Athens Motown

Hello, I’m Thomas Newton, a professional writer with over 15 years of experience.  

I am currently retraining as a technical writer (ISTC member, associate/entry-level), and will be documenting my progress here. 

You may remember me from such headlines as How did Labour vote on the Investigatory Powers Act? and Face/On: London’s Met Police to use live facial recognition tech in targeted ops, and also this pinned tweet.  

I have tested laptops of all shapes and sizes, like this monstrous Acer desktop replacement, and this foldable OLED laptop-tablet hybrid from Asus.

I have reviewed phones, tablets, speakers, soundbars, smartwatches, printers, routers, and pay TV services.

I got to see a demo of 4k TV being broadcast live over digital terrestrial spectrum, back in 2015 – ten years on, and we still can’t get 4k TV channels over the airwaves. 

I’ve seen brand-new optical fibre being put into the ground during a press trip to the Superfast Cornwall project, and I’ve been inside cutting edge R&D and testing facilities run by BT and Virgin Media. 

During a visit to a router testing facility at the University of Bristol, I locked myself inside an RF-shielded anechoic chamber for 15 minutes, to see what it felt like (short version: pretty bloody weird).

I’ve been lucky enough to get a nose-to-tail look at the UK telecoms landscape, play with new phones and tablets months before they hit the shelves, and file reports from all corners of the world, from Las Vegas to Taipei.

Now, for my next act…

While I am not currently pitching articles or accepting commissions, if you’d be interested in working with me in the future, please do get in touch.