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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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It seems as though Kent has become the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley – after seeing Virgin Media choose the area as it’s test bed for the new 50Mbps service, and BT trialling next-gen 100Mbps broadband, telecoms group Orbital Net are about to deploy broadband services via WiMax in and around the Folkstone area.

This new network will see Orbital Net’s footprint covering practically all of Kent, (WiMax is already available in Ashford, Maidstone, Canterbury and Thanet) and will see businesses able to enjoy wireless broadband speeds of up to 10Mbps, and residential subscribers able to apply for services offering speeds of 2Mbps and above.

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Orange have announced some changes to the pricing structure of their broadband products so that they are more in line with those of the competition. A one-off £30 connection charge now applies to their products across the board, that’s Orange Home Starter, Orange Home Select, and Orange Home Max. A 3 month introductory period, giving customers 50% off the regular rate for each of the packages has also been introduced.

The Orange LiveBox (pictured), a wireless router enabling up to 8Mbps speeds, VoIP calls and effortless home networking comes included free with the Home Select and Home Max products.

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The popularity of the BBC iPlayer has been a bone of contention between the PSB broadcaster and the ISP superleague of Britain, and last week the BBC’s Director of Future Media and Technology Ashley Highfields drew up a nineteen point manifesto on broadband use, a “Broadband Charter.”

The charter lambasted the practice of falsely labelling services as Unlimited, and the much maligned ‘up to’ prefix – Highfields cheekily suggested that ISPs get in touch with Ofcom for “help” on how to do this.

But Highfield, Director of Future Media and Technology at the £4bn-a-year corporation, said the BBC won’t dip into public money coffers to help out:

“I would not suggest that ISPs start to try and charge content providers,” he writes, finger a-wagging. “They are already charging their customers for broadband to receive any content they want. If ISPs start charging content providers, the customer will not know which content will work well over their chosen ISP, and what content may have been throttled for non-payment of a levy.”

The charter stated that a worst-case scenario would see the Beeb reducing the bit rate of iPlayer streams and downloads so that the toll on bandwidth usage would not be so heavy, although Highfield quickly admits that this is “not a desired outcome for anyone.”

A bookmarking system is also on the cards, so that should you download several episodes of say EastEnders, then next time you sign in, follow-up episodes would be prioritised for downloading. Highfield noted on the “very good relationship” between the BBC and BT Wholesale, made mention of the 21CN network and Virgin Media’s 50Mbps trials.

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Carphone Warehouse, owners of ISPs TalkTalk and AOL UK, have dug their heels in over the recent demands from the government and the BPI to shop customers who illegally download copyrighted material over P2P networks.

In a statement, Charles Dunstone said that: “Our position is very clear, we are the conduit that gives users access to the Internet, we do not control the Internet nor do we control what our users do on the Internet,” and stated that should a legal decision to make a ‘three strike’ policy a requisite for ISPs happen, then Carphone would do everything in its power to challenge that:

“I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would voluntarily disconnect a customer’s account on the basis of a third party alleging a wrongdoing. We believe that a fundamental part of our role as an ISP is to protect the rights of our users to use the Internet as they choose. We will fight any challenge to the sanctity of this relationship with every legal option available to us.”

The BPI’s response: “We passionately believe that working in partnership with ISPs to develop first class, safe, legal, digital music services is the way forward. TalkTalk claims it is their role to ‘protect the rights of their customers to use the internet as they choose’. We strongly disagree on this point when that usage is illegal. Contrary to TalkTalk’s claims, passing advice on to their customers is not ‘unreasonable’ or ‘unworkable’. We are not asking ISPs to act as the police. We are asking them to act on information we provide to them.”

Last week it was revealed that Virgin Media were only too keen to buddy up with the BPI – presumably because they want government to be on their side when the time comes to pass judgement on the numerous disputes with Sky. Carphone Warehouse is also the only ISP out of the three who have climbed into bed with the controversial Phorm – the others being Virgin and BT – who have gone out of their way to stress that an ‘opt-out’ will be available to all users.

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Seems as though the music industry has finally realized that the internet exists. With UK ISPs now facing government pressure to shop clients who willingly indulge in illegal P2P activities, one of the major labels, Warner Music is currently holding talks with the big players in the Broadband league over the provision of legal music downloads available on a subscription basis.

A piece in yesterday’s Times reveals that Warner Music frontman and chief executive, Edgar Bronfman, gave the go-ahead to a scheme which would see American broadband customers paying an additional fee on top of their usual package – e.g. $5 a month – for access to the Warner catalogue, including artists such as Led Zeppelin, Madonna, R.E.M. and, somewhat ironically, Metallica.

Along with IPTV, inclusive music downloads could soon become the next value-added lock in for broadband customers. Companies such as Virgin Media and O2 are synonymous with music here in the UK, owing to sponsorship of festivals and venues, and many of these companies already have existing deals with content providers for their TV platforms.

Any music files are almost certainly going to come shrink wrapped in shiny happy DRM, and probs wont work on certain world-famous portable music playing devices. Whilst this is certainly a step in the right direction, its doubtful that punters will warm to the idea of paying for something which they might not be able to use 100% of the time. It’s not like up and coming bands make money from CD sales anyway.

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