YouGov applauds Orange
December 24, 2008 at 11:14 am
Orange has been named the top provider in the mobile broadband market by YouGov. A survey of just over three thousand broadband consumers found that the large majority of Orange customers were satisfied with the service provided. The consumers have not only found Orange to be reliable but the quality of the broadband connection has also been praised.
The news will come as music to the ears of officials at Orange, which is the primary 3G network operator in Britain. The company had over sixteen million customers living in the United Kingdom by the end of September this year. The large majority of these customers are active mobile customers, whilst just over one million of them are fixed broadband consumers.
Paul Tollet, the vice president of Orange Business, was thrilled with the news and referred to it as a “real honour”. He also revealed that the company is consistently taking “significant measures to improve the quality” of its network. Orange is apparently investing approximately one million pounds each day of the working week in the aim to further improve its network and maintain the ability to offer high speeds. Tollet is happy that Orange’s customers are "really starting to see the benefit” of this continued investment.
Orange have also been striving recently to ensure that the prices charged to their customers are fair and in line with the quality of the service provided. The company is committed to developing the “right tariffs” so that every consumer is able to get the appropriate type of mobile broadband “at the right price”.
BT Claims 27% of Market Share
December 24, 2008 at 11:13 am
British Telecom (BT) claims to hold a 27% share of the total broadband market, surpassing both O2 and Virgin Media as the UK’s most popular high-speed internet provider. BT made revenue of £5 billion during the last quarter, earning an average of £283 per customer.
Broadband has proved to be one of BT’s most lucrative properties and thousands of new clients flock to the provider every day. At the end of September, the telecommunications giant claimed to have over 4.6 million broadband customers and 13.3 million wholesale broadband connections.
The figures belie an increasingly desperate situation, however, with profits from telephone customers floundering well below predicted targets. BT kept a meagre 14% of its total revenue (0.7 billion), a few hundred million less than for the same period last year.
A report compiled by the Regulatory News Service (RNS) blamed the slow uptake of BT’s Global Services package – a networking solution for businesses – for the recent dip in quarterly profits. BT’s chief executive, Ian Livingstone, explained that profits from the Global Services proposition are “simply not good enough” and pledged decisive action to correct the problem.
BT bosses have implied that extensive redundancies will be required before the end of the next financial year if the company is to improve overall profits. A total of 4,000 agency and contracted BT staff members have already lost their jobs while a further 6,000 are expected to face the axe before March 31st 2009. BT’s pension scheme will also suffer cutbacks.
The complete RNS half-year report is available online.
VAT and broadband prices
December 24, 2008 at 11:11 am
With the government’s recent VAT initiative set to get people spending again, consumers across the country have been disappointed to find that a number of companies, shops, and service providers have failed to pass on the full rate cut.
So what about broadband? Is this a good time to pick up an extra-cheap deal? Well, according to thinkbroadband.com, a number of broadband providers are taking the cut on board and offering to pass it on to their customers.
The first to do so were BT Total and Plusnet, the latter of these companies is actually lowering prices even more than necessary for the sake of convenience. The other top performer is Be Broadband, which will be cutting rates by 50p a month on all its packages and is therefore providing one of the best discounts around.
Those passing on the full rate cut include O2 and Virgin, who are both planning to drop their rates, even though it may take a bit longer for the changes to show. Andrews & Arnold and Newnet are also going to pass on the full rate cut but are not going to go above and beyond what is expected.
Orange faces an altogether different problem, promising to pass on the price cuts but having a few difficulties because their tariffs are designed on simplicity, offering deals for exact amounts such as £5 and £10.
However, some providers have completely failed to pass on the cut, offering a number of excuses in the process. UK Online has decided to keep its prices the same, bringing no change to the consumer at all, even though the increased prices of their services suggest they should be making a few more improvements.
Carphone Warehouse is also not going to pass on the cuts to its customers. However, it will aim to improve the service it is offering, according to ISPreview.co.uk.
One can’t help but feel that it all seems like a lot of trouble for nothing. It will be an administrative nightmare for all of these companies to change their pricing schemes, and with a maximum of about 50p being saved per month, it is hardly time to crack open the bottles of champagne.
However, it actually provides an interesting insight into the broadband operators’ attitudes towards their customers. Surely it is better in the long run to pass on the VAT cut just to avoid looking stingy in the future. Therefore, the providers that were the first to drop their prices, BT and Plusnet, have probably won an unexpected branding battle that could well do them a few favours in the future.
Be broadband in free Christmas deal
December 22, 2008 at 8:09 pm
For anyone who waited until the end of the year to think about getting a broadband package, Christmas came surprisingly early. Be Broadband, in its latest bid to attract new customers, recently announced that it would be providing a completely free service for the rest of the month to anyone who signed up for its Be Value broadband service before the 14th of December.
Even better than that, it also confirmed that it would not be charging any signup fees for the privilege, meaning many people across the UK will now be enjoying completely free broadband access for the rest of the year.
Of course, this offer won’t go on forever, and the party will be well and truly over after the New Year has arrived, when customers will be expected to pay £13.50 a month for a minimum 12-month period.
It includes all that you would expect for the price, with speeds of up to 8Mbps, a free modem, free Web space and unlimited data usage. In fact, the only thing that customers will have to pay for throughout December is the BT line rental, but this is one fee that can’t be escaped.
The move suggests that the ISPs are really battling it out for customers at this time of year, well aware that a decent broadband package can make a great Christmas present. For some people, buying that present just got a whole lot cheaper. However, I don’t think they’ll be telling the recipient of the gift that they purchased it for free!
3 introduces new mobile broadband package
December 15, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Small businesses have been provided with yet another good deal by a mobile broadband provider. They have been treated well by broadband providers this year, with O2 recently introducing numerous fantastic deals, including a 10GB package available on a two-year contract for just £30 per month. Furthermore, Virgin Media has just announced that their customers will be able to access a deal in which a 1GB package will cost just £5 per month.
3 Business, the small business division of top mobile firm, 3, has announced that it will introduce two new bundles in the near future: the Broadband 5GB and the Broadband 15 GB. The 5GB package will cost just £15 per month, whilst the 15GB one will cost twice this amount.
Renato Bottini, the head of 3 Business, believes that the company has always shown a desire to offer small businesses “a wide range of communications options at the best possible price”. Bottini was keen to point out the importance of maintaining such a policy during the current global financial crisis.
As well as the two new bundles, the company is going to provide any small business purchasing a mobile broadband package for either 18 or 24 months with the option of buying a second at half the usual price. Furthermore, customers who have already signed up to a deal with the company but wish to purchase a business mobile broadband package will be given a fifty per cent discount on line rental for the newly acquired plan.
T-Mobile named fastest mobile broadband provider
December 3, 2008 at 3:54 pm
T-Mobile has been awarded the accolade of being the fastest mobile broadband provider in the United Kingdom. Over the last three months, independent researchers have been measuring mobile broadband speeds during peak hours in a total of 16 cities across the UK. The researchers discovered that T-Mobile Broadband offers the fastest speeds for uploading and downloading. They also found that the company offers the fastest speeds for browsing the Internet and sending (and receiving) emails.
The good news for T-Mobile (and, of course, their customers) is that their close rivals in the broadband industry did not even come close to matching their speeds. The research showed that the services offered by T-Mobile are approximately 25% quicker than those offered by the company which finished in second place overall. This figure was calculated whilst researchers attempted to connect to the BBC homepage. Whilst attempting to upload photographs to a Facebook account, the researchers found that T-Mobile broadband was approximately 60% faster than its closest rival.
The chief technology officer at T-Mobile, Emin Gurdenli, was pleased with the results of the independent research. Gurdenli stated that the results “clearly put T-Mobile’s Mobile Broadband network ahead of the pack”. The technology officer was also quick to point out the general appeal of T-Mobile’s services. The company has removed complications and complexity from the broadband experience by offering unlimited usage, flat rates and non-committal tariffs. This allows consumers to access broadband if and when they need to use it.
