In Short

A round-up of today's other stories in brief.

Broadband speeds set to double

Broadband speeds for Irish internet users should almost double soon after changes to pricing and products by Eircom. From next month, customers on 2Mbit, 3Mbit, 4Mbit and 6Mbit will be upgraded to 3Mbit, 7.6Mbit, 10Mbit and 12Mbit respectively. The changes apply to 240,000 customers of Eircom and other providers who resell its service.

Cost of .ie address cut again

The cost of registering a .ie web address has been cut by 5.8 per cent by the IE Domain Registry (IEDR). The wholesale cost is now €65 although the prices charged by resellers are significantly less. Register365 said it has reduced its prices from €25.95 to €21.95. This is the fifth year in a row that the IEDR has cut prices and a .ie address is now 48 per cent cheaper than it was in 2003.

Middle East cast adrift by anchor

India and the Middle East experienced slow internet connections and problems making international phone calls after two submarine cable systems in the Mediterranean were cut this week. The break, which may have been caused by a ship's anchor, near Alexandria, northern Egypt, will take 12 to 15 days to fix.

Home-grown Sage on sale here at last

SageCRM.com, the software-as-a-service version of the popular customer relationship management software, is now available in Ireland. Although built and managed by the Sage Global team in Dublin and used by 2.8 million users worldwide, SageCRM.com has not been available in Ireland before.

Google Gphone talk back online

The rumour mill about the possibility of a Google "Gphone" has cranked up again. Speculation is that the internet giant and PC maker Dell will announce a handset at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month.

ComReg offers wireless licences

Up to 18 licences to operate wireless telecoms services are being made available by ComReg. A reserve price of €350,000 has been placed on each of the national licences which will operate in the 26 GHz frequency band.