BT reckons a government plan to put a 50p tax on copper lines in order to fund fibre broadband to the country's hard to get to places can only go so far - and will probably never reach the last fifth of the UK.

The plan, unveiled last month in the government's Digital Britain report, is aimed at ensuring superfast broadband is rolled out to areas likely to be ignored by the market.

IT staff at British Airways (BA) have saved the company more than £2m by working for free or taking unpaid leave amid forecasts of a slump in airline IT spend this year.

Techies were credited by BA CEO Willie Walsh for being among the 7,000 of BA's 40,000 staff who cut back on hours or pay to help the company through the credit crunch.

Telecoms companies may tell us it's good to talk but they seem to be struck dumb when it comes to communicating with their own customers, according to a new poll.

In a survey asking 5,000 Brits to vote for UK businesses with the worst customer service half of the top 10 are telecoms companies.

Skype shed the beta tag on Monday to reveal version 3.0 of its VoIP application for Windows Mobile phones. Skype 3.0 for Windows Mobile is nearly identical to the beta build that preceded it but mobile Skype users graduating to it from version 2.5 will notice some major feature additions - notably the capability to transfer files and to send SMS messages.

File transferring and SMS are carryover features from desktop Skype and are initiated via relatively small buttons on the mobile interface that you can access from the contact list. Click the dark, round icon to send an SMS using Skype Credit, and select the grey drop-down arrow to select "send file".

The head of UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has urged European parliamentarians and telecommunications ministers to resolve an argument that has erupted over a raft of new legislation.

At the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (Ecta) conference in Brussels on Thursday, Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards said if the Telecoms Package failed to become law by the end of this year, it would be a "significant blow" to regulatory certainty in Europe.

How is the UK's IT workforce faring in today's economic climate? silicon.com's annual Skills Survey, now in its 11th year, aims to find out.

The survey is intended to track the year's skills trends, and discover how things have changed in the last 12 months.

City University London is setting up a centre dedicated to training the next generation of CIOs.

The centre will provide short courses and ultimately a Masters-level qualification for mid-career IT professionals looking to develop themselves and acquire the skills to move up the IT ladder.

BT is about to formally launch a virtualised infrastructure service called BT Virtual Data Centre, which will form the basis of its cloud-computing strategy.

VDC involves the virtualisation of servers, storage, networks and security delivered to customers via an online portal as cloud-based services. On Thursday, BT's Global Services division announced the customer rollout of VDC, which will initially target multinational corporate customers and the public sector.

The government has announced plans for a 50p per month levy on all fixed copper lines to fund the expansion of fibre broadband to areas where the market fears to tread.

The proposals come as part of the government's Digital Britain report - its blueprint for ensuring the UK does not become the laggard of the global digital economy.

CIOs spend countless hours listening to suppliers pitch their technology, so silicon.com decided to make the process a lot more entertaining by putting the vendors on the spot. Welcome to the 60-Second Pitch.

Suppliers have just one minute to pitch their product or service to a panel of current and former heads of IT, who then have the opportunity to quiz the vendor before giving the technology a green or red light - just for fun, of course.

Ofcom has published its draft recommendations on how to manage radio spectrum during the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

A final version will follow later this year but, in the interim, people can read the file here covering the various effects of the Olympics on London's spectrum use. The telecoms regulator published the document on Wednesday.

Liverpudlians probably aren't doing it but their neighbours over the border in Wales more than likely are.

A survey of working habits in the UK has identified the towns most likely to offer flexible working, with Sheffield coming out top after a third (32 per cent) of companies there said they do so.

Open-phone company Koolu says it is two weeks from shipping beta developer versions of the Neo FreeRunner mobile phone running Google's open-source Android Cupcake operating system. Full consumer versions should follow towards the middle of July.

Koolu is using the GTA02 version of the Neo FreeRunner from Openmoko, which is entirely based on open phone standards.

Orange has walked away from talks to buy the Project Kangaroo online on-demand media player technology.

The mobile operator, which is owned by France Telecom, said in a statement: "We can confirm that we are not pursuing our interest in the catch-up TV service Kangaroo. After in-depth due diligence, we concluded that it was unlikely that an outcome which benefited France Telecom's Orange operations would be met."

Can't decide between a netbook, a smartphone, ultramobile PC or some other piece of mobile gadgetry? It won't be a decision bothering you for much longer.

According to Lee Williams, director of mobile OS organisation the Symbian Foundation, hardware roadmaps are heading in a new direction altogether - and in the not-too-distant-future too.

BT is planning to double the pace of its forthcoming next generation broadband fibre rollout, bringing up to 100Mbps broadband within reach of more than a million premises next year.

The move comes after the telco reported tough financials and announced a further 15,000 job cuts. CEO Ian Livingston said a faster fibre rollout would help it safeguard jobs.

A bank card that allows workers to securely access company IT systems from outside the office is being trialled in the UK.

Up to 1,000 staff at Deloitte and Visa will be given new Barclaycard Corporate Visa cards, revealed by silicon.com last year, which generate one-time-use passcodes that allow remote access to the company IT system over a virtual private network (VPN).

Fancy loading your Android phone up with some cool apps? So did silicon.com's Natasha Lomas - and over the next 10 pages you can find more info on the ones she liked.

Cab4Me

Broadband speed freaks take note: cable broadband purveyor Virgin Media has upped the ante by announcing a trial of 200Mbps broadband - four times faster than its current fastest fat pipe service.

The company said it will use the trial to assess the commercial viability of deploying a 200Mbps service in the UK - and to investigate the kind of applications consumers could use regularly in such a speedy future.

The European Parliament has voted through a massive tranche of reforms for the European telecommunications sector, including a significant net-neutrality amendment.

The 'Telecoms Package' of laws was voted into force on Wednesday with a large majority, and must now be ratified by the Council of Telecoms Ministers. The vote marks the first time that internet access has been recognised in European law as a fundamental right on a par with freedom of expression.

Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of BlackBerry-maker RIM sat down with silicon.com's Jo Best at RIM's Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando to talk about touchscreen devices, CIOs and the future of the BlackBerry.

You were quoted as saying the company is working on a successor to the Storm. What more can you tell us about the next Storm, the next touchscreen device?Every product we have has evolutions and roadmaps - that's just a normal part of our lives. We don't give any specifics on our products before they're announced, so I can't give you any details. That was just talking the normal evolution of our business…

RIM has officially taken the wraps off the latest version of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

BES 5.0, unveiled at the company's Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando, will bring in a number of new features aimed at IT admins.

BlackBerry-maker RIM and HP have teamed up for a new set of services aimed at the smartphone platform.

As part of the partnership, HP debuted its Operations Manager for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

As the recession forces companies to become leaner and the comparative savings from offshoring diminish, banks and businesses are considering returning work back to the UK.

Speaking at the FT Global Outsourcing and Offshoring Conference yesterday, Ian Cramb, chief operating and technology officer for global consumer group for EMEA at Citigroup, said increasing efficiency at home has spurred the company to review which offshored work could be brought back in-house.

Digital Britain. Sounds like a rubbish tech-themed comedy show.According to some of the more acerbic industry watchers, you may well be right.

However, to put it a little more literally, Digital Britain is the government's grand plan for the UK's technological future.

The Volvo Ocean Race is an annual round the world yacht endurance competition, described as the 'Everest of sailing'.

This year, eight teams are competing in the event, including two Ericsson teams and two from telco Telefonica. The race started in Alicante, Spain, in October last year and will end in St Petersburg, Russia, in late June.

eBay announced on Tuesday plans to spin off its internet phone and video-conferencing service, Skype, with an IPO in the first half of next year.

The decision comes four years after online auction giant eBay acquired Skype for $2.6bn, with the plans to offer customers the ability to discuss their transactions in real-time. But over the course of the four years, eBay found its acquisition failed to provide the outcomes it was after.

Telepresence and cloud computing are likely to drive enterprise network needs in the short term, according to president and CEO of AT&T Labs - the telco's research hub.

Keith Cambron told silicon.com high-definition videoconferencing will be increasingly important for businesses, not just as a way of burnishing their green credentials through "the avoidance of travel" but to boost staff collaboration and productivity.

The world's largest reinsurer has struck a multimillion-euro networking deal with BT.

The 42-month deal will see the telco supply Munich Re with an MPLS network across 60 sites in 33 countries.

For David Jones, the role of CIO at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is something of a departure: for the majority of his career, Jones has been an army officer.

Before joining the CPS 14 months ago, Jones was more used to dealing with the rigours of military life than the rigours of heading up an IT function within the civil service.

Weaknesses in a £1.2bn computer system to track journeys into the UK could allow undesirable individuals to slip into the country, a security expert has claimed.

From 2010 the e-Borders system will cross reference the personal details for almost all passengers travelling to and from Britain against a watchlist of suspects.

BT is to merge two of its IT services acquisitions and rebrand the combined business as BT Engage IT, the company announced on Thursday.

The communications and IT firm bought Basilica and Lynx Technologies in late 2007, claiming that the acquisitions would help it target the SME market. According to a statement on Thursday, BT Engage IT will offer professional services and products in the areas of virtualisation, unified communications and managed services. The merging and rebranding will take place on 1 April.

The Law Society has inked a £12m, five-year IT outsourcing deal with Logica.

The deal covers server support and maintenance, hosting, remote infrastructure management and WAN management.

A group of privacy and security experts has charted the proliferation of UK government databases and concluded that some of them could be illegal.

The Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), an independent technology thinktank, published a report on Monday entitled Database State. The authors described 46 government databases, labelling a quarter of them "fundamentally flawed and almost certainly illegal". The report was commissioned by the cross-party Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

BT has revealed the first exchanges that will get fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), starting from next year.

The telco's local access division Openreach will deploy FTTC at 29 exchanges across the UK from early 2010, bringing speeds of up to 40Mbps - and potentially 60Mbps - within reach of 500,000 homes and businesses.

Skype is going after business customers with a new service designed to help companies reduce communications costs.

On Monday, Skype, which is owned by eBay, will announce a new version of its internet calling service that allows companies to use their IP-enabled corporate phone systems to make Skype calls using regular office phones instead of using a headset that plugs into a PC.

Brewer SABMiller has signed a five-year, $120m deal with BT for comms services.

Under the deal, BT will take over communications and networked IT services across Latin America and Europe, including the UK, for the beer company.

The recession is forcing businesses to search for ways to cut costs - and unified comms is one place many will start, says Quocirca's Bob Tarzey.

As politicians quibble about whether a recession is turning into a depression, businesses are more focused on the bottom line. For IT departments this means two things: cutting their own costs and helping the broader business to cut its costs. Achieving the latter will serve the long term reputation of IT well.

Unified comms - I've heard of it but frankly I don't know what it actually means.You're not alone. Apart from the fact it sounds unapologetically dull, unified communications (or UC for short) is an amorphous and rather abstract concept. This is not a neat, one-size-fits-all technology - UC deployments vary from company to company, depending on each particular business' needs.

That's reassuringly vague. So where do you begin with UC?Let's start by taking a look at the cocktail of comms that can be found in a modern business.

Google unveiled a service called Google Voice on Thursday that indicates Google wants to do with your telephone communications what companies such as Yahoo! have done with email.

Google Voice - the new version of the GrandCentral technology Google acquired in July 2007 - has the potential to make the search giant a middleman in people's telephone communications. With the service, people can pick a new phone number from Google Voice; when others call it, Google can ring all the actual phones a person uses and handle voicemail.