Cable giant Virgin Media has caused consternation among some of its broadband ISP subscribers after it confirmed that price hikes, which are expected to average around £2.68 a month extra, would be applied to its internet access and phone packages from 1st April 2012 (a wise choice of date by their PR team?).

The move brings Virgin Media more into line with what other operators (e.g. BT , TalkTalk etc.) charge and follows just three weeks after the operator promised, at no extra cost, to at least double its customers broadband speeds (here).


Virgin's price changes page suggest that their basic 10Mbps (L) package will, for example, go up by about £1 per month. Call charges will also jump by over 10% and their evening period for home phone calls is changing from 6pm - 6am to 7pm - 7am.


The move is likely to be just as unpopular as recent price rises from BT , TalkTalk and many other operators. It comes at a time when the economic crisis is continuing to suppress wages and puts additional pressure on personal / family budgets.

A new study from consultancy firm Analysys Mason has suggested, theoretically, that a mix of band plan, vectoring and line bonding solutions could allow up to around 98-99% of UK homes and businesses to received superfast broadband ISP services via FTTC (e.g. BT-Infinity ) technology. In reality there are problems and many unknowns with this prediction but it might have some merit.

At present Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) works by delivering a fast fibre optic cable to street cabinets, while the remaining connection (between cabinets and homes) is done using VDSL2 (similar to existing ADSL broadband but faster over short distances) via existing copper cable.

BT already uses this solution to deliver download speeds of up to 40Mbps to 30% of UK homes and it plans to reach 66% of homes by 2014. BT has repeatedly said that the service could potentially reach 90% of the UK (i.e. roughly equal to its eventual 21CN coverage) if it gets the lion's share of public money, but we'll leave that often heated debate aside for today.

A "band plan" (increased spectrum allocation) related upgrade during this spring will boost FTTC's top download speed to 80Mbps (20Mbps uploads) and a similar upgrade in the future could push that to 100Mbps+.


According to Analysys Mason, adding pair-bonding (using one or more spare copper pairs [phone lines] to increase speeds) and vectoring (works to cancel out interference [crosstalk]) could make FTTC faster and available to about 8% of lines over and above those covered by the current band-plan changes.


In the real world, mathematical assumptions like this and actual deployments don't always meet up quite so precisely and usually sidestep other problems. For example, some premises would not have the necessary amount of copper pairs to benefit from bonding.

The assumptions about speed also forget that as FTTC performance rises, usually for those closest to their street cabinet, it falls for people who reside further away. Real-world performance is usually very poorly reflected by predictions of theoretical capability (i.e. expect to get a lot less).

Then you have the financial issue. Both vectoring and bonding in particular would cost more money and this in turn is likely to make them more expensive for consumers; in some cases prohibitively. On the other hand there are those who would be more than happy to pay double if it meant getting a superfast connection.

It's worth pointing out that we don't yet know the full details of how BT would, if it got the funds, reach that 90% figure. This could easily impact Analysys Mason's prediction so we're taking it all with a pinch of salt. Thanks to Ian Grant for pointing us towards the report.

Mobile operator and ISP O2 UK has expanded its special up to 6 months free service promotion to their lesser known fixed line Business Broadband and Landline phone packages. The 'Flying Start' offer, as it's called, has apparently been "created specifically for business between 1-2000 employees".

Eligible O2 business customers with an existing mobile voice contract can take advantage of 3-6 months free landline rental and broadband. Eligible O2 business customers that have a fixed line contract with O2 can also take advantage of the broadband offer. Businesses currently without an O2 contract will be given 3 months free.

O2 Home Office
* Up to 20Mb download speeds
* FREE wireless router
* FREE McAfee licenses (up to 10)
* FREE Static IP
* FREE 24/7 technical support
* FREE connection from your existing supplier
* Happiness Guarantee (30 days to change your mind)

Price (Existing O2 Users): £15.50 per month (first 6 months FREE)
Price (Non-O2 User): £20.50 per month (first 3 months FREE)

O2 Office 10
* As above, except..
* 2.5Mb upload speed
* 300GB Usage

Price (Existing O2 Users): £22.50 per month (first 6 months FREE)
Price (Non-O2 User): £27.50 per month (first 3 months FREE)

Curiously the cheaper 'O2 Home Office' package doesn't mention anything about a usage allowance, although both deals are subject to a 24 month contract period. Meanwhile the same promotion also applies to O2's Business Landline service, which costs £11.50 a month (first 6 months free) if you're with O2 and £14.50 (first 3 months free) if you're not. All O2 business customers are offered unlimited calls to O2 mobiles from their mobile phone.

National UK telecoms giant BT has today released its latest results to 31st December 2011 (Q4), which saw their retail broadband ISP subscriber base add +146,000 (net) customers to hit a total of 6,144,000. BT also announced the launch of a new FTTP on Demand service, which could in theory allow them to deploy ultrafast 300Mbps+ (330Mbps in BT's PR) fibre optic ( FTTP ) broadband services to almost anywhere that its slower FTTC goes. A 1Gbps trial is also hinted.

The results represent a strong quarterly growth, albeit one that has slowed from the +166,000 net additions added during Q3. Elsewhere BT's primary 'up to' 40Mbps (rising to 80Mbps during Spring 2012) superfast broadband ( FTTC ) service has seen its coverage expand to 7 Million UK homes and businesses (up from 6 Million in Q3).

BT Retail's share of the superfast broadband ( BT-Infinity ) base increased by +95,000 in Q4 to reach more than 400,000 customers, which marks another steady rise in uptake from the +88,000 added during Q3. Separately the BTVision ( IPTV ) service (broadband TV) continued to grow by adding +39,000 new subscribers (total 679,000), which is slightly down from +44,000 in Q3.


BT's performance in the last quarter has been strong but our readers will probably be more interested in the new FTTP on Demand solution, which has already had successful trials in St Agnes (Cornwall) and more are due to follow this summer.

BT is somewhat vague about how this new method of deploying fibre optic services will work, although it appears to overlay the existing fttc solution. Previously, FTTP speeds (100-300Mbps) weren't possible in FTTC (40-80Mbps) enabled areas but BT has "developed a solution that takes advantage of the fibre it has already deployed between the exchange and the street cabinet".


According to BT, FTTP on Demand is anticipated to become commercially available to all ISPs by Spring 2013 next year. Sadly the service isn't likely to be cheap because BT's press release appears to focus on the business advantages, although it does confirm availability for home users too. We'll have more details later.. keep watching.

Tucked away deep in BT's press release is also a single line mention that the operator was "also testing a 1Gbps FTTP speed variant". BT has always said that its FTTP solution would one day reach speeds of 1000Mbps (1Gbps) and so this isn't really a surprise, although it's nice to hear that they won't stop at 330Mbps.

By comparison Virgin Media would find it hard to go beyond 300-400Mbps due to the limitations of their platform, although Virgin can cover significantly more than BT's limited FTTP footprint (currently targeting around 2.5 Million premises vs Virgin's 13 Million). It's not yet known how the new On-Demand FTTP solution will impact this as it appears to be an 'at request' service.

BT's main battle horse is thus still their slower 40-80Mbps FTTC service (possibly 100Mbps+ in the future), which aims to cover at least 66% of the UK by 2014.

UPDATE 11:01am

After putting a few questions about FTTP on Demand to BT's MD of NGA Access, Mike Galvin, we now have a little extra detail to share.

In terms of cost, several price options are being explored and nothing has been set in stone. How much it costs is also likely to "depend on the exact location of the premise that wants the service" (i.e. the further you are away from the cabinet the higher the costs will be) and whether or not such work is subsidised by public money.

Galvin did suggest that the installation cost (to CPs) is likely to be in the "high hundreds of pounds". He also hinted that ISPs would have some control over whether or not it ends up costing "the same on a monthly basis as normal FTTP". ISPs might need to "absorb" some costs for that to happen; so don't believe any predictions about price yet, it's too early.

BT also confirmed that the service would indeed be available "wherever we have deployed fibre enabled cabinets", so it is a significant development; assuming ordinary folk can afford it.

When asked how this service would impact BT's current FTTP rollout, the operator told us that it "does change things somewhat although we haven’t formally issued a new c/p split" (FTTC / FTTP). So right now we don't know the answer. BT also shared with us a related diagram, which sadly lacks explanation of the points but some of you will know all the bits and bobs.

The Managing Director (MD) of business ISP Fluidata, Piers Daniell, has confirmed that they will, by default, enable IPv6 for all new subscribers by 6th June 2012 (World IPV6 Launch Day). The operator has also been providing new connections to customers as dual-stack (IPv6 enabled) since June 2011.

This means that Fluidata's services will not require any IPv6 end-user configuration, which should allow ISPs to offer IPv6 Internet services to the home network and with no interruption to existing IPv4 services.


Fluidata is not the only UK ISP to be doing this and AAISP (Andrews & Arnold) has been doing the same sort of thing for awhile (here). We intend to take a closer look at the issue of IPv6 adoption among UK ISPs later this year.

Consumer ISP PlusNet UK, which claims to offer stand-alone "broadband that won't be beat on price", has slashed the price of its new 'up to' 40Mbps ( FTTC ) superfast "Fibre" broadband packages in half for the first 3 months of service. As a result the Plusnet Fibre packages now start at the low price of just £8.24 a month instead of the usual £16.49.

The promotion, which applies across all of the Plusnet Fibre bundles, also requires customers to take PlusNet's Home Phone line rental service from an extra £9.49 per month. At the time of writing their special offer is not currently showing on Plusnet's public site but you can reach it via the direct links below.

Fibre Value with FREE Evening & Weekend Calls
• Up to 40Mb/s speeds
• 40GB usage allowance (Free between midnight and 8am)
• Free easy setup wireless router
• 18 month contract
• Yorkshire-based call centre
• McAfee security available
• Free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines, 0870 / 0845 numbers and Plusnet Support

PRICE: £8.24 inc. VAT a month

Fibre Value with FREE Anytime Calls
• Same as the first package, except..
• Free Anytime calls to UK landlines, 0870 / 0845 numbers and Plusnet Support
• 25% discount off top international call destinations

PRICE: £11.74 inc. VAT a month

Fibre Extra with FREE Evening & Weekend Calls
• Same as the first package, except..
• 120GB usage allowance (Free between midnight and 8am)

PRICE: £10.74 inc. VAT a month

Fibre Extra with FREE Anytime Calls
• Same as the first package, except..
• 120GB usage allowance (Free between midnight and 8am)
• Free Anytime calls to UK landlines, 0870 / 0845 numbers and Plusnet Support
• 25% discount off top international call destinations

PRICE: £14.24 inc. VAT a month

An engineer visit is required to install Plusnet Fibre, which costs £50 for new customers and £25 for existing customers. This is FREE if you add one of PlusNet's phone packages (as above) to your order or already have their phone service.

BTOpenreach, which provides rival ISPs with equal access to BT's local UK telecoms infrastructure, has finally revealed how much it intends to charge for their new Fibre Voice Access (FVA-FTTP) product that will be delivered over truly fibre optic Fibre-to-the-Premises ( FTTP ) based lines (not available on [40-80Mbps] FTTC lines).

Fibre Voice Access essentially delivers a dedicated path to an Analogue Terminal Adaptor. This allows ISPs and other Communications Providers' to offer voice (telephone) services over full fibre optic lines and instead of having to use an old analogue alternative.

According to BTOpenreach, FVA-FTTP will be priced at a rental of £183.48 +vat per year (£15.29 a month) when bought as a stand-alone service. The one-off connection price will be £80 +vat, which is the same as BT's other fibre based superfast broadband services; it is also subject to the same FTTP contract (12 month) and service terms. Now for the special offer blurb.


It's important to stress that the above FVA-FTTP prices are what ISPs must pay to BT and consumer services, which have yet to be revealed, will naturally carry a premium (i.e. ISP profit margins etc.). Call charges are likely to mirror that of a standard analogue line but at this price it might be difficult to encourage consumer adoption.

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has this morning published its latest biannual research into the country's national average broadband ISP speeds. The study, which is based on data from November 2011, found that consumers are achieving 22% faster internet performance than 12 months ago and the average download speed has risen to 7.6Mbps (up by 11% from 6.8Mbps last summer).

As expected a "significant" gap still exists between what most ISPs are advertising (headline speed) to consumers and what is actually being received. The average advertised rate is now 16.3Mbps, which is an increase from 15Mbps last summer and still double what ISPs actually delivered to their customers.


The main reason for this gap between headline and real-world performance is the dominance of less reliable copper line based ADSL ('up to' 8Mbps) and ADSL2+ ('up to' 20/24Mbps) broadband services, which are highly susceptible to interference through poor home wiring and longer telephone lines (among many other things).

A simple breakdown of the results (below) shows the problem quite well. The average speed that at least half (50%) of connections obtained for an ADSL service was just 3Mbps (advertised as 8Mbps), which rises only slightly to 5Mbps for an ADSL2+ service (advertised as 20/40Mbps).


The good news is that the new generation of superfast broadband services ( FTTC , FTTP , Cable Modem ) from BT and Virgin Media can so far deliver on their promises. At present Virgin's service tends to cover half of the country and is focused in urban areas. Meanwhile BT's solutions can only cover 30% of the UK, reaching 40% later this year and 66% or more by 2015 (likely to go a lot further with government funding).



Thankfully those who can't yet get a superfast service do have some support from Ofcom's Voluntary Broadband Speeds Code of Practice (Version 2), which requires member ISPs (Listed Here) to explain to new customers the access line speed that they are likely to achieve at home, and to try to resolve any problems when speeds fall significantly below the estimate.

According to the v2 Code, if the problem cannot be resolved then customers will be able to leave their provider, without penalty, within the first 3 months of a contract. Ofcom has recently commissioned another mystery shopper exercise to look at whether ISPs are "adhering to the spirit of the Code". This will be published in the spring.

Separately the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) last year released a new set of guidelines that will clamp down on misleading broadband ISP promotions of "up to" internet access speeds and "unlimited" usage allowances (detailed here). This is will come into effect on 1st April 2012.

In line with this new guidance, using data from Ofcom's study, the industry average speed based on the 10% availability criteria would be 6Mbps for services currently advertised at ‘up to’ 8Mbps, and 14Mbps for services currently advertised at ‘up to’ 20/24Mbps. ISPs are not required to follow Ofcom's suggestion and have been allowed to set their own levels, which some fear could lead to abuse.


Sadly Ofcom's speed study, which is based on performance tests from 1,710 homes (carried out via specially adapted routers), only covers the eight largest ISPs in the market (75% of UK residential broadband subscribers) and so we don't get a full picture. More details of the ISP specific results have been posted below.


It will be interesting to see what kind of impact the future superfast speed upgrades from Virgin Media and BT will have on these results, with both intending to roughly double the performance of their services. The latter's FTTC technology (being upgraded from 40Mbps up to 80Mbps) is far more susceptible to ADSL style distance vs performance limitations.

Ofcom UK fixed-line broadband performance - November 2011 (PDF)
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/broadband-research/Fixed_bb_speeds_Nov_2011.pdf

UPDATE 9:44am

Ofcom also appears to have updated its interactive UK maps of fixed line broadband ISP availability, adoption and performance (original news) with ever so slightly more recent data from August 2011 - http://maps.ofcom.org.uk/broadband/ .

The latest anecdotal monthly consumer broadband ISP speed testing results from Broadband.co.uk, which covers the January 2012 period, have shown a modest increase in the average UK internet download speed from 7.578Mbps (Megabits per second) during December 2011 to 8.210Mbps now.

Meanwhile the average upload speed has rebounded from a brief low of 1.160Mbps in December 2011 to 1.313Mbps now. Cable operator Virgin Media continues to be the top UK ISP for average performance with a download speed of 15.331Mbps and an upload rate of 2.463Mbps.

Top 9 UK ISPs - Download Speed (Megabits/sec)
1. Virgin Media – 15.331Mbps
2. Eclipse Internet – 9.647Mbps
3. BT – 7.518Mbps
4. PlusNet – 5.972Mbps
5. O2 ( Be Broadband ) – 5.620Mbps
6. Sky Broadband – 4.597Mbps
7. TalkTalk (Tiscali) – 4.308Mbps
8. AOL – 4.045Mbps
9. Orange – 3.710Mbps

Top 9 UK ISPs - Upload Speed (Megabits/sec)
1. Virgin Media - 2.463Mbps
2. Eclipse Internet - 1.532Mbps
3. BT - 1.453Mbps
4. O2 ( Be Broadband ) - 0.895Mbps
5. Sky Broadband - 0.593Mbps
6. PlusNet - 0.587Mbps
7. TalkTalk (Tiscali) - 0.563Mbps
8. Orange - 0.554Mbps
9. AOL - 0.388Mbps

The first month of 2012 was a mixed week for average ISP performance, with some providers losing a bit of speed and most making a small gain. The biggest non-cable mover was undoubtedly PlusNet , which saw its download rate jump from 4.606Mbps in December 2011 to 5.972Mbps in January 2012; perhaps their superfast FTTC service is starting to have an impact.

Both Virgin Media and BT Retail, not to mention any ISPs that use BT's FTTC and FTTP technology, will probably see big rises during the spring and summer as the major operators deploy significant speed upgrades across their services. Be Broadband and O2 are also working on a major network overhaul and Sky Broadband has just announced a superfast package of its own.

As usual readers should take anecdotal data like this with a big pinch of salt. Every home is different and performance can be affected by all sorts of things, many of which are beyond an ISPs control. We do not consider the above to be a reliable barometer for individual users but it does help to reflect overall market changes.

The North Tyneside Council (NTC) has confirmed that it aims to "exceed national targets" by making superfast broadband ISP services available to 91% of the borough by 2015 and without public funding from the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office. Sadly this means that those in the last 9% have been given a "low priority" and will instead be stuck with "a 2Mbps service".

The news follows shortly after the UK governments Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) released a new progress report (here), which labelled North Tyneside as being one of the local authorities that was most at risk of having their funding pulled due to the slow pace of progress.

The council is supposed to have its "draft" Local Broadband Plan (LBP) approved by the governments deadline (end of February 2012), which is naturally a little difficult to do when you don't have one. As a result some £880k of BDUK funds, which the council would have been expected to match, is likely to be withdrawn.


Some of the locals whom live in that last 9% are likely to be very disappointed. The council, with a rare opportunity to go well beyond the target, has instead chosen to merely meet the target (ok.. "exceed" by just 1%) and go no further.

The council instead claims to have taken an "active" role in helping BT to deploy its superfast broadband ( FTTC / FTTP ) services in the area, although it's not clear what that has entailed; beyond allowing BT to go where it was already intending. Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting this.

Carmarthen-based Bluewave Internet, a new wireless ISP that uses WiMAX technology to deliver faster broadband access into rural communities, has become the first company to successfully bring a "high speed" internet connection into the isolated rural village of Llanfynydd in south west Wales (UK).

Some homes in Llanfynydd had previously only been able to receive fixed line broadband speeds of less than 0.5Mbps, although Bluewave's new wireless service is apparently able to deliver speeds of up to 20Mbps.


Bluewave Internet is also available in some parts of the main Carmarthen town and its service is currently being rolled out to other rural communities across the region (e.g. Capel Issac and Salem etc.). The Welsh Government's Broadband Support Scheme, which offers grants to homes that can only receive sub-2Mbps speeds, is known to be helping.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has today upheld two primary complaints by multiple members of the public against a TV advert for BT Retail's broadband packages, which were judged to be "misleading" because its claim that the ISPs Wi-Fi equipped (HomeHub3) routers offered "the UK’s most reliable wireless connection" was not proven.

A second upheld complaint also challenged whether the advert misleadingly implied that BT was the only ISP to offer a router that actively avoided interference. The ASA ruled that BT's ad did not make sufficiently clear that the claim was actually based on avoiding interference from non-Wi-Fi devices only. After some digging we managed to find an original version of the advert (below), which has since been changed.



As usual the ASA has asked BT to remove their TV advert and not to repeat the claim "The UK's most reliable wireless connection" in future, unless they provided adequate evidence to substantiate it or qualified the basis in which the claim was made. BT made this change some months back.

A third complaint, which was NOT upheld, challenged whether interference "can cause some routers to drop out" (BT's claim). However BT had demonstrated that interference from "non-WiFi" devices could cause some routers to "drop out" (i.e. lose connectivity to your computer), which is indeed quite well known.