Users frustrated by mobile broadband
July 28, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Mobile broadband has revolutionised the broadband market in a very short space of time. Now the internet is truly mobile, with laptops being able to access the internet through a dongle wherever there is a mobile signal, and with a slew of new smartphones that can do all the same things that a computer is capable of doing.
But now it’s been revealed that consumers are not particularly happy with the mobile broadband service that they are receiving.
The news comes following YouGov research on behalf of Acision, and shows that many mobile-broadband users are actually quite disappointed by the quality that they are receiving through their dongles.
The results of the research show that, of the total respondents:
- 67% suffer from slow download speeds
- 49% are concerned by their network coverage
- 40% report problems with a loss of connection
- 84% are unhappy with the slow connection speeds
The head of consumer, technology and telecoms consulting at YouGov, Marek Vaygelt, said that many users are “suffering regular and significant problems with their mobile broadband”.
The truth is that, even though it is ubiquitous, the technology is still in its infancy. Mobile broadband came practically out of nowhere and suddenly everyone is using it, which is sure to lead to some teething problems.
There are a lot of improvements that mobile broadband service providers can introduce in the near future to make surfing on the mobile web a lot more enjoyable and less frustrating than it currently is.
Results like those from this YouGov research will hopefully give mobile broadband providers the drive that they need to do something about their service and improve it soon.
BT to cover most of London with fibre by 2011
July 23, 2010 at 3:41 pm
There was good news for broadband users in London recently as BT announced that it will be rolling out its super-fast broadband service to nearly the whole of London in 2011.
BT’s original plan was to cover 40% of homes with high-speed broadband by 2013, so the new plans are much more ambitious in scope and really show just how important it is for BT to provide faster broadband to the country.
BT will invest over £2.5 billion in order to upgrade its current infrastructure. When the rollout is complete, two million homes and businesses (or 87% of the population of London) will have access to high-speed fibre-optic broadband with speeds of up to 100Mbps available.
And BT is not waiting around: 100,000 homes already have access to high-speed broadband, and the rollout is going to be rapid. BT has confirmed that it wants to offer the service to two thirds of the UK by 2015, which is great news for anyone living outside the capital.
The news means that the battle continues to heat up between BT and Virgin Media. Virgin currently provides a high-speed service up to 50Mbps, and BT is keen to dominate the market in London as this would stand it in good stead to expand around the country.
But although no one is in any doubt about the importance of high-speed broadband for the UK economy, will there be huge demand for the service at first? It really depends on what people are willing to pay, and how much BT will charge, which is yet to be disclosed.
Lower fines for cutting broadband contracts
July 16, 2010 at 4:32 pm
There are lots of broadband deals available on the market, with new ones coming out all the time. But if you want to switch to a deal that is much better value then you may be put off from doing so because of the fees involved in cancelling your contract.
But now things are about to get a lot better for customers after Ofcom announced that it had come to an agreement with the three biggest landline customers that they would start to introduce lower charges for cancellations.
Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk have all agreed to cut their cancellation fees for a number of their landline packages, as well as landline and broadband bundles.
TalkTalk introduced its new charges on June 1, and will be offering the same cuts to its Tiscali users from November 1. Virgin and BT will both cut their fees from October 2010.
Ofcom stated that the companies did not think that their charges were unfair, but that they agreed to reduce them for their customers.
Companies want to recoup their losses when customers cancel a contract, and so have made the fees very high as a result. But the new cuts are quite substantial.
For example, the TalkTalk Essential phone and broadband bundle cancellation fee has gone down from £33.48 per month to £8. And the Virgin Media phone and broadband bundle has gone down from £29.99 a month to £6.63 for the first month and £4.63 for the remaining months.
It is thought that more companies will follow suit in the future as they could face action from Ofcom if they do not.
Zen to provide fibre broadband this year
July 15, 2010 at 11:01 am
A new player is about to enter the super-fast broadband market in the UK after Zen Internet announced its intention to provide speeds of up to 40Mbps later this year.
Super-fast fibre-optic broadband is the future of broadband technology. So far BT and Virgin Media both offer this service to people across the UK, but the addition of a new company offering the service is welcome news as it will provide consumers with a growing choice of services.
Zen Internet, which is based in Rochdale, will be providing a fibre-optic broadband service to both normal residential customers as well as business customers. It announced that the services will be launched in September of this year, and there will be a number of different packages available.
All the packages will start at a minimum of up to 15Mbps, with the highest offering speeds of up to 40Mbps. This isn’t the fastest speed in the UK, but it is certainly up there amongst the best. Upload speeds for the services will be between 2Mpbs and 10Mbps.
Zen has been running a trial of the service for a while now, and it is now offering current customers the opportunity to join in. Customers should send an email to fibre@zen.co.uk with their name, telephone number and address in order to take part.
The new broadband is only going to be made available where fibre cables already exist, so if you do not currently benefit from fibre-optic broadband then you could find yourself missing out.
Prices for the new services have not yet been announced.
New super fast broadband plans unveiled
July 9, 2010 at 3:35 pm
The next stage in the UK’s super-fast broadband plans has been announced. The new culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, declared in a speech at the Hospital Club in London that he wants the UK to have the “best super-fast broadband network in Europe” by 2015.
The development of super-fast fibre-optic broadband across the UK has been a matter of debate for some time now. The previous government got the ball rolling when it committed to providing broadband with minimum speeds of 2Mbps to the whole of the UK by 2012. In order to achieve this it had planned to introduce a telephone tax of 50p, paid on every landline in the country.
The new government always claimed that the plans were not ambitious enough, and it has already scrapped the 50p tax idea. With the appointment of a new culture secretary, it was clear that we were to expect some news on the broadband situation fairly soon, and Hunt’s announcement should get things going.
Hunt said that the government might have to spend up to £47 million to get high-speed broadband to the more rural areas of the UK. It’s not exactly sure how the money will be raised, but in the past the government has suggested that some of the BBC license fee could go towards it.
He also highlighted just how essential fast broadband is to the economy. His main aim is to increase speeds so that domestic businesses can perform better and help the economy out of the recession. He also suggested that the increase in broadband speeds could add up to £18 million to the economy.
World Cup means you could be breaching download limits
July 2, 2010 at 2:48 pm
If you have been sitting glued to the World Cup using your broadband connection, you could be in for a nasty surprise.
It is all very well thinking that you need never miss a match whether you are at home, work or even in the garden now that live TV streaming and catch-up TV are available.
But you might like to think again, this time bearing in mind the inconvenient aspects of 21st century technology such as fair-usage policy and download limits.
With streaming just one match in HD using a whopping 2.4GB, fans could easily be in danger of falling foul of their broadband contracts. The consequences of doing this range from a fine to speed throttling.
For the uninitiated, to whom this may sound like some form of medieval torture, speed throttling is in fact a method by which an ISP can limit the speed of upload, having a serious impact on your viewing experience. Even the so-called unlimited packages have restrictions so the advice is to read the small print carefully.
Choosing your provider carefully makes sense too. Virgin Media and Sky both offer packages with no download limits, whilst Be Broadband and O2 Broadband offer more generous downloads than many of their competitors, although there is still a fair-usage policy in place.
If you are concerned about running up big bills it is possible to download a monitor free of charge and even opt for an alarm to warn you when you are nearing your limit.
