Cable and Wireless have recently announced an increased offer to buy out Glasgow-based telco THUS plc, owners of Demon Internet. The buyout would see C&W able to compete with BT in terms of supplying big businesses with communications solutions.

Whether or not the buyout would see the Demon Business Broadband packages receive a boost is another matter. C&W are reportedly offering a generous £1.80p per share for THUS which equates to a cool £329 million. They already own just under 30 per cent of the comms operator.

Brief history lesson: Cable and Wireless can trace their lineage back to those early days of telecommunications when the British Empire existed in more than just a name. Beginning life as the Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta Cable Company, subsequent mergers and rebrands would later see the birth of Cable and Wireless in 1934. Nationalisation in the forties would see C&W becoming absorbed into the GPO, which of course would later give birth to BT in the 1980’s, when C&W re-emerged, selling fixed-line calls via the Mercury Communications subsidiary.

Mercury also ran mobile network operations under One2One, which was eventually taken over by T-Mobile. A merger in 1997 saw C&W reabsorbing Mercury and selling cable TV to customers along with voice calls. In 2000, C&W then sold off their digital cable assets to NTL, which would eventually become part of Virgin Media.

At last weeks ISPA awards ceremony, Eclipse Internet, the overall winners of the 2007 awards, scooped the titles of Best Business ISP and Best Business Email at the 2008 Internet Service Provider Awards (ISPAs) in London on Friday 14 March.

Mark Thomas, Head of Sales and Marketing at Eclipse had this to say: “Over the last 18 months we have complemented the business-grade broadband access we offer with a range of new services that help businesses to operate more efficiently, including online data back-up, hosting services, hosted applications and e-commerce solutions. We are delighted that our growing reputation as the ISP of choice for businesses has been recognised by the industry through the achievement of not one but two business ISPA awards.”

All of the Eclipse business broadband packages come with no download limits, and provide top download speeds of 8Mbps, with varying levels of IP addresses and webspace; this way smaller businesses who do not require as much space for hosting are not priced out of higher speeds and can enjoy the same level of service as larger outfits.

Eclipse aren’t intending on resting on their laurels. According to Thomas, the plan is to “keep investing in the type of services and the level of customer and technical support that businesses want.” As the commercial broadband market is continually consolidating, the business broadband sector is set to become another hotbed of competition. Tiscali are to branch into the market via Pipex, and both O2 and Sky are offering ADSL2+ services to companies via Be Broadband Pro and UK Online, up against ISP stalwarts Demon
and NamesCo.

The tenth ISPA event, now in its tenth year, recognises innovation and good workplace practice (which is why HMRC were awarded the ISPA equivalent of the Golden Raspberry) in the ISP sector.

2007 has also seen much consolidation in the Broadband marketplace, with mergers and acquisitions seeing old players shake hands and donning new team colours.

At this stage in the financial year, there’s still everything to play for up until April 2008, with takeovers from Tiscali and Carphone Warehouse hopefully giving former stragglers Pipex and AOL a shot in the arm, and with Sky connecting customers at a phenomenal rate since the launch of their successful See Speak Surf squad formation. Up and coming ISP Be Broadband, has also been a keen player, thanks to partners O2, who have just launched their own broadband service using the Be network.

We’ve taken a quick look at the total take-up of the big six so far, and had a look a some of the more prominent ‘tier 2′ ISPs available.

UK Broadband Premiership – Q3 Figures 07/08 Season

BT Group (BT Broadband/PlusNet/Brightview) - 4.1 million

Virgin Media (including Virgin Media Cable and ADSL) - 3.3 million

Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk/AOL UK) - 2.5 million

Tiscali (Tiscali Broadband/Pipex) - 2 million

Orange (Orange Broadband) - 1.6 million

Sky (Sky Broadband/UK Online) - 1 million

UK Broadband Division 1

O2 Telefónica - have launched O2 Broadband, using the Be Broadband ADSL2+ network. O2 Broadband comes at a discounted price to O2 Pay Monthly mobile customers who pay more than £30 a month.

NamesCo – one of the veterans of the ISP league, NamesCo may not hold as big a market share as the big hitters, but specialise more in hosting, and provision of webspace. NamesCo have generous packages for businesses and residential customers alike.

Eclipse Internet – with word of mouth spreading, Eclipse are slowly winning over customers with a solid broadband service that doesn’t rely on flashy bundle deals or expensive ad campaigns. Eclipse is owned and ran by KCOM, who handle all telecommunications within Hull and around the Kingston area.

Demon Internet – Like NamesCo, Demon have been doing the rounds since the early days of dial-up and are an established and trusted brand. Demon also specialise in hosting, providing webspace, unlimited emails, and static IP addresses with their home and business packages.

Welcome to the ‘Version 2.0′ look of the Broadband Finder blog, part of the recent new look overhaul of Broadband Finder. We have rolled-out this new and improved site giving the users more flexibility, choice, in-depth information, news articles and user friendly tools to make choosing your broadband package and easier process.

New features include a revamped home page showing recommended broadband providers in a quick comparison guide, and a local availability check tool, which lists the available broadband services operating in your postcode area. is now available, to enable you to jump straight to our broadband package listings. There are also questions to establish your current broadband status along with a direct route to our broadband bundles page.

Another added feature is the Line Speed Checker, which allows you to check the average connection speed your phone line will support from the exchange. Further features include the latest broadband breaking news stories along with links to our comprehensive and informative news pages. We have also arranged packages into usage categories from Light, Average and Heavy packages (Light = infrequent use, Average = general use, Heavy = intense use).

Our main aim for the site is to allow you to be able to efficiently and effectively choose a broadband package to suit your needs which is why we have developed our new look comparison pages for consumer and business broadband. There are also comparison pages for broadband bundles and an in-depth broadband search page called Broadband Finder, where you can tailor make a broadband package to suit your needs.

The main compare broadband page allows you to input your postcode and it will display all the broadband packages available within your postcode area. You will also be able to sort these results by clicking on the relevant headings within the table to display sorted results (high to low or low to high).

We now have our new business broadband page allowing our business customers to search for the most suitable broadband package in the business broadband market, including services from BT, Demon and Eclipse. Our range of packages goes from the single business user through to large companies who require connections for hundreds of employees.

Another additional resource that we have added, is allowing you to be able to bundle in your broadband package with other services throughout our Broadband Bundles resource. These services include adding your home phone, TV and even your mobile phone packages together, so that all your communications and entertainment services can be paid easily on one monthly bill. This page feature well-known companies such as Sky, Virgin, BT, and Orange.

All these comparison pages come with an Editor’s Choice section, which highlights what broadband package is ‘hot’ in the broadband marketplace. We also have our featured offers throughout the site which offer you the companies, with what we think at Broadband Finder, to be the best offers around.

Our news feed provides regular up-to-the-minute Broadband News and our informative Broadband Finder blog, as always, is regularly updated with new features and articles - just like the one you’re reading now. Other resources include our Broadband Directory to easily source your broadband package or provider and a very informative Broadband Information section giving you the low-down on broadband.