Shocking iPods, netbooks and an offshoring backlash

Broadband Britain was back on the agenda this month - with speed and bandwidth once again hot topics.

First up Virgin Media announced it was trialling 200Mbps broadband - four times faster than its current UK top speed service of 50Mbps.

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

However, according to principal analyst at Forrester Research Ian Fogg, the trial is likely to show up other network blockages which put a cap on speeds.

"You get a point where the web servers, the general speed of the internet becomes the bottleneck - not the connection into someone's house," he said.

Not so in engineer and futurist Peter Cochrane's case, as the silicon.com columnist explained how he has maximised the bandwidth of his home broadband by using a broadband aggregation service, along with two phone lines and a one-metre parabolic dish that harvests the signals from two 3G broadband suppliers.

The result? 9.5Mbps in deepest rural Suffolk and a "next phase" plan to ramp up to 19.5Mbps in the future. Click here to read how Cochrane scavenges enough bandwidth to power his digital enterprise.

For those not blessed with a head for DIY telecoms engineering, this month saw news that BT is to double the speed at which it rolls out fibre to the cabinet - bringing faster broadband in reach of more than a million homes by next year.

From fat pipes to thin, in-ear pipes: Apple this month said iPhone and iPod users may experience a "small and quick" shock via their earbuds due to a build-up of static electricity - and even suggested wearing natural fibres and moisturiser as a deterrent.

Meanwhile silicon.com's all-things-Apple columnist Seb Janacek was asking whether Apple might be tempted to diversify its smartphone portfolio - iPhone nano anyone? - in the face of aggressive competition from the likes of BlackBerry-maker RIM.

Perhaps Apple should also consider getting into the mini laptop market?

These dinky notebooks are certainly a popular topic with silicon readers who got clicking in droves on our netbooks Cheat Sheet to learn the what, why and how of this handbag-sized gadget.

Also popular on the site this month: news that Google is to get on its bike to extend the reach of its 360-degree Street View service, and more rumblings about Auntie's iPlayer and the licence fee.

Meanwhile analyst house Gartner is advising companies to skip a Vista upgrade and prepare for Windows 7 instead. Quelle surprise.

Last but not least, our Bangalore-based columnist Saritha Rai made a few waves discussing what's not popular in the current economic downturn: outsourcing. Bangalore tech workers are suffering a Western backlash as homegrown jobs get harder to find, she reports.