February 2, 2012
Plus.net customers have been facing internet troubles this morning as Plus.net have been having data transfer issues causing very slow speeds for their customers but now appear to be back working again.
 Plus.net users (including the editor of this very article) have struggled all morning connecting to the internet and getting web pages to load, the problems appear to be a knock on effect from some scheduled Traffic Management maintenance that Plus.net undertook late last night.
It appears that it was a nationwide problem for PlusNet customers with Twitter showing that users all over were experiencing the problems both on ADSL connections and also their fibre broadband connections.
As of around 11.20am internet (for us here at Broadband Watchdog towers) appears to be back working as normal again and checking on Twitter it appears as though others are also getting back online and being able to use the internet as usual again.
Anyone still experiencing problems or wanting a bit more information should visit the PlusNet Service Status page.
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January 26, 2012
O2 have fixed a problem that revealed the mobile phone number of customers to websites when they were browsing websites via their mobile phone.
 For just over 2 weeks (Tuesday 10th January 2012 until Wednesday 25th January 2012) O2 were sharing customers mobile phone numbers with websites that they were visiting via their mobile phone, the information was being displayed as plain text in the header information that is sent from the phone to the website and potentially meaning that the phone numbers were then available for spamming through text messaging or telephone calls.
The issue was only found when Lewis Peckover, a web systems administrator ran a test to show that O2 were sharing users mobile phone numbers with websites.
O2 had not deliberately let this happen and stated that it was an “unintended effect” of some routine maintenance they had done on January 10th.
O2 also said:
“The only information websites had access to is your mobile number, which could not have been linked to any other identifying information we have about customers.”
O2 also explained what happens with mobile numbers when O2 mobile customers browse the internet.
“Every time you browse a website (via mobile or desktop), certain technical information about the machine you are using, is passed to website owners. This happens across the internet, and enables website owners to optimise the site you see. When you browse from an O2 mobile, we add the user’s mobile number to this technical information, but only with certain trusted partners. This is standard industry practice. We share mobile numbers with selected trusted partners for 3 reasons: 1) to manage age verification, which manages access to adult content, 2) to enable third party content partners to bill for premium content such as downloads or ring tones that the customer has purchased 3) to identify customers using O2 services, such as My O2 and Priority Moments. This only happens over 3G and WAP data services, not Wifi.”
The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) who deal with UK privacy are said to be looking in to it to see if the Data Protection Act has been breached. They did say the following:
“When people visit a website via their mobile phone, they would not expect their number to be made available to that website. We will now speak to O2 to remind them of their data breach notification obligations, and to better understand what has happened, before we decide how to proceed.”
O2 have put up a page trying to detail the issue for anyone who wants a bit more information. view here.
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January 18, 2012
Virgin Media ADSL & cable customers were left without Internet access yesterday (Tuesday 17th January) from 17:00 to 20:00.
 The issue is now resolved which Virgin Media put down to a routing hardware fault.
For anyone who is still experiencing problems with their service the advice is to turn your router/modem off for 5 minutes and try again.
The Virgin Media service status page says:
“If you experienced a loss of internet connection between 5pm and 8pm on Tues 17th January, we experienced a national outage during this time, which is now resolved. If you have still not been able to reconnect – please try powering down your router for 5 minutes and then turn back on and this should re-establish your connection. Virgin Media apologise for any inconvenience caused.“
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January 4, 2012
TalkTalk’s advertising of the “UK’s safest broadband” has been restricted by the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) after complaints were received by the advertising watchdog.
 BT and two members of the public complained to the ASA asking if the claim that TalkTalk were making that they had the “UK’s safest broadband” could be substantiated.
TalkTalk said that they were the only broadband provider in the UK that offered network level security filtering via the HomeSafe service. This meant that any computer or device connecting to the internet via that router would receive the protection that the service offered. TalkTalk said that although other broadband providers did offer security packages these had to be downloaded and there were some limits and restrictions on the number of devices that could use it.
The ASA upheld the complaints and said:
“We considered that customers could interpret safest as referring to a number of features, such as virus protection or protection from hacking, and that Home Safe only offered a basic range of security features. We did not consider that consumers would interpret “safest” as referring to blocking of inappropriate content, and restricting access to certain sites at certain times.”
TalkTalks HomeSafe service is a free service offered to TalkTalk Broadband customers and allows network level protection (this means before the content even reaches your router) where by inappropriate websites can be filtered out, helps to stop viruses before they reach you and alert you if you visit a suspected site, also time limits when the internet will work or when social networking or gaming sites will work which is useful for when children have homework to do.
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December 22, 2011
BT has announced 47 Scottish communities that are to receive an upgrade to their broadband which will see faster broadband for over 180,000 homes and businesses.
BT are to upgrade the 47 communities with next generation copper broadband which will see broadband speed up to 20Mb being made available to those whose exchange is upgraded. This upgrade is not a fibre broadband upgrade that is being done across other parts of the country but it will still see the broadband speeds of over 180,000 homes and businesses increase hopefully by over double!
Earlier this month the plans for 695,500 homes and businesses in Scotland to receive super fast fibre broadband were announced and should see this rolled out by the end of 2012.
The areas to receive the upgraded copper network are:
- Angus – Kirriemuird, Monifieth.
- Ayrshire – Girvan, Maybole, Stewarton, Alloway.
- Borders – Hawick and Selkirk.
- Clackmannanshire – Alva.
- Dumfries & Galloway – Stranraer.
- East Lothian – Haddington.
- East Renfrewshire – Eaglesham.
- Fife – Anstruther, Ladybank, Burntisland, Kennoway, Ballingry, Cowdenbeath, Newport/Wormit, Kelty.
- Grampian – Huntly, Kintore/TRS, Lossiemouth, Bucksburn, Banchory, Culter, Peterhead, Portlethen.
- Highland – Alness, Dingwall, Grantown-on-Spey, Invergordon, Fort William, Oban.
- Orkney Islands – Kirkwall.
- Perthshire – Stanley, Bridge of Earn.
- Shetland Isles – Lerwick.
- Stirlingshire – Bridge of Allan.
- Strathclyde – Maryhill, Springburn, Bishopbriggs, Busby and Stepps.
- West Lothian – Armadale, West Calder, Fauldhouse.
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December 12, 2011
BT Openreach have announced a further 178 exchanges that to be upgraded to its fibre broadband technology.
 The extra exchanges that have been listed will cover around 1.8 million homes and businesses with most of them being connected with FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) with most of them hopefully being connected during 2012.
Currently there are around 6 million premises in the UK that have access to fibre broadband via BT’s “BT Infinity” network and once all the exchanges on the current list and these new exchanges have all been enabled it will see BT having hit 80% of their target coverage of two thirds coverage across the UK by 2014.
BT have already brought forward the date by a year for when they hope to achieve their two thirds coverage by and along with this they also announced not long ago (read here) that they will be doubling their main 40Mb fibre broadband product to 80Mb next year too.
BT’s headline full fibre product (limited availability) will also be increased from 110Mb to a whopping 300Mb in early 2012 too, this is a huge difference that the current average broadband speed test result of 6.8Mb that the UK currently has. Unfortunately most of the UK will be connected by FTTC (the current 40Mb one) and not the full FTTH (Fibre To The Home) that will see the up to 300Mb speeds.
Although BT are investing £2.5bn in their fibre network to cover two thirds of the UK, they do believe that with extra investment and funding that around 90% of the UK could be covered with fibre broadband. This requires some of the money from the BDUK (Broadband Delivery UK) scheme to help BT roll out fibre that bit further.
The full list of the 178 exchanges that BT have announced can be viewed at www.btplc.com.
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November 25, 2011
Ofcom have called for ISPs to make it clearer to consumers about the expected broadband speeds they are likely to receive and to detail any traffic management that they implement on specific services.
Although Ofcom knows that ISPs already provide some information to consumers about any traffic management that they implement it does not, according to Ofcom, go far enough to make it clear enough and easy enough to understand for most consumers.
Traffic management which is also known as traffic shaping or throttling, allows ISPs to give priority to certain types of traffic and restrict and slow down other types of traffic either all the time or just at peak times when traffic is at its greatest.
They also want consumers to be shown what their expected broadband speed is likely to be as in the past many consumers have felt “cheated” by signing up for broadband deals with headline broadband speeds being advertised yet the reality of their connection not being any way close to these advertised speeds when consumers run a broadband speed test.
Ofcom are hoping that ISPs are able to implement it’s requirements as a self regulatory agreement off their own backs, however if they are not done to Ofcoms satisfaction then they may have to step in and use its powers to introduce a minimum level of consumer information.
The levels of information that Ofcom is requesting ISPs provide to customers at the point of sale are;
- Average speed information that indicates the level of service consumers can expect to receive;
- Information about the impact of any traffic management that is used on specific types of services, such as reduced download speeds during peak times for peer-to-peer software; and
- Information on any specific services that are blocked, resulting in consumers being unable to run the services and applications of their choice.
Traffic management does have its benefits, especially for protecting safety critical traffic such as calls to emergency services. However, “net neutrality” supporters are not keen on traffic management as they believe all traffic should be treated as equal. Quite often file sharing traffic via peer-to-peer (P2P) is slowed down while the use of video streaming sites and general web surfing is given the priority.
To read Ofcoms report on it’s approach to net neutrality click here.
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November 8, 2011
Derbyshire County Council are calling for both residents and businesses to fill out a survey to show there is demand for superfast broadband in the area.
The reason there is this push from the local authority is to show that there is sufficient demand from residents and businesses which in turn will encourage companies to invest in the county.
Derbyshire was awarded £7.39m of broadband funding from the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) scheme but for these funds to be released the council needs to at least match the funding from the government. Showing there is demand for superfast broadband in the area would go along way to proving to companies that investment would not be wasted and help the council raise the important funds required.
However, the Derbyshire County Council member for regeneration, councillor Kevin Parkinson, is actually aiming for more than the £7.39m, he believes that reaching £10m is the target they want to aim for and he then thinks that the government funds could well be increased up to this to match them.
This is what Mr Parkinson had to say:
“Although they have given us the pledge, if we can raise more money, say £10 million, then I have confidence that we can encourage the Government to match that.
The onus is now on us.
Bringing fast and reliable broadband to Derbyshire is one of our key priorities and we really need people to share their experience to help us do this.We’ve been running the survey for a year and we’re grateful to the 1,500 residents and businesses who have already responded, but we need more.
We all need to pull together to bring better broadband to Derbyshire and Get Online week is the ideal time for people to do their bit for the county’s future.
The more we know about the current internet services in the Matlock and High Peak area the more we will know it can be addressed.
We are competing with all the other county councils in England but if we can demonstrate that everybody is behind this campaign it can only put us in a strong position.“
Residents & businesses are encouraged to fill out the broadband survey online or over the phone at www.derbyshire.gov.uk/broadbandsurvey
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October 31, 2011
BT’s roll out of fibre broadband is set to be completed a year ahead of schedule as they take on a further 520 engineers to accelerate the roll out.
BT had originally planned on having two thirds of the UK covered with fibre optic broadband by 2015, but they are taking on all these new engineers, most which are ex-armed forces, to help with the fibre deployment and will mean that BT hope to have this target completed by the end of 2014, a year ahead of schedule.
BT are investing £2.5bn into their fibre network, the majority of which is done as FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) for most of the country. Although FTTC is not classed as full fibre as it only has the fibre optic cable going form the exchange to the street-side cabinet and then requires standard copper wires to take it the remaining distance to the premises it does represent a huge increase in broadband speeds over what is available by standard broadband lines which are based on copper all the way. Currently the FTTC solution offers broadband speeds up to 40Mb, although this is set to double by next spring along with the headline speed for the full fibre (FTTH) being increased to a huge 300Mb.
Due to their speeded up roll out it will also see BT bringing forward £300 million of the investment forward to help fund the progress.
Currently around 6 million premises has fibre optic broadband available to them, with this figure likely to reach 10 million in 2012 and then to hit the two thirds of UK premises by 2014.
Only a few days ago the UK were ranked in 25th position on global broadband speeds based on the results from “Akamai’s State of the Internet report”, it is news of this accelerated rollout which should hopefully see the UK quickly rise of the world rankings, especially as the UK government has aims to have the best super fast broadband network in Europe by 2015.
BT markets their own fibre broadband solution as BT Infinity.
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October 27, 2011
Virgin cable broadband service is continuing to grow in popularity according to their latest set of results with most new customers taking broadband with a speed of 30Mb or above.
Virgin have just released their Q3 2011 results and it shows that they have increased their number of cable broadband customers by 24,300 to their fibre optic cable broadband service but have lost 5,200 customers on their standard DSL service. The customers on Virgins DSL service are those who are not in areas covered by Virgin Medias cable network and so will connect via standard copper broadband connections on BT’s network.
They are also seeing far more new customers taking out super fast broadband options, with 54% of new subscribers taking out broadband with speeds of 30Mb or above, this is compared to a year ago where just 28% were taking 20Mb or higher.
Of Virgin Media’s 4,072,900 cable broadband customers, over 26% are now taking 20Mb or higher broadband form them, this equates to over 1 million customers.
We anticipate allot of Virgin broadband customers who have existing deals may only move to faster broadband packages when they are offered free upgrades to do so. Virgin Media already offer a 50Mb broadband and are rolling out a 100Mb broadband service that is due to be completed during 2012 that will be available to 8 million homes.
Virgin will no doubt eventually change their packages and will not offer their 10Mb broadband service but it is likely to be increased, many customers may only then move to a faster broadband connection when they will not have to pay more for it.
Neil Berkett, the Chief Executive of Virgin Media, said:
“Over a quarter of our entire base now subscribe to speeds of 20Mb or higher and a record number of
customers joined us on superfast broadband speeds during the period with. In TV, we have quadrupled the
number of households using our game-changing TiVo service and customer advocacy for this product is
very strong.
We are increasing the value and mix of our customer base as people add or move to higher tier services
and as new joiners increasingly take up higher value products. This, along with subscriber growth, has
increased revenue and we have had further substantial increases in free cash flow and OCF. Our strong
and sustained financial performance allows us to continue to invest in giving our customers more value and
further differentiating our range of market leading products.“
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