A community in the north of England has decided to dig up the ground so they can lay their own superfast broadband network after becoming fed up waiting for private companies to install it in their area.

Volunteers with spades are taking turns digging a 51 mile (83 km) long trench, which will connect several villages in Lancashire to fibre-optic cables in Manchester.

In other news, civil liberties groups have warned that a government proposal to monitor the calls, emails, texts and internet use of UK citizens could be an invasion of online privacy, and TomTom has blamed a leap year bug for a fault which caused some of its satellite navigation devices to stop working.

Spencer Kelly presents these and other technology news stories.

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