Earlier this month we saw Be Broadband offering new customers who signed up to any of the Be Value, Be Unlimited or Be Pro packages for 12 months a free haul of Amazon gift vouchers worth £24.

Now we hear that the UK’s leading providers of ADSL2+ broadband have doubled their offer, handing out packs of Amazon vouchers worth a whopping £48 for new 12 month subscribers. That works out at £4 worth of free stuff from Amazon for a year.

Apparently, to qualify for the vouchers, all you have to do during the sign up process is enter the promotional code: ‘24OfferBTC1′. The Be Broadband website is currently still displaying the old offer on its main page, but according to a post over at Broadband Genie, where the story broke, the code is genuine and will benefit new subscribers to the tune of £48 worth of Amazon vouchers. Continue Reading »

Be Broadband is giving away £24 worth of Amazon gift vouchers to customers who sign up for any of its services between now and the end of June. The offer applies to new customers who sign up for a 12 month contract for Be Value, Be Unlimited or Be Pro. To qualify for the vouchers, all you have to do during the sign up process is enter the code ‘24Offer’.

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Fans of First Person Shooters will no doubt laugh at the title of Be Broadband’s flash based game - “Unreal Call of Brothers 5: the Road to Broadband Heaven”. A point and click affair sees you dispatching an array of cardboard cut out baddies that float in front of your sights and shooting at the pink Be Broadband asterisk logos for extra health, or ‘connectivity’ as it’s called here.

On the same page as Unreal Call of Brothers, there is a chance to win a super powerful Area-51 X-58 gaming rig. Thankfully, your prowess on the various levels of Unreal Call of Brothers won’t affect your chances of winning - all you need to do is furnish Be Broadband with your name, email address and postcode.

The deadline for entries to this competition is the 31st May and the draw will be made at random on the 1st June 2009.

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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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Following on from Monday’s grand unveiling of Virgin Media’s new 50Mbps Size: XXL service we’ve just heard word that Be Broadband have finished conducting successful trials of a new ‘bonding’ process, which doubles the top download speed of their 24Mbps service to “almost 50 [Mbps]“. The process ‘bonds’ two high-speed connections together, thereby nearly doubling the potential maximum speed.

Trials held across the central London Paddington exchange yielded positive results, with customers reporting real-world download speeds of between 30 and 45Mbps.

The Be Broadband press release states that this is “the equivalent of 3MB to 4.5MB each second – the size of an average MP3 file, ” and that “wider trials of the service are planned through 2009.”

Felix Geyr, Managing Director of Be Broadband, said “We want to push the limits of high-speed broadband. We already offer the fastest possible broadband on an ADSL line, but we want to take it a step further. If you want broadband around the 50Mb mark but don’t want to go the cable route, Be wants to offer you a real alternative.”

Just two days ago saw Virgin Media’s launch of their new 50Mbps service, full rollout of which is expected to be completed by Summer 2009; however, these services will only be available in cable areas. Be Broadband’s trials will allow customers to get similar speeds through BT lines, which are available to more customers, specifically those who don’t live within cabled areas.

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Be Broadband has come up trumps in a survey by consumer organisation Which?, racking up a customer satisfaction rating of 85 per cent. Which? awarded Be Broadband with the prestigious ‘Best Buy’ award on the basis of overall customer satisfaction, and the likelihood of customers recommending the broadband provider to their friends. Be Broadband gained an excellent rating of 85 per cent, against an average customer rating amongst of 49% amongst ISPs.

The results of the Best Buy survey were compiled using an online questionnaire on the Which? website which ran between 1st May and 20th May 2008. 18,876 broadband users answered the questionnaire. In putting together the ratings, the survey looked at criteria such as overall satisfaction, customer service, ease of setup, connection speed, reliability and technical support.

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Virgin Media have begun showing off their shiny new bit of kit which will sit next to the computers of those who sign up for their forthcoming 50Mbps service, and we have to say it really is a nice looking bit of wireless gear that you’ll happily have on display in your home, unlike other eyesores, such as the Virgin Media-branded USB modem which came with the 2Mbps service.

The modem is a neat black reflective tablet with an outward convex curve, a bit like a mirror image of the new BT Home Hub, or a mini version of a PlayStation 3. Speaking of which, the speeds afforded by such as device might well appeal to online gamers, so perhaps Virgin Media’s choice of design wasn’t coincidental… watch your back Be Broadband!

Looks aside, the new cable modem runs on DOCSIS 3.0 technology (that’s Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, acronym fans) which enables such fast downstream speeds.

The 50Mbps service is reportedly due to be made available to punters before the end of the year; it is thought that existing Virgin customers who upgrade to the service will get the new modem sent out to them for free, with newcomers presumably shelling out for a small one-off fee.

Be Broadband have recently admitted that they have only ever had to apply restrictions in accordance to their fair usage policy (FUP) in just one incident. Be Broadband, who characterize their users as being heavy users, who frequently play online and download large amounts of information.

“Be is committed to being transparent to its members on in all aspects of its service, including download limits and fair usage policy,” said Be Broadband MD Felix Geyr.

“So far, we have only had to impose our fair usage policy once due to a small proportion of member’s downloading activity affecting the whole network and thus detracting from the level of service available for other Be members.”

This comparatively liberal attitude towards usage policies, is another feather in the cap for Be Broadband, who already have the distinction of providing some of the fastest and most reliable connection speeds in the UK.

Broadband speeds tests have revealed that Virgin Media now offers the fastest broadband speeds, snatching the crown from rival internet service provider O2 for the first time.

An industry official involved in the testing stated: “Virgin Broadband have finally overtaken O2 broadband as the UK’s fastest average download speed supplier. Data shows that the average download speed for a Virgin user is now 6.13Mbps as compared to 5.32Mbps for O2.”

The report indicates that Virgin Media also came ahead of other high-speed broadband providers, including Be Broadband and Sky Broadband.

Both O2 and Virgin offer high-speed packages of 20Mbps, helping ensure they fared well in speed tests against other providers who do not offer such a service. Virgin Media is likely to perform even better in future speed tests as it carries out plans to roll out its 50Mbps broadband service to a wider area.

Other broadband providers did not fare so well in the speed tests, with AOL and Eclipse Internet yielding the poorest results. AOL also scored worst on the upload speed tests along with TalkTalk, another Carphone Warehouse owned provider. For the month of September, the average download speed for Virgin Media was 6.128Mbps compared to an average speed of 5.321Mbps from Be Broadband and 5.32Mbps from O2.

Be Broadband are currently rewarding trigger happy gamers with a months FREE Broadband, should they finish within the Top 3 of two gaming categories over on the Mixes portal, which is run in conjunction with Enemy Down. That’s up to £22 off of your annual subscription, if you were signed up with the Be Pro gaming package.

Be Broadband launched the promotion this week, and will be handing out free broadband for the gamers who make it to the Top 3 in the overall rankings, and the top three insomniacs who rack up the most matches each week.

This offer is exclusively available to Be Broadband subscribers who play online through the Be Mixes portal.

Signing up for Mixes is a simple process; all you need to do is be a Be Broadband subscriber and register over at the Mixes site and away you go… Those helpful chaps at Enemy Down have knocked up this handy tutorial video which explains how you can set up so you can start gunning for a month off of your broadband subscription:

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