Next Gen Broadband 
Sky’s the limit right? Leading pay-TV operator and rising star of UK broadband Sky is preparing to launch a new digital music service to rival the likes of Spotify and iTunes as well as Virgin Media’s recently announced Music Unlimited platform.
Called Sky Songs, the service launches on the 19th of October in a week’s time and will be available to anyone in the UK with broadband. Over four million songs will be available to both stream and download on a subscription basis.
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Posted by Tom on October 12th 2009 in Next Gen Broadband, Sky Broadband, Virgin Media
Virgin Media’s ground-breaking unlimited music streaming service looks like it’s going to have to shift that ‘unlimited’ tag, according to an exclusive article in The Register. The platform was thought to be called ‘Music Unlimited’, was supposed to offer streaming of music a la Spotify and would come in a number of tiered subscription packages, the most expensive of which would provide unlimited downloads of songs.
The platform, announced back in June, attracted a considerable degree of press attention at the time. An unlimited music download package would have been a world-first for Virgin Media and the UK music industry. At the time Virgin Media had struck a deal with Universal Music Group and said that it was “negotiating with other UK major and independent music labels and publishers,” in order to offer a “complete, compelling catalog.” The Register piece cites that there was some resistance to a fully unlimited package from certain fronts, with anonymous fingers pointed in the direction of Sony Music.
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Posted by Tom on October 9th 2009 in Broadband, Next Gen Broadband, Virgin Media
The controversial ‘broadband tax’ which would cost subscribers an extra 50p a month – or £6 a year – looks set to be made law before the election is due to be called next year.
Treasury Minister Stephen Timms said today at a British Computer Society debate that “My aim is that we should legislate for that this side of a general election.” He added that the new tax would raise £150m to £175m a year, which would be used to develop next-gen broadband networks.
Developments could see 21st Century broadband speeds being taken into rural areas and other similar broadband ‘not spots’ where speeds of 1Mbps are scarce.
Do you live in a broadband not spot? Do you think this broadband tax will help, or do you think that it’s a waste of money? Are the investments made by BT and Virgin Media in next-gen broadband enough? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
Source: [Guardian]
Posted by Tom on September 23rd 2009 in BT Broadband, Digital Britain, Next Gen Broadband, Virgin Media
Virgin Media has cut the price of its premium XXL Broadband service. The 50Mbps service is now available for just £18 a month when taken with a Virgin phone line (£11 a month) for the first 3 months of the contract. After this introductory period the price will increase to £28 a month, saving you a nice £72 for the first year.Taken without a Virgin phone line, the service now costs £33 a month for the first 3 months and £38 a month thereafter.
Virgin Media announced the price drop of its XXL service back in July, when it has just completed rolling out the next-gen services across its entire network. Roughly half the country can now download as much as they like at speeds of up to 50Mbps completely unhindered by any hidden usage limit or traffic management. Virgin Media’s L and XL broadband packages allow to you download as much as you like, but only at certain times of the day when the network is less busy.
Virgin Media has recently launched the Freedom Netbook offer. Customers who sign up for Virgin Media for 24 months will receive a free Freedom Netbook which is capable of connecting to the web at speeds of 50Mbps and is worth over £300. Mobile Broadband dongles allowing customers to surf when out and about are also bundled with these plans.
Posted by Tom on September 2nd 2009 in Next Gen Broadband, Virgin Media
BT Broadband has just announced that it has completed upgrades of hundreds of its exchanges which will give customers access to speeds of up to 20Mbps. 549 exchanges, serving 10 million UK homes, have been upgraded, with more homes to be added throughout the rest of the year.
What’s more is that homes eligible for an upgrade will be able to speed up for virtually nothing. Although the theoretical maximum speed available on a fully pimped ADSL2+ line is 24Mbps, BT Broadband has taken a leaf out of O2 Broadband’s book and will be advertising the top speed as being 20Mbps. This is ostensibly to advertise a more realistic top speed, as the theoretical maximum is rarely if ever experienced by broadband customers.
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Posted by Tom on August 18th 2009 in BT Broadband, Free Broadband, Next Gen Broadband, O2 Broadband
BT Broadband has announced that it will be re-launching it’s successful free broadband for 3 Months offer. The offer sees any new customers who sign up for any of BT Broadband’s broadband products online – that’s Option 1, Option 2 and Option 3 – instantly qualifying for the first three months of broadband for free. BT first launched this promotion back in April and it proved such a success that it’s decided to roll with it again.
The offer applies to bundles of broadband and fixed-line phone calls as well as broadband and BT Vision digital TV bundles and bundles of all three services. BT Broadband Option 1 provides top speeds of 8Mbps and a 10GB monthly cap. Option 2 gives you the same 8Mbps top speed and 15GB of usage, and Option 3 gives you unlimited monthly downloads, along with that same maximum speed of 8Mbps.
All BT Broadband Options currently come with the improved BT Home Hub 2.0 (increased wireless range and strength), and Option 3 comes with the Hub plus the Hub Phone, a cordless VoIP handset which allows you to make free and cheap calls over your broadband connection.
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Posted by Tom on August 5th 2009 in BT Broadband, Broadband Bundles, Next Gen Broadband
An Ofcom report published yesterday suggests that the average download speed received by UK broadband customers is only just over half the speed of the average advertised rate. Data from the report shows that while the average broadband package is sold as “up to” 7.1Mbps, the actual average speed delivered is thought to be 4.1Mbps, little more than half the average theoretical maximum.
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Posted by Tom on July 29th 2009 in AOL, BT Broadband, Next Gen Broadband, O2 Broadband, Orange Broadband, PlusNet, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Tiscali, Virgin Media
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 »
Posted by Tom on June 26th 2009 in Be Broadband, Next Gen Broadband
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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Posted by Tom on June 16th 2009 in Next Gen Broadband
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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Posted by Tom on June 16th 2009 in Next Gen Broadband, Virgin Media
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