Internet TV will push up broadband prices says BBC boss
November 30, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, has warned that should the interest in internet TV (IPTV) continue to increase, it is likely that the cost of enjoying a high speed broadband service will rise as broadband providers seek to find ways to ensure that they are able to continue to cover the cost of installing fibre optic broadband cables across the UK.
Speaking recently at a conference, Thompson stated: “Once we start seeing IPTV take off, we will see the cost of broadband decommoditising”. Thompson believes that this will initially cause prices to rise for consumers but this price rise will eventually fund a UK-wide improvement in broadband services.
With Google launching Google TV, and Apple’s Steve Jobs continuing to spend time developing and improving Apple TV, the increase in the use of bandwidth-greedy websites and services is expected to force companies such as Sky and TalkTalk to invest significantly in improving the services that they currently provide, with both companies currently relying upon government-led investment to stimulate the widespread introduction of super fast broadband.
Broadband is now widely considered to be a household “essential”, rather than a luxury commodity for the privileged, and politicians and service providers alike will be keen to avoid the negative publicity that is likely to be generated should Thompson’s prediction come true and broadband providers decide to raise the finances to support investment in the UK’s network by introducing hefty price increases for consumers.
However, with politicians still unable to find a solution as to how to provide faster broadband across the UK, it seems increasingly likely that it is consumers who are going to be the eventual losers in this situation.
BT project a ‘big step’ for rural internet
November 30, 2010 at 2:59 pm
British Telecom (BT) is to set a precedent for the UK’s broadband companies by rolling out fibre-optic broadband in Cornwall and on the Isles of Scilly, two of the most sparsely populated areas in the country.
The telecommunications giant has pledged to bring super-fast internet to 90% of Cornwall’s population by 2014, helping to reach some of the suspected 30% of UK residents who could miss out on ‘next-gen’ broadband technology simply because their home is in an isolated location.
However, the scheme is partly funded by the European Union (EU) to the tune of £53 million, which suggests that financial support from the EU may be a prerequisite for such ambitious schemes to come to fruition.
Unfortunately, the EU’s share of the bill is one of the largest investments to come out of Brussels in the last three years, indicating that the sum given to BT was a one-off grant, and additional payouts might hinge on the success of the firm’s fibre-optic scheme in Cornwall.
Telecoms firms have historically taken little interest in rural markets, with some communities having to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to persuade BT to connect them to the nearest broadband exchange.
Compounding the rural broadband issue is the news that enormous tax breaks given to BT are helping the company build a monopoly on broadband markets, ensuring that rural towns and villages are at the mercy of Britain’s largest internet provider.
Fibre-optic technology, explains the Guardian newspaper, is “prohibitively expensive” to other companies, as they must pay “thousands of times more in tax” than BT.
Regardless of this fact, allowing a communications firm to expand at a prodigious rate will get Cornwall online and facilitate the government’s plan to be able to boast Europe’s greatest broadband network within the next five years, an important goal for the Conservatives.
BT claims that it lays enough fibre-optic cable every week to get 80,000 people online but unless the firm can be persuaded to take on projects independent of the EU, the widespread provision of next-gen broadband could stall before it has even begun.
Virgin begins upgrade to 100Mbps broadband
November 24, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Virgin Media has announced that the roll-out of its new super-fast 100Mbps broadband service has finally begun. It first announced the service back in February 2010, and now it is starting the roll-out with the service expected to be up and running for the first customers by December.
The first customers to get access to the incredible download speeds will be in London, the South East and Yorkshire. The roll-out is billed to be complete by 2012.
The CEO of Virgin Media, Neil Berkett, called the launch “a significant milestone in the UK’s broadband evolution”. David Cameron was even quoted as saying that the “exciting news takes us a step closer” to seeing super-fast broadband “brought to peoples’ homes and businesses right across the country”.
The 100Mbps service will cost customers £45 per month as a standalone service, and £35 as part of a bundle. Customers will also have to pay activation and installation fees on top of that.
It will also have a 10Mbps upload speed, which will be great for video conferencing in high definition and for uploading videos to the web.
Super-fast fibre broadband will allow people to share one connection in a house without seeing the speed slowing down. It is also going to become increasingly important if the UK wants to remain at the forefront of new internet technologies.
Virgin Media has long been in competition with BT over their rival fibre-optic broadband services, and BT was quick to claim that the Virgin service is too expensive, stating that it was “more than twice the price of BT’s fibre product”.
But Virgin will just have to wait and see if the service is picked up. If the demand is there for faster broadband then people will pay for it.
UK broadband moves up Cisco rankings
November 18, 2010 at 2:58 pm
The UK has managed to move up to 18th in the Cisco broadband rankings but there is still a very long way to go before the nation catches up with other similarly developed countries in terms of the upload speeds and infrastructure on offer.
The download speeds on offer across the UK have increased by an impressive total of 34% since 2009, a fact that both consumers and businesses will appreciate as the British government continues with its quest to roll out super fast broadband.
However, the true state of the nation’s internet access can be judged in comparison to that of nations such as South Korea. Whilst in the UK we’re currently in the process of upgrading our broadband network by putting down high-quality fibre optic cables that will increase the speed of broadband to such an extent that users are fully prepared for the ‘applications of tomorrow’, South Korea and several other countries at a similar level of development are already prepared for these applications.
However, whilst this may sound like fairly downbeat news for British broadband users, those who use the internet in the UK can feel safe in the knowledge that analysis performed by Cisco adjudges users in the UK to be receiving a level of broadband provision that is more than adequate for the current applications that can be accessed online right now.
Analysing the results of the study, Tony Hart, an associate fellow at Saïd Business School, suggested that it was impressive that the UK has managed to earn 18th place in the rankings given the rate of broadband progress in developing nations. As well as this, he suggested that the future of UK broadband looks bright as “the next step-change, in the UK especially, is more deployment of fibre. Fibre deployment will help us to step into that next band. BT’s plans for fibre deployment will make a change”.
Should this turn out to be the case, then the UK will surely be able to keep its place high up in the rankings for some time to come.
Government in £530m broadband pledge
November 11, 2010 at 2:55 pm
The roll-out of super-fast broadband has been in the news a lot recently, and now it’s just been given a further boost with the news that the government has pledged to channel £530 million into providing fibre optic broadband to rural areas of the UK.
The news was revealed in the Spending Review, and will see the government investing £230 million into the project, with the remaining £300 million coming from the BBC licence fee funds.
Getting fast broadband out into rural areas remains a huge challenge for the UK. Although we constantly hear about BT and Virgin Media increasing the speeds they are able to offer through broadband, with the latter recently announcing a 100Mbps service arriving later this year, many rural areas are still missing out.
The reason for this is that these areas are simply not economically viable for ISPs to invest in, and so unless funding is provided from elsewhere, super-fast fibre broadband will never reach these areas.
The first schemes are to be launched in Cumbria, North Yorkshire, Herefordshire and the Highlands, and it is expected that 2 million homes and businesses will benefit from this first stage of the roll-out.
The importance of fibre broadband is now beyond dispute. George Osborne, the Chancellor, stated that the provision of faster broadband “will help encourage the growth of our creative industries as a key part of the new economy we are seeking to build”. If the UK wants to keep up with the rest of the world then this funding should go a long way to helping the whole of the UK get access to the broadband speeds they need.
