Virgin Media

It’s been a while since the launch of Virgin Media - just over 3 years in fact.

You’d be surprised to learn then that it’s taken this long for the business arm of NTL:Telewest to be rebranded as Virgin Media Business.

Richard Branson presided over the re-brand aiming to “shake up the UK business telecoms market” and build on the success of Virgin Media in the domestic market by consolidating the brand under “one common offering”.

The company is said to be ploughing money into its networks, provisioning functions and ad campaigns based around the rebrand.

However the option of paying for access to BT’s high speed tunnels has not yet been dismissed by the company.

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Be Broadband, the UK’s leading provider of ADSL2+ broadband owned by O2, has hinted that it may unroll its own fibre-optic network to rival those of Virgin Media and BT. This news comes a day after it was announced that BT may be opening up its fibre network in the same manner as it currently does with its copper lines.

According to a post over at ISP Review, Be has responded enthusiastically to the news:

“The news that BT are preparing to open up so that other broadband providers can run their own high-speed broadband networks through their infrastructure will help us and other businesses better assess the case for fibre deployment. Although we will wait until BT confirms this move before revealing any of our own plans, one thing for certain is that the UK lags behind most of Europe now in terms of rolling out fibre broadband, which can’t persist for longer.”

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Broadband Britain has become almost as big a political battleground as Broken Britain as the race for the upcoming election gathers steam. The Conservatives have unveiled plans to deliver “super-fast broadband” to the majority of UK homes by 2017, part of which could be funded by the BBC licence fee.

In yesterday’s Guardian, Shadow chancellor George Osborne said that an incoming Tory government would deliver speeds of up to 100Mbps and that the UK could be the first European country to have super-fast broadband speeds.

Private investment would be allowed to pay for better cabling for the broadband expansion and as a backup, the BBC - whose iPlayer has driven demand for faster broadband - has put aside 3.5% of the licence fee to fund the project.

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Note: This is not a premature April Fools’ prank. From the 1st of April onwards, Virgin Media customers who have a Virgin Phone line will be able to enjoy free and cheap calls to Virgin Mobile numbers.

The Size M, L and XL Virgin Phone plans will also include free calls to Virgin mobiles at the same times of day when you can benefit from free calls to UK landlines. To clarify, this means that customers with the Size M phone plan which comes inlcuded free with a Virgin Phone line (not inc. £11.99 a month line rental) gives you free calls to Virgin mobiles at weekends.

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With BT Infinity just around the corner, Virgin Media is eyeing up the new kid encroaching on it’s cable turf and claims that the UK’s leading broadband provider is still playing catch-up.

“We’re not sure why people in the UK would want to wait for BT’s 40Mb service which hasn’t launched yet, when they can already get Virgin Media’s great value 50Mb service,” a Virgin Media spokesperson said in a statement today.

“Last summer we completed the roll-out of our next generation service to 12.5 million homes and people throughout the country are already enjoying all the fantastic things you can do online with the UK’s fastest broadband service. We’ve been saying for years that fibre optic broadband is the future.”

Infinity is a real step forwards for BT, who has until now, solely relied on the old phone lines to deliver fixed-line broadband. However Virgin Media has been in the cable game for longer and, it has to be said, has a bit of an edge on the newcomer.

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BT’s broadband offerings are set to get infinity times better from next Monday onwards. From the 25th of January, customers will be able to sign up for download speeds of up to 40Mbps from £19.99 per month.

BT Infinity Option 1 gives you top speeds of 40Mbps and 2Mbps downstream and upstream, 20GB of usage a month and costs £19.99 with a one-off £50 activation fee.

The higher-grade BT Infinity Option 2 offers the same top download speed of 40Mbps but offers a faster upload speed of 10Mbps and comes with unlimited downloads.

Option 2 costs £24.99 a month but there aren’t any additional charges.

Whilst BT Infinity doesn’t offer speeds as fast as Virgin Media’s 50Mbps XXL service, the Option 2 package provides a greater upload speed, which BT claim is over 6 times faster than that offered by XXL.

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A lot has happened in the UK broadband market in 2009. Here’s a quick round up of the some of the big changes in broadband that have taken place over the last 12 months.

Tiscali gets bought by TalkTalk

Poor old Tiscali spent 2008 looking for a buyer without success and its woes continued into 2009. Despite many ISPs sniffing around hoping to steal a quick march on BT, nobody was willing to dig deep in their wallets. With deals collapsing at the last minute and its parent company losing millions of Euros on the continent times looked bleak for Tiscali’s UK arm. Then TalkTalk came to the rescue at the eleventh hour and swept Tiscali of it’s feet.

Speeding Up

2009 has seen a lot of speeding. BT, Orange and PlusNet all revved up their top download speeds to 20Mbps and 24Mbps in the case of Eclipse Internet. BT also released the Broadband Accelerator speed booster pack allowing customers to benefit from a more reliable broadband experience.

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We might be seriously lagging behind other countries in terms of speed but us Great Brits are pretty fond of our gigabits if this Ofcom survey is anything to go by. Compared with the USA, France, Germany, Spain and Italy the UK can boast the lowest prices for single line (i.e. not bundled with voice calls) and mobile broadband services. Prices for fixed-line voice calls are also the second lowest, after Italy.

Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, said: “The report shows that UK consumers have benefited from competition in the form of lower prices. Innovation means that the UK is well placed in the take up and availability of digital services.”

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Finally, some positive UK Government/broadband news. Sort of. Chancellor Alistair Darling has confirmed that a ‘Landline Duty’ would be set up next year which would work out at 50p per month, or £6 a year on all phone lines. This would raise an estimated £175 million in funding which would be invested in bird houses and moats a nationwide next-gen broadband infrastructure.

The funding will be used to “encourage private sector investment in digital infrastructure.” This could mean that ISPs such as BT and Virgin Media, who have already heavily invested in improving the availability and performance of their respective networks, could benefit from an injection of public coin.

However this will only come to pass if Labour remain in government after the next election. Both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats have said that they would scrap the proposals if either party came to power.

Last month, TalkTalk chief executive Charles Dunstone said in the Guardian that the tax would be counter productive, as “over 100,000 mostly low income homes will be forced to give up their broadband lines.”

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Allergy Warning: This article may contain traces of pun.

Over the next two weeks, Eclipse Internet is giving away up to £100 worth of high street gift vouchers as part of a cracking Christmas deal. New customers who place an order from today Monday the 23rd of November to the 14th of December will be able to qualify for free vouchers.

The vouchers are from giftvouchershop.co.uk can be redeemed in over 60 high street retailers including Argos, Burtons, Currys, Toys R Us and WH Smith.

Customers who sign up for Eclipse Home Select (£17.95 p/m, up to 24Mbps, 10GB download limit) will earn £30 worth of vouchers whilst those who take out Eclipse Home Pro (£29.95 p/m, up to 24Mbps, 50GB download limit) will get £50.

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