Posted by Admin on February 6, 2011 – 12:36 pm
Various towns in Kent are hopingto have access to super-fast broadband services within a year according to recent reports. This is all due to BT’s fibre based expansion which is currently being rolled out. The lucky Kent towns are Sheerness, Sandwich and Feversham.
Altogether 41 market towns will be receiving BT’s high speed broadband as a result of this expansion. This will apply to both businesses and residents which is excellent news.
Farningham has been reported to have the slowest broadband speed in the UK with an average of 1.30 Mbps. It would take residents 12 hours to download a film.
5.5 million UK residents and businesses now use BT’s internet services and their profits increased by 30% in the 3 rd quarter of 2010.
Posted by Admin on January 23, 2011 – 9:21 pm
BT has been told by Ofcom, the telephone regulator that they must reduce the prices that they charge other internet service providers to use its network. They must make reductions of somewhere between 10.75% and 14.75%.
The regulator was reported as saying” Ofcom expects competion between retail ISPs. who will benefit from lower wholesale prices, to lead to reductions in retail prices which benefit customers. The changes may also lead to better quality services by enabling ISPs to allocate more bandwidth per customer which could deliver faster broadband”
BT responded by saying ” It is key that the details strike the right balance between control and incentives to invest in rural areas. As the UK’s main investor in rural broadband, we will engage fully in the consultation process which follows to make our case”
The price cut will come into effect later in the year and is expected to benefit 12 pc of the UK. The reductions are however not good news for BT as they will reduce BT’s revenues by tens of millions of pounds per year.
BT had to open its network to its competors to meet the Governments promise to provide cheaper broadband to everyone in the UK by 2015.
Posted by Admin on January 16, 2011 – 1:44 pm
Londonderry is set to become the first city in Irelend and one of the first in the UK to be totally connected to fibre-optic broadband. By Autumn 2011 , 21,000 homes and 6,000 businesses are sheduled to be connected to fibre- optic broadband.
BT is to install £3 million worth of equipment in Londonderry in the run up to its inaugural year as City of Culture in 2013. The new broadband technology, which will provide the city with a super fast connection, has been heralded as an open access solution which will allow all broadband service providers to link in.
The City of Culture along with BT chiefs announced that it would take about nine months to build the infrastructure and make it ready for use. They confirmed that the cost would be about £3 million.
Londonderry’s Culture Company which is currently being set up hopes to attract a host of international names to invest in the city both before and after 2013 and confirm that there has already been huge interest from both private and commercial sectors.
Posted by Admin on January 5, 2011 – 1:47 pm
BT have announced the winners of their Race to Infinity Competition.
The competition which closed on 31 st December was designed to offer smaller communities the opportunity to show how much they wanted better services. Communities needed at least 1000 votes to qualify for the Race to Infinity. Each area was ranked as a pecentage by the amount of votes compared to the number of available phone lines. The top four areas completed the race with more than 100%
The top three in the race were Whitchurch in Hampshire, Caxton and Madingley in Cambridgeshire. Also sussessful were Blewbury in Oxfordshire , Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders and Baschurch in Shropshire.
The competition was for the top five areas but Baschurch did so well in the competition that BT decided to include it as well.
These communities would normally have expected to wait longer for faster broadband but they will now have the new high speed broadband packages up and running by early 2012.
Posted by Admin on December 22, 2010 – 6:27 pm
Talk Talk has accounced plans to provide its customers with a guaranteed minimum speed of 15 Mb in the New Year.
The internet provider will launch the new service in January 2011 for a small additional charge. Using BT’s fibre- to -the -cabinet technology speeds of up to 40Mb will be provided to enable customers to take advantage of its advanced online services. The new service will be offered as an addition to the consumers current service along with other options currently available.
Options available include a Mega download Boost, which can double a monthly download allowance to 
GB for just £4.99 per month. Also available is a IOO Mobile Minutes Boost allowing broadband and home phone customers to call mobile phones for free.
There are other deals offered by Talk Talk including Turbo, Anytime calls, Super Secure, International Calls and Calling Feature boosts all of which allow costomers to customise their own broadband service.
Posted by Admin on December 12, 2010 – 6:51 pm
The Government announced in its spending review that it will trial super-fast broadband as promised ,in North Yorkshire ,Cumbria, Herefordshire and the Highlands, with a contribution from the BBC of £300m .
The total cost of funding rural broadband is expected to be up to £530m. Money has been set aside from the digital switch over to help with the funding.
2 million households in remote locations who are struggling on dial up speeds will benefit although some parts of the UK will unfortunately still miss out although BT is trying to address the issue.
In Yorkshire the internet provider NYnet and North Yorkshire County Council have been selected to provide broadband at superfast speeds for up to 220,000 people in 27 market towns. They will work together to provide the broadband infrastructure needed for the future.
The Governement has also revealed in the Spending Review 2010 that they will hold spectrum anctions in 2011 or 2012 for next generation mobile broadband.
Posted by Admin on November 25, 2010 – 2:32 pm
BT has been conducting a nationwide suvey, which they are running as a competition called the Race to Infinity. The five winning areas will be upgraded to superfast fibre broadband by early 2012 at the latest. Businesses and homes have to show there is a local demand for fibre broadband by taking part in the survey.
BT is also commited to engageing with any community who didnt actually win one on the first five positions but where at least 75 per cent of busunesses and homes have voted for super-fast broadband.
In the lead so far is Caxton in Cambridgeshire and Malvern in Worcestershire where more than 1000 votes have been received. Overall more than 200,000 votes have already been cast since the idea was launched on 1 st October 2010. The competition will run until December 31st at bt.com/raceforinfinity .
However there is still some way to go and it seems that many local people are really enthusiastic about the competition and are becoming campaigners for their community.
By the end of 2010 BT will have made superfast broadband available to over 4 million premises, although they still have 12 million to reach as part of their plan to deliver fibre broadband to two third of the UK by 2015.
Posted by Admin on October 20, 2010 – 4:13 pm
A recent survey conducted for Cisco by the Said Bisiness School and the University of Oviedo has placed the UK as the I8th on the Broadband Quality Survey 2010 Last year Britain was 25th on the league table.
Unfortunately we are still some way behind the best in the world such as Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea. However the Uk has definately improved by 23 per cent over the last year. There has been a 39% improvement in download speeds and a 17% increase in upload speeds. Most British web users can now enjoy the latest web applications and the survey has placed Britian in the category of ” Broadband Penetration Leaders” now that three quarters of UK households have broadband access.
The UK is also to be congratulated on having no broadband quality digital divide between the most populated cities and those in less populated areas. This is considered to be a major achievement in a country such as ours.
However Britain is not one of the 14 countries already prepared for the ‘ applications of tomorrow’ and developing countries such as Bulgaria, Lativa and Portugal are way ahead in terms of download and upload speeds. They are currently acheiving download speeds of 11 mbps The worldwide average is 5.9 mbps for download with the UK coming in at 6.4 mbps.
The Government has said that Britain will have the best broadband network by 2015.
Posted by Admin on September 22, 2010 – 6:15 pm
BT customers who already have a broadband and phone bundle will benefit from a free upgrade to fibre optic broadband.
Bt Infinity gives customers download speeds of up to 40Mbps and upload speeds of 10Mbps.
Now BT has revealed that anyone who signs up to a bundle comprising Total Broadband Options 2 or 3 ,plus a home phone srevice or maybe digital TV, will qualify for a free upgrade to BT’s fibre optic broadband network if and when it becomes available in your area.
BT has already brought fibre connections to almost 1.5 million homes in the UK and they hope that this figure will increase to 10 million by 2012 and by 16.5 million by 2014.
At the moment signing up to More Broadband and Calls will give you a download speed of up to 20Mbps, a 40GB monthly allowance and unlimited calls to Uk landlines at weekends for a price of £17.99 per month. When you upgrade to fibre optic broadband your download speed increases to 40 Mbps. Plus if you take adventage of a current BT promotion you will only need to pay £7.49 per month for the first 3 months plus your standard line rental.
If you dont mind paying a little more you could opt for the More TV Broadband deal. This includes the same internet and calls usage plus a choice of 2 BT Vision TV packs. This will cost £32.99 per month with no upfront installation cost. Compare this to Sky and Talk Talk who are charging for installation.
BT has confirmed that it will not cost a penny more when the upgrades take place although there is an Infinity Activation charge of £25.
Posted by Admin on September 15, 2010 – 3:31 pm
Ofcom the independent regulator for the UK communications industries watchdog has conducted a survey about the number of people who wish to change their broadband providers.
Around 45 % of the people surveyed by Ofcom said that it was really difficult to switch broadband provider. People tend to stick with the internet provider that they have just to avoid any hassle.
It seems the main problem is getting the MAC ( Migration Authorisation Code ) passed from their current provider to their new provider. The code should be given to you within a week but often this takes much longer and customers are left without broadband during that period. Of course this may or may not be a ploy to discourage customers from changing provider. It seems to work if that is the case as a lot of people surveyed say it is too difficult to change.
Hopefully Ofcom will now look into this situation and make the process less of a headache for anyone looking for a more favourable internet package.
It would be interesting to know how many people have had problems changing their provider.
