ISP News Archives for October 31, 2012

Mobile operator Orange UK (EE) has reportedly taken the decision to completely cease its old “FREE broadband FOR LIFE” service, which between 2006 and 2009 offered a free home broadband connection to customers on their mobile contracts.

The financially troubled Digital Region network, which offers an alternative superfast broadband platform in South Yorkshire (England), can now give local homes and businesses a choice 50+ ISPs after the previously announced Service Exchange Platform (SEP) finally went live.

The YouView (IPTV) product, which offers broadband based video-on-demand and catch-up TV services via several big UK ISPs (BT and TalkTalk), has started rolling out a new software update for its Humax set-top-boxes that will deliver various speed, sound and feature improvements.

Internet and phone provider Direct Save Telecom (DST) has today announced that it will create 120 new jobs over the next 12 months, which is apparently possible as a “direct result” of their latest £2.49 per month broadband and free calls bundle (plus £12.85 line rental).

The CEO of budget ISP TalkTalk, Dido Harding, has warned a Westminster panel session that the UK government should “start to worry” about the lack of competition in the new market for fibre optic based superfast broadband services; where a true alternative to BT and cheaper fibre-based local loop unbundling (LLU) remains absent.

The boss of UK business ISP Fluidata, Piers Daniell, has said that he is “somewhat underwhelmed” by the lower than hoped for Mobile Broadband speeds of EE’s new 4G (LTE) service and expressed similar disappointment about its low and “misjudged” usage allowances.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has published a new Huawei sponsored study that says “a good dose of reality” is in order as it questions whether the new fixed line superfast broadband and 4G mobile solutions can really deliver the “sizeable boost to GDP growth” and job creation, which are so often touted by the UK government.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has once again banned an advert for Virgin Media’s service after one of its circular promotions (e.g. spam letters) was deemed to have misleadingly claimed that an individual’s street had been “connected” to its “state-of-the-art fibre optic cable“.

I’d just like to take a moment to apologise to our readers for ISPreview.co.uk’s recent downtime, which began late on Sunday night and lasted until Tuesday morning. Unfortunately the situation was out of our control and occurred when a fault struck just as we were in the middle of upgrading the web server.