May 11, 2010

BT to extend fibre broadband across country

BT are to increase the number of homes that will be able to receive it’s fibre optic broadband when they announce their annual results later this week.

fibre optic cable BT to extend fibre broadband across country BT had originally planned on having 40% of the UK, or around 10 million homes to be connected to the new superfast next-generation fibre optic broadband network by the Summer 2012 at a cost of around £1.5 bn, this date had been pushed forward from the original date of 2013 but we expect to hear that this figure has now been increased to 66% of the UK (around 16.5 million homes) although we don’t know if this is on an extended time scale or if it will still be within the original planned dates.

BT do not release their annual results until Thursday this week and and not commented on the speculation that this is what is actually happening, but it has been reported by a number of sources and so it is likely to be the news we expect to hear on Thursday.

BT’s fibre based broadband network for the majority of people on it will be done via FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) that will offer broadband speeds up to 40Mb with the chance for the speed to increase in the future. FTTC provides Fibre optic cable to the street side cabinet and then uses the existing copper cables to take the broadband form the cabinet to the premises. Fibre to the Premises is the ideal fibre network but the costs would be substantially more for this to be implemented.

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- Filed under: Fibre broadband
- Tags: BT fibre broadband, BT In, BT increase fibre optic broadband across UK, BT Infinity, BT to extend fibre broadband network —
Author: Mark @ 9:38 am

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May 7, 2010

General Election results leaves us with a Hung Parliament and Broadband uncertainty

With the General Election counting still going on but it looking like we are going to have Hung Parliament we look at what the possible outcomes for the broadband sector could be.

As we don’t know who is likely to be ruling the country at the moment and if there will be any coalition governments we can’t really say what is likely to happen but we can say what the options are likely to be.

Conservatives (Tories) – The Conservatives would make sure that Labours proposed “Broadband Tax” of 50p per month (£6 per year) would not go ahead. They instead would look to use some of the money left from the Digital TV Switchover money to help fund the roll out of next generation broadband.

Labour – A Labour government would push their proposed “Broadband Tax” of 50p per month through, they had hoped to do it before the election but didn’t get chance to get this done.
Labour estimated that this fee which would be applied to every landline would raise around £170m per year to help with next generation broadband to rural areas.
Labour want 90% of the UK to have superfast next generation broadband by 2017.

Liberal Democrats – On the whole they would go down the 50p per month “broadband tax” route similar to Labour, but they would exempt pensioners and those who are the least well off from it.

Soley on the broadband front, Labour & the Lib Dems would appear to have similar views on the issue of broadband and next generation fibre broadband and so if these 2 parties form a coalition then we can very much expect the “broadband tax” to be put into action.

Current General Election standings as of 11.20am

Conservatives – 291
Labour – 251
Liberal Democrats – 52

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- Filed under: News
- Tags: Broadband and General Election 2010, General Election, Hung Parliament —
Author: Mark @ 10:23 am

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May 4, 2010

Virgin Media average over 9Mb in latest broadband speed tests

The latest set of broadband speed test results from broadband comparison site broadband.co.uk have been released and show no surprise with Virgin Media still topping the fastest broadband charts.

For the first time however, Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com) have finally gone through the 9Mb average broadband speed barrier by registering an average broadband speed of 9.373Mb which is over 1.1Mb faster than they were last month and still way ahead of the broadband providers in second place of O2 & Be broadband (Be are owned by O2 and use the same network) who registered an average broadband speed of 5.654Mb.

Virgin Media are currently the safe first spot on these broadband speed tests as they have fibre optic broadband that has a headline speed of 50Mb. However, fibre optic networks are currently being installed by BT across the UK so we should start to hopefully see the broadband speeds start to rise for those broadband providers who use BT’s wholesale network via BT Infinity or another broadband provider.

The full table of the main broadband providers who are featured in the results and what their respective download speeds are is shown below:

Virgin Media – 9.373Mb
O2 & Be Broadband – 5.654Mb
Sky Broadband – 3.734Mb
Orange – 3.682Mb
BT Broadband – 3.582Mb
TalkTalk & Tiscali – 3.511Mb
Eclipse Internet – 3.455Mb
PlusNet – 2.811Mb
AOL – 2.251Mb

The average broadband speed recorded from all the broadband providers was 4.958Mb so we would expect that next month we will finally see the average broadband speed hit the 5Mb marker which if so will have taken 13 months to achieve form when it finally went over the 4Mb mark.
Largely this will be down to Virgin Media who have in the last year added 3Mb to their average broadband speed, however O2/Be Broadband have actually gone backwards in the last year by being around 0.4Mb slower.

The average broadband upload speeds were also measured and the average across all the broadband providers was 0.482Mb, it is actually O2/Be who lead the way on the uploading speeds with Virgin Media in second place.

O2 & Be Broadband – 0.729Mb
Virgin Media – 0.594Mb
Sky Broadband – 0.475Mb
Orange – 0.448Mb
BT Broadband – 0.401Mb
TalkTalk/Tiscali – 0.348Mb
Eclipse Internet – 0.396Mb
PlusNet – 0.337Mb
AOL – 0.319Mb

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- Filed under: News
- Tags: broadband speed test, Fastest broadband provider, Virgin Media fastest broadband provider —
Author: Ruth @ 10:18 am

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Broadband | Mobile Broadband | Fibre Broadband | Broadband Speed Test

May 11, 2010

BT to extend fibre broadband across country

BT are to increase the number of homes that will be able to receive it’s fibre optic broadband when they announce their annual results later this week.

May 7, 2010

General Election results leaves us with a Hung Parliament and Broadband uncertainty

With the General Election counting still going on but it looking like we are going to have Hung Parliament we look at what the possible outcomes for the broadband sector could be.

Conservatives – 291 Labour – 251 Liberal Democrats – 52

May 4, 2010

Virgin Media average over 9Mb in latest broadband speed tests

The latest set of broadband speed test results from broadband comparison site broadband.co.uk have been released and show no surprise with Virgin Media still topping the fastest broadband charts.

Conservatives – 291
Labour – 251
Liberal Democrats – 52