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May 29, 2001 - June 3, 2001

News - June 3,2001

BTInternet Update AnyTime Package

By:mark.j @ 9:07:AM - Comments (2) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

One of our vigilant readers was quick to point out that BTInternet appear to have updated their unmetered AnyTime offer:

BTinternet Anytime comes with 50mb of webspace and 10 free email addresses.

We're not sure about E-Mails, yet 50mb of webspace is more than the 10 or 20mb it had upon launch. Although this still remains a far cry from the once popular 2GB =).

Tiscali Cuts 250 Jobs

By:mark.j @ 9:03:AM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Not long ago we rumoured that the Italian based multimedia and ISP provider who owns several UK ISPs was also to cut their workforce by roughly 250. Today this has been confirmed and the ISP has effectively cut half of its work force with the move, given that they have 500 employed, or did have.

The jobs cull will take place in July following the company's integration of World Online UK, LibertySurf UK and LineOne.

Tiscali's recent spending spree means its acquisitions have left it with a massive duplication of jobs. The company hopes to create one central ISP out of the three popular subsidiaries.

4TheNET Updates Unmetered Packages

By:mark.j @ 8:50:AM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Net4Nowt has spotted that the unmetered ISP, 4TheNET, have now added one extra residential unmetered package and one for businesses as well:

4theNET Unlimited Off-peak - £9.99 per month
Surf the net weekdays days between 4pm and 8am and all weekend, with NO CALL CHARGES, outside of these hours you will be charged at less than the price of a local call.

Details: 2 hour cut off / 10mb Webspace / 15 E-Mails

4theNET Business Anytime - £19.99 + VAT per month
The Premium access package for small to medium business.

Details: Between 6am - 6pm (weekdays) you get no cut off, all others times have a 4 hour cut off / 10mb Webspace / 15 E-Mails

With the inclusion of these latest two offers, 4TheNET now has one of the largest and most varied arrays of unmetered access packages we have ever seen. You'd almost expect them to have a 128Kbps ISDN solution, pity they don't.

News - June 2,2001

Telewest Cache Campaign WORKS!

By:mark.j @ 9:31:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Good news for those on Telewests BlueYonder Broadband Cable Modem service, the Up The Cap! campaign (problems with transparent caching servers) run by users of the service could well have worked. Telewest has made the following service update:

For some time our hi-speed users have been experiencing our caches not performing optimally, which will have affected their throughput when accessing various websites. The issues have been explained in depth before, particularly in some of our regular e-mail updates to all users.

When this problem was initially investigated we reported explaining that ACK [Acknowledgment] packets were not being received back by the webcache. The issues are in no way related to the NetApp caches themselves, as we have proved empirically.

Upon requesting a page from the World Wide Web, you are transparently cached. This means that the page is actually served from the cache rather than having to traverse the web, as long as that page has been requested from the same cache recently.

When you request a page from the cache and it is downloaded, all your download bandwidth is consumed. Your PC [or Macintosh, or LINUX box, or ...] transmits ACK packets back to tell the webcache that "I have received all the page". As you are receiving packets so quickly with your caches being local to you, you have to acknowledge them quickly also, and this consumes more and more bandwidth.

Hence, in line with TCP/IP [Internet] standards, when the cache doesn't receive an acknowledgment that you have received all the data, it sends it again.

We believe that we now have a fix for this issue, upon reconfiguration and performance testing of one of our Cisco UBR's [Universal Broadband Router]. The UBR is the bridging router between the cable [HFC/RF] network and the Internet [IP] Network.

There is more information on how this works on our help site at:

http://help.blueyonder.co.uk/glossary/h/hfc.html

Currently the UBR will discard any excess packets. The fix involves implementing something called "leaky buckets".

The update goes on to explain that Scotland should have had their UBRs updated last night and Telewest will be watching the service to see how things progress. Whether this was indeed related to the campaign or not we don't know; although it'd be nice to think consumers won this round.

News - June 1,2001

Vispa Launches Unmetered Beta Test

By:mark.j @ 4:06:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Vispa Internet (Connect) have this afternoon sent us their latest press release about a beta test they've just begun for their future unmetered services:

June 1st 2001

After four heavy months of working extremely close with our telecommunications provider, Vispa Internet Limited is pleased to announce the launch of Unmetered Access based services. Lift Off is planned and ready for June 20th, but may be brought forward depending on demand from current Vispa users and thus scheduling will be adjusted to allow pre-subscribed members to not miss the "busy" boat.

As stated right from the start, signups will be in limited numbers and introduced in several key phases. These will be as follows; Vispa Beta Testers will start the show off, to which we have 100 available places. Then once we have valuable data of usage patterns, more places will made available to current loyal Vispa users. Then we move our interest to users who have pre-signed over the past few months followed by opening access to new customers. These combined will allow a nice gentle managed introduction of new services without degrading access quality levels from day one.

Prices can be confirmed as follows and are based on our Connect Lite package with 24/7 access. Monthly charge of £14.95, Quarterly charge of £44.85 and Annual charge of £179.40

If you like to become a beta tester, then visit the MyVispa section of our web site (Option available at the top of every web page) www.vispa.com login and select upgrade account. From here you be presented with details of our beta test program and signup form.

Typically Vispa has chosen to charge the standard amount and we expect this price to remain even after the beta, although you never can tell. Considering this is a beta then you should be prepared for the possibility of small service outages, upgrades or anything else like that. Chances are the service will be stable and that won’t happen.

BTs Starts SDSL Business Trials

By:mark.j @ 4:00:PM - Comments (7) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

BT has today started trials of what could turn out to be a very controversial technology, SDSL. Costing roughly £550 per month for a 2Mbit line it might make you squirm; yet SDSL is the same speed in both directions and that's roughly £1,500 cheaper than BTs own 2Mbit leased lines:

This month, 150 customers at 20 exchanges across the country will start trials of BT StreamLine Direct, a symmetric digital subscriber line (SDSL) service. It will be generally available by the end of the year.

SDSL, like the better-known ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line), vastly increases the capacity of traditional copper phone lines to carry data.

But while ADSL's 'fast download, slow upload' service is adequate for general web surfing, SDSL offers the same speed of data communication in either direction, making it more suitable for business applications.

The VNUNet item cleverly points out that while SDSL may be much cheaper than a comparative leased line, the service could be a mixed blessing because it drastically undercuts BTs more established leased lines. In other words BT would have to adapt their prices on the leased lines to be competitive and thus making for a potential loss.

As yet the trials have only just officially begun and nobody yet knows how BT will work things, after all we ISDN users still pay through the nose compared with ADSL don't we. In the past BT has never cared to update costing for older technologies, so why should they this time?

KeMe Launch Live Unmetered Beta Test

By:mark.j @ 11:20:AM - Comments (4) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The forthcoming unmetered ISP, KeMe, have today announced that some of their pre-subscribers can now openly test the basic freecall dialup:

At last KeMe.com is live!!

After a month of gruelling work, that included cajoling pleading and encouraging our Telephony Carriers we are now in a position to start real time Beta testing of the KeMe.com web site.

We would like volunteers to give the connection a good run through before we take anyone's money, and that it represents the best connection possible for a residential service.

The system will be available on a free 0800 dial-up number until midnight on 7th June 2001. After that point we will ask for credit card details from all those users who have already subscribed, and all free access will be ceased.

Until then simply create a dial-up networking entry to dial 0800 *** ****

Set your dial up networking not to log on to network, to use only TCPIP protocol, and the TCPIP setting should read server assigned IP address, server assigned name server address.

log in as ********
********************

Please feel free to email us your comments or queries.

Please Note: No telephone support will available for this service until we are fully live. Neither will there be an email account available on the KeMetest account. All of this will be available once we have finished our final Beta Test.

We've of course removed the confidential details in order to prevent abuse as this is not for the general public, yet we don't doubt newsgroups will soon leak the information publicly. Aside from that the early reports are that the network is working well.

On top of that the ISP seems to be using an 0800 number, which means Telco's outside of BT may be able to use the ISP, we'll have to wait and see. No matter what system a service uses, 0800 is freecall by law.

Zen Internet Post RADSL Update

By:mark.j @ 11:04:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

This morning Zen Internets Marketing Manager, Ian Buckley, has issued a special update to all those who've stated their interest in RADSL (Rate Adaptive Digital Subscriber Line). The update is very important if you're interested in getting ADSL broadband outside of the 3.5KM exchange radius:

As you are probably aware, this latest development will increase the reach of the Single-user USB 512Kbps ADSL service from 3.5km to 5.5km from a DSL enabled local exchange. This will increase coverage around a DSL enabled exchange to more than 90%.

Rate adaption is achieved through enabling the upstream path, away from the customer, to rate adapt to between 64kbps and 250kbps depending on distance from the exchange and traffic levels. This flexibility is made possible by increasing the acceptable line-length loss measurement from 41db to 55db. The download speed, into the customer, remains the same as the current Single-user USB 512Kbps service at up to 512Kbps.

The pilot is scheduled to begin on 25th June 2001, when order processing will begin. Zen have the opportunity to participate in the pilot by re-submitting 5 orders on that day which have previously failed due to line length, but are now within the rate adaptive area. We shall be re-submitting previously failed orders on a first-come first-served basis.

Zen will be sending the selected customers' details to BT, enabling them to gauge interest and run initial tests. These rate adaptive orders will then be submitted to BT on the 25th June, when they will be subject to BT's standard lead times.

Following the successful pilot, BT is proposing to introduce rate adaption as standard on all current and future BT USB 512Kbps installations. Customers within the 3.5km parameter will notice no alteration in service, and pricing will remain the same.

Although we do not have any confirmed dates for this as yet, we anticipate that the service proper will be launched shortly after the pilot RADSL installations have gone ahead and been evaluated. As soon as we have any further news, or a confirmed date for the official launch of this service, we will contact you via e-mail with an update.

Zen is one of a few highly rated ISPs to be conducting such trials in preparation for a greater and official rollout later in the year.

One.Tel UK Safe From Bankruptcy

By:mark.j @ 10:54:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The ever popular Telecom and (soon) ISP group, One.Tel, could be safe from bankruptcy in the UK after all:

Company sources have told ZDNet that Britain is the only country where One.Tel is making a profit -- thought to be in the region of £14m per year. Senior company officials told employees on Wednesday that the profits made in the UK meant it would be possible for the UK office to go independent. Currently, most of the UK profits were being used to support the loss-making Australian operations.

One.Tel refused to discuss whether a split was being considered. "We can't validate or speculate on these matters. We've nothing further to say at this stage, apart from that it is business as usual," said a spokesman.

The company is also refusing to answer questions from its own staff on the matter.

The ZDNet item doesn't go into much detail, but then One.Tel aren't giving any out. We'll have to wait another week or two before some solid information arrives, although a lot of people would be sad if the UK wing collapsed along with the rest of the company.

Trigger Happy Echelon

By:mark.j @ 10:50:AM - Comments (5) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Remember the Echelon 'Spy System' we've been talking about recently? Well how would you like to know what triggers the system into monitoring your discussions?:

According to various UK media sources today, the buzzwords said to trigger the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand spying mechanism Echelon have been "posted on the Internet". We haven't found the file and it hasn't popped up on the authoritative site for these sorts of things, Cryptome.org, so we'd not put too much weight behind it.

However, just for your interest, we give you a quick run-through on what some of the words are.

There are the obvious phrases like "Kill the President" which caused two schoolboys from the UK to be quizzed by special branch, "anarchy", "echelon" :-), "nuclear", "assassinate". Then there are ones that are dodgy (cause they fit in with X-file type paranoia) like "Roswell", "Waco", "World Trade Center", "Soros" - after George Soros, "Whitewater".

We should probably be worried about The Register's item, yet must confess to a style of boy-hood fascination with the thought of a large Inter-Continental spy network. At least they're not monitoring our E-Mails yet... or... oh no.

News - May 31,2001

Quick ISP Review Site Update

By:mark.j @ 1:09:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Just a quick note to say we may have lost two days of work on the Specific ISP Forums when a serious bug arose during coding. Sadly we were unable to get rid of it by simply replacing the files with those we had backed up, as such we've started from scratch again - fun - NOT!

The forum is now working properly again and we'll make an attempt to recover and re-introduce the features we've been adding this afternoon after work. The problem was caused by a ‘Custom Titles’ system I was asked to install – thanks Dan =).

Vodafone Undercuts BTs GPRS

By:mark.j @ 1:05:PM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Vodafone has today announced that they intend to undercut BTCellnets GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) offer by launching their handsets at half the price! Vodafone said it would start selling the Motorola Timeport 260 GPRS phone in the UK on Friday at £99.99, compared with BTCellnet's price of £199.99. Its monthly contract fee is £7.49 and undercuts BT by 50pence.

The phones offer "always on" connection to the Internet, making it far easier to view WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) sites than on current handsets.

The technology is a stepping stone to third generation (3G) phones with faster data rates, and demand for GPRS is seen indicating whether the industry will recoup the more than 100 billion euros spent on 3G licences.

But Vodafone's apparent decision to subsidise the price of the phones more heavily than BT could renew worries about profit margin pressure. Simon Buckingham of industry analysts Mobile Lifestream said he was surprised Vodafone had priced the phone so low.

"The early adopters who have to have the latest technology are not going to be too worried about the price, so Vodafone may have missed a trick."

Sadly we don't believe Simon Buckingham to be correct because as yet very few have adopted the technology and that's primarily because it's not much better than GSM or WAP yet. No matter what people say, this is good news for consumers.

Harmonizing Cyber Crime Laws

By:mark.j @ 8:56:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Today the Council of Europe has issued a proposed final draft for the international cyber crime treaty to harmonize laws on electronic criminal activity. It looks as if both Europe and North America will be following the same set of cross-border rules from now on:

A number of crimes have got to be made both uniform and reciprocal among all signatory countries for the scheme to work properly; thus national legislatures will have to be made compliant.

Or, as the document puts it, signatories shall cooperate "on the basis of uniform or reciprocal legislation and domestic laws to the widest extent possible."

The list of items the COE insists must be made illegal includes unauthorized access to a computer system; the interception of private communications (by players other than by Big Brother, naturally); damaging, deleting or altering computer data; producing, distributing or possessing child pornography; and data forgery.

The Register goes into a lot of detail and also mentions a R.I.P style of data monitoring, which could be a serious drawback for the general public. We can't help but wonder that whether by 2005 we'll have any online privacy left, or that it'll have just been eroded. Governments seem to increasingly want to control OUR LIVES instead of run the country, we suppose one is as equal as the other.

Mr Brown Refuses To Help With 3G

By:mark.j @ 8:46:AM - Comments (7) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The government has already stated that they'd be unlikely to give financial aid to those operators suffering under the heavy debt burden of 3G. Today Gordon Brown made it absolutely clear that any such rebate or refunds would be out of the question:

Chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown on Wednesday again insisted that Britain had been fair in its auction of third-generation mobile licences and would not return money to those who paid billions for them.

Asked if the British government would offer rebates to telecommunications firms saddled with heavy debts because of the expense of the licences auctioned last year, Brown told a Labour Party election news conference: "We're not going to change our policy. It was a market-driven exercise. People bid in the normal way for this, and people paid the price they were prepared to offer."

The auction last year brought $32bn into state coffers -- well above analysts' forecasts and making a major contribution to the UK's £37bn net cash surplus in the financial year to end-March 2001.

The ZDNet item only gives just enough information to go on and from an economic and principled point of view we can understand Mr Browns decision. Yet as consumers ourselves we also know that a lack of such investment or deal of any kind won't help rising mobile phone prices for some years to come.

One.Tel Troubles Spread To UK

By:mark.j @ 8:41:AM - Comments (15) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

As reported yesterday the popular Telecom and ISP group, One.Tel, is in serious trouble with their Australian base. The Rupert Murdoch (Sun Newspaper) backed venture now looks set to see its problems spread closer to home.

The company has been criticised for over-expanding too rapidly, from its home market in Australia to France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK. The company claims to have 2.4m customers globally.

The administrators have promised to keep the Australian service going for the time being, but the future of the European services is more doubtful.

Shareholders in One.tel included News Corp, and Publishing and Broadcasting, run by two of the most colourful characters in Australian Business, Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer respectively.

Scions of the two antipodean media families, Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer, oversaw the investments in One.tel. Today they said that they had been "profoundly misled," about the financial health of the company, according to Reuters.

The two companies have invested $467m over the years, and together they own 40% of the company. However the recent problems now look set to affect all of their European bases as well, whether this means closer for the UK one or not remains to be seen. Many of you reading this have made use of One.Tel and so we know it's a popular service.

Viatel Wins £4.3Million 24/7Freecall Deal

By:mark.j @ 8:35:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The popular unmetered ISP 24/7FreeCall, has awarded Telecoms and networking giant, Viatel, a £4.3Million contract to develop their wholesale un-metered Internet access over a two year period. According to Net4Nowt:

Viatel will provide 24-7Freecall with “ISP Dial Flatrate”, a service that allows Internet service providers (ISPs) to offer unmetered pricing, to their subscriber base and provide them with cost certainty when launching those services.

“A flat-rated Internet offering is integral to an ISP gaining market share in the UK,” said Mr. Sal Abdin, Chief Executive at 24-7Freecall. “Customers today demand a fixed-priced package, which is both affordable and reliable. We are confident that we have found the right partner in Viatel to deliver a quality service at the right price.”

The new package itself is old new, having been known about to 24/7FreeCall subscribers since April, it will cost £14.99 and should launch on the 20th June. The new service will not contain a cut-off (nice) and remain limited to BT only subscribers.

In the past 24/7FreeCall have had problems with coverage for their products, it's hoped this will not be an issued under the new deal. More details in our Specific ISP Forum.

ISP Blames BT For 36Hour Outage

By:mark.j @ 8:25:AM - Comments (6) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The popular British website hosting provider, Fasthosts, has hit back at BT today following a 36-Hour service outage that affected 500,000 of their hosted sites!.

Fasthosts vowed it would review its relationship with the Telco. The problem brought down websites hosted by the company as well as preventing customers from sending or receiving emails. This was apparently due to a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack on one of BTs primary routers.

They denied suggestions that Fasthosts was to blame for the prolonged downtime, adding: 'The only mistake we made was to trust BT with aspects of our internet service.'

A 36-Hour outage over 500,000 websites, many of them commercial, could carry an untold cost to any related companies. This is one of the reasons we worry about 'Putting all your eggs in one basket' as the online population grows.

One Billion Online By 2005

By:mark.j @ 8:19:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

It's unlikely any of us could contemplate what one billion people actually look like, let alone even a million. Despite this some new research has shown that a colossal one billion people will be using the Internet by 2005:

The recently published study -- The Global Market Forecast for Internet Usage and Commerce -- claims that fifteen percent of the global population will be online in four years, driving e-commerce revenues up to $5tn. This will represent a 70 percent compound annual growth rate in Internet spending from $354bn in 2000.

"With the dot-com stock crash and US economic doldrums so much in the news, it's easy to lose sight of the explosive growth in Internet usage and commerce taking place below the surface," said John Gantz, IDC's research officer.

Internet usage around the world has traditionally been dominated by the US and Europe, but the IDC report predicts that by 2005, the pattern will become more widespread rather than being dominated by a single region. Last year, America had 34 percent of the world's Internet users, followed by Europe with 29 percent and Asia-Pacific at 16 percent.

The ZDNet item goes on to segregate out the Internet coverage around the world and explain what's what with usage, although we must confess to being slightly worried. As the population grows, does this also mean that one small network outage could affect a lot more than ever before? It looks like increased stability could be an important goal for the future.

BT Helps Redstone Improve SDSL Network

By:mark.j @ 8:13:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

It looks as if Redstone Telecom has struck an important deal with BTs Wholesale wing in order to make their SDSL services more readily available, especially in urban areas. The full press release follows:

Redstone's DSL Plans Enhanced by BT Wholesale Deal

Redstone has signed a Letter of Intent with BT Wholesale for the supply of ATM "back-haul" capacity to connect its street cabinets to its data centres and switching sites. This approach, using BT's new large-scale wholesale ATM product, "MacroNet", considerably improves the economics involved in Redstone's SDSL network rollout, as it avoids the need to construct full Metropolitan Area Networks. Any extended DSL rollout using MacroNet is subject to Redstone obtaining additional funding.

MacroNet will enable Redstone to extend its Smartbuild strategy by leasing the Metropolitan Area and backhaul network whilst co-locating its DSLAMs in street cabinets outside the BT local exchanges. This strategy replaces large up-front capital investments for civil engineering for metropolitan area networks with connection charges and yearly rentals.

Martin Wall, Managing Director, Redstone Networks, said:
"We have been in discussions with BT Wholesale regarding the development of this wholesale product for over nine months. I am extremely pleased that BT Wholesale has agreed to provide such connectivity, which I believe will speed up the unbundling process in the UK."

Stuart Horwood, Managing Director, BT Wholesale Markets, said: "This is a great move for the industry. BT Wholesale is pleased that innovative product development is helping other licensed operators accelerate their strategies to deliver Broadband Britain."

As usual this is unlikely to be of any interest to residential consumers being that SDSL is primarily a business product and often linked with leased lines.

Freeserve Forces Customers To AnyTime

By:mark.j @ 8:06:AM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We've noticed some sites reporting that Freeserve are to force a change from the original 'Unlimited Time' package onto their newer FRIACO based 'AnyTime' one. This is actually old news and we reported on it for the 10th April 2001 HERE.

The difference is that now Freeserve are openly confirming their Energis Squared and BTSurfTime supported 'Freeserve Unlimited Time' package will be closed and customers asked to move or leave. This is apparently to take place sometime in August and will affect some 75,000 customers!

Realistically this could help the service immeasurably by the ISP either loosing thousands of customers from their network or migrating them to a better-designed package. Of course those still using FUT are hardly likely to see anything but an extra £5 charge on top of what they currently paying.

News - May 30,2001

Echelon Spying On YOUR E-Mails?

By:mark.j @ 4:26:PM - Comments (3) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Unless you follow technology and computer/Internet magazines then Echelon will probably mean nothing more to you than a strange word or name. It is in fact a top-secret surveillance (spy) network run by the UK, USA and three other countries.

Much like the famed Area51, Echelon didn't even officially exist until recently in the last two years, although it's far older. The network had been under investigation by the EU because of claims that it was being used to gather private corporate details for other companies.

The system is so advanced that it's apparently capable of monitoring the worlds phone, Internet, TV and radio waves all at once. A recent EU report concluded that Echelon was not a threat to businesses, yet cast some concern over its other uses:

On the one hand legislators said there was no solid evidence that the US-led network was involved in commercial espionage, but a draft report still encouraged Internet users to encrypt their email - just in case. A final report is expected in September but a Parliamentary group looking into Echelon meets today, which has created an explosion of interest in the subject.

European MPs have been investigating Echelon for over a year after allegations that the US had used the shadowy system to engage on a spot of industrial espionage on European firms.

Previous statements by the parliamentary temporary committee investigating Echelon have indicated that Brussels considered it something of a paper tiger, and have dismissed speculation that the system can intercept virtually all electronic communications around the globe.

Articles like that of The Register's are always very worrying, although deep down most of us know that somewhere there's a real BIG BROTHER watching over all of us. No it's not god, but apparently some pasty-faced youths in front of Echelon computer screens =) – god help us.

Oftels February Residential Survey

By:mark.j @ 4:06:PM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Although we're still waiting for Oftel to publish the Dialup access review (now delayed until June), Net4Nowt have noticed that they still managed to publish some residential survey results from last February 2001. The following is a copy and paste of the summary:

2.1 Home Internet access continues to grow. By February 2001, 34% of UK homes said they were connected, up from 30% in November 2000. This represents an increase of 1 million homes connected to the Internet since November, with a total of 8.5 million homes connected by February 2001.

2.2 Home Internet access rose amongst most subgroups of the population between August and November. Although access remains highest amongst younger and middle aged groups, higher income and large households, an increasing number of DE homes and older consumers are connecting.

2.3 Whilst the vast majority of customers still access the Internet via the traditional PC and ordinary phoneline / dial up method, already small numbers, particularly younger consumers, are adopting new technologies including mobile phones, digital TV, and to a lesser extent games consoles and personal organisers. Internet access via digital TV was also popular amongst increasing numbers of lower income groups. Take up of high speed Internet access via ADSL technology remains low at just less than 1% amongst Internet homes.

2.4 Use of unmetered packages continues to grow - with over a third of Internet homes (35%) currently claiming to use fully or partially unmetered packages. Average weekly household time spent on-line remained stable at about 7 hours, and while this was inflated by a small number of heavy users, customers with unmetered packages (c. 10 hours) spent about twice as long on-line as those on pay per use packages (c. 5 hours).

2.5 As found in previous months, the vast majority of customers (90%) were satisfied with their home Internet service. The November report identified the most satisfactory aspects of Internet service, which included ISP quality of service and to a lesser extent call and subscription charges. Fewer were satisfied the speed of their service, and with the choice of speeds available for accessing and using the Internet although this may partly reflect lack of awareness of alternatives available.

2.6 A further 15% of UK homes thought they would be likely to connect to the Internet within the next 12 months. A similar proportion identified significant barriers that would prevent them from connecting in the short term, and said that cheaper call, subscription, and equipment costs, along with better provision of information detailing the potential uses and benefits of the Internet, and advice on how to connect, would encourage them to get access sooner. A significant proportion of UK homes however (36%) said they didn’t want or need the Internet at home.

It's interesting to see that 35% of residential customers are now using unmetered ISPs and spending 7 hours online per week, which is more than most other European countries.

Apple and Demon sign

By:Rob.W @ 3:04:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Apple have signed an agreement with Thus, who own Demon, to make all British Mac's show Demon as the preferred ISP for use in the UK when installing a new OS.

The deal mirrors a similar deal struck between Apple and US ISP EarthLink early last year. Under the terms of that agreement, EarthLink got a $200 million investment and Apple got a cut from the subscription of each Mac user who signed to the ISP.

Users will get a 30-day free access trial if they do select Demon as their ISP

Read the whole article over at The Register.

Experienced Mac users can still use another ISP if they wish by entering the settings manually, but for newbie Mac owners it looks like Demon will be getting a good slice of the market.

News Retraction.

By:Rob.W @ 12:48:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

In the absence of Mark at this time, ISPreview would like to retract an earlier article. Whilst we try to ensure that our reporting on the ISP scene is 100% accurate and backed up by all of the facts, sometimes we can let our own reporting styles give an impression of personal views, of which we wholly apologise for.

IC24 Officially Closes 0800 Offer

By:mark.j @ 10:56:AM - Comments (11) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Much as we've been predicting for the last month, the Semi-Unmetered ISP IC24 has finally come to an end. IC24 have today issued the following statement to its customers, although the good news is that another offer will be announced soon:

Internet access service trends have gone through some of the fastest transitions of any customer service in history , and this continues today. It is clear now to all UK Internet Service Providers that providing free telephony service hours as well as free access services cannot be sustained indefinitely, and we at ic24 are no exception to this - all good things must come to an end. And, unfortunately, our pioneering 'After 8' campaign must do just that. On Thursday May 31st our free online time promotion will end.

Of course, we will continue to operate our acclaimed 0845 'pay-as-you-go' service and should stress that our 0845 service is completely unchanged and still very much available. As you may know , this service is the basis of ISPA's ISP of the year for 2000.

We know that most of our customers will find that our 0845 / pay-as-you-go service is still the most cost effective way for them to access the Internet and our 0845 service will continue to provide the high levels of performance availability and reliability that you have come to expect.

We are currently developing a series of unmetered, unlimited use telephony packages, and will advise you of those within the next 7 to 10 days.

We'd like to thank you for using ic24 to date, and hope that you will continue to enjoy and benefit from a truly great service.

We'll miss IC24's pioneering offer of cost free Off-Peak unmetered access, although they should announce some new commercial packages within the next 10 days. Thanks to all who informed us.

Alcatel-Lucent Merger Talks Collapse

By:mark.j @ 10:16:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

It looks as if talks between French Alcatel and North American Lucent may have been called off for good. Apparently Alcatel proposed a Take over instead of merging and this made Lucent less than pleased.

Although the companies had essentially agreed to the financial terms of the £16Billion deal, the talks broke down due to disagreements over the structure of the combined company's board and management control, sources familiar with the situation said.

"The deal is off for all the wrong reasons," said one source, who declined to be identified by name. The companies put out a brief statement confirming that talks had been terminated but declined further comment.

In the negotiations, which grew out of Alcatel's interest in Lucent's fibre optic business, Lucent had initially agreed to hold a 42% ownership stake in the combined company, with Alcatel having majority control, sources said.

In lieu of a takeover premium, Lucent wanted a voice on the combined company's board and top management. The two sides also argued over what the merged company would be named, sources said. Lucent walked away when it became clear that Alcatel viewed the deal as a takeover of its money-losing U.S. rival, rather than an equal partnership, sources said.

"Lucent made it clear they were not interested in a takeover. Lucent was not for sale -- they wanted a strategic partnership," a source said.

Criminal Law Review Attacks R.I.P Act

By:mark.j @ 10:09:AM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The Criminal Law Review (CLR) is an academic paper that usually confines itself to flat objectivity and is not know for direct attacks. Yet their latest paper titled, "BigBrother.gov.uk - State surveillance in the age of information and rights", attacks the privacy invading R.I.P act:

We've been saying it for ages, but an independent review of the law also decides that the RIP Act allows for agencies to "snoop randomly and routinely" - something, it says, that may breach both the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act.

The article speaks of "substantial defects" in RIPA. The removal of judges in the approval process for tapping because it is "inappropriate" in cases of national security and economic well-being, for example, is labelled "wholly spurious".

It is "disingenuous" to set up legislation that concerns itself with the minority of cases rather than the majority, the article argues. Paranoid, more like. Or authoritarian. The fact that people being investigated are never informed of it "decreases substantially the chances of abuse ever being uncovered". The criteria enabling government agencies to snoop on people are "unduly expansive".

The Register does a good job of highlighting the most important areas of the paper and it's nice to know people understand some of the serious problems with R.I.P. The often damning conclusions over the legislation is probably likely to get pushed under the carpet this close to the election.

One.Tel In Trouble

By:mark.j @ 10:00:AM - Comments (2) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The popular Telecoms Company, One.Tel, could be in serious trouble that may spread to the UK if solutions can't be found:

One.Tel has appointed administrators and notified the Australian Stock Exchange of a suspension of trading prior to the market opening this morning, following the revelation that a capital raising of AU$132m (£48m) would be insufficient to keep the company solvent.

And union officials, in meetings with One.Tel, have hit a brick wall in seeking assurances about the fate of the troubled telco's staff. The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) met with One.Tel secretary Alicia Parker today only to be told "it's in the hands of the administrator".

Late today, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission launched an investigation into One.Tel, following the referral of information from the Australian Stock Exchange and concerns raised by James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch, who claim to have been misled about the telco's solvency.

Hopefully the Telco's offshore problems won't circle back and hit those of us in the UK, although there's a very real chance they will due to the strong links. The ZDNet item only covers one side of the problems.

Vodafone States The Cost Of 3G

By:mark.j @ 9:50:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The CEO of Vodafone, Chris Gent, has been brave enough to speak out as to what he expects the cost of 3G to be to his company and it's not good:

£10 billion, he says, over five years. God only knows how he came to this figure, but he knows a thing or two about a thing or two, so we'll go with it for the meanwhile. At least, until he's proven hideously wrong.

Quite why he felt the need to come out with a figure, we don't know. Vodafone is in good shape, although it has cheapened itself by issuing loads of shares to help it acquire several big companies of late. The figure of £10 billion also looks low. BT and NTT DoCoMo have had huge technical difficulties getting next-generation phone networks working properly. This costs.

And then there's the fact that 3G phones will need many more masts and people's opposition to such masts is increasing over fears that they can cause cancer etc. We imagine the £10 billion is a very specific value that Chris has put on it to keep investors and the City happy.

The Register highlights the first company, Vodafone, to ever announce what it believes to be the price take for deploying 3G services. Certainly no matter what the real figure it's bound to be the kind of money nor you or I will ever see =).

Affinity VIP Launch Families Unmetered Offer

By:mark.j @ 9:43:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

According to Net4Nowt Affinity VIP (Virtual Internet Provider) has today added a new package to its growing mix of cheap unmetered products.

Called Surf@Home the new package has been aimed at families and offers 4pm - 8am Weekday access and 24/7 over the weekend for just £9.99 Per Month.

It claims to use the FRIACO infrastructure, although this is often confused in press releases with BTSurfPort24 (FRIACO Derivative, not actually FRIACO). So quite what they mean we don't know, although we've seen this kind of package before with other ISPs.

Affinity is hoping some of their 150 branded VISPs will choose to take up the new offer.

News - May 29,2001

IC24 Briefly Extend 0800 To 31st May

By:mark.j @ 1:01:PM - Comments (4) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Well it would seem as if IC24 may well do as we had originally expected and not last beyond June, in fact it may even end the day before.

The website has been updated to say that the offer will now end on Thursday 31st May, just a meagre 4 day extension. If they extend it again then that'd just be playing with peoples minds a little too much =).

Having said that we’ll miss IC24 as being the only true freecall off-peak ISP provider in the UK, they did something very special for the customers.

Quick ISP Review Site Update

By:mark.j @ 12:54:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

While news has been somewhat thin on the ground today we've been busy doing updates around the site and working on the ISP forum as promised.

Just now we've uploaded an updated unmetered list with some changes and the new 0800Dial ISP added in, not to mention we also added that ISP to the usual forum and linked it back.

On top of that we've updated the complaints page again with BTInternet and Freeserve still taking the biggest slice of hate. There were also some updates to all the various ISP listings and we've now linked in the final pay (subscription) 0845 ISPs list and updated the primary page accordingly (now no old lists exist).

From now on we'll be enhancing the forums following yesterdays important technology upgrade.

Have IC24 Finished Freetime?

By:mark.j @ 9:35:AM - Comments (6) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

IC24 are usually an ISP known for meticulously extending their Off-Peak 0800 (Freetime) offer month on month, fortnight on fortnight or more recently - week on week. Despite this the ISP never made an extension announcement when their final date (27th May [Sunday]) was reached, unusual.

Some are now finding that the 0800 number is no longer in operation, while others still seem able to connect. It could just be the bank holiday weekend, although they've extended from Sundays before. We're waiting to hear from the ISP as to what is going on.

Has IC24 finally finished the 0800, or will it be officially extended one last time or possibly more?

Tiscali Re-Brands LineOne & More

By:mark.j @ 9:22:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

It wasn't all that long ago when part BT owned ISP LineOne found its way into the clutches of Italy's Tiscali. According to The Times newspaper, Tiscali is now set to re-brand the ISP with a name of its own. This follows a much wider shake up of all Tiscali owned networks and ISPs in the UK.

Not only that, but strangely the Italian provider is now aiming to launch a mobile phone service in the UK. Apparently they plan to launch a Tiscali-branded mobile phone later this year under a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal with one of Britain's four existing mobile network operators.

That's good; otherwise the operator wouldn't have been able to take advantage of 3G for the future. No details of whose network they'd use has been announced, although we'd suspect BTCellnet and Vodafone as being the top two most likely choices.

Fast24 Unmetered Update

By:mark.j @ 9:14:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

It would seem that the new unmetered ISP Fast24 have updated their Off-Peak package information. Thanks to Mark (no not me) for pointing out that what was once:

- 128k ISDN, 64k ISDN or upto 56k v.90 modem access.

Is now..

- 128k ISDN (at local call rate), 64k ISDN or upto 56k v.90 modem access.

We always thought the 128Kbps option was a little strange and that SurfPort24 couldn't handle dual channels, guess we were right. Whether this means both channels are LCR (Local Call Rate) or just the one remains to be seen.