All the latest broadband news from the Broadband Genie news team.
Thus, the broadband and telecoms supplier who owns Demon Internet is expected to receive a takeover bid offer from Cable and Wireless today.
Cable and Wireless previously had a £1.65 per share offer for the Scottish telecoms company rejected after it was thought that the deal wasn’t lucrative enough. The Guardian now suggests that the bid has been increased to £1.80 however, it has been suggested that Thus are hoping for £2.52 per share.
If the deal is successful then Cable and Wireless will seriously increase their broadband presence with the most important move since they sold their Bulldog broadband service over to Tiscali.
Source: PC Pro
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Over 120 residents in South Derbyshire have filed complaints to their local District Council after experiencing problems with their BT broadband services last week. The South Derbyshire-based local paper, the Burton Mail are calling for all broadband customers affected to get in touch in order to investigate the cause of the problem:
“The council wants as many case studies as possible to present to BT bosses – hoping that they will be able to investigate and solve the problem.
Furthermore, the authority is also considering forwarding their findings to the BBC as part of a documentary-type programme about broadband and providers across the UK.
People experiencing problems with their broadband are urged to first contact their supplier and then the council, on 01283 221000.”
Source: ISPreview
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PC World has announced the launch of its new service – “Get Connected” – an initiative that includes offers for free and discounted laptops, mobile broadband, home broadband and digital TV. Through the new PC World offers customers should be able to purchase their equipment and get connected to the internet immediately with brand new computing and mobile broadband equipment like USB dongles straight away.
PC World is currently advertising three new ‘Get Connected’ deals. For those interested in getting hooked up with mobile broadband the £10 a month ‘Get Broadband Anywhere’ offer includes a free USB dongle and 1GB of data allowance.
For a contract that’s at least £30 for 24 months it’s possible to sign up a mobile broadband deal from the likes of 3 with a free laptop, a USB stick plus 3GB of Data and 150 SMS. Alternatively, you can receive up £350 off any laptop in store.
Finally, there are three different land-based broadband offers available including a “free broadband for six months and then £9 a month” offer for Virgin Media subject to a 2MB speed limit and a fair usage policy.
To check details of all of the ISPs used in the offer visit Broadband Genie and Mobile Broadband Genie’s information-packed service provider lists.
Source: PC World
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A new deal has been signed by the Scottish government to provide satellite broadband for all areas that are unable to receive ADSL. With a £3.3m contract deal, Avanti Communications Group has been given the funds to make broadband available in even the most remote areas. This contract was agreed after the Scottish government asked residents wanting to make use of broadband where it is not yet available to add their names to a register. More than 3,500 added their names to the survey.
Not only does Avanti have the funds to manage the new satellite network project it will also act as the internet service provider and will liaise with all of the residents that included their names on the register.
Source: ZDnet
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When choosing the most suitable ISP download caps are one of the first factors that play a part in the decision process. Speculation is arising that both land-based broadband and mobile broadband will revert to a pay-as-you-go format following increasingly heavy usage on the customers behalf when on unlimited download packages.
Limits could be taken a step further however, as a move by the Japanese broadband firm OCN has signalled the potential for ISPs to also cap customer uploads.
OCN announced this week that from August all of its 7 million customers would be limited to 30GB of uploads per day in an effort to stabilise internet speeds and connections. The hope is that 30GB of upload data is far too excessive for any normal broadband user to achieve and so the rule is merely targeted towards persistent file sharers.
Explaining the new rule the OCN statement release confirmed, “a small number of individual users have been monopolising substantial network resources by uploading massive amounts of data, which can slow the speed of the network and lower communication quality for other users.”
Whilst 30GB sounds like a hefty amount of data usage to achieve within the UK it is important to remember that Japanese residential fibre connections run at an average of 100Mbit/s.
Source: Tech Radar
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Web regulators voted yesterday to allow the creation of new domain names in replacement of the standard end URLs like ‘.com’, ‘.co.uk’ and ‘.org’. New domain names like ‘.car’, ‘.bank’ and .Pepsi’ are expected to be in regular use by 2009, whilst adult sites are expected to snap up ‘.xxx’. Additionally, companies like the online trading site eBay have already expressed an interest in having their own domain name.
The new announcement by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Names (ICANN) has been touted as “one of the biggest shake-ups in Internet history”. From 2009 1.3 billion users will be able to purchase an unlimited number of generic addresses featuring common words, brands or company names and cities.
Details on the availability of new domain names are expected to be released within the next three or four months with the release of the domains due for the second quarter of 2009.
In order to limit the possibility of “cybersquatting” for the new domain names the ICANN said that they will be looking into ways of limiting the “abusive registration of new domain names.” Certain domain names will also be blocked if they are deemed a security risk or are morally offensive.
Source: Yahoo News
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It has been reported that BT, the UK’s largest broadband provider has begun issuing disconnection threat letters to all subscribers they believe are sharing copyright music over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.
An anonymous subscriber revealed that she had received an email from BT warning her that she was believed to have downloaded and shared the track Biology by Girls Aloud. The email contained evidence collected by the BPI showing evidence of her interaction with the open source filesharing program Ares in May earlier this year. The evidence provided included a timestamp, a file name and an IP number and the correspondence was addressed from a member of the “Customer Security Team” stating: “I have received a complain regarding on copyrighted material over the internet. On investigation, I have found that your account was used to make this offer.”
The email continued: “Sorry, but we’re obliged to point out that further similar problems may have to lead to the termination of your account, as such activity contravenes BT’s Acceptable Use Policy.”
Geoff Taylor, chief of BPI commented on the new approach to illegal downloaders in a statement to The Register: “Establishing partnerships with ISPs is the number one issue for the BPI, and we are beginning to form positive working relationships with BT, Virgin Media and most of the other major ISPs.”
The tactic that BT will be using to address illegal P2P file sharers beyond the warning email is at the moment, unclear.
The full threat email is available to read in full on The Register, here.
Source: The Register
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A scheme that was set up to bring high-speed wireless internet to the Western Isles for an estimated cost of £6.5 million has been revealed to have gone £1.5 million over-budget.
Despite an initial quote estimated by the Highlands Islands Enterprise (HIE) and a deadline date of sometime in 2003, the project has not only gone seriously over budget but it has also now running over five years past its schedule.
The Connected Communities Service, also known as ConCom was granted funds by HIE, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the Scottish Government and the European Regional Development Fund in 2003, although then it was thought that the project would cost a total of £1.5 million. ConCom only has 930 customers on its books, meaning that after the total amount spent on the Western Isles project, each customer leaves the company out of pocket by £8,575 per household.
Residents of Northbay in Barra are up in arms over the body’s decision to continue with ConCom rather than upgrade to a BT exchange and in protest, Northbay’s BT telephone exchange has been held to ransom by members of the community in protest.
“If you are doing something important on dial-up, it may take two hours but at least you will get it done,” said Northbay resident George MacLeod told the Stornoway Gazette. “Wireless does not work here. BT trialled it years ago and said it was expensive, cumbersome and bound to fail. But the BT offering (of landline broadband) has come on by leaps and bounds.”
So far a solution to the problem hasn’t been offered.
Source: Stornoway Gazette
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Another high street retailer has thrown in free gadgetry to entice broadband customers. Phones4U has announced that it will be offering customers a free laptop if they subscribe to Orange mobile broadband for £30 a month.
The Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo comes as standard with the package (worth £349.99). This laptop has an 80Gb hard drive, 1GB of storage, an Intel Celeron 540 Processor and a 15.4-inch widescreen display. Alternatively it’s possible to upgrade to a Samsung R60 laptop (worth £499) for an additional £74.95.
The Orange subscription includes a free mobile broadband USB modem and 3GB of usage per month – this should allow around 100 hours of surf time and over 2000 emails.
This offer is available at Phones4U stores now.
Source: Pocket-Lint
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PlusNet has launched a new offer for all new residential ‘Broadband Your Way’ package customers allowing them to receive three month’s broadband of half the price of the standard cost, this is providing that they also sign up to PlusNet’s contracted 12 month Evenings and Weekends or Anytime home phone line rental service.
If this offer is taken up by the customer the cheapest package from PlusNet would be set at £4.99 for the first three months £9.99 for the remaining months. With this package users receive a 1 GB capped ‘up to’ 8Mbps broadband service including free set up and a wireless router. The Home Phone option would also include free evening and weekend calls for an addition £9.99.
The new half-price offer from PlusNet will be available until 29th August 2008.
Source: ISPreview
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