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Broadband speeds ramp up with Virgin

Andre — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 07:15:46 +0000

Jon James, director of Virgin Media’s broadband, has issued a statement saying that broadband services will be enhanced with speeds of up to 400 megabits per second (Mbps)by the end of the year. Currently, Virgin Media provides broadband services to 70,000 customers across the UK, at a speed of 50Mbps.

The media giants are promising a more efficient service, which promises to shake up the broadband industry and create healthy competition for fast performance.

In addition, Virgin will be supplying modems optimised for 400 Mbps performance, and routers to accommodate the new speedy service. Future plans for the company include making the Virgin Media network available through new overhead cables, to an additional million consumers.

With the new speed, people will be able to download a full music album in a matter of seconds, or a film in under a couple of minutes. In his statement, Jon James said: “We have a big fat dial to give more capacity to customers and there will be a steady series of upgrades. Consumers are beginning to want more out of their connections. The crunch point is coming. There is a step-change in what people are trying to do with their broadband connection.”

Cloud computing, which enables shared resources, software and information to be provided on-demand, like electricity, is the future of high-speed connections and data transfer through broadband. Virgin Media are planning to make this service available to all homes, rather than keeping it in the realm of business services. A spokesperson for Virgin commented that the new service would remove issues people experience with IT currently, as photographs, films and documents could be accessed via the cloud.

This service, combined with the growing trend for home working, teleconferencing and 3D gaming, are all placing pressure on the broadband to provide faster, more efficient services to satisfy users.

Yesterday’s budget heralds improvements for broadband costs

James Oliver — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:49:41 +0000

Chancellor George Osborne announced yesterday that plans for the proposed tax on next-generation broadband in the UK are to be scrapped. As part of his budget plans, Osborne confirmed that the 50p monthly charge which was scheduled to be levied on broadband use is no longer to be implemented.

Rather than implementing the tax, the government are choosing to leave the roll-out of broadband to private investment. He also confirmed that money would be made available to assist rural areas to access broadband.

When Labour first announced their plans to place a tax upon broadband usage, the Conservatives were strongly opposed to the idea. The plan was then dropped from the Finance Bill agenda. George Osborne commented; 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 Liberal Democrats were in favour of creating funds for broadband roll-out in rural areas, but this planned change by Labour came under criticism from the Tories. The plan was dropped prior to the dissolution of parliament. Despite this, the UK coalition government appears to be supporting ongoing enhancements in broadband provision.

Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary, has announced that he intends to make Britain the best provider of superfast broadband services in Europe. One of the ways he is considering to achieve this is by making companies which currently supply fuel and water to allow fibre to be laid within the existing ducts, to enhance service provision. This is hoped to be a cheaper alternative than digging up roads to lay new ducts.

Ed Vaizey, the new broadband minister, will oversee the roll-out of next generation broadband and has been asked to provide all homes with 2Mbps minimum speed by 2012.

UK phone networks to offer iPad announced

Andre — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 10:45:24 +0000

The ‘big 3’ mobile phone networks in the UK have all announced that they have signed up to supply the iPad on its release.

O2, Orange and Vodafone will all supply the more expensive iPad that Apple will be releasing, this model will include both Wi-Fi and 3G mobile internet capabilities.

For anyone out there thinking that they may be able to put their current iPhone sim-card into the iPad, think again. Apple have been quite cheeky and have made the iPad work via a micro sim-card so users will have to sign up with a network in order to use 3G services on their tablet.

None of the networks have given any information about what sort of price plans they will be offering, this information is likely to be released along with the iPad pricing system on the delayed date of May 10th.

T-Mobile customers need not be too disheartened as the company have announced that talks with Apple are ongoing and that customers will be updated when more information becomes available.

All of the networks are planning to tie the iPad price plans with the current price plans provided for the iPhone meaning that a customer already on an iPhone contract will be given a micro-sim for use with their iPad costing them an additional monthly fee on top of their current contract.

Apple, however, favour the idea of a pay as you go system allowing users to pay only for the amount of broadband access they use rather than having to rely on contracts, this should in turn make the networks offer both options.

BT extends Fast Broadband Service

Matt Thomas — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:00:52 +0000

British Telecom is extending its super-fast broadband services, making the 100 megabits per second service available to double the number of people. The extension of the ‘fibre to premise’ service will make super-fast internet available to in the region of 2.5 million households. This is all coming as part of BT’s £1.5 billion pound investment in broadband networks through which they hope to connect 10 million homes to their fast broadband service by 2012.

However, BT has admitted that most of these connections will not technically be ‘fibre to the premise’ connections, rather ‘fibre to the cabinet’ connections where fibreoptic cables are hooked up to junction boxes on roads. ‘Fibre to the premesis’ connections are likely to be installed mainly in urban areas.

The new BT networks will be offered on a wholesale basis, which means that competitors like Sky and Carphone Warehouse will eventually be able to lease these high speed connections from BT and offer their own services through them.

The government has made high speed internet access a priority over the last few months, with the Digital Britain report even going so far as to pledge universal broadband access, at speeds of at least two megabits per second, across the UK by 2012.

UK Broadband not Future-Proof

Jenny Sanderson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:18:29 +0000

According to recent research from Cisco UK, Great Britain’s broadband service is not fit for the country’s future needs. Whilst the current broadband speed is sufficient for today’s sites and internet capabilities, Cisco believes we will struggle to compete with the next generation, Web 3.0, if you will.

Out of the 66 countries whose broadband signal was ranked, Britain came an embarrassing 25th, putting us behind the likes of less developed eastern-block countries like Latvia and Bulgaria. The one comforting thing to come out of the report is that we are classified as ‘meeting current requirements’, which at least puts us ahead of countries like Brazil, Argentina, and China who have always had a combative relationship with the internet.

The fastest, as if you needed to ask, are Japan and Korea which are approaching the threshold of 1 gigabit a second. That’s right, I said One Gigabit a second. This speed will apparently be universal in Japan and Korea by 2012. Just to give you appoint of reference on exactly how fast that is, the worldwide average speed is 4.75 Megabit per second.

BT Broadband Trial = 10 times faster Internet

James Oliver — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:45:01 +0000

Thousands of South Wales residents will be amongst the first customers to reap the benefits of BT’s new ‘super-fast’ broadband trial. The Internet users of Cardiff and Taffs will find themselves exploring the Internet and downloading files at unprecedented speeds early on in 2010 after BT have installed the fibrotic broadband.

This being a technology blog, I’d better explain the vital statistics. The internet speed will run up to a maximum speed of 40 mbps (megabits per second) with an even better speed of 60 Mbps available to a lucky 16’000 or so homes and businesses making those connections more than ten times as fast as the current speed in UK homes.

Impressive as it is the trial has not been cheap, a whopping £1.5 billion pounds has been earmarked for the project. This represents the single largest investment in fast Broadband technology ever seen in this country.

A few very lucky computer users in Cardiff and North London will have the opportunity to test out the super fast internet speeds this summer ahead of the main roll-out.

Tiscali on the Rocks

James Oliver — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:00:24 +0000

Tiscali have become the latest technology company to run into recession related trouble after their stock plummeted 40 per cent earlier this week. This drop has left the company’s valuation floundering at a pitiful €100 million Euros.

The company is heavily in debt and, by its own admission, needs a serious restructuring drive in order to survive. This is all a big change from last week when they had been hoping to wipe their debts completely by selling their UK business to BSKYB. Unfortunately for Tiscali, that deal fell through and any remaining faith that investors had in the company evaporated, leading to this week’s catastrophic share-price drop.

The troublesome Tiscali debts amount to about €500 million Euros, that’s made up of two €50 million credit facilities and a €400 million loan. All told, it amounts to five times the company’s current market value. You don’t have to be an economist to know that’s not good.

Tiscali’s downfall could be bad news for many UK internet users. Tiscali provides broadband to around 1.7 million UK customers after growing through their acquisition on Pipex broadband.

Trading in shares of the Italian company was suspended in Milan on Monday.

UK will struggle to up Broadband Speed to meet Targets

James Oliver — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 12:31:28 +0000

According to PointTopic, a UK based broadband think-tank, the government is going to have an ‘uphill struggle’ to fulfil its pledge to bring broadband of a minimum speed of 2 Megabytes per second to its Great Britain. The company has produced a breakdown of all the areas in the country that are not yet up to that speed and it makes for troubling reading.

Northern Ireland is the worst placed with more than 30 percent of all households failing to meet the 2Mbps standard. Wales is only slightly behind with 29.9 percent of all homes failing to meet the standard. Predictably, the best area is London, where only 1.2 percent of the population are out of range. However, it is the only section of the UK that falls below 10 percent.

The think-tank has described the scale of the task as massive and has advised the government to seek cooperation between it, the regulator and the operators if it is going to have any success. This crossroads for the UK’s broadband provision comes 10 years after the first broadband connection was established in the UK. Now analysts are predicting that adoption will reach 90% of all UK homes within another 10 years, making a success of it is critically important.

USA moves a step closer to free Broadband

Matt Thomas — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:00:53 +0000

The dream of free broadband across the US is a step closer to becoming a reality today after a debate lasting two years has finally led to a vote on the issue being scheduled. If the vote passes and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approves the plan then free broadband could be rolled out across America before 2009 is out.

The free broadband plan revolves around the AWS-3 segment of airwaves which are currently not being used. About 25% of the AWS-3 would need to be designated for free wireless broadband use. Whoever eventually buys the airwaves would be required by the terms of the sale to honour this usage policy. They would not however, be restricted from charging for premium broadband or other services in addition to the basic free connection provide by the state. Ownership of AWS-3 will be decided by auction next year.

The plan is predicted to benefit rural users in particular. Many rural Internet users are still forced by geography to use dial up Internet connections which struggle to handle web 2.0 features like streaming video. As a result, many of them are in danger of being left behind as the Internet advances at a pace they cannot match.

Internet providers on the other hand are, unsurprisingly, not so keen, particularly T-Mobile who bought the spectrum next to AWS-3 for $4 billion dollars in 2006.