BT Group has released its latest quarterly results up to the end of last year, which reveals that the broadband market leader has again managed to strengthen its position at the head of the pack by adding a total of 4.7 million customers to it’s combined base of BT Broadband and PlusNet subscribers. This represents over a third of the total UK broadband market - 34 per cent.

BT’s Openzone Wi-Fi hotspots have also taken off, with now more than 50,000 access points available worldwide. Part of the official statement reads thus:

“[BT] had 13.6m wholesale broadband connections (DSL and LLU) at 31 December 2008, including 5.5m LLU lines. There were 296,000 net additional broadband connections in the quarter. Our [BT Broadband] share of those net additions was 28%. [BT] broadband revenue grew by 9% with net additions of 83,000 in the quarter.

In the maturing broadband market, we remain the UK’s number one retail broadband provider with a customer base of 4.7m and a retail market share of the DSL and LLU installed base of 34 per cent at 31 December 2008.

Further UK hotspots have been added, and new agreements signed with international operators Swisscom Hospitality Services and SFR in France. BT Openzone is now also available at more than 50,000 worldwide locations through roaming partners.

BT FON membership continued to climb and members now total 163,000, up 9% on the 7 previous quarter. BT customers can now go online at over 120,000 locations in the UK and Ireland with extensive coverage across 12 major city centres.”

That said, BT’s pre-tax profits also signify a pretty big slump - an 81 per cent fall down from the Q4 2007 results published last year.

Broadband Comparison site Broadband.co.uk have released the results of their anecdotal speed tests for January 2009, which sees Virgin Media sitting pretty atop the pile with an average download speed of 6.018Mbps - a speed and position no doubt bolstered by the recent launch of the premium Size: XXL 50Mbps service.

Sitting just behind Virgin in second place is O2, owners of Be Broadband’s ADSL2+ infrastructure, with a top average download speed of 5.319Mbps. Third place is Sky Broadband, with a top downstream average of 3.521Mbps.

The three ISPs offer theoretical maximum download speeds of 50Mbps, 20Mbps (or 24, if you’re with Be) and 16Mbps respectively.

Market leaders BT were nowhere to be seen in the upper echelons of the speed test, lurking second to last with a top average download speed of 2.331Mbps, just about AOL’s 2.011Mbps.

In the upload speed stakes, O2 performed considerably better than Virgin, with a top average of 0.734, well above the cable group’s 0.466Mbps.

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Attention Mac users - PC owners and fans of Linux please look the other way - MacAce, a specialist ISP providing hosting and broadband exclusively for Mac users, have recently launched a trip of ADSL2+ products delivering speeds of up to 24Mbps across 145 existing BT exchanges.

MacAce’s new AlwaysOn products, Lite, Pro and Elite, all provide top download speeds of 24Mbps, with increasing monthly usage limits of 10GB, 30GB, and 60GB respectively. Like PlusNet, MacAce customers also qualify for unlimited off-peak usage, which is listed as being from 12 Midnight to 7am.

Even though MacAce’s products are delivered over BT lines, you also have the option of paying for line rental and phone calls all through one package with MacAce’s OneVoice broadband and fixed-line bundles.

MacAce ADSL2+ products start from £19.49 per month on their own, or from £30.99 per month as an OneVoice phone and broadband bundle, which includes line rental, calls and broadband.

Today, PlusNet are offering their Home Phone Evenings & Weekends to new customers who sign up for home broadband products Option 2, Option 3, and Pro packages for just £1.99 a month for the first 3 months of the service, should you sign up for a 12 month contract, saving customers £24 on their first year with PlusNet.

Option 2, which provides up to 8Mbps download speeds and 15GB of monthly usage, comes with 120 anytime Broadband Phone VoIP minutes, and can be bundled with either Home Phone Evenings & Weekends or Home Phone Anytime, as can the Option 3 (up to 8Mbps, 30GB usage) or Pro (up to 8Mbps, 15GB, prioritised for gaming).

With PlusNet Home Phone Evenings & Weekends, the cost of line rental is included in the price, with free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines, along with free anytime calls to other PlusNet Home Phone customers.

Home Phone Anytime, available to be bundled with any of the PlusNet broadband packages for an extra £15.00 a month, provides unlimited minutes to UK landlines and 300 minutes to 20 international landlines, as well as the same inclusive calls to other PlusNet customers.

PlusNet have ever so slightly just beefed up the usage of their entry-level Option 1 broadband package. Option 1, which provides up to download speeds of 8Mbps and allows users to take advantage of unlimited downloads during the ‘graveyard shift’ of 12am Midnight to 8am in the morning, now comes with a 2GB monthly download limit for all other times, for no extra cost; that’s 1GB up from the previous daytime usage limit, which was 1GB.

Today also sees the launch of the new PlusNet Essential bundle deal, a bare bones broadband and phone deal for customers who already have a router or modem and aren’t interested in making use of an IP for VPN. With no extra cost for line rental or connection, PlusNet Essential really is bare necessities broadband.

PlusNet has also undergone a bit of a makeover, sporting a new fetching mauve outfit; their new design logo is here on the right, resplendent in all its JPEG glory.

EDIT: We have just been informed by PlusNet that the Essential bundle package also comes with unlimited email addresses and a healthy 250MB of webspace, therefore making the Essential package even better value for money!

PlusNet have just opened their doors on their Broadband Summer Sale, which sees punters after a decent broadband and fixed-line calls deal able to make a killing.

Four PlusNet broadband packages, based on their Option 1, Option 2, Option 3 and Broadband Your Way Pro services, come priced at a lower than usual cost, provided that customers sign up for either of the two phone packages on offer (free evening and weekend calls or anytime calls).

Customers singing up for PlusNet broadband Option 1, usually fork out £9.99 a month – under this scheme, customers can enjoy the first three months at the reduced rate of £4.99 a month. Similar discounts roll out across the other packages – £7.49 for the first 3 months on Option 2 (then £14.99), and £9.99 for the first 3 on both the Option 3 and Pro packages (£19.99 a month thereafter).

Activation is free if you stay with PlusNet for 12 months, and if you already have your own router or modem, you don’t have to sign up for any hardware if you don’t want to. Of the two phone packages available, Evenings & Weekends costs £9.99 a month and gives you free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines, and Anytime+ costing £15.00 a month, gives you free anytime calls plus 300 minutes a month to 20 top international destinations. The cost of line rental is included in both packages.

Ofcom have come up with a new code of conduct for ISPs to help consumers get a real estimate of the service they are likely to receive. The code will see providers listing the downstream speeds that consumers are likely to be able to achieve at certain times of the day (peak times, overnight usage, etc).

The new Code of Practice, which was drafted in association with the ISPA, is however voluntary, and it is therefore unlikely that we will be seeing the end of “up to” style advertising anytime soon.

Having said that both Virgin Media and PlusNet have been more transparent than most, telling customers in advance about their peak time throttling and traffic shaping measures.

Seeing as the majority of UK ISPs deliver services via BT phone lines, one of the best ways to check your potential broadband speed is to use our Line Checker and Speed Test tools to see what speeds you should be and are actually getting.

Ofcom have also announced that they will be conducting new surveys across 2,000 homes to assess general speeds and quality of service; the results will be published later this year.

Next week Nintendo launch WiiWare for their phenomenally successful Wii console. WiiWare titles are games and Wii applications that can be purchased via the Wii Shop Channel and downloaded onto machines in the same vein as the retro Virtual Console titles, with players paying for games using the Wii Points currency system.

Chief among the first run of titles is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, a Sim City-style spin-off of Square Enix’s hugely popular Final Fantasy series which sees the player taking control of a small township and expanding it into a flourishing kingdom for the whole world to marvel at. Other hotly anticipated titles include Lost Winds, a sort of throwback to the classic 2D platformers of old, Star Soldier R, a retro-style shooter, and an update of the pill-popping Dr. Mario & Germ Buster.

The games themselves are generally smaller in scope than hard copy titles – by eliminating the cost of packaging and distribution, developers can take more risks with innovations in games and recoup losses easily. The games themselves are also pretty cheap, as the following prices (taken from a Eurogamer article) indicate:

FFCC: My Life as a King – 1500 Wii Points (£10.50)
Dr. Mario & Germ Buster – 1000 Wii Points (£7)
Lost Winds – 1000 Wii Points (£7)
Pop – 700 Wii Points (£5)
Star Soldier R – 800 Wii Points (£7)
TV Show King – 1000 Wii Points (£7)

Whilst this represents a big plus for gamers, punters ought to be wary of the strain which WiiWare downloads will have on Britain’s creaky broadband infrastructure. Customers who’ve signed up for packages from PlusNet can take advantage of unlimited overnight usage and simply download WiiWare games in the evening, and Virgin Media customers will be mindful of the peak time (4pm to 9pm) after which they are free to Wii ’til their hearts content.

Last year, Bill Gates announced that BT Vision were to launch a new HD download service for Xbox 360 owners, effectively allowing their machine to double as a high-definition PVR – initial reports suggested that this service was all set to be ship shape by this summer, although BT have been a bit schtum on the issue of late.

Broadband customers signing up for PlusNet’s Home Phone Evening and Weekends service will pay just £4.99 for line rental for the first three months of a 12 month contract, and then £9.99 per month thereafter. The package includes all evening and weekend calls to UK landlines as well as free calls to other PlusNet Home Phone customers at any time.

PlusNet’s Anytime+ package has also been cut to £10 per month for the first six months (£15 per month thereafter). The package includes all calls to UK landlines, free calls to other Home Phone customers and 300 call minutes to the top 20 international destinations.

The PlusNet phone packages are available to anyone who signs up for any of the PlusNet packages, from Option 1 to the new Broadband Your Way Pro.

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.