BBC Worldwide launched beeb.net back in 1999. The purpose of the service was to provide a trusted brand and a helping hand to get onto the internet at a time when it was still an exciting, but potentially confusing, new phenomenon. Since that time, the market for internet access has changed dramatically as most people have integrated use of it into their daily lives and the bundling of internet services with pay TV, telephone and even mobile services are becoming more common.

Closing beeb.net will enable us to concentrate our efforts on our core activities of bringing value to the BBC through content distribution, sales of TV programmes overseas, production of DVDs, books and magazines , and the expansion of our other online businesses such as commercial websites (for example topgear.com and radiotimes.com) and making content available on new platforms.

Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst, Nielsen Online, comments, “'Super Fast' broadband is aggressively advertised by the ISPs, some even referring to it now as 'standard', but it is an unrealistic pipe dream for the vast majority of Britons online.

Aside from how much you're willing to pay, your maximum speed is really dependent on the distance you are from the local phone exchange and the quality of its technology.”

“The idea that having a faster connection speed means you spend less time online, because everything loads more quickly, is a myth. Having a faster speed is like driving a Ferrari compared to an old banger - you want to spend more time using it and going to more places in it.

Having a faster connection speed means you can do so much more things online, download movies and play higher-quality games, for example. Even the mundane tasks become more attractive as it‟s so much quicker and easier to get more of them done.”

Best Consumer ISP - PlusNet
Best Business ISP - Eclipse Internet
Best Consumer Broadband - NewNet
Best Business Broadband - Datanet
Best Consumer Email - Entanet
Best Business Email - Eclipse Internet
Best Dial Up - Waitrose
Best Shared Hosting - Namesco
Best Dedicated Hosting - UKFast
Best Wireless ISP - Vodafone (Commendation: BOZII)
Best Internet Telephony - Entanet
Best Streaming - Astream (Commendation: Mydeo)
Best Portal - Bt.yahoo.com

The Internet Watch Foundation Award:
Richard Swetenham, Head of the eContent and Safer Internet Unit at the European Commission

The IWF was impressed with his involvement with the issue of Internet content since 1996, drafting the first Communication on illegal and harmful Internet content. He has been the driving force behind a variety of very successful EC Safer Internet Programmes, in particular the development of the INHOPE association of Hotlines.

The Corporate Social Responsibility Award:
BT

An ISPA spokesperson said, “The judges felt that BT has an excellent corporate social responsibility policy in place and acknowledged its Better World campaign aiming to create a more sustainable world through better communication.”

Internet Villain:
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)

HMRC won the Internet Villain category for failing to take the protection of people’s personal data seriously and highlighting bad practice in protecting data by losing computer disks containing confidential details of 25 million child benefit recipients.”

Internet Hero:
Peter Robbins OBE QPM, Chief Executive, IWF

Peter Robbins wins the Internet Hero award for his continued leadership of the IWF and approach to fostering extensive partnerships with the Internet industry, the government and law enforcement agencies to tackle illegal online content."

Best Consumer ISP
TBA

Best Consumer Broadband
Entanet
NewNet
Seriously Internet
Virgin Media
Waitrose

Best Business Broadband
Claranet
Datanet
Lumison
NewNet
PlusNet

Best Business ISP
Claranet
Datanet
Eclipse
Entanet
PlusNet

Best Wireless ISP
BOZII
Kijoma
South West Internet
T-Mobile
Vodafone

Best Consumer Email
Entanet
NewNet
Pipex
Vispa
Waitrose

Best Business Email
Datanet
Eclipse
Lumison
NewNet
Zen

Best Dial-Up
Datanet
Entanet
Exa
Vispa
Waitrose

Best Internet Telephony
Entanet
Keen Computers
Lumison
Tesco
Zen

The Ecosse mail servers are now fully back up and running.

There was a large amount of email backlog but as of this morning the majority appears to have been cleared and email is being sent in a timely manner to users accounts. You may however receive some emails sent since the disruption over the next 24 hours while the full backlog is processed.

We would like to apologise to our users for any inconvenience caused.

Forrester Research analyst, Pete Nuthall, states: “The addition of 48m new broadband connections may seem a healthy opportunity for broadband suppliers, but our forecast reveals the key challenge for ISPs will be managing customer churn.

In 2008, we estimate the level of churn to be 23% across Western Europe, this will peak in 2012 at 31%. Most at risk are incumbents such as BT, France Télécom, Deutsche Telekom, and KPN, due to regulatory action that force them to open up their networks to competition through local loop unbundling (LLU). Incumbents will need to reassess existing retention strategies in the light of increased price-based competition from alternative ISPs.”

Ecosse.net was originally founded by Calico UK about 10 years ago. As the years passed the ecosse.net brand grew and when Calico UK went through a staff buyout in 2005 the ecosse.net brand and service were sold off separately to another company. We at Calico UK have held the management contract for the service on behalf of the new owners since January 2005, but unfortunately that contract is now coming to an end.

As the proportion of slower speed connections has decreased, the proportion of higher speed connections has increased. In September 2007, 49.2 per cent of connections had a speed greater than 2 Mbps, which is an increase from 47.2 per cent in June 2007 and 37.5 per cent in December 2006. Over the same period, the percentage of connections with a speed of less than or equal to 2 Mbps decreased to 50.8 per cent in September 2007, down from 52.8 per cent in June 2007 and 62 per cent in December 2006.

Niji Online is proud to announce that it will soon begin testing a 24 MB broadband service. Launch dates will be announced before the end of January 2008. The service will include 10 email boxes, 50GB of downloads monthly and free virus and spam protection. Interested parties may contact our admin team to be added to our mailing list to be notified before public announcements are made.

Had an informing/bullying letter from Orange this morning telling me that their Anytime Dial-up service is being discontinued in December and that I'll be sent a Broadband kit within the next 3 weeks and be able to get broadband for just under £12 per month. However, if I don't want this broadband offer then I must phone their customer service number within fourteen days, which I have done as I don't want their Broadband yet or perhaps never.

Are they really turning off this service? I have been to the Orange website and there is still the ability to register for their Anytime service or the PAYG service which according to the letter will be the only alternative to Broadband.

Orange spokesman: "Orange has decided to close the Any Time Dial-up service at the end of this year. This is because we believe that broadband provides our customers with more benefits and greater value for money than Any Time Dial-up. Our broadband packages cost from £12 a month so in a lot of cases, Any Time customers will be paying less than they were before.

At Orange, we intend to carry on investing in future products and services. The closure of Any Time Dial-up will allow us to do this more effectively."

Under the new regime however, access to email is not denied when the dial-up account is suspended, so users are not made aware their account is in danger of deletion. The "grace period" has been removed.

The new policy has bitten over the last week, as noted by angry users in this Orangeproblems.co.uk thread. Many say they have lost years of email without warning and are told it is irrecoverable when they contact customer service.

For your info, I spoke to Onetel again Friday and they confirmed they are still having big problems. I'm now getting some emails today, Monday dates sent from last Tuesday but I know some have also been lost.

The queue of people who will line up to see who can scream loudest probably starts with the police national computer (PNC) which would probably go offline for a month if it lost its ISDN links (says my source) - which sounds unlikely, because last time I looked it was a pitifully small system, capable of handling well under 1,000 simultaneous enquiries. But that's what I heard, from people who should know.

It goes on. The Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) still uses bags of ISDN connectivity. As indicated above, so do several military centres, and if I tried to tell you which ones, I'd probably be exiled to Malta and given a 1200bps Hayes modem as my only link to the World Wide Web, so I won't.

Now, the question several people are trying to answer is a simple one: "Why on earth are all these people using an obsolete technology?" Part of the reason is exactly the reason why BT would quite like to get rid of it - it is uncontended (i.e. no one has to share it) data bandwidth with very low latency, but (for what it is) incredibly cheap. People look scornfully at its 64 kilobit by two channels bandwidth of 128 kb/s and laugh. What they don't see is that you get that 128 kilobits all the time, without packets being dropped and without contention from grockles doing bittorrent uploads.

ISDN proved very popular with people working from home who needed access to data connections faster than available dial-up modem speeds.

"We are withdrawing consumer ISDN," said a BT spokesman, "the demand for it has dived with the availability of cheap, fast broadband." But some broadcasters feel the service is still essential to their jobs.

Back when home net users relied on dial-up modems and fast data pipes were so expensive that only businesses had them, ISDN emerged as a hugely attractive alternative.