All the latest broadband news from the Broadband Genie news team.
BT managed to hit targets for their first quarter results, ending 30th June 2008 with revenues of £5.1bn, an increase of 3 per cent year on year. However, trading results were disappointing with market shares dropping 10 per cent in early trading.
The average UK household paid BT £278 in the last twelve months, an increase of £4 last quarter. Call revenue results were uninspiring, but the company managed to offset revenue by increased spending on broadband.
BT’s ISP provider business Openreach showed a dip in revenues of one per cent, taking the total to £1.072bn. Meanwhile an Openreach spokesman announced that the service will be introducing a pro-active monitoring service to reimburse customers automatically if their service levels are missed.
Source: The Register
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BSkyB announced pleasing fourth quarter results today despite earlier predictions that customer take-up and profits could give gloomy news. The British firm confirmed that it added 92,000 net new customers in the fourth quarter and 200,000 new broadband customers. These results exceeded analysts predictions that the company would take on 192,000 new broadband customers.
Revenue-wise, results were up 9 percent at 4.95 billion pounds and the company revealed that they had increased its profits to 752 million pounds, again exceeding expectations.
Source: Reuters
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As more suppliers announce increases in domestic bills there are fears that the mobile broadband industry could suffer from slowing subscribers, according to the Mobile Data Association.
The latest trend reports from the MDA show that mobile web usage has increased by 25 per cent in the past two years. However, if predictions are correct, this take-up could show a significant slowdown in the not too distant future.
Chairman for the MDA, Steve Reynolds, explained that consumers are having to become more scrupulous when it comes to signing up for additional domestic purchases and many consumers are now too concerned about the costs involved to sign up to new technology. To improve the situation Reynolds called for “greater price transparency on the costs associated with using the mobile internet”. Only then, would the mobile broadband industry take off to become a rival to land-based broadband connections.
Source: PC Advisor
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A new survey by Gartner has concluded that around 25 per cent of all households worldwide will have a broadband connection by 2012.
At the last count it was estimated that 323 million homes were connected up to broadband, accounting for 18 per cent of the total number of households across the globe. If Gartner’s predictions are correct then this could rise to around 499 million by 2012.
58 percent of UK households are currently link up to a broadband service, although this number is expected to increase to 74 per cent within the next four years.
This will still only mean that the UK ranks 9th in the list of the global broadband penetration. Topping the charts are Holland, Switzerland, Canada, Hong Kong and South Korea.
Source: NetworkProPortal
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TV standbys may get a tough ride when it comes to unnecessary energy consumption. However, your wireless internet router is probably doing a good job of mounting up your electricity bill, especially as they tend to be left on all the time, status lights blinking.
D-Link has cottoned on to this unnecessary electricity drain and released three new router models that use up far less power than the average gadget.
Routers from the Xtreme NT range uses 40 per cent less power than it previous models. Although this means that you will only see a small cost drop when the next bill comes in, operating in large numbers around the community, this could help reduce power consumption significantly.
D-Link’s three new routers; DIR-655, DIR-855 and DGL-4500 are available from £70 to £150 and come with an eleven year guarantee.
Source: Smart Planet
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Manchester council has announced that it is hoping to extend its Eastserve wireless broadband service across the city, giving residents the opportunity to log on to a fast internet connection without installing land-based broadband.
The proposed Wi-Fi development is part of the city’s Digital Strategy for Manchester which was set up in 2000 to ensure that all resident have access to affordable, speedy broadband.
In order to take this scheme to the next level the city council has announced that it is seeking a joint venture partner to help grow the exising service – hopefully providing city-wide coverage.
Sir Richard Leese from Manchester City Council commented: “Manchester has a very strong track record of putting together imaginative partnerships with the private sector… A joint venture would help turn Manchester into a “world-class digital city.”
Source: Manchester.com
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It has been announced that Phones 4u has signed a deal with BrightStar Europe who will stock the retailers’ 440 stores with new notebooks and accessories.
The new deal means that Phones 4u will be able to offer customers a wider range of enticing gadgetry in the hope to build a wider subscription base for all those wanting to make use of the latest mobile broadband and WiFi technologies.
Jim Slater, Phones 4u Marketing Director, said: “The agreement with Brightstar Europe gives Phones 4u direct access to the full range of laptop PCs and accessories from all the leanding brand manufacturers, including HP, Toshiba, Sony and Acer. It means that we will be able to offer our customers a tremendous choice of products…to meet the needs of mobile workers, students or anyone who wants to stay in touch or surf the internet while they are on the move.
Speaking from Brightstar Europe, Richard Baxendale, UK managing director, said: “Phones 4u is leading the way in opening up the possibilities of always-on mobile internet and messaging to its customers. This agreement with Brightstar Europe will enable Phones 4u to offer the widest range of options for mobile data from all the leading PC manufacturers. We’re delighted to have formed this partnership with one of the UK’s leading phone retailers and are looking forward to working with Phones 4u to deliver the best solutions and services to their customers.
Source: Channel EMEA
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In an interview with Reuters, Virgin Media’s chief technology officer, Howard Watson revealed that the cable provider is planning to offer speeds of ‘up to’ 200Mbps by 2012. If successful, this would provide double the speed of BT’s 100Mbps fibre optic cable network that it recently announced it would spend £1.5bn on installing.
Virgin Media’s network improvements would be part of its new investment strategy, that includes freeing up some extra capacity on its network.
Howard Watson explained: “We are setting ourselves a vision of households using 200 MB per second by 2012. The current technology that we’re investing in to roll out the 50 MB per second over the next 12 months has inherent within it that extra capability.”
Watson also explained how the speed increase would take hold, and how quickly customers would see an improvement:
“If you take a 20 MB customer [and upgrade them to 50MB] on day one or two you might see a relatively small increase in usage but by day 60 or 65 they’re using 50 MB per second quite easily.”
Source: Reuters
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New research commissioned by BT and carried out by Ipsos MORI has found that, on average, the UK population spends more than six hours a week online. The study known as the ‘BT 21st Century Life Index’ was set up to find out how technology and media consumption has changed over the past decade, nationwide.
The survey of around 2,000 people across Britain found that the average time online now reaches up to as many as 30 hours a week.
From those questioned it was found that 44% of the UK popular have broadband at home, compared to 14% ten years ago. The number of website visits have increased with 19% of Internet users now visiting around 20 different sites a week. Out of the 2,000 people taking part almost 50% said that they had booked flights and holidays online, 46% had bought books, 21% had downloaded music and 19% had shopped for groceries. 23% admitted that they had ‘Googled’ themselves and around a quarter said that they regularly used social networking sites.
Source: Net Imperative
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Despite yesterday’s announcement that six leading UK ISPs were expected to sign a “Memorandum of Understanding” in order to reduce illegal file sharing, a report by PC Pro now suggests that The Carphone Warehouse are threatening to walk out of the pact if a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule is enforced.
Speaking to PC Pro a Carphone Warehouse spokesman explained: “We will not disconnect or threaten to disconnect our customers. We will not divulge details of our customers to people like the BPI unless we get a specific court order to do so.”
“What we have agreed to do is to write to our customers and advise them there’s been an alleged infringement. We’ve very clear that we don’t know if that’s the case or not, we’ve just been told there has been and we want to advise them of that.”
“We certainly won’t pass over their details and we certainly won’t disconnect them.”
Carphone Warehouse has advised the BPI that they will walk away from the deal if the three strikes rule is put into play: “The BPI isn’t happy with this approach,” said the spokesman. “It wants a ‘three strikes and you’re out approach’ and I think it’s coming round to realise that – well certainly I can speak for TalkTalk and Carphone Warehouse – there’s no way that will happen. It may be other ISPs have said that to it [the BPI] as well.”
Source: PC Pro
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