All the latest broadband news from the Broadband Genie news team.
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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3 has announced that it has sold one million mobile broadband dongles and subscriptions so far in Europe. Since the mobile broadband service started late last year the company has seen growth in custom from both people who want to supplement their fixed-line broadband service, or replace it altogether.
Christian Salbaing, managing director for Hutchison Whampoa European telecoms, commented: “For many customers, it is their first personal broadband connection. However, due to the high wholesale data roaming costs charged between mobile operators in Europe, it remains very expensive for consumers to use mobile broadband while travelling abroad and roaming onto other networks.”
Salbaing also took the opportunity to call for the EU to regulate roaming prices:
“The EC has an opportunity to bring the same clarity and value to data roaming as it did so successfully with voice last year. The difference between domestic and roaming data rates is far greater than with voice - only wholesale action can put an end to charges that are sometimes hundreds of times greater than our customers pay at home. A million connections in a matter of months from a comparatively small business makes it abundantly clear that mobile broadband is already a mass market proposition.”
Source: Mobile News
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Six of the UK’s most prominent broadband suppliers are expected to announce today that they will sign up to a government-back music piracy scheme. The broadband suppliers expected to announce new tactics for handling illegal downloaders include BT, Virgin Media, Carphone Warehouse, Orange, Tiscali and Sky.
In the near future broadband customers of these suppliers will receive a warning letter if they are suspected of illegally downloading tracks – a scheme supported by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
Previously, ISPs have been reluctant to carry out a scheme like this, wary of the fact that such a system would involve passing on subscriber details to a third party. CEO of The Carphone Warehouse, Charles Dunstone, explained: “We will not divulge a customer’s details or disconnect them on the say so of the content industry, but we will work with rights holders to develop a sensible and legal approach founded on protecting consumer rights and privacy.”
Letters will now be sent out to repeat offenders, although none of the ISPs involved have revealed how they will handle to the situation if the offender continues to download. It has been suggested that a ‘three strikes and you’re out rule’ is the most practical solution.
Source: PC Advisor
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Orange UK has sacked both their head of media, Ian Smith and head of advertising, Rececca Macbeth whilst promoting direct marketing chief Spencer McHugh (pictured) to head of brand communications following disappointing results in their broadband sector.
The redundancies are thought to be part of Orange’s internal restructuring tactics in a hope to improve broadband performance. Last month Orange announced that it would cut jobs and improve customer service in an effort to enrich its broadband offering.
Source: Precision Marketing
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Tiscali is suing BT for “defamation and malicious falsehood” following a marketing campaign in which Tiscali customers received a letter from the competitor persuading them to switch providers.
The letters were sent out in their thousands and outlined the imminent sale of Tiscali’s Italian and British businesses, suggesting that customers should seek an alternative provider. Leading with the header: “You can be confident with BT Total Broadband”, the letter continued:
“We can understand why you’re wondering what might happen to your Tiscali Broadband service. And because no one really knows the answer just yet, it could be a good time to look at an alternative service.
“Changing your provider to BT could be the right move if you’re worried about the future of your broadband service.”
Tiscali has now issued a statement in which it confirms that legal proceedings will take place for defamation and malicious falsehood against BT. The statement read: “Tiscali UK has issued proceedings against British Telecommunications for defamation and malicious falsehood.
“In a letter to us, BT has disputed the claim. The next stage for us is to file a further court document and we will then learn the terms on which BT intends to defend the claim, if at all.”
A BT spokesman responded to Tiscali’s statement confirming that BT considered the marketing campaign to be both “legitimate” and a “reasonable business tactic”. Tiscali is currently the fourth biggest broadband supplier in an industry that is heavily dominated by BT with a comparative market figure of 1.7 million compared to BT’s 4.25 million.
Either Vodafone, BSkyB or Virgin Media is expected to acquire the Italian broadband company.
Source: The Times Online
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Redten has received a warning from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over claims for its unlimited broadband packages. Both the “unlimited broadband” and “unlimited internet downloads” were found to be misleading after the ASA found that connections were slowed down to dial-up speed once customers reached either a 5GB or 15 GB cap. The ASA also found Redten’s claim that a “free upgrade to 24Mb/sec broadband” was available to be categorically untrue.
An ASA spokesperson explained the authority’s ruling: “Because we had not seen evidence to show that the download cap excluded on atypical users, or that customers were able to obtain an upgrade to 24 Mb/sec free of charge, we concluded that the claims ‘unlimited broadband’, ‘unlimited downloads’ and ‘free upgrade to 24 Mb broadband’ were misleading.”
Following the official complaint the ASA confirmed that they were concerned by the response met with Redten broadband: “The ASA was concerned by Redten’s lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code clause 2,6 (Non-response).
“We reminded it of its obligations under the Code and told it to respond promptly in the future.”
Earlier in the year Redten customers were affected by a total broadband shutdown for a week.
The company recently went into administration but were taken over by Fatcat Communications earlier in the year.
Source: PC Pro
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BSkyB will be launching a new music subscription service targeted at families in collaboration with Universal Music for internet users who pay a monthly fee. The new venture, which is hoped to launch later this year will give customers access to hundreds of thousands of songs and it is hoped that other music industry partners will work with Sky soon.
Sky are claiming this new service as a “world first” as users will have access to unlimited streaming, downloads and access to the whole of the Universal catalogue. Tunes will work on any device, even Apple iPods, as it will be free of DRM copy protection software.
As of yet, information on subscription rates hasn’t been revealed nor have BSkyB confirmed whether they will be sending warnings to broadband customers who take part in file-sharing activities, but Sky are confident that this new pay monthly service is the best way of making sure that “artists are properly rewarded for their creativity”.
Source: BBC
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Orange has announced that it will begin bundling Asus and HP laptops in August for all new data package customers, regardless of whether they’re business or consumer clients.
Customers will be able to receive a new laptop when they subscribe to a 24 month mobile broadband contract through Orange high street stores or over the telephone. The minimum consumer subscription price to be eligible for the laptop is £25 per month and this includes a free Asus Eee PC 900 16G with a bundled USB modem on the ‘Internet Everywhere’ tariff. For this you customers will have a 3GB data allowance and 100 texts, which can be sent from the laptop.
Business customers will be able to choose from three Hewlett-Packard laptops and three different tariffs. Each tariff will include unlimited data and 500 Wi-Fi minutes which can be used in any of Orange’s 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots. £35 per month subscribers will receive a HP 6730s Intel Celeron laptop with an Orange USB dongle, £40 subscribers get a HP 6730s Intel Core 2 Duo with an Orange USB dongle and customers on the £45 per month receive a HP 6730b Intel Core 2 Duo with a built-in SIM card.
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