All the latest broadband news from the Broadband Genie news team.
Communications watchdog, Ofcom has announced plans to release new guidelines to broadband providers concerning unfair additional charges to consumers’ bills, according to Comms Dealer.
It has been suggested that ISPs will be required to be clear and upfront about charges enforced on customers and also justify any additional charges to the consumer. This could encompass additional charges that are commonly applied for customers who pay by cash or cheque rather than Direct Debit.
Ofcom’s chief executive Ed Richards commented that the new guidelines would ensure that customers would get a “fair deal”: “In addition, our proposals mean that, in some cases, additional charges will be subject to clear limits which would provide direct protection for consumers,” said Richards.
Source: Telappliant
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BT is urging companies to follow its lead after scraping charges for customers calling their customer service and helpdesk numbers. Highlighting the rates charged by other companies, BT estimates that the rest of the industry is making around £70 million every year from 0870 and 0845 numbers.
Before the complete call charge scrapping BT claimed that 92% of calls to the company were already free, however, more than 7 million chargeable calls were being made every year.
Gavin Patterson, BT managing director consumer said: “We’ve always had some of the lowest prices for such calls and now we’ve decided to make them free. We call on the rest of the industry to follow our lead. There really is no excuse for companies whose prices are either sky-high or verging on the ridiculous. We believe that customers are out of pocket to the tune of £70 million a year.”
To compare call charges between the companies, and highlight their new, free rates, BT also released the following table:
Source: BT
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As suspected, the Italian broadband operator Tiscali announced that they had replaced Chief Executive Tommaso Pompei with board member Mario Rosso yesterday, whilst signalling that the company was up for sale. After carrying out extensive restructuring, Pompei’s retirement comes after a two-year stretch in the company.
A Tiscali spokesperson announced that the company is to “explore options to create value for shareholders connected with the process of consolidation taking place in the European telecommunications sector.”
Shares rose following rumours that Pompei was to depart from Tiscali and the company has also reported that preliminary revenues rose 34% to 910 million Euros, whilst earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose 60% to 160 million Euros.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
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Virgin Media has released the anticipated Q4 results revealing an increase of 2.6% earnings to £321 million, but showing a widened pre-tax loss sum of £162 million. It wasn’t all bad news though as they also reported an increase in customer subscription rates in its broadband, telephone and television services of 272,100 customers.
In the report the company confirmed that broadband remained their “premier product” and announced that it would continue to emphasise the speed, quality and reliability of their broadband service to consumers.
Virgin Media now has 3.4 million cable broadband subscribers as well as 0.3 million off-net broadband subscribers, making them the largest residential broadband provider in the UK.
Speaking on the results, Neil Berkett, acting chief executive officer of Virgin Media said: “We are achieving good results from our stated strategy of exploiting our superior network capability to drive broadband growth and deliver the next generation of personalized on-demand content, as well as focusing on reducing churn.”
He continued: “With a strong brand, superior products, and improving service and operations, we believe we are well placed for continued growth and cash flow generation.”
Source: Virgin Media
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Following reports and subsequent concern that three of the UK’s largest ISPs are to team up with advertising service Phorm (click here for more details), The Register has reported that BT had already previously passed data on subscribers to Phorm last year, despite the fact that at the time, the companies denied any working relationship.
An Open Internet Exchange that matches advertisers with publishers, Phorm’s service has been met with caution following previous dabblings in spyware. An article in The Register suggests that BT was previously reluctant to acknowledge partnership with Phorm due to uncertainty of the security of the pilot scheme.
Despite an open investigation into suspected redirection to a domain known as ‘dns.sysip.net’, a confirmed Phorm domain, BT firmly denied any acknowledgement, sending a statement to the thinkbroadband.com threader stating: “sysip.net is a DNS hijacker, similar to a malware therefore your anti virus scan would not have picked this up.”
Since the partnership announcement, BT has now confirmed that it has “carried out extensive commercial, legal and technical due diligence on Phorm.”
Suspicion has been raised that the partnership between BT and Phorm had been agreed quite some time ago and subscriber data could have been passed on without any notification.
Neither BT nor Phorm have been available for comment.
Source: The Register
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Ofcom has been the subject of criticism at the CMA’s 2008 Annual Conference in London after the Communications Management Association accused it of failure to represent the ICT needs of business in drafting regulations.
Carolyn Kimber, chairman of the CMA spoke out that businesses were in need of increased competition and choice for mobile and broadband services but stated that Ofcom seemed to be heavily tied down in consumer competition only.
“We cannot repeat too often to people that business needs are not the goals of the consumer. The communication needs of the business users are overlooked by lawmakers and regulators in favour of consumer needs and the needs of the supplier community,” Kimber said.
In her speech she accused The Office of Communications of failure to business matters seriously, especially when it came to attracting internal investment from enterprises abroad:
“Countries like Japan have invested heavily in its ICT infrastructure and have linked that investment to a 40% increase in Japanese GDP. I can see no progress here,” said Kimber.
In the past Kimber has openly expressed her negative views on Ofcom’s recent proposal to de-regulate broadband wholesale markets. In doing so Kimber suggests that business needs would be ignored.
Peter Phillips, partner of strategy and market developments at Ofcom spoke back, commenting that there was a “misconception” over the time the regulator spent dealing with consumer affairs:
“When we speak about consumers, we meant the full gamut of enterprise customers, and not just the domestic ones. We look to deregulate where there is a case for both the business and consumer,” said Phillips.
Source: ComputerWeekly
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The head of Italian firm Tiscali is expected to quit today at a board meeting that is being held at 5.00pm to discuss the group’s preliminary results.
During the meeting the firm’s board will decide boss, Tommaso Pompei’s (pictured) future and will prepare for an expected sell-off of the group’s ISP businesses. According the The Register Pompei is reported to have fallen out with over members of the board over future strategies.
Rumours were already circulating that Pompei was expected to step down as head of the business after comments that he expected the company to sell its UK broadband operations within the next two years.
Mario Rosso, an existing Tiscali director is expected to replace Pompei for the remaining life of the ill-fated ISP.
Suggestions on the market are that Vodafone, Sky and BT are the most likely suitors for the UK Tiscali business. However, many more ISPs have been thrown into the mix in the recent past including Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media.
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More than ten million customers of UK’s three largest ISPs; BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse are feared to have their browsing habits sold off to a company who has previous been accused of using spyware software. However, the firm behind the new advertising system rejects any concerns.
Using the new Phorm service BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse will be able to share information on customers’ browsing trends in order to implement target specific advertising. As part of the deal the three major ISPs will be able to receive a share of the revenue received through the advertising. Estimates show that BT could receive £85m in 2010 as part of the Phorm deal.
According to reports on The Register, Phorm is run by Kent Ertegrul, an entrepreneur who is most well known for founding PeopleOnPage, an ad network that was blacklisted a few years ago for using spyware software. A spokesman has denied links between PeopleOnPage and Phorm by stating: “The previous company was involved in the adware space, but that was a long time ago,” he said. “We’re actually setting a whole new gold standard in online privacy.”
A BT spokesman has confirmed the company’s trust in Phorm: “BT has carried out extensive commercial, legal and technical due diligence on Phorm and Webwise, and is confident that customer confidentiality and security is wholly protect. Webwise doesn’t collect any personal information, or keep IP addresses, website addresses, keywords or search terms – it simply analyses web pages visited by BT customers and matches them against pre-defined categories of interest to advertisers.”
Virgin Media has also expressed similar views.
Introduction dates for the Phorm service hasn’t been announced by any of the ISPs involved.
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Japanese scientists launched a new communications satellite this week in an attempt to offer 1.2Gb/s internet connections to customers across the Asia-Pacific region.
Called ‘Kizuna’ the new Japanese satellite is an updated version of the 2005 launched Wideband InterNetworking engineering test and Demonstration Satellite.
‘Kizuna’ is planned to offer 155Mb/s downstream and 6Mb/s upstream connections to anyone equipped with a specialist antenna. For those lucky enough to be able to install a five-metre antenna to their property the downstream speeds could potentially reach an impressive 1.2Gb/s.
Speaking on the recent launch the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said that they hoped the new satellite would “make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances.”
After basic preparations are out of the way and the satellite has reached a stable orbit, Kizuna is expected to go live this coming July.
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Two men have been arrested under suspicion of “wi-fi squatting”, making them the first in the North of England to be suspected of logging on to another person’s internet connection illegally.
The arrests occurred after a woman reported two men behaving suspiciously outside her home sat in a car using their laptop computers. It later emerged that the two men were using the woman’s wireless broadband connection to check their emails. Both men were arrested for dishonestly obtaining a communications service and are on bail pending further enquiries.
Despite the fact that there are now thousands of legitimate hotspots around the country, “piggybacking” is becoming an increasingly common, even though under the 2003 Communications Act it is illegal to use another person’s service provider to access the internet and it could result in a maximum penalty of five years in jail or a fine.
A new phenomenon called “warchalking” has also been noted to be aiding regular piggybackers. By drawing a chalk symbol on a wall or pavement, Wi-Fi guerillas are able to expose open wireless internet connections to their fellow piggybacking buddies. However UK founder, Matt Jones has aired his views supporting the tagging concept: “If someone chalks the fact that you’re exposed and you’re a sysadmin, you can see it. You know you’re exposed, and then you can decide what you want to do. I have already had emails from some sysadmins who said they love the idea. Several even said they will print the symbols on a card and put it in their office windows. “
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