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 »

The Digital Britain report has just been published. We’ve yet to give huge 195-page PDF a proper going over, but we have made note of some of the key points with regard to the future of Broadband Britain.

First thing of note is that, as expected, universal broadband access at speeds of at least 2Mbps downstream will be made available to every UK household by 2012. This will be partially funded by a large £200 cash injection of public money, which will bring broadband access to the “estimated 2.75 million households which cannot currently receive 2Mb/s.”

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The final part of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report, which will outline a roadmap for the development of broadband infrastructure in the UK, is due to be published today. There has been much speculation about the contents of the document, after the interim report was published back in January.

Recent announcements by ISPs here in the UK and noises made by content providers such as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) have given us some clues as to what the report may contain.

Here is a brief round-up of what is widely expected to be included in the report:

• Measures to provide speeds of at least 2Mbps to every UK home - this will almost certainly include a mixture of fixed-line and mobile connections. ISPs and mobile network operators could receive government incentives to invest in future broadband connections.

• A Rights Agency designed to prevent illegal file sharing. This may or may not involve a ‘three strikes’ system, whereby first offenders will be sent written warnings, persistent offenders will frisk having their connections slowed to a halt. Yesterday’s announcement by Virgin Media sees the ISP offering a carrot to go with the stick, in the form of unlimited downloads of DRM-free music with its broadband services. Such offers could become commonplace throughout the market.

• A change to the BBC licence fee which will see the public service broadcaster help cover the costs of bandwidth eaten up by use of its iPlayer on-demand platform. The BBC could also be asked to share proceeds earned from the licence fee with commercial rivals such as ITV and Channel 4, both of whom have their own ITV Player and 4oD on-demand offerings.

• Funding for investment in future networks may also be accrued from the licence fee. A speed of 2Mbps is the minimum required speed for viewing programmes on iPlayer online, so it makes sense for a fraction of the licence fee to be used for this purpose. Doing so should in theory allow everyone to watch footage of the London 2012 Olympics live on line. This will be beneficial to those living in parts of the UK such as Cornwall where digital terrestrial reception is patchy.

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Virgin Media has signed a record-breaking deal with the Universal Music Group which will see it become the first ISP in the UK — and the world — to offer free downloads of music that is readily available and unrestricted by any DRM software.

The service will be available to subscribe to alongside Virgin Media’s broadband packages. It is thought that there will be various packages available, such as a basic service which, according to a source quoted in The Register, allows for “a couple of albums per month,” to be downloaded, alongside an unlimited service, which would give you full access to the Universal catalogue.

Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett said, “In terms of both convenience and value, our new music service will be superior to anything that’s available online today and provides a fair deal for both consumers and artists. There is no better example of Virgin Media’s commitment to harnessing digital technology to give customers what they want, when they want and how they want.”

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News has just reached us that BT Broadband will be offering free upgrades to faster speeds when it’s 21st Century ADSL2+ network comes online this summer. 10 million UK homes are due to receive the free speed boost, which will provide ‘up to’ speeds of 20Mbps, more than double the top speed currently available on any of BT’s packages.

Further rollout of the service will continue into the new year. 10 million homes accounts for roughly 40 per cent of BT’s network, and it is expected that a further 55 per cent will be covered by March 2010.

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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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What is a hot spot not? A recent study by leading independent broadband research website SamKnows reveals that millions of UK consumers are living in broadband ‘not spots’ - areas where download speeds don’t even come close to 2Mbps.

What’s surprising about the report is that many of these not spots can be found in built up suburban areas as well as in remote rural regions. “We had assumed that these not spots were in remote parts of the countryside. That may be where the most vocal campaigners are but there is a high incidence of them in commuter belts,” says SamKnows co-founder Alex Salter.

The general rule of thumb with broadband (specifically ADSL, the type delivered over phone lines) is that the further away you are from a telephone exchange, the slower the speed gets. Naturally its fair to assume that if you live in a built up area, then you’re almost guaranteed a semi-decent level of service - this recent survey however has proven that this isn’t always the case.

What the survey reveals is that any residence more than 4 kilometers from an exchange sees the speed dropping below 2Mbps.

This is the case in Basingstoke in Hampshire; a built up commuter belt with direct rail access to London, but one where 50 per cent of the population cannot get speeds greater than 2Mbps because their homes are some 6km away from the nearest exchange.

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After both BT and Virgin Media have been busy making their next-gen plans public over the last few weeks, the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), an independent Government body, has announced that it is spending £1 million on developing new broadband technology.

The research projects could yield technology capable of delivering speeds from 1 and 10 Gbps, or Gigabits per second, and will hopefully ensure that the UK won’t lag behind other countries in the future when it comes to broadband.

“The challenge is to identify ways to address the technical issues facing the introduction of Ultra-Fast Broadband within the next decade and to build European collaborations to exploit the technology,” said Mike Biddle, a spokesman for the TSB.

There are 13 projects currently being undertaken, all of which are concerned with different aspects of how the future of Broadband Britain might take shape. One will look at the possible technology used for Ultra Fast Broadband, and another at how best to connect homes to fibre networks.

It is thought that the final result of these projects will be an extensive roadmap which will lay out the best way for the Government to prepare for the future of broadband in the UK.

Virgin Media is planning to add a further half a million UK homes to its existing network, with some 50,000 homes and businesses to be added this year alone. The Virgin Media network currently covers some 12.5 million premises, which accounts for roughly 50 per cent of the UK.

Virgin Media will be initially focussing on places where ducting and infrastructure has already been set up in order to minimize costs and delays, close to or within areas already fully or partially covered by the cable network.

A Virgin Media spokesperson, quoted in DigitalSpy earlier this week, said that the move will “improve our consumer offer and lay the foundation for future growth.”

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It looks as though BT is set to double the pace of its next-gen fibre optic broadband rollout, bringing up to 100Mbps broadband within reach of more than a million premises as early as next year.

In a statement following publication of the broadband market leader’s financial report for the last three months of 2008, CEO Ian Livingstone said:

“We will examine doubling the pace of the rollout of super fast broadband next year within existing capital expenditure plans, bringing fibre based services within the reach of more than a million homes and businesses and securing the jobs of a thousand BT people.”

Perhaps BT were spurred to act fast after it was announced that Virgin Media has begun trialling a 200Mbps service, and has mentioned plans to roll out a 150Mbps service to customers in 2010.

“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 of 100Mbps downstream and possibly more,” said Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett in March.

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