Carphone to buy out beleaguered Tiscali?

After reports of Tiscali falling into some serious financial difficulty, it has emerged that TalkTalk and AOL owners Carphone Warehouse are rumoured to be plotting a last minute takeover bid.

Carphone was once the frontrunner for a Tiscali takeover bid launched last year, which fell through at the last minute. Sky then stepped into the bidding war, stumping up £450 million for the Tiscali’s UK services, but again, negotiations deteriorated before a deal could be worked out.

Last September, a Carphone buyout of Tiscali would have seen its joint subscriber base swell to a massive 4.6 million, overtaking BT at the head of the British Broadband league table. A Sky purchase would have seen the satellite broadcaster become the third biggest ISP, with its customer base rising to 3.6 million.

Tiscali are some €500 million in the hole, and as the credit crunch continues to bite, the lenders of Europe are calling for their pound of flesh. After Tiscali revealed that its shares have been suspended on the Italian stock market following a 50 per cent tumble, it asked lenders to freeze debts in order to “allow a period of suspension for interest repayments and financial covenants,” according to a piece in the Telegraph.

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Virgin Media bills Hard to understand? The Home Sec’s Home Sex Scandal

The mass debate over UK Members of Parliament’s expenses claims have been brought into sharp relief with the recent revelation that much loved and respected Home Secretary Jacqui Smith ‘mistakenly’ claimed the cost of two adult films along with her Virgin Media broadband connection.

Apparently, the Home Sec claimed that it was pretty difficult to tell the difference between the broadband and digital TV parts on the Virgin Media bill. In a statement given to the press, the schadenfrau said: “I’m sorry that in claiming for my internet connection, I mistakenly claimed for a television package alongside it.”

Well, we’ve had a look at a copy of a typical Virgin Media broadband and TV bill, and it’s really not that hard to tell the difference at all. To make it even easier for Jacqui, we’ve helpfully underlined the two parts of the bill pertaining to TV and broadband respectively.

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Virgin Media increase Size: M Broadband Prices by £2 a month

Virgin Media customers still on the old ‘Size: M’ 2Mbps broadband package will have to stump up a couple of quid extra over the coming months. Customers on the old plan will now be paying either £6.50 a month or £11 a month (plus £11 Virgin Phone line rental) depending on the contract.

Throughout the year, all of the 2.6 million customers still on Size: M will be eventually be offered upgrades to the L package. This gives you unlimited downloads and top speeds of 10Mbps.

After having increased the speed of the L and XL packages and unleashing the ultra-fast XXL 50Mbps service, its clear that Virgin Media regard 2Mbps broadband as a thing of the past, and are keen on migrating as many M customers onto the new plans as possible.

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Welcome to the new-look new-version Broadband Finder!

Welcome back! Over the last couple of months we’ve been busy working behind the scenes here at Broadband Finder, giving the site a massive overhaul, adding new features, broadband providers, and a new coat of paint. It’s now even easier to compare the prices and speeds of all of the broadband packages available to you, thanks to the new and improved comparison table, and search for the broadband package that’s best suited to you with our new Advanced Search option.

Whether you’re looking for a broadband solution for the home, your business or you’re after a mobile broadband solution, you’ll be able to easily find the right deal for you here on any of the relevant comparison tables.

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Virgin Media ponders over 150Mbps broadband

Yep, you read that right – 150Mbps. Not content with being the only broadband provider in the UK to offer 50Mbps services to customers, Virgin Media are apparently planning on rolling out services providing top speeds of 150Mbps as early as next year.

Chief executive Neil Berkett today told BBC News that Virgin Media will offer next-gen broadband speeds up to two years in advance of BT completing the deployment of their own cable network.

“We have an opportunity with our network to provide significantly higher speeds [than BT],” he said.

“If BT were to meet the time frame they have suggested – of finishing by 2012 – I would see us as having much, much faster upstream speed, running at a minimum [our italics] of 100Mbps downstream and possibly more.”

BT’s £1.5 billion cable network, which is due to be rolled out by 2012, will reach 40 per cent of UK homes, and will provide on average speeds of 40 to 60Mbps.

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BT earmarks major cities and rural areas for next-gen network

BT has announced the locations which will first to receive next-gen broadband services when the group is set to begin rollout of its £1.5 billion network.

From early 2010, customers in selected areas of London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast will all be able to sign up for trials of broadband services providing download speeds of around 40Mbps, and up to 60Mbps. Should the trials prove successful, then presumably city-wide rollouts will follow.

BT will also trial the new network in two rural regions – the Calder Valley near Halifax and Taffs Well in South Wales – which suggests that BT have their eye on a full nationwide rollout in the not so distant future. Obviously logistical problems encountered in the countryside will differ greatly from those encountered in the cities, meaning that BT will be well placed to extend their network when the time comes.

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Vodafone and O2 merge mobile networks

Vodafone and O2 have agreed on a deal which will see the two mobile operators merging their mobile networks, in order to improve mobile phone reception across the country, and, more importantly, improve the availability and quality of mobile broadband services.

Matthew Key, chief executive of O2 owners Telefonica Europe said: “This goes some way to ‘future proofing’ the network,” adding that “the current economic situation was a catalyst.”

The merging of the networks will see the operators saving hundreds of millions of pounds over the next few years, and could, in theory, lead to the eventual rollout of mobile broadband services comparable to fixed-line connections in terms of speed and reliability, in accordance with Lord Carter’s Digital Britain proposals.

This follows in the footsteps of a deal done in December 2007 between 3 and T-Mobile. The two operators share HSDPA networks and are starting to decommission masts, with T-Mobile already noticing savings, costs, freeing up money that can be invested.

In Spain, a joint venture between Vodafone and Orange saw the two providers able to bring much faster services to rural areas, by reducing the number of base stations needed, thereby reducing the cost of running and maintenance.

BT Broadband voted most trusted ISP

BT Broadband has won the prestigious Readers’ Digest award for Most Trusted ISP 2009, after coming top of a poll by the magazine’s readers. To celebrate their win, BT are launching a campaign to advertise the wireless BT Home Hub 2.0 which comes free with BT Broadband Options 1, 2 and 3. The Home Hub is quick and easy to set up and helps protect your computer with advanced WPA wireless security and a built-in firewall.

BT’s award-winning broadband is available from £7.78 a month for the first three months, and comes with with basic security features along with the option to upgrade to BT NetProtect, which includes Norton AntiVirus and Personal Firewall security products to protect your computer against viruses, spyware, spam and pop-ups. The basic security package also includes parental controls, allowing you to block potentially inappropriate images and searches. Download limits range from a generous 10GB a month with Option 1 to unlimited with Option 3.

BT Broadband can be ordered online here or over the phone by calling 0800 328 1522.

The Beeb to fund next-gen Broadband?

Part of the Government’s all-encompassing Broadband-for-all plan might see the BBC, partially funded by the public through the licence fee, providing funding for next-gen broadband investment.

Seeing as the BBC iPlayer is one of the most popular online resources, and plans to launch the tentatively titled ‘Project Canvas’ IPTV service with ITV and BT, it would seem that communications minister Lord Carter, author of the Digital Britain report, might have a point.

“More and more people get their media from the internet and that usage is doubling every two years,” he said in response to a question about next-gen investment from Conservative MP for Bromsgrove Julie Kirkbride. “Would the nation’s state-funded content provider have a role in this? It would seem to me it would.”

In the first part of the Digital Britain report, Lord Carter outlined his vision for the future of British Broadband, in which he saw every household in the UK being able to enjoy speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2012 – 2Mbps is a sufficient speed at which to stream videos from the BBC iPlayer, meaning that everyone in the UK will be able to watch events at the London Olympics online.

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Virgin Mobile Broadband comes out on top in Which? survey

Virgin Media came out on top in a recent survey on mobile broadband products by independent consumer group Which? who tested each of the provider’s products to see if the much advertised plug and play aspect of mobile broadband set up really was as easy as that.

Providers were tested on usability, customer service, ease of set up, speed and connection, and how easy it was to cancel.

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