Eclipse owners Karoo to unroll ADSL2+

Karoo, the incumbent ISP in the Kingston Upon Hull areas, whose parent company KCOM owns Eclipse Internet, will be setting up ADSL2+ connections across its entire network over the next two months, providing residents with a much needed boost in broadband speeds.

As Karoo is the only choice of phone and internet service provider in Hull and its surrounding areas, residents have missed out on the competitive prices offered by providers elsewhere in the UK, having been unable to sign up for the triple and quad-play services provided by the likes of Sky, BT, Tiscali and Virgin Media.

Until now, residents of Hull have been unable to sign up for the faster ADSL2+ services which are available to Be Broadband and O2 Broadband punters as well as UK Online subscribers. There are not yet plans in the pipeline to make ADSL2+ speeds – theoretically capable of a maximum downstream speed of 24Mbps – available to Eclipse Internet customers.

New £90 BT Accelerator service promises faster Broadband – or your money back

BT Broadband have launched a new call-out service that sees broadband customers connecting to the net on a BT line (which could be practically anyone who isn’t on Virgin Media cable or on KCOM’s network) able to ask for a BT engineer to be sent round in order to help declutter and speed up the customer’s connection for a flat fee of £90. If there is no noticeable change in speed, BT promise to refund the charge.

BT are claiming that they can improve speeds of people’s broadband by at least 0.5Mbps (megabits per second), regardless of who provides their internet, so long as it’s provided via a BT line.

Head of BT’s Home IT Support service, Taza Mohammedbhai, said: “Based on our research we are confident that up to 60 per cent of customers could benefit from the Accelerator service. And if customers don’t see at least a 0.5Mbps improvement on speed, we will refund the fee.”

Part of the Accelerator service sees the engineer performing changes that many customers could realistically do for themselves, such as reconnecting their ADSL modem to the master phone socket and reconfiguring browser settings. The service is intended for users who either aren’t quite as tech-savvy as others or are simply too busy to fix things themselves.

No word yet from BT as to whether the service includes the installation of one of those nice Interstitial plates they were talking about in March.

Eclipse Internet gives Control to customers

Award winning Eclipse Internet are about to launch a revolutionary new feature for their broadband customers.

The about-to-be-launched Eclipse Control Panel allows users to manage their traffic and optimise specific applications, so if you mainly use the net for email, you can tweak your settings accordingly. The press release from Eclipse claims that connections can be configured in order to optimise “web browsing, email, peer-to-peer, FTP, VPN and gaming.”

“The new services give customers access to the tools to let them do this for themselves, via the Eclipse Control Panel,” says the release. “The view from Eclipse is that customers know better than anyone else what they want from their broadband service, so why not let them control it?”

This news comes on the eve of some price adjustments to the Eclipse residential and business broadband packages – more on this as we get it.

PM’s Q’s on Bband

Earlier this week, Downing Street responded to an e-petition which called for the Government to take a leaf out of the Japanese book by financially backing the big telcos in order to roll out a nationwide fibre network. The petition said that “the UK will lag behind in broadband speed if no fibre network isn’t put in place,” attracted just under 1,000 signatures and elicited this response from Number Ten:

“Thank you for the e-petition asking the Government to give BT Government incentive to provide fibre to every UK home. On the 22 February the Government announced a review targeted at areas within the scope of the Government’s influence, and responsibility with the aim of assisting the creation of market conditions that would lead to the a more attractive investment environment for the private sector. This review is due to report in the Autumn.

To date BT’s and other’s investment in broadband technology has meant that over 99% of all businesses and households have access to broadband – the highest ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) availability of all the G8 countries. As a result we have a very competitive market, which has benefited the consumer through increased choice and some of the lowest prices in Europe. This has been achieved by opening up the previous monopoly to introduce more competition. BT alone can no longer provide broadband to the exclusion of other providers.

Based on the last Broadband wholesale review carried out in 2003/2004, BT and Kingston Communications in the Hull area are currently obliged to provide wholesale broadband access products to other ISPs (Internet Service Provider), which in turn allows them to offer competing retail services. These obligations were necessary to ensure competition for consumers by ensuring that ISPs can access wholesale broadband services to allow them to develop their own competitive retail offerings. Both BT and Kingston meet the requirement and offer a range of wholesale broadband products to meet the needs of ISPs. The market is open to any ISP who wants to take the commercial decision to offer broadband via the incumbents’ network.”

Whilst the response contained a number of home truths, the UK does have the highest availability of ADSL broadband throughout the G8 (although that’s largely due to the fact that the UK is significantly smaller than say, the US or Russia) and some of the lowest prices in Europe, the response neatly avoided giving any concrete response to the question, other than that we should all wait until the Autumn to find out if any kind of government assistance will be given.

We’ve received a number of emails from readers who say they’d happily pay out more in taxes if the government could guarantee FttH to UK homes by a set date, say 2012. Gordon, are you listening?

Eclipse eclipses other businesses business broadband

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.

ISPA 2008 Results In

The results of the tenth ISPA Internet industry awards ceremony which took place last week are in. The coveted Best Consumer ISP award was picked up by PlusNet, who scooped the accolade because of their flexible monthly contracts and the clearly defined usage limits of their packages. An ISPA spokesperson had this to say about the winners:

“The judges agreed that PlusNet put their customers first with transparent usage allowances rather than vague Fair Usage Policies and their self-developed traffic management system. The judges also felt that PlusNet’s one month contracts were very beneficial to consumers.”

Runners up in the category were BT, Virgin Media and Tiscali. Previous winners Eclipse who won the best consumer broadband award in 2007, picked up two gongs this year, winning best business ISP and best business email. BT Yahoo! scooped the award for Best Portal – other nominees in this category were Virgin Media, Tiscali, and Orange.

The Internet Villain Award of 2008 went to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for their spectacular EPIC FAIL late last year, which saw the confidential details of 25 million recipients of child benefits go missing due to unbelievably low-tech data protection measures.

ISPA facto – 2008 nominations are in

The majority of nominees for the 2008 Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) Awards have been released.
The prestigious awards, which have been running since 1999, are divided into categories to recognise the
various innovations, features and business practices of the UK’s leading ISPs.

“Each year the event changes to reflect changes in the sector and to represent the ever broadening nature
of the service provider sector,” says the ISPA’s website. The categories released so far are:

Best Consumer Broadband
Best Business Broadband
Best Portal
Best Business ISP
Best Wireless ISP
Best Consumer Email
Best Business Email
Best Dial-Up
Best Internet Telephony

Among the nominees for best website (“Best Portal”) are, BT, Virgin Media, Orange and Tiscali, whilst Eclipse Internet,
overall winners of last year’s awards, are up for Best Business ISP for their business broadband packages, as are
PlusNet. Eclipse are also up for Best Business Email, and Virgin have also been nominated in the Best Consumer
Broadband category.

BT: Fibre on the streets of Ebbsfleet

It seems as thought south-west England is set to become the UK’s favourite testing ground for next-gen cable deployment.

Yesterday it was revealed that BT are preparing to have set up Fibre to the Home (FTTH) connections to 10,000 new houses currently being built at Ebbsfleet in Kent. The pilot scheme is due to be completed by the beginning of August, and will offer customers maximum connection speeds of up to 100Mbps.

BT will be trialling five different services as part of their ‘Generic Ethernet Access’ scheme, offering download speeds of 135 Kbps and 500Kbps, 10Mbps and 30 Mbps as well as the maximum 100Mbps.

Whilst the first three speeds don’t sound particularly impressive, these are speeds are ‘assured’ rather than ‘up to’ – BT are practically guaranteeing at least this amount. The other two speeds come with the traditional ‘up to’ epithet. The 30Mbps and 100Mbps however, come with an ‘assured’ base rate of 10Mbps, and as such, are listed as ‘add-ons’ to the 10Mbps service on the Openreach PDF. Additionally, there’s not even so much of a whisper or hint or suggestion of anything that could even be remotely construed as relating to traffic shaping or an FUP in the whole document.

The cost for this slice of the future isn’t cheap though. The top 100Mb service costs £530 for 12 months, and comes with a £130 connection charge – this works out at £55 a month. Obviously these prices are for the pilot scheme and they don’t necessarily reflect the cost of 100Mbps broadband when it becomes available across the rest of the country.

In other fibre-trial news, French defence engineering group Thales, along with Eclipse owners Kingston Communications, have been tipped to begin work on setting up a new fibre network in South Yorkshire, thought to be capable of supplying over 600,000 homes with broadband speeds of up to 50Mbps. Virgin Media, have also been trialling cable in Kent, as well as Dover and Folkstone since October 2007.

Eclipse Internet boasts cast-Iron anti-spam

With entire catalogues of personal data from HMRC going missing, it’s encouraging to know that not everybody is so laissez-faire about keeping sensitive information secure.

Eclipse Internet has reported that it’s anti-spam measures has seen over 513 million potentially threatening emails blocked from customers’ inboxes during October thanks to upgrades in security software.

Clodagh Murphy, Director of Broadband Operations at Eclipse says, ‘Spam email is a security threat to our customers, as well as being a real cost in terms of time dedicated to dealing with it. Unsolicited email clogs up inboxes and reduces bandwidth for the things our customers actually want.’

The new system, courtesy of IronPort Systems, who are part of Cisco, gives Eclipse customers extra protection against spam and the potential damage it represents, meaning that the days of you getting emails from your long distant relative in Nigeria offering you access to a warehouse full of Viagra are over.

Before you could neatly avoid the threat of spam by simply checking the box and clicking ‘Delete’, but Eclipse customers won’t even have to do that much anymore; ‘As well as identifying and blocking a large proportion of spam before it reaches customers’ mailboxes, our new anti-virus and anti-spam solution also provides the tools to allow customers to check and delete suspect mail before it can do any damage,’ concludes Murphy.

Though not one of the big hitters of the Broadband Premiership in terms of customer numbers, Eclipse are consistently recognised and rated in independent reviews as being one of the better brands out there in terms of speed fidelity, reliability of service and quality of customer service. Customers who have been with Eclipse for over 8 years since the dial-up days repeatedly attest to this.

UK Broadband League Table

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.