June 15, 2010
Fibre broadband is to be available to 87% of Londoners by Spring 2011 according to plans announced by BT.
BT are investing heavily in fibre optic broadband and last month announced that they were upping their investment in fibre broadband from £1.5bn to £2.5bn to make it avai;lable to two thirds of the UK by 2015 and to be available to 40% of the UK in 2012.
 The fibre broadband that BT offers brings broadband speeds of between 40Mb and 100Mb depending on what form of fibre is deployed, in the main part it will be FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) which offers broadband speeds up to 40Mb, with FTTH/P (Fibre To The Home/Premises) offering broadband speeds up to 100Mb being the other type but this is not being done as much as it costs more.
In the announcement by BT they have said that 114 exchanges across London which serve more than 2 million homes and businesses will be upgraded to fibre broadband by Spring 2011 and will mean that it is one of the most well connected cities by the time the Olympic Games come to London in 2012.
BT’s fibre network that they will be offering fibre broadband to customers through is called BT Infinity.
The chief executive of BT, Ian Livingston, said:
“London is already one of the best connected cities in the world and our investment plan will ensure that it stays ahead of the pack. Our investment will see Londoners have access to both fibre and advanced copper broadband services well in advance of the London Olympics.
With BT as its official communications partner, London 2012 looks set to be the best connected Games yet. The infrastructure that we are putting in place will allow people to watch the event in high definition and engage with the Games using a range of exciting, interactive services. More importantly, the new broadband network will be a lasting legacy, enabling those living and work in London to prosper and the capital’s economy to thrive well into the future.“
In London more than 90% of homes and businesses are currently using advanced ADSL2+ copper connections which offer broadband speeds up to 20Mb.
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June 14, 2010
The price of BT Talk and Surf Plus has been reduced in price to just £15.99 per month which also includes 3 months free!
The original price of the Talk and Surf Plus package was £19.99 per month but BT (www.bt.com) have reduced this down to £15.99 per month and also kept the first 3 months free like they have on offer with their other broadband and phone deals.
BT Talk and Surf Plus offers customers up to 20Mb broadband speeds with 10GB monthly usage and a free wireless BT Home Hub on the broadband side of the deal, on the phone side of the deal customers can receive unlimited UK landline calls at anytime up to an hour in length (basically hang up the call and re-dial if the call is going to be over an hour in length to avoid any extra charges).
Line rental is also charged from BT and this costs £11.54 per month and customers have to sign up to an 18 month contract with this deal.
The 3 months free is now worth a saving of about £48 and now this extra saving of £4 per month for the remaining 15 months of the deal is worth an added £60 on the previous pricing so all in all customers are making a very healthy saving with this deal from BT Broadband.
BT are currently investing heavily in rolling out Next Generation fibre broadband with the new BT fibre network being called BT Infiniy which should make fibre optic broadband available to two thirds of the UK by 2015. Lats month BT confirmed that they should be investing an extra £1 billion in fibre broadband so they would be spending a total of £2.5 billion and making it available to more people.
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June 11, 2010
O2 are pulling unlimited mobile broadband data for new smartphones that they sell and instead changing the tariffs based on how much data users want to pay for each month.
The new O2 smartphone tariffs are due to be introduced on July 24th which is the same day that the new iPhone 4 is due to be launched meaning all new contracts on this will require users to choose what mobile broadband data allowance they want with their new phone contract.
Existing customers who are already on “unlimited” data for their mobile phone won’t be affected until they come to upgrade or renew their contract. New customers or those who are upgrading a new contract will be offered unlimited data until 1st October and then form that date onwards they will have to decide if to take any bolt ons.
Unlimited data was used to draw new customers into using smartphones, but with the popularity of smartphones booming the mobile operators are now looking at keeping these types of phones profitable and to look after their network capacity.
The new O2 data pricing is:
O2 do say that the 500Mb of data (the minimum of offer) is currently 2.5 times the average O2 customers current usage, this does not say that this just related to O2 Smartphone customers however, as we anticipate the results to this statistic would be different if they took just smartphone customers into account.
Out of O2′s 21 million customers they say the changes will mean only around 3% of these customers will be affected and have to pay additional charges because these 3% of customers are using up around 36% of O2′s data capacity on their network.
As more applications and media becomes available over the internet for smartphone users we anticipate that in the future these data limits in place may have to be reviewed as going forward more bandwidth hungry applications will become available.
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June 10, 2010
New customers signing up to TalkTalk for either it’s Essentials or Pro broadband or home phone services can now get free connection with it.
The free connection offer is worth a saving of £29.99 and is available to online customers if they join up before the end of July.
 The Essentials package from TalkTalk offers up to 24Mb broadband download speeds with 40Gb monthly data transfer, it also comes with a free wireless ‘G’ router and free technical customer support when you ring from you TalkTalk line.
The phone part of the Essentials package offer unlimited calls to UK landlines at evenings and weekend.
The Essentials package costs £6.99 plus a line rental of £11.49 which comes to a total of £18.48 per month on an 18 month minimum contract.
The TalkTalk Pro also offer up to 24Mb broadband but with unlimited download (fair use policy applies) and a free wireless ‘N’ router and free technical customer support when you ring from you TalkTalk line.
The Pro phone part offers unlimited calls to UK landlines anytime and calls to mobiles for 7p per min flat rate + call connection.
TalkTalk Pro costs £14.99 plus line rental at £11.49 so a total of £26.48 per month on an 18 month contract.
On top of this TalkTalk also offer a 30 day no quibble trial for customers before they have to commit to the 18 month contract.
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June 9, 2010
The UK needs to increase it’s roll out of true Fibre To The Home (FTTH) broadband as we are lagging behind the rest of the world.
The call for the UK and the rest of the EU to roll out 100Mb fibre broadband connections direct to the home (FTTH) came from Hartwig Tauber, the director general of the FTTH Council.
To push the point home of the UK’s lack of ambition he pointed to the fact that last summer Japan were pushing for everyone there to have a minimum 1Gb fibre broadband connection, while over in the UK our government said they wanted there to be a minimum 2Mb broadband connection for everyone in the country, this is 500 times small than the target Japan has set!
The FFTH Council did acknowledge the EU’s target of making sure everyone within the EU would have broadband access by 2013 and that by 2020 there should be a minimum 30Mb broadband connection, although upload speeds and also minimum speeds was still unclear as many “up to” speeds don’t actually guarantee users will actually receive this broadband speed.
In the UK there are currently only 5,000 homes that have full Fibre To The Home connections and across Europe this totals around 2.5 million. However, in comparison to the Far East where fibre broadband is much more widespread there are around 38 million people who are connected with fibre directly to their premises.
There was also a slight dig made at the FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) installations that BT are installing, this is where the fibre is taken to the street side cabinet then VDSL2 technology is used via the existing copper network to take the broadband to the home, this results in slower broadband speeds than full fibre, with BT offering up to 40Mb broadband connections via this type of installation.
Tauber said this on the issue:
“The applications that people will want in the future, such as being able to download HD movies, will need faster speeds. An HD video of 20GB would take five hours to download on VDSL speeds of 10Mbit/s, but just 30 minutes on fibre of 100Mbit/s.“
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June 7, 2010
Zen Internet are to offer fibre optic broadband services in September.
 Zen’s fibre broadband will be available to areas where BT’s fibre optic network has been installed and will be able to offer broadband speeds of up to 40Mb and say that there will be a minimum download speed of 15Mb.
Although no specific prices for Zen’s fibre broadband are yet known it is believed that the fibre options will be around £5-£10 more than standard ADSL broadband costs when launched.
Zen has been working with BT to trial fibre optic broadband services since July last year, they are to start commercial trials of the service in mid June so that they can hopefully be ready for the full launch in September. Anyone interested in taking part in Zens commercial fibre broadband trials should email fibre@zen.co.uk and include your name, address and telephone number where they will then check to see if you are able to take part in their tests (basically your local telephone exchange will need to have the fibre broadband deployed from it).
Last week we also saw that Zen Internet doubled the usage limits available on it’s Lite, Active, Pro and Office broadband packages.
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June 4, 2010
BT is to offer access to it’s next generation fibre network to rival broadband providers on a more restricted basis to begin with after the Ofcom proposal was accepted by The European Commission.
 BT only have to offer Virtual Unbundled Local Access (VULA) for the time being but The European Commission has told Ofcom that they should make BT offer full physical unbinding as soon as is feasible both technically and economically!
What this actually means for rival broadband providers is that they will have access to the new fibre networks through a Virtual Unbundled Local Access which will mean that they can take control of the customers line but at the present time they will not be able to physically add any of their own equipment. Instead, BT will be installing the equipment at the telephone exchanges which means that they can still charge the price they want to rival broadband providers which potentially for the interim period at least while VULA access is all that is granted we may not see the price wars with fibre broadband until other rival providers get their own full physical access to the fibre network.
The Digial Agenda Commission, Neelie Kroes, said:
“In this specific instance, virtual unbundling seems the best option to safeguard competition and enable consumers to benefit from a wider range of services provided over next-generation fibre infrastructure.“
Only last month BT announced that it would be spending an extra £1bn on installing it’s fibre optic network to make it available to two thirds of the UK.
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June 3, 2010
O2 have launched a special World Cup offer where if you take one of their free Limited Edition World Cup pay as you go sim cards you can receive £5 credit for each goal England score in the World Cup!
The promotion lasts as long as England stay in the competition, what’s more, O2 even have an option for none-England fans to get £5 for each goal England concede at the World Cup to if your allegiances are elsewhere.
It is very simple to take part, all you need to do is follow the following instructions:
- Get your free sim from www.freesim.o2.co.uk
- Top up £15 by calling 4444
- Text GOAL to 66102 and they’ll send you a code
- Visit o2goals.co.uk and input your code to register
- Follow instructions at o2goals.co.uk to claim
If you are not a England fan this World Cup then all you need to do is text CONCEDE instead of GOAL to 66102 and then for each goal that England concede you will receive £5 credit.
This is a limited time offer so to make sure that you receive all your free £5′s apply for your sim card now before they are all gone!
At the end of the competition a cheque will be sent to you for how much you have earnt providing you fill out the claim form.
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June 2, 2010
Virgin Media are giving new subscribers access to their fibre optic broadband network for just £5 per month for an introductory time.
The new online only offer from Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com) is available to new broadband subscribers to it’s 10Mb fibre broadband service which offers customers unlimited downloads, free wireless router, free internet security and unlimited UK weekend landline calls with the Virgin phone line which is charged at £11.99 per month.
After the 3 month introductory offer is over the price reverts back to the standard price of £12.50 per month for the broadband.
Users who don’t take out a Virgin Phone line can take an introductory offer of £15 per month for 3 months for the broadband which will then revert back to £20 per month after the 3 months.
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June 1, 2010
The Apple iPad finally was launched in the UK on Friday 28th May, with it’s highly anticipated arrival comes many people wanting to get their hands on one and making the most of all it’s functionality, including using mobile broadband.
 The Apple iPad comes with a slot for a micro sim card, which means that putting a standard mobile phone sim into it will not work, as such iPad users need to get a special iPad mobile broadband deal which inclused the micro sim card.
Below is a brief run down of what each of the mobile broadband providers currently have on offer for iPad users to connect to mobile broadband on their websites.
3 Mobile (http://threestore.three.co.uk)
Both deals are on one month rolling contracts
Vodafone (vodafone.co.uk/ipad)
All3 deals are on one month rolling contracts
Orange (www.orange.co.uk/ipad)
- iPad plan
5p per MB capped at £40 per month
- iPad Daily
200MB data valid for 1 day
£2
- iPad Weekly
1GB data valid for 7 days
£7.50
- iPad monthly 15
3GB data and unlimited BT Openzone WiFi
£15 per month
- iPad monthly 25
10GB data and unlimited BT Openzone WiFi
£25 per month
What we anticipate is that with the launch of the Apple iPad we will see the take up of mobile broadband become even more popular as users want to realise the full potential of their iPads.
For any lucky owners of the iPad then the links and iPad mobile broadband tariffs above are your best options for connecting your iPad to the internet at the moment.
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