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.

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.

Vodafone have reportedly done a volte face and pulled out of their bid to take over the residential broadband, home phone and digital TV services of triple-play provider Tiscali, according to the Financial Times.

Reportedly, the two companies failed to agree on a sum which would see Vodafone acquiring Tiscali’s broadband businesses not only in the UK, but across Europe as well. The map to the right shows the extent of Tiscali’s continental reach. Lime green indicates countries where Tiscali operates independently, and the purple countries are markets where the Tiscali brand is present, but the company does not wholly own the service provided, like the AOL/Carphone Warehouse situation here in the UK.

Speaking of Charles Dunston and the gang, Carphone also dropped out of the Tiscali bidding war back in May. This leaves Sky, Swisscom and fellow Italian comms provider Wind Telecomunicazioni.

EDIT: The map wouldn’t display for some reason in the original post. The bug has been fixed, and now you can witness it in all its cartographic glory.

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.

Tom Alexander, the new(ish) boss of Orange has announced plans to both concentrate on pushing mobile broadband and invest more in customer service for its mobile phone and fixed-line broadband customers.

Alexander, the former chief executive of Virgin Mobile, quit last year, convincing three of his old droogs from Virgin to climb aboard the good ship Orange in the process. Andrew Ralston, Gerry McQuade, and Steven Day all used to work for Virgin, but defected to Orange in January, to helm operations, development, and personnel respectively.

Alexander said that he plans to invest into 3G networks, so that mobile broadband users can access the faster up to 7.2Mbps speeds currently available to selected Vodafone customers. And not a moment too soon – Vodafone are reportedly all set to take over Tiscali’s UK broadband and fixed-line customers, which will see them leapfrog Orange in subscriber numbers. Orange currently have around 1.7 million broadband customers, wheras Tiscali are slightly ahead with over 2 million.

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.

In February, Virgin Media big cheese Neil Berkett quite literally offered his two cents on the net neutrality debate in an interview with the Royal Television society magazine; “This network neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” he reportedly thundered.

The interview sparked fears among web video providers, such as YouTube, that Virgin have this week been trying to ally. It was implied that content providers who refused to pay levies to ISPs would see user traffic travelling to their sites shaped in order to meet bandwidth costs.

Berkett reportedly said video providers who don’t pay a congestion charge on the wider internet could see customer traffic shunted to slower “bus lanes”; it was this particular comment that send the WVPs running for the hills. A spokesman said that Berkett’s statements had been taken out of context, and asserted that: “We’re not suggesting there will be any denial of access to those who don’t want to pay.”

What is clear is that demand for popular applications such as YouTube and the BBC iPlayer has placed a huge strain on bandwidth. Virgin have circumvented this somewhat with direct peering with el Beebio in order for faster and more streamlined iPlayer usage, setting the precedent for other ISPs to follow suit.

Tiscali have been pretty vocal about BBC Technology Director Ashley Highfeild’s proposed Broadband Charter, and are adamant that Auntie et al should cough up. Simon Gunter, strategy chief at Tiscali said last week that it’s a “bit rich that a publicly-funded organisation is telling a commercial body how to run its business.”

Bandwidth famine in the UK is rife. Virgin Media’s forthcoming 50Mbps broadband service ought to help, but cable isn’t available everywhere to everyone. BT are soldiering on with their 100Mbps next gen trial, but new CEO Ian Livingstone on day one of hi new job, made it clear that BT would not be engaging in any phorm of big-scale fibre rollout unless Ofcom keep their tentacles at bay.

Speaking of Ofcom, they tellingly betrayed their grip on the situation with a recent announcement of an investigation into whether roll-out of fibre can be sped up by using existing utilities infrastructure, chiefly waterways. H20 Networks have been busy getting on with this on their tod for a while now, and way back when in ‘93, a company called Ipsaris unrolled 3,500 km of cable alongside British Waterways’ canal network. Iparsis was purchased in 2001 by Easynet, who are of course now owned by Sky.

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.

A report by telecoms research body Point Topic says that Sky has retained its position as the fastest growing ISP in the UK, according to sales figures from the past five quarters. In the three months up to last December, the triple-play company netted a further 260,000 broadband customers, which equates to 42 per cent of new broadband customers during that period.

The success of Sky Broadband has largely been credited to the popular SeeSpeakSurf bundle, which sees broadband included free with Sky TV, their killer app, and fixed line phone calls. Sky was also the first ISP to offer free wireless routers to customers, allowing home networks to be set up quickly and easily. Rival providers Be, AOL, Tiscali and others quickly followed suit.

Sky entered the broadband market under its own name nearly two years ago, after buying Easynet for a cool £211 million. Sky wasted no time investing into the LLU scheme, unbundling at a furious rate. SeeSpeakSurf launched in 2006 and late last year, Sky announced that it had connected its millionth customer. Sky also purchased ADSL2+ ISP UK Online, who specialise in providing next-gen ADSL broadband to SME customers.

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.