WiFi could come to a cash machine near you
August 26, 2009 at 1:54 pm
It looks like we may soon be getting more than just money (and an annoying £1.50 charge) from those independent cash machines that appear in pubs and shops across the country. Because Cashbox, owner of 2,500 machines across the UK, has just made a 5-year deal with BT to install WiFi into a number of its ATMs.
The chief executive of Cashbox, Ciaran Morton, has said that the company is trying to provide customers with “additional opportunities to utilise the ATM machines”, and the move is surely going to be welcomed by both members of the public and by the owners of the premises in which the machines are located.
Initially there are only going to be 10 ATMs that will benefit from becoming WiFi hubs. However, the idea is to install WiFi capabilities to the other machines in the network offering a huge boost to WiFi access across the country.
It will be especially advantageous to anyone who lives near to one of the Cashbox ATMs, as they will technically be able to pick up free broadband. It will also mean that cafes and restaurants that have one of the ATMs within them will not have to worry about providing WiFi themselves, which is becoming increasingly important for diners and cafe goers, as they will get it included free with the machine.
It’s great news for BT customers who have inclusive WiFi minutes, and BT are hoping that a large number of people will be inspired to take out contracts with the company to take advantage of it.
UK might not get 4G Broadband until 2012
August 26, 2009 at 1:53 pm
The evolution of mobile broadband is always a cause for excitement, but it looks like the UK could be behind the rest of the pack in the next stage. 4G (fourth generation) broadband, also known as LTE (long-term evolution) and WiMAX, is already close to becoming a reality for many users in other countries. However, it looks like the UK is going to have to wait until 2012 to benefit from it, at least according to Ericsson.
The interview in PC Pro revealed that users in the US, China and the rest of Europe will soon be seeing the introduction of 4G mobile broadband with speeds up to 150Mbps.
The UK should technically be able to get 4G as well as the problem is not down to investment. Instead, the problem is due to the 900MHz spectrum owned by Vodafone and O2. As long as they keep a hold of it, we will have to wait to get 4G. These networks will have to redistribute sections of the spectrum before it will be possible to bring in faster broadband. And until this is possible, the UK is set to fall behind many other countries.
However, Ofcom has announced that the 800MHz spectrum will be cleared for use with higher broadband speeds, so that’s some good news. But it is not, however, enough to prevent us from falling behind other countries. Eriksson has also said that it is unlikely that 4G will be able to reach the speeds that have been predicted because it will be running on an existing infrastructure, so all in all the future of high-speed mobile broadband looks fairly uncertain.
Barclays provides cheap mobile broadband to students
August 21, 2009 at 3:43 pm
New students signing up to a Barclays bank account can now benefit from a great mobile broadband deal that it has recently introduced. Barclays has recently teamed up with Orange to provide its student account holders with a 25% discount on an Orange mobile-broadband package, which also includes a free dongle thrown in.
Broadband is increasingly important for students whilst they are at university, so this new deal is sure to prove a hit. There is always fierce competition between banks to get hold of undergraduates at this early stage, as this will often mean they will be customers for life. For this reason banks always try to provide the best perks to get hold of them, and this new deal, being the first of its kind, is sure to prove popular.
The mobile broadband deal applies to Orange’s 18-month plans. There are currently three available plans to choose from, with 1GB, 3GB and 10GB download limits respectively. So which package is best for each student will depend on how often they use the internet and what types of websites they use. Sites such as BBC iPlayer and YouTube use up a huge amount of bandwidth, so a higher limit is best for using these.
On top of the mobile broadband package, Barclays’s student account also has a number of other perks. Students will be able to have a £2,000 interest-free overdraft, a telephone banking service and a ‘contactless’ Visa debit card. This means that for small transactions the user does not have to use the ‘chip and pin’ system, and can simply flash the card in front of a special reader to make the purchase.
New broadband hotspots from O2
August 21, 2009 at 3:42 pm
O2 mobile-broadband customers just got a boost to their connectivity options after O2 announced that it is to provide them with a further 3,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across the country. You may wonder why anyone would want to connect to Wi-Fi when they already have mobile broadband, but there are a number of benefits to be had, such as to avoid using up your data allowance or to get on the internet when you can only get a weak mobile signal.
The new hotspots to be included in the O2 package come courtesy of a deal with BT Openzone which operates them, many of which can be found in locations such as Starbucks cafes. They won’t be the first hotspots that O2 customers will get access to, however, because they can already access another 5,000 via The Cloud Network.
In further changes to the O2 mobile broadband package, the company has just announced a change to its Connection Manager software. The upgrade has meant that when customers access the internet via Wi-Fi, their laptop profiles will be copied to the system and it will then provide users with a data counter to provide accurate monitoring of their internet usage.
This will allow users to manage their internet usage more effectively as they will receive alerts warning them when they approach their maximum data allowance. And with stories in the press of people forking out thousands of pounds to pay for going over their data usage, especially when abroad, this should help them to get far more control.
The service is already available to existing O2 customers who can download it now, but new users will have to wait until later in the month to benefit from it.
Top 10 quickest ISPs
August 17, 2009 at 2:33 pm
It’s time to sort out the tortoises from the hares again in the world of broadband. Recent results have been checked and verified and, thanks to the statisticians at Broadband.co.uk, we can now see exactly who has gone up and who has gone down in the charts. There are two categories: upload speed and download speed. Before we announce the winners, it’s worth saying that the overall average speed for all broadband in the UK has risen in the month of May 2009 from 4.137Mbps to 4.248Mbps. This might not seem like a gargantuan jump, but it’s going in the right direction at least.
In the download speed category the winner yet again were the people from Virgin Media. They notched up an impressive average score of 5.874Mbps. It’s no huge shock though as Virgin seem to want to lead the way with the need for speed, as their investment into the fastest broadband in the world venture has recently shown. After them came O2 with their Be Broadband, which is still one of the new boys in the broadband world. They come in with a 5.778Mbps. These two are quite a way ahead of the bronze medal place, which is held by Talk Talk whose average speeds are 3.705Mbps. Then, in order it’s Sky Broadband, Orange, PlusNet, Tiscali, BT, Eclipse Internet, and AOL.
Upload speed is a rather different kettle of fish in terms of the speed average but funnily enough the same contenders are in the top three. The overall winner for uploads is O2, who can get our files and folders online at an average of 0.758Mbps; you can see here what most people care about in terms of speed. After them is Talk Talk with 0.491Mbps and then Virgin Media with 0.451Mbps. Then, in order it’s Sky Broadband, Orange, Eclipse Internet, Tiscali, PlusNet, BT and then last again it’s AOL.
Digital Britain will crackdown on net piracy
August 17, 2009 at 2:29 pm
The Digital Britain report has been highly publicised for its aim to get fast, cheap broadband to everyone in the country by 2012. But another area where it is hoping to make a difference is in the crackdown on illegal filesharing.
Filesharing has presented a huge problem over the years for the music and film industries especially, and has now become so prevalent that many young people do not even think that they are doing anything wrong by downloading files illegally from the internet. The Government is hoping to change this perception with the rules outlined in the Digital Britain report.
Under the new arrangements, Ofcom is to get new powers to enforce ISPs to cut down on illegal filesharing by 70% within a year of the changes coming into effect. The Government has said that from now on ISPs will be required to collect data on any of their users who share files illegally, and to pass that data on to the Government. These details could then be passed on to the companies who are being affected which could result in legal action being taken.
The new measures are not expected to be implemented for a while to come, but already voices of dissent have spoken up. The Guardian reports that Orange has already said it will not ask its law-abiding customers to pay for the monitoring of the minority who abuse the law.
Potential punishments could include blocking certain websites and reducing the connection speeds of the worst offenders. Written warnings could also be handed out to the most persistent offenders, all in a bid to crack down on the practice as we move into the next decade.
New signal boost in the home from Vodafone
August 7, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Do you live in a home where you have to go upstairs and stick your arm out of the window to make a phone call because it is impossible to get good mobile phone reception? This is a problem faced by many, and if anything the problem is even worse when it comes to mobile broadband because people prefer to connect to the internet in specific places in the home.
But now the problem could be solved thanks to a new innovation from Vodafone. The company has just announced that it is releasing what it calls the ‘Vodafone Access Gateway’, a small box incorporating ‘femtocall’ technology that plugs into a regular broadband connection in the house to increase the ability to get 3G connectivity all around the property.
The device allows up to four people to use it at the same time so there are never any problems with quality, and it means that people can connect to their iPhones or use their dongles to access mobile broadband wherever they are in the house.
The Access Gateway will be coming out in July and is available for a one-off fee of £160, or you could choose to pay monthly for a fee of around £5.
As people increasingly expect to be able to connect to the internet wherever they are, both through their phones and their computers, this could well answer the problem for many people who find that they cannot connect within their own homes.
It will provide people with good connectivity wherever they are as it will not be affected by walls or being in another room, and will make it easier for people to connect via 3G to both computers and phones rather than setting up a wireless network that would only work for computers.
BT wants BBC to pay more for online content
August 7, 2009 at 4:25 pm
A row has erupted between BT and online content providers such as the BBC and YouTube. The problem surrounds BT’s frustration at the content providers for not offering to cover more of the costs of the content that they provide. This follows the revelation that BT actually slowed down iPlayer recently by putting a limit on download speeds for its lowest-level customers.
With the recently-released Digital Britain report calling for a better service for the whole country in terms of broadband speed and price, BT does not think that it should have to pay for all the costs of delivering content, and has focused its attentions on those content providers who use up the greatest amount of bandwidth.
BT is now saying that the cost of high bandwidth connections should be shared out between both the providers and the producers of the online content, and it is a sentiment also expressed by other network providers such as Virgin.
As traffic continues to grow, BT has suggested that ISPs will not be able to keep on paying for bandwidth-heavy content and that something is going to have to change in the way content is provided on the internet.
The managing director of the consumer arm of BT Retail, John Petter, told the Financial Times that it is not possible to give content providers a “free ride” at the same time as offering a good service and a low price to customers.
However, the BBC says that the iPlayer only consumes a “small percentage” of the UK’s total bandwidth.
This argument highlights a key stage in the evolution of the internet, and the debate about whether content providers offering content with a high bandwidth usage should pay more than other content providers is not likely to disappear anytime soon.
