UK comes fifth in global broadband table
June 26, 2009 at 3:32 pm
The broadband picture in the UK is looking good, after the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development) placed the country in fifth position out of a selection of 30 major world economies based on the success of the broadband market.
The report does not cover every country in the world, omitting Russia and China amongst others, but it does provide a good idea of the general state of things for the worldwide broadband market.
The fifth position relates to the high number of broadband subscribers that the UK currently enjoys, with over 17 million people connected. This was one of the highest numbers in the world, although France and Germany were ahead of the UK, and the US led the field with 80 million subscribers.
With regards to the overall picture of broadband in the OECD nations, the results show that broadband subscriptions have risen by 15% in the last year across the 30 countries. This adds up to a total figure of 270 million subscriptions, or more than one-in-five people.
However, the fibre-optic market is still very much in its infancy, and since June 2008 the market has only grown by 1%. The UK does not even make it onto the fibre-optic list, but there is a very different picture in Japan and South Korea where it makes up the dominant connection format.
Disappointingly, the UK drops to 11th position on the scale of broadband per capita. The number of broadband subscribers per one hundred does not paint such a good picture, and schemes such as the government’s plan to get 2Mbps broadband to every home by 2012 will be important in helping this figure to increase.
Orange sees dongle sales rise by 500%
June 26, 2009 at 3:30 pm
The booming popularity of mobile broadband is no secret, but the true extent of its popularity has just been made even clearer now that Orange has revealed that its dongle sales are up 500% over the last year. On top of that, mobile handset data usage has also risen by 108%, which brings to 3.8 million the number of Orange customers who are either on a 3G mobile handset or have bought a dongle.
The details were released on the company’s Digital Media Index report, which also highlights the fact that dongle data usage has seen a huge rise of over 4,000% in the last year.
The director of products at Orange, Paul Jevons, said that the “explosion” of mobile applications and embedded laptops means that the demand for mobile data will increase enormously in the coming months and years.
But despite the obvious popularity of mobile broadband, there are no signs that it will take over from fixed-line broadband anytime soon. Michael Phillips from BroadbandChoices.co.uk told the BBC that people use mobile broadband more for social networking and news, whereas a fixed-line broadband has faster speeds and bigger download limits and is therefore used differently.
This seems to be confirmed by Orange’s announcement that of the most searched-for categories, social networking came top of the list, with downloads, ringtones and games following closely behind.
But with the growth of mobile broadband, new challenges will arise. The BBC has highlighted the huge demands that will be put on the networks to deal with increasing amounts of data. As the networks are put under ever-increasing strain, the speeds could well suffer as a result. So despite the figures from Orange, it’s clear that the technology is still in its infancy and has a long way to go yet.
The Usage Quagmire
June 19, 2009 at 2:52 pm
ISPreview.co.uk, a self-proclaimed broadband information resource, has revealed that up to a quarter (25.1%) of British broadband users have been warned about excessive usage by their internet service provider (ISP).
Critics are blaming the ISPs. Due to the shared nature of many domestic broadband networks, truly unlimited broadband is a rarity, if it exists at all. ISPs may be encouraging usage violations by continuing to sell “unlimited” broadband packages, even if their own fair usage policies place restrictions on downloads and bandwidth.
Approximately half (41.1%) of all interviewees said that they would seriously consider switching providers if their usage was called into question. A further 45% would seek out a more suitable provider. Only 13% said that they would remain with their current ISP.
ISPreview have perhaps been a little pessimistic. Due to the size of the survey group – a meagre 557 people – the results are unlikely to be representative of UK broadband users as a whole. However, there is an indication that broadband companies are struggling to cope with the popularity of interactive media websites such as the BBCi Player and 4OD, and the Xbox Live gaming platform.
Mark Jackson, news editor for ISPreview, reminds broadband users to be mindful of any hidden limitations imposed by their service provider. Companies such as BT will charge gluttonous users a service fee if they violate the fair usage policy. Tiscali, on the other hand, applies bandwidth restrictions to individuals who download in excess of 100GB per month.
Despite the results of the ISPreview survey, many internet service providers maintain that written warnings and service restrictions are employed to counter extreme usage violations, rather than the occasional over-indulgence.
Broadband research gets £1 million government boost
June 19, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Things are looking good for the future of broadband speeds as the government has agreed to pump £1 million into researching new technologies. The cash injection will help a number of projects in their attempt to find a way to reach speeds of up to anything between 1Gbps and 10Gbps in the future.
The money is being supplied by the TSB (Technology Strategy Board), which is itself supported by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. It will provide funding to 13 research projects across the UK, all of which will focus on the development of fibre-optic technology.
The new research is needed to find a way of getting super-fast speeds at the right price to make them commercially viable. Mike Biddle of TSB said that internet speeds double “roughly every 21 months”, and that although we can already see speeds up to 10Gbps it cannot currently be done “at the right cost point”. If this is achieved then it could see huge advances in the broadband industry over the coming years.
The research projects are all looking into different areas of the broadband technology. Whereas one is experimenting with a new wi-fi system for the home, others are working on the crucial area of passive components, which connect homes to fibre-optic networks and is one of the biggest obstacles currently in the way.
The grants vary in size from £30,00 to £100,000, and it is great that the government has realised just how important broadband is to the future of the UK economy and is taking real measures to see it develop.
Orange offers cheaper mobile broadband for SMEs
June 15, 2009 at 3:30 pm
With the huge growth in mobile broadband in the consumer sector over recent months, there is growing concern in the industry that mobile broadband is still not proving as popular amongst businesses. This is one of the reasons that Orange has just announced a new offer that is designed specifically for SMEs (small to medium businesses).
From May 1 to July 31, any existing SME customers on one of Orange’s voice packages can now sign up to the Business Everywhere plan, which has just been released from Orange, and get a discount of up to 50%. This means that, from as little as £7.50 a month, customers will be able to get unlimited broadband as well as a choice of three dongles.
This offer is only available to existing customers, but another offer is in place for new Orange customers who sign up for Business Everywhere. The deal is similar, with new customers able to get £5 off the standard £15-a-month price tag for the same unlimited broadband.
Once the offer comes to an end at the end of July, customers will then have a choice of which package they want to sign up to. The choices include Business Everywhere Unlimited, which costs £15 a month on a 24-month contract, and Business Everywhere Traveller, which costs £35 a month and comes with a roaming allowance of 25 MB.
It is hoped that these low prices will tempt new and existing Orange business customers to try out mobile broadband for the first time and that uptake in the sector will begin to show signs of improvement.
Virgin piloting 200mbps broadband
June 15, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Some of us are only just getting used to our new 2 or 4Mbps internet, so the thought of something a hundred times that speed is a tricky one to get your head around. The computer engineers at Virgin Media in the UK, however, are getting very excited about the prospect of the fastest internet speeds in the world.
Virgin Media are hatching plans to trial broadband speeds of up to 200Mbps in a small area in Kent. As though it were a drug being trialled, the wizards at Virgin have tested such speeds in their laboratories but are now ready to try it out on about 100 so called “lead adopters” – in other words computer savvy guinea pigs – here in the UK.
The six-month trial will monitor the upload and download speeds on the individual’s broadband connection. There are many hopes and challenges for this test. The benefits of such speeds aren’t related to the familiar everyday tasks that we associate with broadband speeds, such as opening web pages quickly or downloading music. The engineers will be looking at the system’s ability to cope with new technology such as 1080p High Definition TV, which is also known as ‘full HD’ – a much wider picture and superior quality to normal HD. Another system the 200Mbps will hopefully be able to cope with is 3DTV, something quite guarded in the industry but possibly only a few years away from our homes.
Virgin Media have the Docsis 3 system to thank for this burst of speed. This is the fibre technology that supports such a speed via cabling. The challenge will be making the service wireless, not to mention getting websites and Data centres able to keep up.
Carphone Warehouse to split from TalkTalk
June 9, 2009 at 4:15 pm
November 2008 brought a shocking announcement from the Carphone Warehouse when the company revealed that it was set to completely review and assess its corporate structure. Following this review, its Talk Talk residential broadband service and its high street retail business could be divided. The chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, Charles Dunstone, was speaking publicly after the company was forced to report a drop in its first half profit of approximately eleven per cent.
Dunstone revealed that Carphone Warehouse had now reached a “watershed in the evolution of the Group, with two discrete and focused businesses”. Both businesses had managed to retain good positions in the market and still had solid monetary foundations. However, officials in the company also realised that the Group’s structure was such that it might no longer be viable for the two businesses to develop to their optimum ability.
As a result of the formal review undertaken by Carphone Warehouse officials, it has finally been announced that the two businesses will become completely separate entities by July 2010.
The need for Carphone Warehouse to consider such a split has been necessitated by the global economic climate which exists at the moment. Speaking about the potential split last year Dunstone stated that the short-term outlook remained extremely “uncertain” and this year was likely to provide further challenges for the company and other industries in the United Kingdom.
T-Mobile and Blackberry make a deal
June 1, 2009 at 4:14 pm
The President of the United States of America has made it clear he can’t do without his. Having a Blackberry glued to your palm is now back in fashion. When they first came on the scene only the really career-driven individuals were using them, often because they were the only ones able to afford the bills. This month has seen a big move for Blackberry that could see it punch the Apple iPhone right back in the face.
The mobile phone runners-up, T Mobile, might not carry the same weight as O2 and Vodafone in some areas of business, but they’ve seen a new way of boosting their sales with the use of the Blackberry. If you take out a contract with T Mobile, you get a Pearl 8110 Blackberry handset free. It’ll cost you a flat rate of £179.99 for the year, but with it you get unlimited internet access, not to mention as much use of your personal or work e-mail as you like.
Most people use their Blackberry for work e-mails and then have a separate mobile phone that they use for personal calls and texts. If you want to ring or text using this new T Mobile tariff then it uses a pay-as-you-go system inside the Blackberry, where calls are on average 10p per minute (after the first 2 mins) and texts come in at 10p.
T Mobile are trying to compete with rival mobile phone companies, such as Orange, who did a very similar Blackberry deal at a slightly cheaper annual charge last year, but with a monthly payment for unlimited internet. Pressure came from the iPhone too, with O2 winning the battle for exclusivity on the handset. But the iPhone’s success with work e-mails hasn’t been as great as the Blackberry.
The deal with T Mobile might not, however, be great for longer than a year, as you have to pay around £100 at the start of the following year for the service to continue. That’s why it might be worth using the Blackberry you’ve acquired but then shopping around for a new tariff.
