It is the same story everywhere. Broadband prices are falling, so the early adopters pay more than newbies – unless they switch fast. To make the matters worse, operators have started selling the same packages with new prices – in the same manner an Airline bringing ticket prices down at the eleventh hour to fill the seats.
This is the tirade of one user.
UK customers are paying 70% more than they need to for their broadband connections despite the credit crunch. Masses of broadband customers (70,000 in fact) on 8Mbps broadband packages have been surveyed by Broadband Expert to find out how much they pay for their connections. Compared to the deals currently available on the market, it’s no surprise that there’s a huge disparity between the two…
Some regular readers of LIRNEasia blog would just love this news.
Internet service providers (ISPs) in UK have just a few weeks to sign up to a voluntary code on the promotion of broadband speeds or the industry will face mandatory regulation, the communications watchdog has warned.
Attempts to set up a voluntary system providing consumers with accurate information were failing, Ofcom’s chief executive Ed Richards told a parliamentary select committee. “This is a near-term issue that needs to be dealt with now and we would like to be able to get the industry to sign up within the next few weeks,” he said.
BT, the UK’s largest broadband provider, said it backed the plan. “We believe the most important thing is transparency when a customer orders a…
Broadband customers are still experiencing connection speeds less than half those advertised, with the worst offenders being ‘high speed’ products, a study suggests.
On average, broadband speeds were just 48 per cent of those advertised, with the figure falling to as low as 26 per cent for high speed packages offering connections of 8Mb/s or more, according to the study.
By contrast, customers on 2Mb/s packages experienced average speeds of 1.8Mb - or 88 per cent of the advertised amount, according to broadband-expert.co.uk, a price comparison website.
The study of 41,000 UK broadband connections found that on average, 8Mb/s packages delivered speeds of 3.4Mb/s - or 43 per cent of the advertised amount, with the worst offenders being Toucan and Virgin Media - whose customers experienced speeds 26…
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, resident of Sri Lanka, citizen of the United Kingdom, and man of the universe, passed away on the morning of the 19th of March. His was a life well lived. He will be remembered.
Sir Arthur imagined what the world could be. In some cases, such as the geostationary orbit that was named after him, he even did the mathematics to substantiate his imagination. But the mathematics was not the true achievement: it was that he imagined this wondrous idea of a specific orbit where satellites would be stationary in relation to the earth and could therefore serve as very tall towers for wireless transmissions with line of sight covering one third of the surface of the globe; it was that he imagined it a decade before…
Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur C. Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies, BANGALORE, Colombo, inchoate Internet, Manila, Ronald Reagan, Sri Lanka, then doing live web searches, United Kingdom, video conferencing, wireless transmissions, YouTube.
Half of the UK’s broadband users are unhappy with the service from their internet providers even though high-speed connections are at their cheapest and fastest, according to a survey by price comparison service uSwitch.
With 15 million customers - half the country - spending £3bn on broadband every year, the gap is widening between the companies perceived as best and worst providers, according to uSwitch, which makes money by encouraging consumers to hunt out new deals.
Its survey of nearly 11,000 broadband customers suggests four million customers are not satisified with their provider and four out of nine companies have less satisfied customers this year than last.
Read the full story in ‘The Guardian’ here.
The UK’s first “fibre town” could go online in the autumn, delivering speeds of about 100Mbps (megabits per second) to consumers’ homes.
Fibre firm H2O provides super-fast broadband via the sewers and either Bournemouth, Northampton or Dundee will be offered the service first.
For consumers, super-fast net connections could create a range of new applications including on-demand high definition (HD) TV, DVD quality film downloads in minutes, online video messaging, CCTV home surveillance and HD gaming services.
Read the full story in BBC here.
Broadband industry leaders are to meet ministers to discuss how to stop the UK dropping into the internet “slow lane”.
More than half of all UK homes now have a broadband connection, at an average speed of four megabits a second (Mbps).
But the broadband summit will hear other countries are moving more quickly to build ultra-fast networks that can deliver speeds of as much as 100 Mbps.
Ministers say ultra-fast broadband will be a key to helping UK businesses “innovate, grow and create wealth”.
Read the full story in BBC
Misleading advertised broadband speeds remain a large concern for consumers in the
UK, according to Ofcom. The British media regulator released its annual research and policy report yesterday that examines all aspects of the consumer experience within telecoms, the Internet and digital broadcasting in the country.
The research has found that competition is continuing to drive price reductions, with a typical “basket” of residential telecoms services costs £69.85 a month, £35 less than in 2002. However, price transparency remains a key worry of British consumers who report additional charges for ambiguous services. Read more.
Asian evidence says the best explanation for the take up of texting is the ratio of price of a voice call to cost of a text. Is this also the explanation for the UK?
BBC NEWS | Technology | Britons sending 1bn texts weekly
Britons are now sending more than one billion text messages per week according to the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association (MDA).
The figure is 25% higher than a year ago and is set to shatter forecasts for how many text messages have been sent to and from handsets this year.
That weekly total is the same as the number sent during the whole of 1999.
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The implications of mobile number portability (MNP) were discussed at a Workshop on Implementing Mobile Number Portability, held in August 2007 in Islamabad, Pakistan. The forum, comprising participants from the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, provided insight into the technical, regulatory and operational aspects impacted by the porting process, with a focus on the Pakistani MNP experience.
The reasons cited in favor of MNP were classified into advantages to subscribers and regulators. The former were benefited by an increase in choice (of packages) and the eliminated costs of having to inform third parties of a number change, while the latter saw MNP as an approach to attract new investment and generate healthy competition. Operators on the other hand, were split in their views; new entrants…
Tags: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Australia, cellular telephone, Finland, fixed line services, GSM, Hong Kong, implemented solution, intelligent network, Ireland, Islamabad, John Horrocks, Malta, Middle East, MNP, Pakistan, PTA, Singapore, SMS, Telecommunication Authority of Singapore, The Netherlands, United Kingdom.
The break up of AT&T in 1984 led to a seismic shift in telecom policy and regulatory thinking worldwide and also created the conditions for the Internet boom. New Zealand is a small country quite unlike the US, but it has taken an unprecedented step that has the potential of changing policy and regulatory thinking again. As the excerpt below says, the split is on the lines of the BT reorganization in the UK. That is true. But the key difference is that BT reorganized voluntarily and NZ Telecom, not.
If I were managing an incumbent telco, claiming dominance in various markets and providing poor broadband service, the NZ decision will give me nightmares; but more than that, it will cause me to seriously consider BT…
Tags: AT&T, British Telecom, Broadband, broadband Internet, BT Group, David Cunliffe, faster and cheaper Internet services, Internet boom, Internet Service Providers, Internet speed, New Zealand, New Zealand government, NZ Telecom, Paul Reynolds, retail, retail arm, United Kingdom, United States.
BY VERONICA S. CUSI, Businessworld
THE PHILIPPINES was the second fastest-growing market for broadband worldwide in 2006, according to a study by UK-based research and consultancy firm Ovum.
This was primarily due, however, to the fact that broadband is just taking off in the country, and Ovum said growth could be significantly higher if regulators allow more competition that would lead to cheaper services.
Greece took the top spot in the study, and the other countries in the top ten list were Indonesia, India, Ukraine, Ireland, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia and Turkey.
Total broadband growth in the Philippines from 2005 to 2006 was at 157% while Greece’s was 168%, Datamonitor affiliate Ovum said. The Philippines had 127,942 subscribers in 2005 and this number grew to 329,216 as of end-2006.
…
Tags: Bayan Telecommunications Inc., Broadband, broadband services, broadband technologies, broadband technology, cable infrastructure, Coham, Datamonitor, DSL, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, mass-media services, Ovum, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., Russia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, USD, VERONICA S. CUSI, Vietnam, WIRELESS SERVICES.
There is a huge gap between advertised broadband speeds and the actual speeds users can achieve, research has shown. A survey by consumer group which found that broadband packages promising speeds of up to 8Mbps (megabits per second) actually achieved far less. Tests of 300 customers’ net connections revealed that the average download speed they were getting was 2.7Mbps. Which has called on regulator Ofcom and Trading Standards to launch a fresh investigation into UK broadband. The speed tests were prompted by complaints from members of the public, unhappy with the speeds of their broadband connections.
In the last 12 months more internet service providers (ISPs) have offered services, promising speeds of up to 8Mbps. The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has investigated several cases of misleading promotions,…
Bangladesh has been elevated to ninth position among the top 10 mobile phone markets in the Asia-Pacific region during first quarter of 2007. A recent study of UK’s The Mobile World revealed it. Three months ago, in the fourth quarter of 2006, Bangladesh was in the 10th position. But it overtook Taiwan after adding nearly three million subscribers during the first three months of 2007. Read more.
To lose your mobile phone is unfortunate but to flush it down the toilet is especially careless, although common, if new figures are to be believed. Research suggests that 885,000 (drunk and sober) subjects of Queen Elizabeth helplessly watch their handsets disappearing into the ‘black hole’ every year. That’s roughly £342 million flushing (not contributing) to Her Majesty’s sewage network.
The study also reveals that 810,000 mobiles were left in the pub each year, with 315,000 left in the back of a taxi and 225,000 on a bus. Pet dogs in UK apparently chewed their way through 58,500 handsets last year, while another 116,000 went through a spin cycle with the dirty laundry, reports The Telegraph.
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