Virgin Media 
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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Posted by Tom on December 21st 2009 in BT Broadband, Be Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, Digital Britain, Eclipse Internet, Mobile Broadband, Next Gen Broadband, O2 Broadband, PlusNet, TalkTalk, Tiscali, Virgin Media
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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Posted by Tom on December 18th 2009 in Broadband, Next Gen Broadband, O2 Broadband, Virgin Media
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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Posted by Tom on December 10th 2009 in BT Broadband, Next Gen Broadband, TalkTalk, Virgin Media
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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Posted by Tom on November 23rd 2009 in BT Broadband, Eclipse Internet, PlusNet, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Virgin Media
Want Pro broadband but don’t want to fork out a City Trader’s salary each month for the privilege? TalkTalk has just launched it’s new premium Pro broadband package which promises top speeds of 24Mbps and unlimited downloads and is being billed as one of the more cost-effective high performance broadband packages going.
TalkTalk Pro costs just £14.99 a month plus £11.25 for TalkTalk line rental and £29.99 for the one-off connection fee.
The TalkTalk Pro package also includes a free wireless router with N technology for improved wireless signal range and strength. Unlimited anytime calls to 01, 02 and 03 UK landlines are also included in TalkTalk Pro.
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Posted by Tom on November 12th 2009 in BT Broadband, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Virgin Media
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
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
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