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Osborne's austerity drive cut 270,000 public sector jobs last year

ONS says 71,000 jobs were cut from education and 31,000 from the NHS as public sector
workforce shrank to 5.94 million

George Osborne's deficit-cutting austerity measures led to 270,000 job cuts in the public
sector in 2011, official figures reveal.

The Office for National Statistics published its official assessment of employment in the
public sector alongside Wednesday's unemployment figures, which showed that Britain's youth
unemployment crisis has worsened.

In total, 270,000 public sector jobs were lost in 2011, reducing the total workforce to 5.94
million.

The civil service payroll shrank by almost 7% over the year, while 71,000 roles disappeared
in education, and 31,000 in the National Health Service, the ONS said.

However, there is some evidence that the chancellor's hope that private sector employment
will soak up some of the jobs lost in government is starting to be fulfilled. In the three months to
December, the public sector payroll declined by 37,000. In the same period, 45,000 jobs were
created in the private sector.

Across the economy as a whole, the ONS said unemployment continued rising in the three
months to January to hit its highest rate since 1995, but the pace of growth in joblessness has
slowed.

The number of people out of work on the government's preferred International Labour
Organisation measure increased by 28,000, to hit 2.67 million, according to the ONS, while the
unemployment rate rose to 8.4%. In the three months to December – the latest set of figures
released – the increase in unemployment was 45,000.

The more timely claimant count measure of unemployment also rose: there were 1.61
million people claiming unemployment benefits in February, up 7,200 on a month earlier.

However, the ONS pointed out that the number of short-term claimants – those who have
been receiving Jobseeker's Allowance for less than six months – has been falling for eight
successive months, to 910,000, with all the increase accounted for by rising longer-term
unemployment.

The ONS also underlined the squeeze facing Britain's struggling households, with pay growth
sliding sharply. Average earnings including bonuses were 1.4% higher than a year ago in the three
months to January, down 0.5 percentage points on the three months to December.

Unemployment among the under-25s – a group hit particularly hard by the weak labour
market – has also continued to rise, the ONS said, with 1.04 million 16 to 24-year-olds unemployed
in the three months to January. That took Britain's youth unemployment rate to 22.5%, a record
high since records began in 1992.

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Wi-Fi is drawing power from the mobile phone mast

Most internet traffic on smartphones is carried by Wi-Fi, suggesting mobile networks

could be sidelined

From Norwich to New York, hotspots are pulsing on every street. A messy urban patchwork
of Wi-Fi signals is being gradually woven into a blanket of coverage which may soon be equal to
the signals pumped out by mobile phone masts.

Wireless Fidelity (a non-scientific term invented by marketing people) is considered easy to

hack, and the signals can often be weak, or password protected. But they are usually free and once
in, they work at speeds well above the average mobile connection.

Even for phone users, Wi-Fi has become the most popular way of accessing the internet. So
why are mobile phone companies planning to spend billions connecting us to the internet via 4G
phone masts?

Vodafone says creating its 4G network in Europe will cost €30bn (£25bn). New evidence has
reached my inbox which fuels a growing suspicion that it could be about to waste a lot of money
on what may one day become a niche technology.

In the UK in January 2012, only 19% of all internet traffic on smartphones was transmitted
by a mobile network, according to researchers at Informa. They worked with Mobidia, whose app
measures how much of your data allowance your phone has used up. The information was drawn
from about a third of Mobidia's 600,000 users.

Globally, Mobidia found 70% of smartphone internet traffic is carried by Wi-Fi. In the US, the
total is two thirds. The picture is similar in Hong Kong, Germany and Spain. Among the major
markets, only Japan and Singapore show an even split between networks. Informa says this is
helped by the fact that they already have superfast mobile broadband, but more importantly
because customers are sold generously sized or unlimited data plans at competitive prices.

Informa analyst Thomas Wehmeier, author of Understanding Today's Smartphone User,

published in February, said:

The expansion of Wi-Fi into hundreds of millions of private homes and offices around the
world, the deployment of more than 1m public Wi-Fi hot spots by the end of 2011 and the growth
of a vast and mature ecosystem built of thousands of devices has established Wi-Fi as the most
heavily used wireless technology in the world in terms of volume of data transmitted ... Wi-Fi is
the primary form of connectivity for the overwhelming majority of users and it is apparent that
Wi-Fi has become firmly entrenched in day-to-day usage.

Informa last year forecast 5.8m open to all Wi-Fi hostpots worldwide by 2015, provided by
public bodies such as town councils. BT Group's own network, not strictly public but widely
available, now numbers 3.5m. It consists mostly of domestic Wi-Fi signals which home owners
have agreed to share with other BT customers who might be passing within range.

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Even mobile operators, conscious that their own masts will soon be creaking under the
strain of data traffic, are moving into Wi-Fi. At O2, they have promised a network of 15,000 sites,
in public places like coffee shops, open to customers and non customers.

Analysts Thomas Seitz and Jerry Dellis at Jefferies bank believe Wi-Fi is not as previously
billed just a useful offload or back-up technology for mobile networks. Rather, it is threatening to
eat their lunch.

We believe evidence continues to mount suggesting Wi-Fi should no longer be viewed solely
as a complement to mobile networks, but increasingly should be looked at as a potential
disruptive substitute.

Wi-Fi is not just an offload avenue for wireless data traffic, but in fact may be the primary
means by which wireless data is consumed. Given that the bull case for mobile operators hinges
on capturing revenue from the exponential growth in data volumes, we believe these trends need
to be monitored closely. In our view, how the relationship between the mobile networks and Wi-Fi
evolves could be a key determinant in the investment attractiveness of the wireless services
sector.

In the UK and elsewhere, operators have mostly stopped selling unlimited data at a fixed
price. We now have allowances. When they are breached, heavy penalty charges kick in. Dellis and
Seitz argue this change is driving smartphone users on to Wi-Fi.

It is a grassroots technology, promoted and funded by a ragged coalition of trade bodies,

cafe owners, universities, town councils, entrepreneurs and the occasional telecoms company.
Despite this, it is gaining ground against lavishly marketed mobile networks.

Wi-Fi is triumphing against the odds, suggesting it is the natural choice for carrying most
internet traffic, even on mobile devices.

How often, outside of a car or a train, do we need an internet connection on the move? It
will be Wi-Fi that finally provides a phone signal for passengers on the London Underground, with
the service due to be live for the Olympic games.

Of course we still need 4G networks. A signal that works without having to fiddle about with
passwords is always going to be worth paying more money for. For many rural householders,
whose homes are difficult to reach with fibre cables, the technology offers the best chance of a
fast internet signal. When it comes to keeping cities connected, however, Wi-Fi is slowly draining
the power of the mobile phone mast.