UK Broadband Internet Service Provider News

UK broadband Internet service provider news and the latest broadband company press releases. Access the latest new broadband deals and broadband service updates, including broadband news from BT, AOL, Tiscali, Eclipse, Orange, Utility Warehouse, TalkTalk, Virgin & Telewest.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Top five ADSL broadband providers

Orange has re-entered the top five ADSL broadband providers in the UK,
joining BT broadband, Pipex broadband, Demon broadband and Virgin.net broadband at the top of the table in terms of technical broadband performance.

The fourth quarter Internet Performance Indicator (IPI) Report from Epitiro – the UK’s leading Customer Experience Management (CEM) provider for Internet access services – identifies BT as the best performing broadband provider. BT have held the top position for the last three quarters.

Epitiro’s customer experience monitoring and competitor benchmarking service, monitored the services from the ten largest competing consumer ADSL broadband providers, collecting 622,147 real-time data samples from eleven locations around the UK. This means that from 1st October to 31st December 2006, each broadband service was tested over 60,000 times on average.

“Our testing has shown that in terms of technical performance, BT and Pipex are still maintaining their position in the top five,” said Gavin Johns, Managing Director of Epitiro.

Overall Ranking - Q4 2006
1 - BT broadband
2 - Pipex broadband
3 - Orange broadband
4 - Demon broadband
5 - Virgin broadband

Increasing Speed Through 2006

Epitiro’s research has found that the industry average connection and HTTP download (web browsing) speeds have increased steadily through 2006, with the average consumer ADSL connection speed for the fourth quarter at 5.73 Mbps per second.

“ISPs are increasing their speeds, which is good news for bandwidth-hungry users,” said Epitiro’s Gavin Johns. “Speeds have increased from 3.82 Mbps per second in the third quarter due to new ADSL Max entrants into the ten largest broadband providers. However it’s unlikely that many ADSL Max services will perform at their full capacity of 8Mbps. The speed of broadband service reduces the further the customer’s connection is from their local telephone exchange.”

Individual Category Rankings

Epitiro’s Consumer ADSL IPI Report measures ten performance metrics, averaging performance in each to compile the top five rankings. Plusnet achieved the highest connection speed for the second quarter running. BT offered the fastest HTTP download speed, which normally reflects the speed of general web browsing. BT also provided the fastest FTP downloads from users’ personal webspace. Pipex
provided the fastest FTP upload speed. As well as upload and download connection speeds, ISP-I measures connection reliability and time to connect to ensure the full customer experience is captured.

“A broadband connection isn’t just about speed,” explained Gavin Johns. “The
connection has to be available when you need it and, with the growth of VoIP, Internet gaming and videoconferencing, it has to be able to deal with lots of different online activities.”

Virgin’s services had the lowest packet loss rate. All ISPs experience some packet loss, but a high rate of loss can lead to problems streaming video and audio. Interestingly, the percentage of packet loss - whilst remaining low - more than doubled in the past quarter. Virgin also had the lowest percentage of connection failures in Q4, suggesting that their consumer ADSL customers had the highest degree of uptime of the sample group. Orange broadband provided the fastest ping time, generally desirable to users that require frequent data updates from the Internet back to their computer, such as online gamers.

Labels: bt-broadband, general-broadband-news, orange-broadband, pipex-broadband, plusnet-broadband, virgin-broadband, virgin-media-broadband

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Virgin Media honesty over past customer service

According to the Telegraph, Virgin Media's head of internal communications, James Weekly, offered some brutally honest perspectives of past customer service to fellow internal communications professionals at the Royal Society of Arts this month.

With particular reference to NTL, Mr Weekly referred to the previously poor customer service and other challenges faced by Virgin Media since a complex merger of NTL and Telewest, under the Virgin brand. His frank references were of a history of "crap service" and "very tired people", along with a "synergy hell", caused by ongoing staff reductions of 6,000.

A spokesman for Virgin Media offered the following comments:

"This shows a brutal honesty about what happened before and the challenges that lie ahead.

"The perception is that a Virgin company generally sails along with no problems at all but becoming a Virgin company isn't easy.

"You can't just stamp Virgin on it and everything suddenly goes well. You are overlaying a very entrepreneurial risqué culture on to what was essentially a utility."

For Virgin Media, these disclosures come at a sensitive time, ahead of their £20m marketing relaunch of NTL as Virgin Media.

Virgin Media

Labels: ntl-broadband, telewest-broadband, virgin-broadband, virgin-media-broadband

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Virgin Media soon to launch

Aligning the services of NTL, Telewest and Virgin.net, Virgin Media will soon launch, bringing their respective TV, broadband, mobile and telephony services under the combined Virgin Media brand. A flavour of the new suite of Virgin Media services is available via a sneak preview PR site - www.knowfirst.co.uk, along with the opportunity to win one of 10 invites to their 'glitzy star-studded' party to celebrate the launch of Virgin Media.

According to this site, it would seem that Virgin Media will launch with a choice of three packages - Medium Virgin TV (incl. 2Mb broadband), Large Virgin TV (incl. 4Mb broadband) and XLarge Virgin TV (incl. 10Mb broadband), each with progssively more TV channels (129 TV channels with XLarge) and an inclusive phone line bundled in with the price. Exclusive content worth £35 per month and he peace of mind of Internet security (PC Guard) is to be included with the Large Virgin and XLarge Virgin packages. It is not clear from KnowFirst.co.uk exactly how the telephone element of each package will work, aside from mention that Virgin Phone services will range from Talk Weekends to Talk Unlimited.

Labels: ntl-broadband, ntl-telewest-broadband, telewest-broadband, virgin-broadband, virgin-media-broadband

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

ISP Finalists - Best Consumer Broadband

ISP Finalists Announced For The 9th Annual UK Internet Industry Awards - The 2007 ISPAs

The Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA UK) - the UK's leading Internet trade association - can today reveal the finalists in the ISP Division of The 2007 ISPAs - The 9th Annual UK Internet Industry Awards in association with Epitiro.

Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK, will be the keynote speaker at The 2007 ISPAs. Ms Allen will address the Internet industry, Government and media representatives about the power of the Internet to help campaign for human rights, and Amnesty's IRREPRESSIBLE.INFO campaign, which is fighting to defend freedom of expression on the Internet.

For those categories related to broadband and other Internet related services, the finalists at The 2007 ISPAs are:

Best Dial-up

Biscit
ntl:telewest
Orange
Waitrose
Zen Internet

Best Consumer Email

Biscit
Madasafish
Namesco
Seriously Internet
Tiscali

Best Business Email

Biscit
Entanet
Exa Networks
Namesco
Zen Internet

Best Streaming

Astream
Groovy Gecko
Keen Computers
Mydeo
Streaming Wizard

Best Internet Telephony

Entacall
Keen Computers
Lumison
Seriously Vocal
Tesco

Best Wireless ISP

BOZII
Community Internet
The Cloud
West Somerset Internet

Best Portal

ntl:telewest
Madasafish
SidNet
Tiscali
Virgin.net

Best Consumer Broadband

Be Unlimited
Eclipse Internet
Entanet
Namesco
Seriously Internet

Best Business Broadband

Datanet
Eclipse Internet
Entanet
Kingston Communications
Namesco

Best Consumer ISP

Biscit
ntl:telewest
Orange
Tiscali
Virgin.net

Best Business ISP

Claranet
Datanet
Entanet
UKFast
Zen Internet

ISPA UK has been organising The ISPAs since 1999 to celebrate innovation and best practice in the Internet sector.

Board members from the Internet industry and Government representatives will gather to recognise the industry's achievements over the past year.

The ISPAs scheme is renowned for its independence and objectivity, reinforced for the fourth year by ISPA's research partner Epitiro. ISPA commissioned Epitiro to conduct tests and monitor the Internet services of entrants in the ISP Division over a three-month period. Following analysis of the data, the shortlists were selected for the coveted awards in the ISP Division.

Labels: biscit-broadband, business-broadband, general-broadband-news, nildram-broadband, ntl-broadband, ntl-telewest-broadband, orange-broadband, telewest-broadband, tiscali-broadband, virgin-broadband

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Virgin Media is on its way

Consumers today get their first glimpse of an exciting new presence in the UK media market as ntl Telewest and Virgin Mobile unveil the merged company's future name and logo. The re-branded company will be called Virgin Media and launches in the first quarter of 2007.

Virgin Media will exploit its unique ability to offer a 'quadplay' of digital TV, broadband, mobile and home phone to offer an unrivalled choice of entertainment and communication services. In September, ntl Telewest and Virgin Mobile provided a taste of things to come when they teamed up to launch Britain's first quadplay bundle, offering customers four products for £40 a month.

With major operational changes already underway at ntl Telewest, Virgin Media promises to live up to Virgin's long-established reputation for offering world class customer service. To help accelerate this transformation, the company has recently committed an additional £5 million in 2006 to improve customer care, ahead of the launch of Virgin Media.

Until the re-brand in early 2007, ntl Telewest will continue to provide services under its existing brand name. Virgin Mobile will continue as part of the new Virgin Media group. Going forward, delivering a wide range of outstanding content across multiple platforms will be an important focus for the re-branded company.

Steve Burch, president and chief executive officer, ntl said: "Virgin Media will shake up the market by bringing the Virgin traditions of value-for-money, brilliant customer service and innovation to the world of entertainment and communications. While work remains to be done between now and the re-brand, our decision to announce its name and logo today is a reflection of my confidence that we're well on the way to creating an organisation that can live up to this vision by consistently putting the consumer first."

Gordon McCallum, chief executive officer of Virgin Management Limited and ntl Board member added: "Taking on the Virgin brand is about much more than a new name and logo above the door. ntl Telewest's management team has consistently demonstrated that it understands this and the commitment that's needed to succeed. Much has already been achieved and we're confident that the company's on track to deliver the Virgin promise when we re-brand next year."

Labels: virgin-broadband

Monday, May 01, 2006

Broadband hots up with new Virgin.net service

Virgin.net, the UK's 5th largest Internet Service Provider, has launched a new £15.99 virgin broadband service. With speeds up to 10 times faster than dial-up and no 12-month contract, it's the ideal broadband option for anyone thinking about moving to broadband for the first time.

Peter Tuomey, Sales & Marketing Director, says: "Many people are currently paying as much for a dial up service from our competitors as they would for broadband from us. What's more, many are also stuck in a 12-month contract. It means people are forced to stick with the same old deal even if they want to experience a better value service from another provider."

Unlike all other major ISPs, Virgin.net doesn't tie its customers into 12 month contracts or make them pay if they want to move from one Virgin.net Broadband option to another. Therefore, the new £15.99 service is perfect for anyone keen to try Broadband without getting trapped on the wrong usage plan or a long-term contract.

Tuomey continues: "Many broadband offers around at the moment may seem like great value on the face of it but when you look more closely, activation charges often apply and there are usually hidden costs to upgrade or downgrade. We offer free activation plus a free modem, and ability to move up and down between our other broadband services free of charge."

Further Virgin Broadband information:
http://virgin.broadband-123.co.uk/