UK network provider EE has confirmed that Facebook has indefinitely delayed the plans to launch the HTC First, aka the Facebook phone, in the U. K. market as Facebook is giving a facelift to its Home software.

EE, the mobile phone carrier that was to carry the phone exclusively, has also confirmed that that the pre-orders for the phone are being refunded.

The carrier added that the decision to focus on adding new customization features to Home and indefinitely delay the plans to launch the Facebook Phone in the U. K. was taken by Facebook following customer feedback.

The HTC First, the Android-based customized Facebook phone, will reportedly not be sold in the UK.

According to Engadget and others, UK network provider EE, one of the HTC's carrier partners in Europe, has confirmed that it would not sold the so-called Facebook Phone in the UK as Facebook was looking to enhance the Facebook Home experience's customization features before the phone's availability on the right hand side of the Atlantic.

There is a wide difference between fastest and slowest broadband speeds available to households in British cities, a new study by price comparison firm uSwitch. com revealed.

The wide difference leaves many consumers in cities like London, Bristol, Glasgow and Northampton in the slow lane. The biggest gap between the fast and slow broadband is being suffered by Birmingham homes, where the difference is 89 per cent.

Nick D'Aloisio, a British teenager, has become one of the country's youngest millionaires after selling its Summly app to Yahoo.

Designed and built by Nick D'Aloisio two years back at the age of 15, Summly has so far earned nearly 1 million downloads. D'Aloisio yesterday announced that Internet search firm bought the app for around £20 million.

The 17-year-old told City A. M., "It's beyond my wildest dreams; I really still see this as a hobby."

D'Aloisio and his Summly team members will now work at Yahoo's Soho-based London headquarters' mobile apps unit.

Heath Hall, the most expensive home for sale in Britain, has become cheaper by a whopping £35 million, but it still costs £65 million.

Property tycoon Andreas Panayiotou, the owner of the 14-bedroom Heath Hall mansion, had put it on the market in the year 2011 with a guide price of £100 million.

But a lack of interest in the mansion forced Mr. Panayiotou to drop the asking price to a more realistic £65 million.

The price cut is enough to purchase a 6-bedroom Georgian terrace in up-market Belgravia or as many as 215 "average" homes in the country that cost £162,000 each.

Travel firm Thomas Cook has announced its decision to close its 195 high street travel agencies and cut 2,500 jobs in the UK.

The planned closures and job cuts are a part of the 172-year-old travel firm's restructuring plan, which aims to turn its distressed British business around.

Thomas Cook, the world's oldest travel firm, also said that most of the cuts would affect positions in the back-office and within the firm's retail network.

Manufacturing activity in the UK dropped unexpectedly in February, giving a major set-back to hopes that the country can return to growth in the next few months.

The recently published Markit/CIPS Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for the UK showed that manufacturing activity in the country dropped from 50.2 in January to 47.9 in February, well below the reading of 50 that separates growth from contraction.

According to the findings of Nielsen's Mobile Consumer Report, 97 percent of the UK population owns a mobile handset, with nearly 61 percent owning a smartphone. More than half of the smartphone users in the country have said that they have never received any adverts when their handset in is use.

The Nielsen report's revelation that nearly 53 percent of the UK smartphone users haven't got adverts while using the phone implies that either mobile advertising is easily ignored by the users or it is apparently an underused marketing channel.

A limited edition £2,000-priced super-pram will be created by Silver Cross, a luxury brand name in baby `carriages', in collaboration with James Bond's favourite car brand Aston Martin.

The luxury pram - which is being touted as "the most exclusive pram in the world" - will be the Silver Cross Surf-Aston Martin Edition pushchair. Only 800 units of the limited edition pram will be manufactured for sale in Harrods.

Waitrose is the best supermarket in the UK, while Tesco is the worst, according to a new survey by consumer watchdog Which?

The watchdog polled 11,000 consumers across the country, and found most respondents voting in favor of Waitrose, which received a customer score of 82 per cent.

Waitrose also received five-star ratings for the quality of its fresh products as well as for its customer service.

Measures taken by the UK Government to revive the ailing economy have made life extremely difficult for savers and pensioners, but the measures like quantitative easing (QE) were necessary to save the broad economy, the incoming Governor of the Bank of England (BoE) said.

Mark Carney, who will become BoE's governor in July this year, said that all-time low interest rates have hit prudent households very hard, with pensioners among the hardest hit.

The UK Government has launched a consultation seeking comments on a plan to ban immigrants from taking driving tests in foreign languages.

Transport minister Stephen Hammond said that the consultation paper set out proposals to remove or decrease the language support given to non-English speaking people taking theory & practical driving tests.

Announcing the consultation, the minister said, "It seeks views on whether foreign language voiceovers and interpreters should continue to be provided or whether the statutory driving tests should be conducted only in the National Languages.

Internet search giant Google revealed in a Tuesday announcement that it is funding a Raspberry Pi Foundation project which involves the handing out of 15,000 free Raspberry Pi microcomputers to students in the UK.

According to Google, the credit card-sized Raspberry Pi microcomputers - which were launched last year - will be given free to schools in the UK chiefly with the aim of producing a new generation of computer scientists, particularly hardware and software hackers.

London-based law firm Olswang has confirmed that a group a group internet users is suing Google for tracking them online without seeking their permission.

The petitioners say that they used Apple's Safari browser between September 2011 and February 2012, and Google bypassed the browser's security settings to plant a cookie to skim information from them to personalize ads.

The temporary cookie planted in the Safari web browser was spotted by a Stanford researcher.

British communications regulator Ofcom has slapped Playboy with a hefty fine of £100,000 (around US$160,000) for failing to restrict children from accessing hardcore porn on its websites.

Ofcom said that Playboy failed to have acceptable controls on two of its websites, viz. Playboy TV and Demand Adult, to make sure viewers are over 18 years of age.