August 26, 2010
The average price of broadband in America and Europe has come down on average by €5 (£4) in past 6 months.
The study was done by Analysys Mason and they looked at prices from the fourth quarter 2009 up to the second quarter 2010 and included at single, double and triple play services when doing so. More than 1,000 bundles were studied of the report.
Alongside the priced coming down we have however also seen broadband speeds increasing which is only a good thing for consumers.
The average price stood at €40.70.
Martin Scott, the Senior Analyst at Analysys Mason said:
“Almost 20% of the tariffs we tracked during the second quarter of 2010 offered downstream bandwidths of 30Mbit/s or greater (although the proportion of subscribers that actually take these ultra-fast services is likely to be much lower than 20%). Consequently, the average price per megabit per second has declined from EUR7.5 in the fourth quarter of 2009 to just EUR5.8 in the second quarter of 2010.
Having said that, the premium that providers charge for mobile broadband services is also eroding. Prepaid mobile broadband services with usage caps of 3GB or more (which are sufficient for light users) now undercut entry-level fixed broadband service propositions in terms of price in most Western European countries.”
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August 20, 2010
Places in the South West and Wales are set to get connected up to BT’s 21CN (21st Centrury Network) which will offer broadband speeds up to 20Mb.
The 21CN uses ADSL2+ technology and by spring next year a further 200 cabinets are due to be upgraded to this technology. This will mean that a further 90,000 homes and businesses in the South West of England plus around 70,000 in Wales will have access to these faster broadband speeds.
Altogether, by next year BT will have covered 56% of South West properties which will be more than 1.2 million premises.
These upgrades to BT’s network are in addition to the work they are doing in rolling our their Next Generation Fibre broadband network (BT Infinity) which will offer broadband users speeds up to 40Mb for those connected to FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) or up to 100Mb for the lucky ones connected to FTTH (Fibre To The Home).
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August 5, 2010
The BBC License Fee is being looked at that it may become “obsolete” with the growing coverage of Internet access across the country.
With the fact that universal broadband is to be introduced across the country some have suggested that this could have a direct impact on the TV license that we pay.
David Graham of the “Adam Smith Institute” has made a report titled: “Global Player or Subsidy Junkie? Decision Time for the BBC”. In the report it was suggested that broadband access could see the license fee applied to this as apposed to paying it to the BBC.
Some of the stated reason that the BBC should give up the License Fee included:
- It criminalises poor people.
- It forces people to pay for genuinely “free” services funded by advertising.
- It obliges the BBC to replicate a crude commercial model based on mass-audience advertising.
- Universal broadband and the Internet make a “licence” to broadcast obsolete. On the other hand, they enable direct delivery of services outside the UK. The current funding model denies access to Britons and others resident overseas.
Obviously the BBC would put up a huge case against this as it is where they get most of their money and funds from.
At the moment the report was designed to get people thinking of this as a possibility and talking about the issue, although it is unlikely that we will see any change in the immediate future but it is certainly something that we should not rule out seeing in the future.
We will at the least have to wait until the full roll out of universal broadband across the country is completed before this subject is even considered.
The full report can be found at: adamsmith.org
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August 3, 2010
The UK has come in at 27th position for the Worlds fastest broadband speeds.
The disappointing position has seen the UK fall back 4 places from 23rd to 27th in the 201 countries that are speed tested, with the results published in Akamai’s “State Of The Internet” report that was released earlier this week. The results are for Quarter 1 of 2010.
The average of the broadband speed test results found that we on average a broadband speed of 3.8Mb, this is way behind the average of the leading countries, with South Korea averaging 12Mb broadband connections.
More than this, the list of top 100 cities based on average broadband speed didn’t see any UK cities listed, and there were only eight cities in Europe that made the list with Romania accounting for four of them. Japan were the clear leaders here with over half of the positions with an impressive 53 cities listed in the top 100.
The global average broadband speed was just 1.7Mb.
Last week we reported how Ofcom had done their own broadband speed test to find the average broadband speed in the UK of 5.2Mb so there is clearly some discrepancy between the two tests as to what our actual average broadband speed is.
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July 29, 2010
The speed of fixed line broadband has seen an increase of over 25 per cent in the last year in broadband speed test done by Ofcom.
After Ofcom conducted it’s own broadband speed test research in partnership with the broadband site SamKnows the results showed that broadband speeds on average were raised from 4.1Mb to 5.2Mb.
This speed increase comes as broadband providers continue to try and offer customers faster and faster broadband speeds, a statistic which is proved with the fact that in April 2009 just 8% of broadband users fixed line connections were advertised as above “up to” 10Mb, with that figure now raised to 24% on services offering above “up to” this speed.
With these increasing advertised headline speeds comes the fact that although on average broadband speeds have increased there is a growing gap between what users are advertised as their “up to” speed and what they are actually receiving.
In April 2009 the average advertised “up to” speed was 7.1Mb with the actual average broadband speed customers received being 4.1Mb which meant that users were receiving 58% of the advertised speed.
However, in May 2010 the average advertised broadband “up to” speed was 11.5Mb and the actual broadband speed customers received ion average was 5.2Mb which is just 45% of the advertised speed.
Unsurprisingly was the fact that Virgin Medias fibre broadband provided the fastest broadband, with the 10Mb and 20Mb which provided download speed around twice as fast as broadband packages offering similar headline speeds.
The fastest broadband speed was found to be on Virgin Medias 50Mb fibre broadband service which offered an average broadband download speed of 36Mb when done on a single thread test (when just 1 file is downloaded) and about 46Mb when a multi-thread test (when three files are downloaded at the same time which is more in line with how heavy broadband users use the Internet) was performed.
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July 26, 2010
BT are going to target thieves who have been stealing it’s copper cables which results in costing the company millions of pounds.
The price scrap copper means that thieves can make good money by stealing BT’s copper cables and selling it on as scrap, however this costs BT millions in replacing the copper and also causes disruptions to it’s customers who can end up cut off from BT’s network and unable to use their phone and broadband services. The theft of BT copper is on the increase with incidents last year rising by 9%.
BT are going to start spraying their cable with SmartWater which is an invisible solution that shows up under ultraviolet light. This will stay on the cable and also any thieves who get sprayed with it for up to 60 days and as it can be made to be unique to a specific location it will make it easier to pinpoint criminals to a specific crime scene.
SmartWater is also used by Network Rail who also find themselves target to metal thieves.
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July 19, 2010
BT are putting the cost of line rental up by 50p per month starting October and telephone call costs are also due to rise,
 The cost of BT’s line rental will now cost £13.29 per month or for those customers who pay by direct debit an dare e-billing customers it will cost £12.04 per month.
Daytime calls are also going to rise, with the price going up from 5.9p per minute to 6.4p per minute.
What could well be a co-incidence is that it was October that Labours “Broadband Tax” of 5op per month was due to be introduced, this was subsequently scrapped by the Conservative/Lib-Dem government. The broadband tax was due to help raise funds to help fund the roll out of next generation broadband across the country.
For anyone who doesn’t have a landline and is looking at taking one out and is willing to pay the landline fee as an annual subscription can make a big saving if they sign up before the 29th October, if they do they will be charged £113.88 (£9.49 per month) instead of the new price which will be £159.48 for the annual fee after October.
BT will be writing to all it’s 12.5 million customers to tell them about the price rises in the coming weeks, although it is thought that around half of BT’s customers are on the unlimited UK landline calls package and as such the call charges won’t affect these customers.
BT recently announced that they would be investing an extra £1 billion in deploying fibre optic broadband, making their total investment to be around £2.5 billion, they also recently started to offer Sky Sports channels to customers, however it is though that due to Sky changing the wholesale price of these channels that BT are actually going to be losing money on each one of these that they sell.
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June 23, 2010
Those interested in watching Englands final World Cup group stage game can do so online with their broadband connection.
The England v Slovenia game kicked off at 3pm and those wanting to watch it online can do so on the BBC iPlayer – www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
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Yesterdays emergency budget by the new Government has finally confirmed that the “broadband tax” that Labour wanted to bring in has been scrapped.
Labours 50p per month broadband tax was to be charged to every phone line in the UK with the money raised used to help fund the roll out of fibre optic broadband across the UK.
The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne said:
“I am happy to be able to abolish this new duty before it is even introduced.
Instead, we will support private broadband investment, including to rural areas, in part with funding from the digital switchover under-spend within the TV licence fee.“
The broadband tax would have cost those with a phone line around £6 per year, with those with more than one telephone lines having to pay for each line they have. Labour figured it would raise between £175m-£200m per year to help fund the roll out of Next Generation fibre broadband, however the Conservatives are going to use the extra money that has been left over from the digital switchover to help fund getting this fibre broadband out into rural areas where it is not financially feasible for companies such as BT to fund the deployment themselves.
It is estimated that there is around £300 million left in the digital switchover fund, with many not believing that this will be enough to make sure all rural ares get broadband.
There will be a slight rise potentially on broadband prices with VAT rising 2.5% up to 20% which is due to come into effect on 4th January 2011.
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June 18, 2010
This evening England take on Algeria in their second game of the group stages of the World Cup with fans able to watch the action online.
 For those who want to watch the game online via their broadband connection they can do by going to the ITV Live website where the game will be streamed live online.
The England v Algeria Group C game takes place at the Cape Town Stadium with Kick Off at 7.30pm but coverage on ITV starting at 7pm.
Those watching World Cup games online at the ITV Live website can also chat live with other fans and also read stats about the teams as the game is taking place if they wish or there is also the option of having just standard viewing with no other distractions if you wish.
To watch the World Cup games online that that ITV have, visit: http://live.itv.com
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