32Mbps in UK homes by 2019?

According to a recent Point Topic report, the majority of UK homes – as many as 90 per cent – could have access to broadband lines providing top connection speeds of 32Mbps by 2019. This report is based on the oft-cited Moore’s Law that states that the number of transistors than can be easily placed on an integrated circuit will increase exponentially, doubling roughly every two years.

Specifically referring to the proposed investment programme which would see every UK household capable of having access to broadband speeds of at least 2Mbps, Tim Johnson, chief analyst at Point Topic, said in a statement that “some people say [the Digital Britain report] is too little too late, but we believe that investing to deliver 2Mbps could provide the platform for much higher-speed broadband services in areas where it wouldn’t otherwise happen for many years.”

This is, of course, all dependent upon the terms of the proposed Universal Service Obligation, and the specifics of any investment schemes can be agreed upon between the leading ISPs and mobile networks of the UK.

‘Project Canvas’ Broadband catch-up venture to cost £24 million

The BBC, ITV and UK Broadband market leaders BT quietly announced the tentatively titled ‘Project Canvas’ last year – a joint IPTV-based venture which is intended to “bring catch-up from the PC to the TV” – which, according to the BBC Trust is set to cost backers a cool £24 million.

Project Canvas is aimed at providing Freeview and Freesat owners with a broadband connection access to a library of catch-up and on-demand programming on their TV screens, presumably following the IPTV model employed by BT Vision, the digital TV offering from BT, although the Canvas service will be altogether separate from BT Vision, as the service will be made available to anybody with a broadband connection, regardless of whose broadband services they subscribe to.

The Beeb, ITV and BT are all hopeful that the service will be up and running by the beginning of 2010, and hope to attract interest from other major partners, such as Channel 4 and Five.
Today the BBC Trust has launched a consultation into the BBC’s proposals that will be completed by 24 July this year, with the partners hopeful of launching Canvas on Freeview, the free-to-air digital terrestrial TV service, and Freesat, its digital satellite equivalent, in early 2010.

New set top box equipment will have to be purchased for the service, which was billed as ‘Freeview mark two’ by an unnamed source in yesterday’s Guardian.

The boxes plus set-up and connection fees, according to the BBC Trust could end up costing anywhere between £100 and £200, but as Project Canvas is an open platform, it is therefore open to all hardware manufacturers, and so installation and equipment costs would invariably fall as take-up increased. Freeview boxes, when they first came out, cost upwards of three figures, but are now available for as little as £10 from electrical retailers. The new receivers would all be HD Ready, and include interactive programme guides, and the ability to pause, record and rewind a la Sky+.

Virgin Media speed boost to upgrade 2.6m homes to 10Mbps

Despite having ditched the old Size: M service from their roster of broadband services a few weeks ago, Virgin Media have announced that they will now be upgrading all of their current Size: M packages – which offer top speeds of 2Mbps and unlimited downloads – to Size: L which instead provides a maximum downstream speed of 10Mbps.

Some 2.6 million homes are currently still on the old Size: M package, which will now be completely phased out. The launch of the new premium Size: XXL product was likened to “opening up a new lane on the M25″ during the grand opening in London last December, allowing for upgrades such as this to be easily actioned.

Current Size: M subscribers who signed up before Virgin dropped the package will pay the same amount they would have done, i.e. less than the amount paid out by existing Size: L customers with a Virgin Phone line.

However customers in line for a speed boost who want all the attendant security software and spam shields will have to cough up the same amount as current 10Mbps punters.

“Our entry-level broadband product is now twice the speed of comparable services and with our new 10-20-50 [Mbps] range, we clearly offer the highest quality broadband service in the UK,” said Neil Berkett, the company’s chief executive.

This marks the third speed upgrade Virgin Media have announced since their launch in March 2007.

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Be Broadband to rebrand

Be Broadband is set to get an image overhaul in the coming months; the current pink asterisk motif is set to change at the behest of owners O2, who want their charges to develop their brand presence and become more of a key player in the marketplace.

Oli White, Be head of marketing, said, “O2 has committed to us being a standalone, premium broadband service, and that means more investment into our site – that’s something we’re conscious has needed to be done for some time.”

Be Broadband have in the past pitched their high speed services as being ‘The Gamer’s Choice’, going so far as to be official sponsors for the Europe-wide Eurokreig Counter Strike tournament.

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Ofcom not to hack up BT’s next gen network

Ofcom yesterday said that it will not oppose BT’s plans to unroll next-gen fibre connections to some 10 million UK homes over the next three years.

In the Ofcom press release, Ofcom Chief Executive, Ed Richards is quoted saying:

“This is a clear sign that the UK market is moving in the right direction, with a growing number of plans to deliver super-fast broadband services to consumers.

These new networks will be a critical part of the UK’s infrastructure and will change our experience of communications. They will support and deliver innovative applications and services as well as helping create new opportunities for businesses of all kinds.”

The investment, which would see customers enjoying speeds of up to 100Mbps was announced last year and is said to cost around £1.5 billion. BT shareholders were thought to be anxious over the possibility of regulatory intervention from Ofcom; as BT are the leaders in the UK broadband league, investing in next-gen technology could have been interpreted as abusing their position in the market.

Now that Ofcom have given BT the green light, they can get on with unrolling their next-gen network, although by the time they’re due to finish upgrades in 2012, Virgin Media will almost certainly have finished trialling 100Mbps speeds, which are, according to the cable company, achievable on their current network.

PlusNet Value – “The UK’s cheapest broadband”

PlusNet have just reshuffled their roster of broadband services, ditching their previous four broadband Options in favour of three more streamlined packages designed to more suited to the needs of casual and heavy broadband users alike.

The entry-level service is now called PlusNet Value, and according to the Sheffield-based ISP, is the “UK’s cheapest broadband” service, giving customers a free wireless router, speeds of up to 8Mbps and a 10GB download limit for just £5.99 a month.

For the average user and slightly busier households, there’s now PlusNet Unlimited (£11.99 a month) which gives you the same top 8Mbps download speed but with an unlimited monthly download limit instead, with the same wireless router available on the Value deal thrown in for free again.

For the real hardcore users and gamers who are happy staying up ’til the small hours patching the latest updates for World of Warcraft or playing Team Fortress 2, there’s PlusNet Pro (£19.99), which again gives you the same free router and 8Mbps top speeds, but instead comes with a 15GB download cap along with unrestricted usage between the hours of midnight and 8am in the morning, perfect for pwning n00bs on the other side of the Atlantic.

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BT subscriber base exceeds 4.7 million

BT Group has released its latest quarterly results up to the end of last year, which reveals that the broadband market leader has again managed to strengthen its position at the head of the pack by adding a total of 4.7 million customers to it’s combined base of BT Broadband and PlusNet subscribers. This represents over a third of the total UK broadband market – 34 per cent.

BT’s Openzone Wi-Fi hotspots have also taken off, with now more than 50,000 access points available worldwide. Part of the official statement reads thus:

“[BT] had 13.6m wholesale broadband connections (DSL and LLU) at 31 December 2008, including 5.5m LLU lines. There were 296,000 net additional broadband connections in the quarter. Our [BT Broadband] share of those net additions was 28%. [BT] broadband revenue grew by 9% with net additions of 83,000 in the quarter.

In the maturing broadband market, we remain the UK’s number one retail broadband provider with a customer base of 4.7m and a retail market share of the DSL and LLU installed base of 34 per cent at 31 December 2008.

Further UK hotspots have been added, and new agreements signed with international operators Swisscom Hospitality Services and SFR in France. BT Openzone is now also available at more than 50,000 worldwide locations through roaming partners.

BT FON membership continued to climb and members now total 163,000, up 9% on the 7 previous quarter. BT customers can now go online at over 120,000 locations in the UK and Ireland with extensive coverage across 12 major city centres.”

That said, BT’s pre-tax profits also signify a pretty big slump – an 81 per cent fall down from the Q4 2007 results published last year.

O2 belatedly join the laptop broadband bundle wagon

O2 have announced plans to launch three new pay monthly laptop bundles with their home and mobile broadband services. Exact price details have not yet been released, but what is certain is that O2 plan to turn around the current stigma attached to laptop deals:

“To date, the subsidised laptop market has received some bad press due to poor equipment and frustrating customer service experiences,” says O2 CEO Ronan Dunne.

“O2 is stepping into the market with a promise to turn this around by taking a holistic approach to the product offer. Our package ticks every box when it comes to the main purchase drivers in the market, which in turn means we are taking away the “worry-factor” involved in buying a laptop.”

This wait and see approach has paid off well for O2 in the past – after buying the Be Broadband network, O2 famously took time out to ensure that there were no problems at the launch day instead of ‘rush-releasing’ their broadband service – unsurprisingly, O2 have consistently topped polls for customer satisfaction for their home and mobile broadband services.

Whilst there’s no details on price as of yet, we do know that the laptop bundle deals with be based around the Samsung NC10 Netbook and R510 (pictured) laptops – worth around £300 and £375 respectively – and not, as was rumoured last year, the Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops.

Virgin Media and O2 lead the pack in 2009 with fastest average speeds

Broadband comparison site Broadband.co.uk have released the results of their anecdotal speed tests for January 2009, which sees Virgin Media sitting pretty atop the pile with an average download speed of 6.018Mbps – a speed and position no doubt bolstered by the recent launch of the premium Size: XXL 50Mbps service.

Sitting just behind Virgin in second place is O2, owners of Be Broadband’s ADSL2+ infrastructure, with a top average download speed of 5.319Mbps. Third place is Sky Broadband, with a top downstream average of 3.521Mbps.

The three ISPs offer theoretical maximum download speeds of 50Mbps, 20Mbps (or 24, if you’re with Be) and 16Mbps respectively.

Market leaders BT were nowhere to be seen in the upper echelons of the speed test, lurking second to last with a top average download speed of 2.331Mbps, just about AOL’s 2.011Mbps.

In the upload speed stakes, O2 performed considerably better than Virgin, with a top average of 0.734, well above the cable group’s 0.466Mbps.

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MacAce serve up ADSL2+ exlusively for OS X users

Attention Mac users – PC owners and fans of Linux please look the other way – MacAce, a specialist ISP providing hosting and broadband exclusively for Mac users, have recently launched a trip of ADSL2+ products delivering speeds of up to 24Mbps across 145 existing BT exchanges.

MacAce’s new AlwaysOn products, Lite, Pro and Elite, all provide top download speeds of 24Mbps, with increasing monthly usage limits of 10GB, 30GB, and 60GB respectively. Like PlusNet, MacAce customers also qualify for unlimited off-peak usage, which is listed as being from 12 Midnight to 7am.

Even though MacAce’s products are delivered over BT lines, you also have the option of paying for line rental and phone calls all through one package with MacAce’s OneVoice broadband and fixed-line bundles.

MacAce ADSL2+ products start from £19.49 per month on their own, or from £30.99 per month as an OneVoice phone and broadband bundle, which includes line rental, calls and broadband.