BSkyB has swooped in on the consumer broadband and fixed-line biz of Telefónica UK-owned O2 and BE with a proposed deal worth up to £200m.

The Register exclusively uncovered in January that Sky execs had been spotted sniffing around O2's office. We also revealed that the mobile telco was effectively squeezing all it could out of the service before looking to sell it off to the highest bidder.

The capacity crunch in Australia’s mobile airwaves has brought a response from carriers, with the ACCC reporting that real prices for mobile broadband services reversed their long-standing trend and rose in 2011-2012.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission yesterday delivered its annual “state of the nation” report to the government. Among the gems in the 121-page epic was the observation that total mobile revenues in Australia fell in the 2011-12 period, even while demand for services continued to skyrocket.

French president Francois Hollande wants to take the cable-cutters to the country’s copper, announcing EU20 billion ($AU25 billion) worth of broadband funding to be spent over the next ten years. His aim is to bring universal fibre-based broadband to the country.

The cash-strapped government won’t be providing all the investment itself. In a speech delivered at Clermont-Ferrand last week, Hollande explained that one-third of the funds will be provided by carriers to service high-density areas; carriers and communities are expected to partner to fund rollout in medium-density regions; and the national government will dominate funding for rural areas.

BT has hit out at Ofcom over its plans to tighten control of pricing of the national telco's wholesale Ethernet services outside London and Hull by describing the decision to regulate high speed data links as a "mistake".

The move came as Britain's communications watchdog notified the European Commission of its proposals to further cap pricing on BT - which is the major supplier of wholesale leased line services in the £2bn-a-year UK market.

Brits who are disabled, over the age of 75 or poor are among the vast majority of people living in the UK who make up more than 7 million citizens found to have never been online, official government figures show.

People over the age of 75 are - perhaps unsurprisingly - the age group least likely to have ever accessed the internet with 3.23 million of those UK pensioners remaining completely offline.