Award winning Eclipse Internet are about to launch a revolutionary new feature for their broadband customers.

The about-to-be-launched Eclipse Control Panel allows users to manage their traffic and optimise specific applications, so if you mainly use the net for email, you can tweak your settings accordingly. The press release from Eclipse claims that connections can be configured in order to optimise “web browsing, email, peer-to-peer, FTP, VPN and gaming.”

“The new services give customers access to the tools to let them do this for themselves, via the Eclipse Control Panel,” says the release. “The view from Eclipse is that customers know better than anyone else what they want from their broadband service, so why not let them control it?”

This news comes on the eve of some price adjustments to the Eclipse residential and business broadband packages – more on this as we get it.

The sunny Dorset town of Bournemouth, famed for it beaches, golf courses and many hills, is to become the first UK town to get next-gen Dark Fibre broadband access.

More than 88,000 homes and businesses in the coastal town will benefit from eye wateringly fast speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second) in the next six months under the £30 million scheme, which has been undertaken by Dark Fibre specialists H20 Networks, whose activities we’ve been chronicling on this very blog.

Elfed Thomas, CEO of H20 said: “This is just the start of bringing next generation connectivity to the UK… Many households and broadband customers in the UK have insufficient connectivity bandwidths because they are attached to legacy networks deployed in the 20th Century that just can’t cope with demand.”

Dark Fibre is the term used to describe the method of fibre-optic cable access that is delivered to kerbside clusters via the existing sewer network.

Bank holidays are usually rubbish – the roads are congested because everyone is trying to go somewhere, the already woeful public transport runs a skeleton Sunday service, and half of the places you’d want to go to are shut.

However, those thinking about signing up with TalkTalk broadband ought to hold their horses til tomorrow; TalkTalk are offering to waive the £29.99 connection charge for customers who sign up online over the May Day bank holiday weekend – that’s the 3rd, 4th, and 5th May 2008.

This means that the overall annual cost of the Talk2 Broadband service shrinks to just over £70, with the Talk3 Broadband deal dropping to under £120 (not including line rental). Those interested in this holiday opportunity should know that the deal ends early Monday morning; 9am on the 6th of May.

Leading mobile networks and broadband providers Orange and O2 have finally moved in on the mobile broadband market, following on from T-Mobile, Vodafone and 3.

Both companies are punting mobile surfing to users, allowing them to connect to the net on the move by way of a plug and play USB dongle. Both of the packages offer customers 3GB worth of monthly surfing over their networks, with the O2 packages including unlimited Wi-Fi access via The Cloud’s 7,500 UK hotspots.

O2 Mobile Broadband automatically hooks users up to the fastest connection available – GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, or Wi-Fi, and the plug and play aspect of the USB dongle makes it super easy to use. The dongle also comes with a stylish LED display panel which indicates what network is being used, so you’ll be able to easily estimate what speed you should be getting. Talking of which, for the moment broadband speeds of O2 Mobile Broadband will be around 1.8Mbps, which O2 plan to accelerate speeds to a faster average of 3.6Mbps this June. Orange Mobile Broadband also comes with speeds of up to 1.8Mbps, although there have been no official noises on speed increases yet. However, Orange has the edge over O2 in terms of cost.

There are two separate price plans available on O2, a £20 a month 18 month contract, which includes the price of the USB dongle, or a rolling monthly package also costing £20 a month, plus a one-off charge for the dongle (£120). Orange, by contrast only have one price plan, and 18-monther which costs users just £15 a month, significantly cheaper over a year and half when compared with the O2 equivalent; the price of the Orange USB dongle is also included in the price.

From today, O2 Home Broadband is available in all homes throughout the UK, thanks to a deal inked with BT which allows O2 to supply broadband to customers using both their own and BT’s wholesale network, allowing O2 Pay Monthly mobile subscribers everywhere to take advantage of discounts off the cost of next-gen broadband. O2 will still continue to install equipment in BT exchanges through Be Broadband, but for now, this venture means that punters who have wanted to sign up with O2 Broadband can do so.

To make punters aware of the nationwide availability of the service, O2 are launching a high visibility £6 million ad campaign. The new campaign, dubbed “Happy Homes” will feature on TV, in papers and posters and on trains and tubes. The print ads feature a series of houses with strategically positioned windows, doors and fences to create the impression that the buildings are smiling.

O2’s Home Broadband Access package will cost from £17.50 per month for O2 customers, representing excellent value for customers when compared to similar services delivered over BT’s wholesale network by competitor providers. Prices for O2 Home Broadband delivered over O2’s own LLU network start from £7.50 per month for O2 customers.

Al O2 customers can benefit from free UK-based tech support and customer service, unlimited downloads, free connection and wireless kit and no connection fees.

After the embarrassing but slightly amusing ‘bollocks’ gaffe, it appears that Virgin Media and the BBC have kissed and made up and sensibly worked something out so that everyone’s happy.

Virgin and the Beeb have announced new partnership which sees the BBC launching their iPlayer service on the Virgin Media cable TV platform, making its 3.5 million TV customers the first in the UK to get the popular service via a TV platform.

Viewers viewing the iPlayer on Virgin Media will be able to watch full screen pictures instead of small, quarter screen size on their computers, and without having to indulge in bandwidth-hungry downloading. Malcolm Wall, CEO of Content at Virgin, said:

“We’re delighted to be the first TV platform in the UK to offer our customers BBC iPlayer as part of our on-demand service. The enormous success of iPlayer online has demonstrated the desire TV viewers have for viewing quality programmes at a time that suits them, and now it’s available from the comfort of the living room. Virgin Media is proud to be working with the BBC to continue to lead this revolution in TV viewing.”

With the iPlayer now being offered as part of Virgin’s digital TV service, this should see the strain currently being placed on their network as a result of iPlayer use lessen.

Sky’s recent release of quarterly results to the 31st of March 2008, revealed that the group had managed to increase its broadband subscriber base to 1,428,000, up 229,000 from last year. Their glowing press release reads thus:

“As at 31st March 2008, 88% of Sky Broadband customers were on our network and around two thirds of these on-net customers are taking a paid-for product. Sky Talk surpassed one million customers during the quarter with net additions of 180,000 to reach 1.1 million. At 31st March 2008, 57% of Sky customers also took Sky Talk.”

The massive surge in growth is a reflection of Sky’s hefty investment into their network so that more of their customers can sign up for their additional digital TV and phone services; last year, Sky pledged an investment of £127m to improve their broadband and telephony infrastructure for residential customers.

Last October, Sky celebrated in style when they connected their millionth customer by hiring seven surfers – each one representing an individual figure in of the 1,000,000 – to ride the waves of Newquay’s Fistral Bay. If they continue connecting customers at this current rate, they’ll be able to do the same thing again, only this time with the bloke on the far right getting to wear a shirt with a big ‘2′ on it.

In February, Virgin Media big cheese Neil Berkett quite literally offered his two cents on the net neutrality debate in an interview with the Royal Television society magazine; “This network neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” he reportedly thundered.

The interview sparked fears among web video providers, such as YouTube, that Virgin have this week been trying to ally. It was implied that content providers who refused to pay levies to ISPs would see user traffic travelling to their sites shaped in order to meet bandwidth costs.

Berkett reportedly said video providers who don’t pay a congestion charge on the wider internet could see customer traffic shunted to slower “bus lanes”; it was this particular comment that send the WVPs running for the hills. A spokesman said that Berkett’s statements had been taken out of context, and asserted that: “We’re not suggesting there will be any denial of access to those who don’t want to pay.”

What is clear is that demand for popular applications such as YouTube and the BBC iPlayer has placed a huge strain on bandwidth. Virgin have circumvented this somewhat with direct peering with el Beebio in order for faster and more streamlined iPlayer usage, setting the precedent for other ISPs to follow suit.

Tiscali have been pretty vocal about BBC Technology Director Ashley Highfeild’s proposed Broadband Charter, and are adamant that Auntie et al should cough up. Simon Gunter, strategy chief at Tiscali said last week that it’s a “bit rich that a publicly-funded organisation is telling a commercial body how to run its business.”

Bandwidth famine in the UK is rife. Virgin Media’s forthcoming 50Mbps broadband service ought to help, but cable isn’t available everywhere to everyone. BT are soldiering on with their 100Mbps next gen trial, but new CEO Ian Livingstone on day one of hi new job, made it clear that BT would not be engaging in any phorm of big-scale fibre rollout unless Ofcom keep their tentacles at bay.

Speaking of Ofcom, they tellingly betrayed their grip on the situation with a recent announcement of an investigation into whether roll-out of fibre can be sped up by using existing utilities infrastructure, chiefly waterways. H20 Networks have been busy getting on with this on their tod for a while now, and way back when in ‘93, a company called Ipsaris unrolled 3,500 km of cable alongside British Waterways’ canal network. Iparsis was purchased in 2001 by Easynet, who are of course now owned by Sky.

AOL have just announced a new change to the pricing plan of their recently launched Wireless Flexi package, and their start-up Wireless broadband service. The cost for the first three months of both of these services has been reduced to just £4.99 – less than £15 for 3 months of broadband access – after which the standard £14.99 rate applies.

The new Wireless Flexi service is billed on a monthly basis, and it aimed at groups of people such as students, who may not be living at the same address for 12 or 18 months – the standard Wireless service is available on an 18 month contract.

Both Wireless and its Flexi equivalent both provide up to 8Mbps speeds with a 10GB monthly cap – that’s a pretty generous limit compared to the start-up packages of other providers. Both of these products naturally come with a wireless router, allowing up to 6 devices to share the same connection.

AOL will also be running with a new TV ad campaign to pimp these new prices, in an effort to distance themselves from Carphone Warehouse stablemates TalkTalk.

O2 have just launched a new promo campaign touting their range of connectivity options available to consumers. The new tagline is “We’re better, connected”, which points to their increased mobile phone signal coverage and their launch of broadband internet services; it’s possible that the phrase is also a cheeky nod to the old “It’s good to talk” ads by BT.

The centrepiece of the promo campaign is a short video clip, with supplementary billboard ads to follow. Familiar O2 themes such as the bubble and the blue light filter are present, as are motifs based around groups of four objects replicating four bars of signal on a handset display.

In the lavishly produced TV ad, the now familiar O2 bubble floats across a series of surreal landscapes where teddy bears play with train sets and dogs on rooftops howl at a series of moons, a bit like the ‘Twilight Bark’ sequence from 101 Dalmatians. Sean Bean reprises his voice acting role from the “It’s your O2 See what you can do” strap line introduced in 2006 with the new punning catchphrase.