O2 has come out top in a new study looking at broadband speeds in the UK. O2’s broadband service provides download speeds over 50% faster than its competitors in the UK. The website moneysupermarket.com found that its 8Mbps service gave an actual average speed of 5.39 Mbps. Runners up for the 8Mbps prize were Sky achieving an average of 3.59 Mbps, and TalkTalk an average 2.99 Mbps. O2 also leads the industry in terms of 16 Mbps and 20 Mbps packages, with an average speed of 8.15 Mbps. The average broadband speed in UK is 2.97Mbps.

Over 20,000 speed tests were carries out as part of the survey. The tests revealed that ISPs were reducing download speeds during peak times. However BT, O2 and Orange managed to keep up their speeds during peak hours while other providers struggled with capacity.

The top three providers all offer broadband as an add-on to existing packages – satellite for Sky, a landline service for TalkTalk, and O2’s mobile service. All three have sidestepped BT’s wholesaler service meaning fewer overheads and more control over speeds. The study showed that for best value, customers should opt for 2Mbps packages, where actual speed is 2.11Mbps for an average price of £10 a month. Packages offering least value for money are those with maximum download speeds of 16Mbps, where an average speed of just 7.02 Mbps typically costs £18.60 a month.

Well, it’s the first of July – pinch, punch, etc – and Tiscali were supposed to announce that they had found someone to take over their European broadband operations… Problem is, they’re still undecided on the sale of their business.

First of all, the offer made by the Carphone Warehouse was rejected outright by Tiscali, and then it looked as though Vodafone were going to step into the broadband market, which would have put them ahead of mobile rivals O2 and Orange by a considerable amount – then this deal was scuppered at the last minute, with no indication from either party as to why, or indeed what the future for Tiscali and it’s millions of UK subscribers was likely to be.

Tiscali had stated that they would have made an announcement by the end of June – it’s now July, and so far, nessuna risposta.

T-Mobile has announced that it will cut its roaming charges across the EU by 80% on the first of July, and the cost of sending text messages from EU countries by 30% on 30^th August.A T-Mobile spokesperson said “We will cut the cost of international internet access from a handset and mobile broadband connectivity via a USB dongle or data card from £7.50 per megabyte to £1.50, and the cost of sending a text from EU countries will be brought down by 38 per cent, from 0.40p to 0.25p.” This follows O2’s announcement last week that it would cut the cost of data usage in Europe to £3 per megabyte, an 80% drop for pre-pay customers.

European commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding had previosuly given the networks an ultimatum to reduce roaming charges by the 1st of July 2008, or face a regulatory smiting. At a meeting earlier this month, she told CEOs “Do your job, respond to consumer concerns and lower your prices. You know exactly where you have to go.” The ruling calls for mobile operators to drastically reduce their charges for roaming and sending texts in Europe.

This will come as welcome news for consumers roaming abroad, who until now have had to pay through the nose for mobile broadband outside the UK. Even after a drop in data charges, the O2 £3 per MB deal still works out far more expensive than broadband at home - in order to upload a 200MB video to YouTube on the mobile broadband platform, you would have to fork out a whopping £600.

Anyone who’s had broadband for a while now may well have noticed that everything seems to be slowing down. When broadband was all shiny and new, all of us who’d previously endured a much slower connections were gasping in disbelief as MP3’s were delivered straight to their hard drives in seconds. Now it’s a different story - connections frequently suffer from congestion; that single we’ve been waiting to get our hands on takes a couple of minutes to download where before it was a matter of seconds, and at times it feels as though we’ve regressed to the bad old days of dial-up.

As take-up of broadband services increases, internet traffic in Britain has risen accordingly, with music downloads, illegal or otherwise, and the BBC iPlayer listed as the main culprits.

Almost one million programmes are watched per day on the BBC’s flagship catch-up service and the ISPs can’t cope, leading to speculation that the BBC did not anticipate the popularity of it’s wonder platform. Under investment in next-gen networks has also been cited as a cheif cause of congestion.

Under discussion at the government’s advisory committee for broadband, headed up by Baroness Shriti Vadera and former Ofcom boss Stephen Carter, is the long-mooted prospect of unrolling fibre-optic cable connections for every home (FTTH).

However, this would be cripplingly expensive, costing up to £10 billion to connect every home, or £5 billion to connect every telephone exchange. Smaller, cash-strapped ISPs are reluctant to foot the bill and BT, having seen their existing network subjected to a regulatory carve-up has already expressed that it wont pony up without government incentive.

Who will actually pay for installation remains unclear, but two possible scenarios are emerging. In the first, as the BBC is generating more and more traffic, but cannot to pay for fibre-optic cables as per the PSB licence agreement (it can’t charge viewers for something they’ve already paid for). Broadband providers struggle to raise the revenue needed, which gives the government a good excuse to ask for a licence fee increase.

The second scenario could be initiated by the music industry - big players such as Universal and Sony BMG could make entire back catalogues available online for an extra monthly fee, say £5 a month, on top of regular broadband services. Deals struck between content owners such as Warner Bros. and UK ISPs such as Tiscali and O2 for IPTV content provision are already in place, so these deals could feasibly be expanded to include music downloads.

The additional revenue is then invested in improvements to speed and connectivity. However, it is unclear whether consumers would opt for this, especially if the BBC release all the Radio 1 session archives for free. Whatever the future holds, one thing is clear – as more and more of us Brits take advantage of interactive services and downloads, bandwidth is eaten up and a solution must be found if there is to be any growth in online business in the UK.

Having the world’s fastest broadband connection at your beck and call might seem pretty sweet to us limeys who consider getting anything resembling 10Mbps to be something of a luxury. However the majority of South Koreans, who enjoy maximum speeds of around 100Mbps – ten times that amount – apparently rate their broadband services as ‘ordinary’ according to a recent survey carried out by the Seoul-sponsored Korean Communications Commission (KCC).

Refreshingly, it’s good to know that even over in the Land of the Morning Calm, there is a disparity between advertised figures and the actual figure achieved by most households, where the maximum speed actually achieved by customers using the fastest connection is in fact 91Mbps, with the average speed available clocking in at around 46Mbps, less than half the advertised theoretical maximum.

And, like in the UK, the South Korean broadband scene is dominated by a handful of providers. The seven broadband tigers of the Korean peninsula, providing high-speed connections to over 15 million subscribers are headed by Korea Telecom, who control 44.2 per cent of the market, followed by Hanarotelecom with 24 per cent and LG Powercomm (who provided the fastest speeds) with 12.2 per cent.

Kim Young-wan of Korea Telecom stated that: “The rate at which high-speed internet customers are increasing has slowed down a lot. That is why internet service providers are looking for new revenue sources such as internet telephony and IPTV services.”

Again, not too different from how things are over here, with Sky, Virgin Media, BT and Tiscali all boasting value-added digital TV options, along with Orange and O2 who are still dipping their toes into the water.

“This encourages service providers to compete against one another to improve the overall quality of such products,” said KCC representative Lee Eun-hee in a statement given to the Joongang Daily newspaper, a sort of South Korean Daily Mail.

In a surprising, but not unexpected turn of events, Tiscali have just told the world that they plan to sell off their broadband business outright to Vodafone, the world’s biggest mobile phone network.

Taking over Tiscali’s network would see Vodafone automatically leap into fourth place behind BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse, and become a triple-play provider, selling mobile and fixed line calls as well as broadband – no news yet as to whether the Tiscali TV IPTV package will be bundled as part of the deal or not. This will put the wind up mobile network rivals O2 and Orange, who would be competing for market space with Vodafone on multiple new fronts.

Last year it was revealed that Toucan – owned by Tiscali via Pipex – launched their own mobile phone service which piggybacked off of the T-Mobile network. It’s unclear as to what will happen to customers who signed up for contracts with Toucan, whether their contracts will remain, be taken over of Vodafone or T-Mobile or whether customers will be given a choice.

Earlier last month, a Carphone Warehouse bid was rejected by the Tiscali. As well as Toucan, Tiscali also own the Pipex and Nildram networks.

Leading mobile networks and broadband providers Orange and O2 have finally moved in on the mobile broadband market, following on from T-Mobile, Vodafone and 3.

Both companies are punting mobile surfing to users, allowing them to connect to the net on the move by way of a plug and play USB dongle. Both of the packages offer customers 3GB worth of monthly surfing over their networks, with the O2 packages including unlimited Wi-Fi access via The Cloud’s 7,500 UK hotspots.

O2 Mobile Broadband automatically hooks users up to the fastest connection available – GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, or Wi-Fi, and the plug and play aspect of the USB dongle makes it super easy to use. The dongle also comes with a stylish LED display panel which indicates what network is being used, so you’ll be able to easily estimate what speed you should be getting. Talking of which, for the moment broadband speeds of O2 Mobile Broadband will be around 1.8Mbps, which O2 plan to accelerate speeds to a faster average of 3.6Mbps this June. Orange Mobile Broadband also comes with speeds of up to 1.8Mbps, although there have been no official noises on speed increases yet. However, Orange has the edge over O2 in terms of cost.

There are two separate price plans available on O2, a £20 a month 18 month contract, which includes the price of the USB dongle, or a rolling monthly package also costing £20 a month, plus a one-off charge for the dongle (£120). Orange, by contrast only have one price plan, and 18-monther which costs users just £15 a month, significantly cheaper over a year and half when compared with the O2 equivalent; the price of the Orange USB dongle is also included in the price.

From today, O2 Home Broadband is available in all homes throughout the UK, thanks to a deal inked with BT which allows O2 to supply broadband to customers using both their own and BT’s wholesale network, allowing O2 Pay Monthly mobile subscribers everywhere to take advantage of discounts off the cost of next-gen broadband. O2 will still continue to install equipment in BT exchanges through Be Broadband, but for now, this venture means that punters who have wanted to sign up with O2 Broadband can do so.

To make punters aware of the nationwide availability of the service, O2 are launching a high visibility £6 million ad campaign. The new campaign, dubbed “Happy Homes” will feature on TV, in papers and posters and on trains and tubes. The print ads feature a series of houses with strategically positioned windows, doors and fences to create the impression that the buildings are smiling.

O2’s Home Broadband Access package will cost from £17.50 per month for O2 customers, representing excellent value for customers when compared to similar services delivered over BT’s wholesale network by competitor providers. Prices for O2 Home Broadband delivered over O2’s own LLU network start from £7.50 per month for O2 customers.

Al O2 customers can benefit from free UK-based tech support and customer service, unlimited downloads, free connection and wireless kit and no connection fees.

O2 have just launched a new promo campaign touting their range of connectivity options available to consumers. The new tagline is “We’re better, connected”, which points to their increased mobile phone signal coverage and their launch of broadband internet services; it’s possible that the phrase is also a cheeky nod to the old “It’s good to talk” ads by BT.

The centrepiece of the promo campaign is a short video clip, with supplementary billboard ads to follow. Familiar O2 themes such as the bubble and the blue light filter are present, as are motifs based around groups of four objects replicating four bars of signal on a handset display.

In the lavishly produced TV ad, the now familiar O2 bubble floats across a series of surreal landscapes where teddy bears play with train sets and dogs on rooftops howl at a series of moons, a bit like the ‘Twilight Bark’ sequence from 101 Dalmatians. Sean Bean reprises his voice acting role from the “It’s your O2 See what you can do” strap line introduced in 2006 with the new punning catchphrase.

Seems as though the music industry has finally realized that the internet exists. With UK ISPs now facing government pressure to shop clients who willingly indulge in illegal P2P activities, one of the major labels, Warner Music is currently holding talks with the big players in the Broadband league over the provision of legal music downloads available on a subscription basis.

A piece in yesterday’s Times reveals that Warner Music frontman and chief executive, Edgar Bronfman, gave the go-ahead to a scheme which would see American broadband customers paying an additional fee on top of their usual package – e.g. $5 a month – for access to the Warner catalogue, including artists such as Led Zeppelin, Madonna, R.E.M. and, somewhat ironically, Metallica.

Along with IPTV, inclusive music downloads could soon become the next value-added lock in for broadband customers. Companies such as Virgin Media and O2 are synonymous with music here in the UK, owing to sponsorship of festivals and venues, and many of these companies already have existing deals with content providers for their TV platforms.

Any music files are almost certainly going to come shrink wrapped in shiny happy DRM, and probs wont work on certain world-famous portable music playing devices. Whilst this is certainly a step in the right direction, its doubtful that punters will warm to the idea of paying for something which they might not be able to use 100% of the time. It’s not like up and coming bands make money from CD sales anyway.