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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October 25, 2011
The latest “State of the Internet” report by Akamai found the UK lagged back in 25th spot based on countries broadband speeds around the world.
This latest report is for the second quarter of 2011 and actually saw European countries placed well in the top 10 of average broadband speeds, as usual though it is South Korea (13.8Mb), Hong Kong (10.3Mb) and Japan (8.9Mb) who top the list.
However, coming in in 4th spot was the Netherlands (8.5Mb), then the Czech Republic (7.4Mb) followed by Switzerland (7.3Mb).
The UK averaged just over 5Mb putting it back down in 25th spot.
However, where the UK does climb the rankings is for general broadband connectivity where we rank 11th, this is due to the fact that over 91% of users connected to the internet have broadband speeds of 2Mb or greater. The leader in this category, maybe rather surprisingly, was Bulgaria with 97% followed by the Czech Republic with 95%.
Top fastest 100 cities for broadband didn’t contain 1 UK city, with the highest ranked European city being Brno in the Czech Republic which was at number 55 averaging 8.3Mb. The top 100 cities included 59 form Japan and 10 from South Korea as has tended to be the case every time these reports are released.
All is not doom and gloom for the UK though, we currently have BT rolling out their fibre broadband network across the UK which is due to reach two thirds of the country by 2015 at a cost of around £2.5bn. Virgin Media are also looking at and working on ways to increase their broadband speeds offered to customers via their cable network. So going forward we would expect the UK to start climbing the rankings and hopefully by 2015 when the uptake of fibre broadband across the country has increased the average broadband speed test results will make for far more pleasant reading.
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October 20, 2011
The first city in the UK & Ireland to be fully upgraded to Fibre broadband is Derry in Northern Ireland.
Every BT street cabinet in Derry has now been upgraded to FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) and now means that around 40,000 homes and businesses will be able to use the new fibre broadband service. It is probably little co-incidence that Londonderry was high up on BT’s list of places to get fibre broadband fully installed to as BT are one of the main sponsors of Derry for 2013 when they become the UK City of Culture.
FTTC will offer users in Derry up to 40Mb broadband speeds with this likely to increase to up to 80Mb next year when BT increases the available broadband speeds across its fibre network.
Colm O’Neil, the BT Chief Executive in Northern Ireland, told this to the BBC:
“There is different pricing and we have done it on an open access basis.
It is a more expensive product than your standard broadband product but for that, you would potentially get 10-50 times increase in speed.
This city on the north west coast of Ireland, right on the edge of Europe, now has access to speeds and connectivity better than people in Hong Kong, Tokyo, London or New York.
That is an important message for the business community to understand.“Derry first city to get full FTTC coverag
Customers in Derry won’t get an automatic switch0over to the fibre broadband, this is because prices are currently around 30% more expensive than standard broadband connections, but as Mr O’Neil pointed out there are much larger speed increases available for the extra you will be paying.
Despite BT being one of the partners for Derry’s 2013 UK City of Culture this does not mean that the fibre broadband is only available via BT Infinity. Other Broadband providers will be able to offer services through the new fibre network.
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October 14, 2011
An outage of Virgin Media broadband, TV and home phone services on Monday in parts of Scotland was caused by rats chewing through fibre optic cable according to Virgin Media.
Hundreds of customers in east Scotland were affected as the rats had chewed through the underground cables. Virgin Media engineers managed to fix the problem by Monday evening but the rats came back and chewed through them again on Tuesday afternoon meaning that services went down again.
The engineers once again came out and sorted the problem, with a spokesperson for the company saying:
“We’ve now put additional measures in place to prevent further damage to our cables to avoid further disruption for our customers.”
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October 3, 2011
 BT Broadband has had broadband outages across the UK today after one of the major exchanges in Birmingham had a power failure.
At around 1 pm today (Monday 3rd October) problems started to arise for BT Broadband customers and it was a nationwide problem affecting customers up and down the country.
A BT Spokesperson earlier on said:
“We can confirm that, as a result of a power issue at one of our major exchanges, some customers may currently be experiencing a loss of broadband service.”
It is believed that the main problem has now been fixed with most BT Broadband customers back online, there are however some remaining customers who are still experiencing problems with connecting to their internet.
*** Anyone still experiencing problems with their BT Broadband are advised to reboot their Home Hub modem/router to hopefully fix any remaining problems. ***
BT Broadband customers can also keep an eye on the BT Service status update page for updates and estimated resolve times to their BT Broadband.
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