Broadband Comparison, News & Reviews

The BBC has finally been given permission to continue full steam ahead with Project Canvas after getting the nod from the BBC Trust.

Project Canvas is a joint venture to bring internet-video services to television that includes Carphone Warehouse, the BBC, Channel 4, BT, Five, and ITV. It has been officially under review since February of 2009.

The aim of the project is to offer on demand video to subscribers over broadband. Its largest opponent has been BSkyB which is owned by the News Corporation.

This morning the BBC Trust is expected to announce that it will offer its support. In order to get the Canvas technology consumers will need to purchase new set-top boxes priced at about ?200 that should become available by the end of 2010.

A source close to Project Canvas stated that the decision will be positive although it will come with conditions. However, the source stated that the conditions will not be too large or confining.

Canvas will offer up content to users from NHS Direct, LoveFilm, possibly Hulu, and the BBC iPlayer. Additional organizations that want to add access to their content will be welcome to submit application designs that users can shop in much like the Apple app store.

The announcement of approval will welcome the wrath of Virgin Media and Sky who have insisted that it discriminates against pay per use TV operators and that it will not offer anything new on the market that currently is not already available on the commercial market.

Filed under: Broadband News and Reviews by Alan

A new BT deal will allow homeowners who want a landline from the company to get free access to broadband as well as phone calls. Additionally, the deal also comes with the twelve pound installation fee waved.

Anyone who takes a phone calling plan for their home that is part of a BT package will get the line connection offer for free as well as three months of free broadband and home phone calls on top of the deal.

Members that take advantage of the deal will not only get great broadband trials, but will get them with speeds that can reach as high as 20Mbps from BT wireless connections.

Other deals available from BT include the BT Vision on demand TV service that can be purchased on a pay per view basis or at the low rate of around ?7 per month.

In order to get any of the new deals from BT, interested customers need to head over to the official website to get the free line connection or free phone calls and broadband package deals.

Customers that already subscribe to BT but want to take advantage of the new offer for free three month broadband and free calls by switching to the trial plan and then switching back to their normal BT package after the period of time is over.

The new set of deals appears to be aimed at drawing back BT customers who left for VirginMedia due to the fact they were fleeing the charges incurred by installing a BT line. BT appears to have made the transition for these customers as simple and cheap as possible.

Filed under: Broadband Deals by Alan

Gary Ashworth has grown tired of his home in Hambleden a picturesque village near the Thames, Oxfordshire, although his complaints are not because of poor weather or a bad economy in the village.

Instead, Ashworth is fed up because even though he only lives about 35 miles from London the area is a ?not spot? meaning that there is no broadband access in the area.

However, Ashworth?s complaints have grown more vocal since he discovered that although he has been waiting five years for broadband, Sir Michael Rake received it after arriving only a year ago. According to Ashworth this is a clear sign of corruption given that Rake is the chairman of BT.

Ashworth?s chief complaint is that the has used 1,000BT lines for a long time at his business and that it is unfair that he chairman is given preferential treatment over long standing customers.

Last week Ashworth decided to write to BT to complain about the problem and was told by an employee at the executive complaints desk that Sir Michael Rake was simply part of a small amount of people in a trial project for the area.

The letter continued to say that the trial is very small and is being conducted in ten rural communities with only a small amount of users.

When Ashworth asked to be included in the trial he was told that they were not going to add on any other users which he stated is not surprising, although maddening that Rake was selected to be included.

Filed under: Broadband News and Reviews by Alan

Tesco unveiled a new plan yesterday to bundle home phone packages and broadband deals in order to compete with the major providers of broadband such as Carphone Warehouse, BT, and Virgin Media.

The retailer announced that it will be able to offer the new package services for the next five years after signing a deal with Cable & Wireless.

Tesco announced the new plans after a two day seminar was conducted with analysts in order to fulfil Tesco?s goal of becoming one of the top telecoms service providers in the UK.

It estimates that it will need to continue to make around ?200m in profits and ?2b in sales annually past its normal medium term. If it achieved this goal the company would gain just under a tenth of the telecoms market in the UK which is valued in total at ?22b per year.

Chief executive of Tesco Telecoms, Lance Batchelor, stated that the combined home phone and broadband bundle deals is the core of the plans for expansion. Batchelor continued to say that this would propel Tesco into the same arena of the major providers in the UK such as Talk Talk and BT.

Consumer experts believe that the new move by Tesco is significant because bundle packages by the leading providers currently makes up a large percent of the market and will cause such providers to lower their prices in order to compete.

Batchelor also said that Tesco?s expenditures as a result of the move will be minimized due to the new partnership with Cable & Wireless.

Filed under: Broadband News and Reviews by Alan

Now that O2 is owned by the Spanish operator Telefonica it has about 21m mobile phone subscribers as compared to BT which only has approximately 19.4m customers.

The news of the new rankings came as BT was forced to report a fall of 45pc in its pre-tax profits leaving their total at ?547m compared to the profits of Telefonica which are a much larger ?1.7 billion.

BT was forced to sell O2 in November of 2001 which was then known as BT Cellnet when profits started to collapse. In 2006 Telefonica purchased O2 for the record setting ?17.7 billion, which was the largest telecoms takeover in mobile history.

The chief executive of BT, Ian Livingston, seemed to regret selling O2 in comments that he made yesterday when he said that BT is pondering the best way to enter the mobile market once again when the Government finally auctions off mobile phone spectrum in the coming year.

According to Livingston, the proposals by the Government to give current operators the rights to the 2G licenses are a waste since a new auction is a best way give Government coffers a boost.

Analyst Lawrence Sugarman of ING stated that the comments show that BT?s revenues need to be increased and that the company is clearly looking at all possibilities for moving forward after they chose to leave the mobile market too early.

In just this year alone O2 has increased its mobile subscribers by about one million even though the other four major operators in the UK were only able to add 400,000 subscribers collectively.

Filed under: Broadband News and Reviews by Alan

Lord Mandelson has confirmed that file sharers who download files illegally on the Internet will now have their accounts suspended, in an effort to reduce the amount of people who illegally share files.

He also stated that only two warnings will be given to a consumer before their Internet is cut off, followed by an appeal process for those who want to fight the decision.

According to Mandelson, the new power will only be used as a last resort, and in cases where people consistently broke the law and illegally downloaded files on a persistent basis.

Under the new proposal, ISPs are responsible for taking action against consumers that are accused of sharing illegal film and music files. They also can take additional measures such as slowing down the downloading speeds of certain users before cutting them off.

However, ministers have taken the time to craft the new rules so that ?innocent? file sharing such as copying a CD onto an iPod are not harmed by the new rules.

BT has warned that with the new ISP responsibilities, the price of broadband may rise due to the fact that all of the costs incurred with cutting of a user?s Internet falls on the ISP?s themselves.

Filed under: Broadband News and Reviews by Alan

There may be good news on the front for BT customers as the largest phone company in the UK may soon have to reduce how much the company charges its 14 million landline customers for broadband and pay TV due to a watchdog ruling that is aimed at levelling the competitive playing field for telecom companies.

Ofcom, the telecoms regulator watchdog, lifted restrictions that it placed on BT telecoms when it was a private company in the 80?s that prevented the company from creating bundled package deals for broadband and line services at a discounted price.

The new change may mean that in the coming autumn for the first time BT can begin to offer package deals to consumers which rival companies have been able to do for years.

When the news was received, BT stocks immediately saw a jump of 4.4% which left the company as the largest riser reported on the FTSE 100 index.

BSkyB and Virgin Media have been packaging fixed line and broadband bundles which allows the companies to sell both services to customers at a reduced rate versus paying for the two services separately.

Due to the previous ruling which was aimed at preventing BT from getting a monopoly the company could only offer packages to customers that equalled the sum of what the two components would cost separately.

Since BT does not hold the same market power any longer Ofcom believes that it is now ok to create healthy competition among the competitors.

Filed under: Broadband News and Reviews by Alan

Zen Internet topped the customer satisfaction survey conducted by Which magazine for the fourth year in a row for their internet services.
Zen Internet is an independent internet provider and scored five out of five in the categories of reliability, service, and speed.

The poll was conducted among members of the Which magazine who also assigned the company a three out of five stars in the value category despite the fact that the company has one of the most expensive internet services averaging about ?17.61 per month for most subscribers.

Overall the company received a score of 87% which compares to four of the largest UK ISP?s, TalkTalk, Virgin Media, BT, and Tiscali all of which scored under 60%. 02, BE, and Utility Warehouse fared better with scores over 80% as well.

Overall, Tiscali, Orange, and AOL did the worse with scores that were below 32% and received the recommendation ?don?t buy? from the magazine editors.

Zen Internet was also praised by the magazine for its excellent customer support stating that the company?s willingness to go the other mile for its customers, its reliability, and its customer support were well worth paying a few extra dollars for.

Which also commended Zen for its one month contracts which allowing customer?s flexibility when it comes to choosing their ISPs.

This is not the first time Zen Internet has received praise from the industry it serves, as the company has also won various accolades over the last few years including the PC Pro Best Broadband ISP award for the last five years in a row.

Filed under: Broadband News and Reviews by Alan