2009 January 
In a bid to beat the January blues, ADSL2+ broadband provider O2 is offering customers three months of free broadband if they sign up for their main broadband products before the end of the month.
Applying to the Premium and Pro O2 Broadband packages – both of which provide maximum speeds of 20Mbps and unlimited downloads – before the 31st of January sees customers avoiding paying for the first three months of the contract.
This offer applies to all customers, whether they have a mobile phone contract with O2 or not; O2 Mobile customers can get further discounts on O2 Broadband services.
The Premium package currently costs £9.97 a month for existing O2 customers, or £14.68 for standard customers, and the Pro package normally costs £17.13 a month for existing O2 customers, or £22.02 for standard customers.
Whilst both O2 Premium and Pro boast the same fast top speed of 20Mbps, the Pro service is more suited to busier households. The Premium service comes with an upload speed of up to 1.3Mb and McAfee Security licences for up to three computers, whereas Pro has a faster upload speed of up to 2.5Mb, McAfee licenses for up to five computers, prioritised customer service and an optional free static IP for hosting.
Posted by Tom on January 12th 2009 in Broadband
For the rest of January, customers who place an order for any of BT’s Total Broadband services online can do so and qualify for a £20 discount which will be credited to your first bill.
This is equivalent to getting your first month of BT Option 1 plus the cost of line rental for free, getting the first months of Options 2 and Options 3 for under a fiver or a tenner, respectively.
This offer ends on January the 31st, and is only available to customers who place orders with BT online.
This announcement comes less than a week after BT took the historic decision to cut the costs of calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers on their Evening & Weekend and Anytime call packages.
Posted by Tom on January 12th 2009 in Broadband
Another new year, another Ofcom report detailing news what ought not be news to anyone who has signed up for broadband services over the last couple of years. This slightly Tuesday Follows Monday tract from the world’s biggest quango tells us that the average downstream broadband speeds enjoyed by UK customers is nowhere near the advertised maximum.
The survey finds that the typical British broadband downstream speed available on a copper wire connection (ADSL) hovers around the 3.6Mbps mark, less than half the speed of the advertised maximum 8Mbps speed which is available from pretty much every ISP out there.
On average, the top speed achieved rounds down to 4.3Mbps, and one in five homes have to put up with speeds lower than 2Mbps. Customers who have ponied up the dough for faster speeds available on ADSL2+ connections can expect on average to receive speeds of 9.4Mbps. The report concludes that on average, punters get 45 per cent of the advertised speed.
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Posted by Tom on January 9th 2009 in Broadband
Today, broadband market leaders BT have announced some good news for some 14 million phone customers by becoming the first UK telecoms company to make calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers free on their Unlimited Evening & Weekend and Unlimited Anytime call plans.
A frequent complaint of all customers is that phone packages boasting free calls to UK numbers at weekends, evenings or any time of day, any day of the week would only include calls to residential numbers beginning 01, 02 and 03 – 08 numbers, which are used by GP’s, banks and insurance companies would not be included in the free minutes, and
This frustration led to the formation of the website Saynoto0870.com, which allowed customers to search for the local and national numbers of banks and insurers by typing in the 08 number and name of the company, bank or practice into the search engine and getting an 01, 02 or 03 equivalent in the search results.
Now BT have cut charges to 0870 and 0845 calls on their two most popular phone plans, with Evening & Weekend customers being able to make free calls to these numbers during after 6pm and at the weekends, and Anytime customers being able to enjoy free 08 calls whenever.
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Posted by Tom on January 8th 2009 in BT Broadband, Broadband
After Sunday’s ‘Gordband’ announcement from the PM, the leader of the opposition duly chimed in with his two pennies.
David Cameron is due to say that ‘Every household in Britain should have ultra-fast broadband by 2020,’ or something to that effect, in a speech promoting the use of green technologies in the UK. The Conservative leader will deliver his message as his party releases two independent policy reports detailing its proposals to help businesses in this sector.
Mr Cameron will argue that Britain lags well behind its European counterparts and must “do a lot better”. He will call on the government to invest heavily in green technology ‘incubators’ and provide free access to testing facilities, a new Low Carbon Index of green firms and tax breaks on their shares.
“Fibre optic broadband is changing the way people work and do business, and it has the potential to completely transform our economy,” Mr Cameron is due to say.
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Posted by Ellie on January 6th 2009 in Broadband, Next Gen Broadband
Yesterday El Gordo announced a Teddy Roosevelt New Deal-style programme of job creation in the public sector to help revitalise the British economy. Speaking to the Observer, the PM hinted, amid New Year’s resolutions to take up jogging and halting deployment of more troops in Afghanistan, of government investment in next-gen superfast broadband.
Directly referencing FDR’s historic reform programme, Brown likened a next generation comms infrastructure to; “the roads and the bridges and the railways that were built in previous times…
Those were anti-recession measures taken to help people through difficult times – you could [by comparison] talk about the digital infrastructure and that form of communications revolution at a period when we want to stimulate the economy. It’s a very important thing.”
The Government has yet to announce any concrete details on how much would be spent and how funds would be allocated, or if ISPs would receive funds or tax breaks for investment in fibre.
BT have pledged £10 billion for a new network which would provide high speed connections to some 10 million homes by 2012. It has been estimated that the cost for a full nationwide fibre optic network would cost around £29 billion.
Posted by Tom on January 5th 2009 in BT Broadband, Next Gen Broadband
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