sensible stroke erasing in ‘Ink’: The stroke eraser in Microsoft Ink now only erases one stroke at a time.
• Cortana improvements: Predictive / suggested, legitimate commands for Cortana are now displayed as you type, and Cortana now delivers recurring reminders for your important events.
• Control over update timing: With Windows Pro, Enterprise, and Education you can pause updates for 35 days.
• Refresh Windows: Rather than a complete re-install there are times when a refresh is a better option. This is now possible via theSettings > Recovery menu, used as part of the Defender app.
• Find all connected devices in one place: They are now (conveniently) all listed on one page.
• Create your own Touchpad gestures: You can now create and set your own gestures using three and four-finger swipes in Touchpad (see Settings).
• Personalisation tracking: Your desktop personalisation changes can now be tracked over time, and rolled back.
• Simplified themes: The themes page (in the Settings Menu) is better organised and easier to use.
• Display settings improvements: Display resolution is now in a more convenient front-and-centre position on the page.
• Create virtual machines fast: In Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education, Hyper-V can be used to quickly create virtual machines, thereby enabling you to securely test a new app, or new software without risk to your PC.
• Accessibility improvements: Narrator now works with WinPE (repair Windows) and WinRE (Windows recovery), and Braille support will be available in Windows 10 soon.
• Easy and effective icon scaling: Your screen icons can now be scaled to the right, consistent sizes.
• Sharing options organized better: Now there is an organized panel on the right-hand side of the screen, rather than fly-out apps.
• Easier web payments: Windows 10 will be able to work with Payment Request API, which stores checkout and shipping preferences in your Microsoft Wallet.
• New calendar options: Windows 10 has will soon support the lunar calendar which is widely used throughout other parts of the world.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

As more businesses switch to Windows 10 with its ‘as a service’ model and automatic updates, the O/S will incorporate more helpful and improved features. These could, of course, help to save money, time and improve efficiency.

This will also mean that businesses will have to find ways of keeping up with the latest updates, which could in itself be time-consuming.