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July 25, 2001 - July 31, 2001

News - July 31,2001

Re-Designed Telecom Advice Website

By:mark.j @ 3:38:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Oftel have also published a second press release in which they welcome the recently re-designed Telecoms Advice website. This is a site primarily designed to give small and medium enterprises (SMEs) valuable telecommunications advice:

The website, http://www.telecomsadvice.org.uk, has been re-structured to make it easier for users to navigate their way around the enlarged site and find the information that they are looking for more quickly. It now has over 200 hundred pages of information and 500 links to other useful websites, including many telecoms companies.

The latest developments have been made in response to feedback from users of the site who wanted more categories of information to make it is easier to locate the material they were searching for.

Oftel’s business research has identified that a lack of information and knowledge about the potential benefits offered by the Internet was a reason for many businesses not connecting, so there is still a significant need for information sources such as http://www.telecomsadvice.org.uk.

Anne Lambert, Oftel's Director of Operations, said today,

"The Telecoms Advice website is an important source of telecommunications information, particularly for small and medium sized businesses and their advisors."

"Oftel welcomes the re-design of www.telecomsadvice.org.uk as visitors to the site will be able to access more information easier and quicker than before. The website is an example of the industry working together, with Oftel’s support, to help consumers make informed choices about the services available to them."

Oftel Review BTs Retail Price Controls

By:mark.j @ 3:34:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Oftel have today begun their review of competitive effectiveness in the fixed telephony market, which is designed to establish whether controls on BTs retail prices should be continued after 2002:

If Oftel finds that competition is effective in the fixed telephony market, price controls may no longer be necessary after July 2002 when current controls end.

However, if Oftel concludes that competition is not fully effective, continued price controls or other measures to assist competition may be required.

The issues on which Oftel is seeking views are contained in its consultation document ‘Competition in the provision of fixed telephony services’ published today.

Anne Lambert, Oftel’s Director Of Operations, said today:

"Price controls on BT have been necessary to protect consumers because the telephony market is not yet effectively competitive. Competition continues to grow through the increasing availability to consumers of cable operators and indirect access operators, who are now able to offer carrier pre-selection services."

"Oftel will assess whether this increased competition is sufficient to protect consumers or whether continued price controls or additional measures to promote competition are needed when the current retail price controls expire in July 2002."

"Oftel will consult with consumer groups and the industry before a final decision is made next year."

Oftel will publish a follow up consultative document setting out its proposals by the end of the year, and this will be followed by a statement with final proposals by June 2002.


Most of BTs rivals still consider this an area where BT is busy flexing its Anti-Competitive muscle and some of Oftels earlier report conclusions semi-agreed. We'll have to wait until the end of the year to find out what their latest investigation reveals.

Full BTOpenworld Satellite PR & RADSL

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

For those wanting a little more detail surrounding BTOpenworlds new Satellite ISP service, they've just sent us the full and official press release. Note that the following is long and also includes details of their new RADSL services:

BTOPENWORLD BRINGS BROADBAND TO UK BUSINESSES NATIONWIDE WITH SATELLITE SERVICE AND EXTENDED REACH ADSL

BTopenworld has today announced two initiatives which will bring broadband within reach of businesses and consumers across the country.

In November it will launch a two-way satellite service to deliver broadband to home-based, small and medium sized businesses (the SoHo and SME markets). The service will initially be available to customers in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Northern Ireland, before being extended to other areas of the UK.

BTopenworld will partner with Gilat Satellite Networks, with whom an MOU has been signed, to provide a two-way solution. Gilat is a worldwide leader in satellite networking technology. The initiative has already been welcomed by Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

BTopenworld is also making ADSL available to more people using extended reach technology. ADSL will be available to around 13 million households connected to enabled exchanges by the end of September this year.

Previously ADSL, broadband technology that converts a normal telephone line into a high speed digital line, was only available to customers who lived around 3.5km from an enabled exchange. Extended reach, or Rate Adaptive, technology increases this "footprint" to up to 5.5km.

Andy Green, BTopenworld chief executive officer said: "Today's announcement represents a set of innovative initiatives to accelerate the availability of broadband on a truly nationwide basis. It also further enhances BTopenworld's reputation as a national broadband operator.

"The launch of our satellite service will meet the demand for always on, high speed Internet services for businesses in more remote locations, while extended reach will now mean more than 90 per cent of customers connected to an enabled exchange, will be able to access broadband technology," he added.

On the new satellite service Andy added: "We recognise that there will be a range of issues to overcome, including planning and licensing. We are already working with the relevant authorities, however, existing rules were not designed for mass deployment of this technology and we will be seeking government support to overcome these and help us give a real shot in the arm to broadband Britain."

As part of the initial service launch, BTopenworld is working with central and local government as well as the Radiocommunications Agency.

Details of the satellite service will be available closer to the launch date but rental prices are expected to start at less than £100 a month(ex VAT).

Andy said: "Given the level of technology involved, whole life costs will be higher than current ADSL prices but our research shows that the benefits of broadband to small businesses sufficiently outweigh the cost and we hope that regional authorities will see this as an important tool to help promote business development in their areas."

Joshua Levinberg co-founder and senior vice president, business development of Gilat said: "We are very pleased to co-operate with BTopenworld and respect their strong commitment to broadband. Our satellite broadband solution will provide BTopenworld with the capability to offer broadband services to business customers all around the UK. This is an important step in our strategy of co-operating with prominent wholesale partners in major markets in Europe."

HIE's director of growing businesses, Douglas MacDiarmid said: "It is very important to us that the Highlands and Islands reputation for having advanced telecommunications is maintained and enhanced, as such we are very pleased that BT have selected the area to pilot this broadband service via satellite."

"The huge advantage of a satellite solution is its ability to deliver the same level of service throughout the area, from Shetland to Kintyre. It sweeps away the idea of peripherality, with businesses in this area able to operate on a level playing field with competitors elsewhere."

BT Openworld to Launch Satellite ISP

By:rich.p @ 2:07:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

According to the FT BT Openworld are to launch the new service in September. Initially to Northern Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland being rolled out to other remote parts of the country over the next 12 months. Thanks to Charles for informing us about the story:

British Telecommunications is on Tuesday expected to launch a satellite service which will bring high-speed internet services to rural Britain for the first time.

The service costing £100 per month will become available in the Highlands of Scotland and Northern Ireland from September, but is likely to be rolled out to other remote parts of the country within the next 12 months.

It will require satellite dishes the size of existing Sky dishes and BT believes it will require a relaxation of existing planning rules to take off.

Andy Green, chief executive of BT Openworld said: "The launch of our satellite service will meet the demand for always on, high speed internet services for businesses in more remote locations, and will now mean more than 90 per cent of customers connected to an enabled exchange, will be able to access broadband technology,"


This service is similar to the one mentioned earlier on today and to the TiscaliSat service. The reason why the price is so expensive is because it is actually upstream as well.

Important ISP Review Site Update

By:mark.j @ 12:32:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We've had to make a few important changes in order to resolve some problems and improve site navigation / speed. Although before that it's prudent to mention we've updated the xDSL and Satellite lists with the most recent news.

For starters we've changed the main page a small amount, on the right hand site (Top News Box) you can now access the most recent 40 news posts by type (xDSL, Satellite, Top News etc.). This was successfully tested in the broadband section and now also linked on the main page.

There have also been some small format changes, although most importantly we've replaced the old 'Live Site Visitors' output with the one from the new forums. This will speed up loading, although only by a couple of seconds. Not only that but it’ll also identify you if you’re a member on those forums.

Finally we had to re-archive and index the news to a fresh batch of files. This is because the system tends to get bloated after 1,000 news posts (6 months) and makes posting new items quite tedious. It's now running a lot faster and all old news can be access from the updated 'Archives' page.

Sadly this means the search engine can only see from July 24th 2001 onwards and news stats are reset, although that's the price you pay. We expect to change news systems to one that's better at indexing and splitting files in the near future.

Beam - Two-Way Digital Satellite ISP

By:mark.j @ 10:46:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Yet another business and residential offering Two-Way Digital Satellite ISP has today graced our inbox. This time it's a little known provider called Beam (Onstar), who will be offering services in the UK, albeit costly ones:

Beam™ gives you the faster, more accessible way of being on the internet.

Our initial service is up to 10 times faster than a 56K modem, and over 5 times faster than a dedicated ISDN line. You are connected all the time that your computer is on so there is no dial-up connection to slow you down.


*Quicker downloads
*swifter file opening
*shorter processing times

Plus you'll now have access to a totally new type of browsing experience. Because with Beam™ the web isn't just about text and still graphics. Now you'll have access to the broadband sites delivering a far richer internet experience.

*stream audio and video
*watch movies
*listen to music
*download files in no time.

At last the web opens up.

Becomes a hugely more entertaining and engaging experience.
So you'll get more from being online, and spend less time watching the "hour glass".


In reality the service looks good, although future Digital Satellite ISPs from both TISCALI and Aramiska already seem to have the edge on price.

In residential terms, Beam will cost you £99 per month (normally £149) and carries a £150 installation charge (variable depending on installer). Yet unlike some other ISPs, they list the hardware as costing a phenomenal £500, so it's probably better to buy your kit separately.

Speed wise and Beam follows a very familiar trend for residential customers, 400Kbps Downstream (Download) and 128Kbps Upstream. With Tiscali and Aramiska both set to offer services of a similar nature, but for half the price, Beam could well be out of its league.

The ISP looks set to go live sometime this Autumn (Q3/4 2001), same as the others.

UPDATE: WonkyPig Unmetered Live

By:mark.j @ 10:34:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

UPDATE - Website Fixed
WonkyPig let us know that their website is now operational again, although they seem to have got rid of the professional design and gone for something kind of simplistic again - pity.

The new and recently refurbished unmetered ISP, WonkyPig, have just informed us that their service is finally live and online:

We are pleased to announce that our Wonkypig Unmetered Internet Access Package is now available. Starting at Just £9.50 per month we provide unmetered internet access to the end user. Payment for the first month is via credit / debit card then users may change to direct debit / cheque or standing order - if they wish.

We have had problems and we can only apologise to all our users for this, but at least we are still here and making it work!. . .


Hopefully their use of BT Ignite will win them back some credit in the coming months, although we'll have to wait and see.

At the time of writing we had tried to visit their site, although it threw up a nasty Javascript error followed by a colourful window where none of the links worked. This seemed to be the case under IE, Netscape and Opera. Hopefully it'll be fixed sometime in the next few hours.

Freeserve Attack AOL Over V.A.T Payments

By:mark.j @ 8:37:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The French Wanadoo owned UK ISP, Freeserve, have today made some very serious claims against AOL. Freeserve alleges that AOL is exploiting a loophole in UK tax laws to gain an unfair advantage over other ISPs.

According to Freeserve, AOL is registered for tax purposes in the US and so doesn't pay any VAT. Considering AOLs packages are already more expensive than Freeserves, it shouldn't bother consumers too much.

Yet this still raises some difficult concerns and issues with Global ISPs, of which the UK has many more.

Zen Announce RADSL Price Cut

By:mark.j @ 8:30:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Did you even doubt it? Yes the fray of ADSL price cuts continues for the 5th day running, this time with the popular Zen Internet at the helm:

As all about us are putting up the cost of broadband and raising ADSL prices (famously at Freeserve and soon elsewhere in the world, according to open-secret sources)...

Zen Internet is happy to announce that we will be lowering the cost of ADSL in a few weeks time.

The price of Zen Internet single-user ADSL service (which means RADSL too, of course) will be reduced to £45.00 per month from the first of September.

And that's official.


Much as we'd predicted would happen, it continues to be the more expensive providers able to cut costs. It looks as if we're going to have our work cut out just trying to keep the listings as up-to-date as possible, what fun.

PlusNET Slash Home ADSL Prices

By:mark.j @ 8:24:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Pretty much as expected, the next big provider to announce a price cut to their residential based ADSL package is PlusNet, full press release follows:

Home ADSL price slashed by PlusNet, but Business remains unaffected.

When will business feel the benefit of broadband Britain? ask PlusNet.



(Monday 30th July 2001 Sheffield, UK) Following Friday’s surprise announcement by BT, PlusNet, the popular UK ISP, today announced a reduction in the cost of residential broadband access to the Internet. From 1st August, the price of monthly subscription to PlusNet’s ADSL Home product will drop by more than £5, from £52.88 to £46.99 inc VAT (£39.99 ex VAT).

Reacting quickly to BT Wholesale’s price drop for their residential ADSL product, PlusNet have seized the opportunity to pass on the benefits to their own customers. Available on the USB-modem version of ADSL, today’s announcement comes as great news for those thinking of connecting their households to the super-fast Internet access provided by ADSL.

This is more good news for home users. Just 10 days ago we announced that with new RADSL technology, PlusNet are now able to reach users who otherwise might not be otherwise able to get ADSL,” said Alistair Wyse, Product and Development Director for PlusNet.

ADSL, or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line as it is more formally known, allows digital signals to be sent along existing telephone cable, allowing high-speed access to the Internet. With the newer RADSL, broadband access is now available to premises at distances of up to 5.5km from a suitable exchange.

Whilst we are of course pleased with both BT’s price reduction and the increased availability brought about by RADSL, we again have to point out that both of these benefits are targeted at the home user,” continued Wyse. “We would dearly like to see BT give the same level of commitment to providing broadband access to British business.

Indeed, the focus of BT’s broadband development has been for the USB-modem version suitable for the home rather than the Ethernet version suitable for commercial use. For an ISP like PlusNet, for whom the small businessman forms a significant percentage of the customer base, this is frustrating to say the least.

August 1st’s price reduction will apply to all of PlusNet’s ADSL Home products including those of PlusNet’s other well-known ISPs, Force9 and Free-Online.

http://www.plus.net


Once again PlusNET have been clever to point out the way businesses are being overlooked. Not only are most ISPs unable to support a proper RADSL based business package, but also no extra savings have been given to them.

Typically BTs reasons for favouring home ADSL are quite obvious, to help spur demand in an area they'd like to target more openly. Price may be one obstacle, although according to our own survey, people regard coverage on an equally important level. What's price when you can't get it in the first place?

News - July 30,2001

EU Pressures UK Gov For 3G Collaboration

By:mark.j @ 4:05:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Existing 3G broadband wireless licenses, as purchased by operators through last year’s auctions, apparently have restrictions on collaboration between carriers in building 3G networks.

Today the EU has hit back at the UK government, suggesting that they alter the conditions of third-generation (3G) mobile licences to allow greater collaboration between carriers in building networks:

European telecoms commissioner Erkki Liikanen confirmed that the EU would support such moves. "We are positively open to network sharing," he said. "If you can have reasonable solutions where consumers don't suffer, it's OK." He added that national regulators would have the final say on what co-operation would be acceptable.

UK 3G licences do allow some collaboration. Sites, masts and passive equipment can be shared, but radio equipment and radio backbones linked to those masts, and base station controllers, cannot. The rules were set by the Department of Trade and Industry before the 3G auction.

UK telecoms regulator Oftel also supports fewer controls on collaboration. This month its director general said "inappropriate regulation" of 3G could threaten up to £8bn of planned investment.


The ZDNet item is interesting, especially in a time where operators are collaborating to ever increasing levels. Despite this the DTI has remained firm and said there were no plans to change the licence conditions.

Looking Towards VoD & HomeChoice

By:mark.j @ 3:57:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

From what we've been told, HomeChoice's broadband xDSL package has had more problems than the G8 summit. It's a pity because they offer a rare and specialised form of broadband connection for £20 per month.

However one of our readers (Khan) pointed us towards an editorial we missed from last week by 'Peter Judge' of 'IT Week / AnchorDesk'. It's a small item that discusses the merits of VoD (Video On Demand) and highlights HomeChoice in a pleasantly surprising light:

When HomeChoice arrived in my street, I booked it. It cost £40 for the installation and took less than a week to arrive, which stunned me, as DSL took much longer. HomeChoice worked first time and I was quickly able to delight my children with Disney's Incredible Journey, ordered online from a server 10 miles away. It is true VoD -- you play it when you want, rewind and pause, just like a tape.

It works because it is not built on IPstream, the BT service that most ISPs use to deliver ADSL, but on VideoStream, another BT service designed especially for VoD. It doesn't bother with IP, but just uses the ATM protocol to give a 2.3Mbit/s data rate, with enough guarantees for real-time services. There's even bandwidth left over for a 115kbit/s Internet access package, which, at £20 a month, is my main reason for looking at HomeChoice.


The item goes on to look at how BTs pricing scheme has been causing HomeChoice some troubles and is possibly part of the reason for their past(?) problems.

BT Rejects LLU Bid

By:rich.p @ 3:06:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

BT has rejected the £8 billion offer made to them by a consortium called Earthlease:

"A BT spokesman confirmed the offer but declined to give any further details. However the source -- who is close to the parties involved --said BT had dismissed the offer as "absurd".

The source said BT believed the attached conditions of the offer were not in the best interests of its shareholders."


However the consortium seems hopeful that they can have further talks with BT.

Freedom2Surf Reduce Cost of ADSL

By:rich.p @ 2:38:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Freedom2Surf have today announced a price cut for their ADSL service from £44.99 to £39.99 from September 1st. Here is the press release in full:

"Freedom2Surf to reduce the cost of ADSL to £39.99 a month following shock announcement from BT

30 July 2001, London - Freedom2Surf, (www.freedom2surf.net) has today announced that it is to become one of the first ISPs to reduce the price of its ADSL services, following an announcement today by BT Wholesale and BT Ignite.

Freedom2Surf will be cutting the cost of its ADSL package from £49.95 to £39.99 per month, allowing it to compete directly with the prices offered by BT Openworld. The move follows the surprise announcement by BT that it will be reducing the cost of ADSL access to ISPs by £5 per month. Freedom2Surf will be reducing its prices for new and existing customers, when the new pricing regime comes into effect on 1 September 2001.

Freedom2Surf will be offering high-speed, always on, 512K R/ADSL USB connections, for customers as far away as 5.5km from their nearest exchange. Freedom2Surf's ADSL customers will also be given a fixed IP address for their connection.

Chris Panayis, Managing Director of Freedom2Surf commented, "I am delighted that BT has finally lowered the price for ADSL services, creating a more level playing field for all ISPs. I hope the price reductions offered will encourage more users to move to broadband services in the UK."


Expect to see a few more of these announcements over the next few weeks.

Vispa Internet Launch Virtual Internet Access

By:mark.j @ 9:57:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

No it's not a 'Buzzline' / 'AltaVista' style unmetered service where they say the system exists, when it clearly doesn't. Instead Vispa have sent along their latest press release regarding a VISP (Virtual Internet Service Provider) package for businesses/wannabe ISPs:

Vispa Internet is pleased to announce VispaVia v.2 (Virtual Internet Access) scheme, which has been designed to offer companies an unparalleled opportunity to harness the power of the Internet to leverage their business. In essence this scheme allows world-leading brands and organisations to promote a cutting edge ISP as their own. Vispa Internet provides all the technology and expertise to achieve this allowing VISP's to avoid having to invest in expensive infrastructure or lose focus on their core business.

The account creation process is very flexible. Customers sign-up for a free account through a customised web page whilst online, alternatively, the customer information can be entered by the VISP, and a set-up fee or monthly charge could be made for each account. Connection to the internet is then made by using a unique revenue generating 0845 national access telephone number charged at local call rates or via the new 0808 Unmetered FRIACO module.

Basic solutions start with a fixed 15Mb of web space available to each and a single pop3 mailbox with unlimited aliases in the form of anything@username.domain.suffix for each account, usenet newsgroup access etc right through to custom based setups and ideas.

Vispa's Virtual Internet Access solution also offers full domain name hosting, making it an ideal solution for web design companies to offer SME's flexible hosting packages. Domain Names can even be purchased at low cost via Vispa.

Every VISP is provided with a ever improving dedicated admin centre based on a dedicated managed server which allows the editing, enabling, disabling or deleting of accounts.

Overall Vispa is now estimated to powering 3% - 4% of the UK's VISP market due to our very flexible approach. If you have an idea, which you think could be based on a VISP, we will work to tailor our product to your needs. Contact Vispa's sales team on sales@vispa.net for more information or visit our web site http://www.vispa.net


Typically this is more of a business related press release.

Oftels Initial Dialup Net Access Review

By:mark.j @ 9:36:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Many of you may remember how we were engaged in helping Oftel conduct their review of Dial-Up Internet access during November/December of last year (2000). The early results were due to appear during May 2001, however they failed to surface because of more pressing matters and technical delays.

Today the Telecom regulator (Oftel) has finally issued the initial results of that review, although a full report and details are expected towards the end of the year.

As expected the initial review finds Britain's dial-up Internet access market is flourishing, with consumers getting a wide range of unmetered access services at competitive prices.

The review finds that competition is effective in the dial-up narrowband market and that 10 million households now have Internet access (35% with unmetered) - up from six million one year ago. Given the current market conditions then we'd have to agree, although this wasn't the area we aided them on.

For our part we aided Oftel in the understanding of common consumer complaints and problems. The review found consumers to be concerned about the quality of some services and access to information that aids them in making the right choice about provider.

Oftel now plans to consult industry and consumer groups before deciding whether it needs to take more action to promote further competition in the retail or wholesale markets. We'll be working with Oftel on these areas if and when the time comes.

News - July 29,2001

BT Could Sell Local Loop

By:rich.p @ 5:29:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

A group of banks has put in a bid of £8 billion for the BT Local Loop. These are the wires which link customers to the BT exchanges. According to THIS report in the Sunday Times:

"A CONSORTIUM of banks and finance houses has approached British Telecommunications with an £8 billion offer for the group's local-loop business - the lines and exchanges that link people's homes to the phone system.

The bid, codenamed Project Alchemy, is being led by Babcock & Brown, the American asset-finance house, and by Chancery Lane Capital, a small New York merchant bank.

Lethbridge first wrote to BT telling it of the consortium's ambitions on May 9. Under his proposal, BT would get about £8 billion in cash and then pay a fixed rental fee for each line it used to service its customers. It would retain the relationship with its consumers and would issue bills. The new owners would also offer the use of the system to other phone operators or cable companies.

BT rebuffed the offer last week but the consortium believes this is a ploy to stall the bid and that the phone company will enter negotiations soon. BT declined to comment."


If BT were to accept the bid it would help relieve the current debt problem and make it easier for other companies to use the LLU.

ISP Review Weekly Update

By:mark.j @ 10:26:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Once again the often-pale white (damn clouds) skins of we native British folk has been turned to brown and in some cases, RED =). Yes that's correct, we've actually got some sun! I'll be keeping this weeks update short because of it.

Aside from all the usual updates, we're presently working to make a few changes on the front page. This will hopefully improve navigation of older news items (by type) and streamline content in with some newer (future) sections.

Sadly the new forums have suffered a slight delay, we're still waiting on a hugely important piece of code before the final merging process can begin. Until then we've been concentrating on trying to refine the new forums layout, something that’ll continue into next week.

The new Readers Top 50 system has also been delayed, a fair portion of bugs were discovered during internal beta that seem to be taking longer than expected to resolve. Typically we always allow for such eventualities and so it's no great problem.

Expect a longer update next week, when it'll probably be back to a normal British summer - raining.

News - July 28,2001

Pipex First To Cut R/ADSL Prices

By:mark.j @ 9:18:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Although a little earlier than expected, Pipex has become the first major ISP to drop the cost of its ADSL service by the expected £5 per month amount. Much as we predicted, Pipex is one of the more expensive ADSL providers and thus has the flexibility to drop prices:

PIPEX Announces Price Reduction For Home Professional 500 USB ADSL Service - With Immediate Effect

27/07/2001 - PIPEX, the UK's first commercial ISP, is pleased to announce that, with immediate effect, it is reducing the cost of its ADSL Home Professional service from £49.99 to £44.99 a month, representing a saving of £60 a year to users. Both new and existing customers will benefit from this price reduction.

PIPEX is able to offer this new price as BT announced today that it would be reducing the cost of its 500 USB broadband circuits by £5 a month from 1 September 2001.

David Rickards, Managing Director of PIPEX, commented "At PIPEX we are committed to the promotion of broadband services to SMEs and home professionals. We believe this technology will prove to be the most significant advancement in the evolution of the Internet as it offers super fast connection, is always available, no dialling is necessary, there is no waiting and no on-line call charges - all in all, a win:win solution for businesses".

He continued, "We believe this price reduction will help boost broadband connection take-up, and are therefore very pleased to be able to pass this significant saving on to our customers immediately, rather than waiting until September".

PIPEX offer a range of ADSL services, including the Home Professional 500 USB service. For further information, please visit our web-site at http://www.dsl.pipex.net .


We'd expect similar announcements leading up to and on September 1st 2001, mostly from the more expensive providers. It'd certainly be interesting to see a cheaper one (BTOpenworld) drop by £5, if a little risky.

News - July 27,2001

PlusNET Introduce Updated Referral Scheme

By:mark.j @ 3:52:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

There aren't many providers with a referral scheme, although those that use one seem to prosper. One of the UKs most popular ISPs, PlusNet, has today issued an update to their own scheme - full Press Release follows:

Much more than your usual referral scheme. Why it pays to recommend PlusNet

PlusNet announce further improvements to their already popular customer referral scheme.



(Friday 27th July 2001, Sheffield UK) Customer referral schemes: once you’ve seen one you’ve seen ‘em all, you might think. That is, until now. PlusNet, the popular UK Internet Service Provider today announced an exclusive new method of generating new business based upon word-of-mouth recommendation.

Four weeks ago, PlusNet first announced to their customers the launch of ‘My Referral’ - a scheme whereby a discount is offered against a customer’s subscription for every signup generated upon referral. Applying to a range of PlusNet’s unmetered ‘Connect’ and broadband ADSL products, this scheme enables a customer to effectively get free Internet access when they recommend enough people.

Unlike most referral schemes, the discount is not a one-off payment but continues for as long as the recommended party remains a paying customer. “The ‘My Referral’ scheme has been well received from the outset”, stated Alistair Wyse, Product and Service Development Director for PlusNet, “Already, upwards of a third of our new subscribers are coming directly from referral”.

Today however, PlusNet announced that they are going one step further and encouraging their customers to actually MAKE MONEY on the deal! Once the total amount of discount generated through referrals becomes greater than the cost of your subscription, the difference is credited to you.

Wyse continued, “From the outset we have always generated most of our customer growth through referral. Today’s further enhancement to the scheme should go a long way to ensuring that this continues well into the future”.

By logging in to their state-of-the-art web site portal, PlusNet’s customers are able to make referrals with the aid of a simple form, and check on the results of their previous endeavours. They can see, at a glance, which of their referrals have signed up, how much discount this gives them and how much in total they are making from the scheme.


Plus.Net – The Smarter Way to Internet
http://www.plus.net

BT Blames Rivals For LLU Failure

By:mark.j @ 3:44:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Friday has been one of turbulence for BT, while shares seem to be creeping up and the cut of ADSL wholesale prices is likely to spur up-take (hopefully), job culling announcements still managed to drag things back down.

Then more bad news today as BT admitted they'd only handed out 163 local exchanges as part of LLU (Local Loop Unbundling). Anticipating an angry response, BT have been quick to blame their rivals for not taking anymore exchanges:

A BT spokeswoman told ZDNet that there are currently 40 exchanges where rival operators can install equipment, and that a further 50 will be available soon. "We've only handed over 163 lines, because that's all that the operators have asked for," she said. "We have the capacity to roll out 1000 lines per week".

However, with only 40 exchanges available so far BT has not managed to achieve what it has promised. Before the cross-party trade and industry select committee, chief executive Sir Peter Bonfield promised MPs that BT would make 600 exchanges available to competitors by June 2001 and 1,000 by the end of this year or early 2002.

According to BT, one reason for the slow rollout of ADSL is that other operators are still working on the technical side. "Most of those 163 lines are being used for testing. ADSL is new to BT, so it's even harder for the operators to get everything working," said the BT spokeswoman.


We're quite surprised by the ZDNet item and had hoped more exchanges would've been taken up, instead very little has changed in the past few months. Expect the usual angry response from rival operators and ISPs etc. over the weekend and into next week.

Brightview Buys IC24 - Preps Unmetered

By:mark.j @ 3:35:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

According to Net4Nowt, users of IC24 should be pleased to know that ‘Brightview’ (MadAsAFish owners) has purchased them for £4.5Million.

Sadly the new owner isn't going to re-introduce the original off-peak unmetered package, although they do have something else planned:

David Laurie, the managing director of Brightview, said, “It’s all going to be migrated over from Cable & Wireless to BT at our new facility in Rochdale. The ic24 subscribers will get a £12.99 24/7 offer which will go live beginning of September. The service will maintain the ic24 branding.

He added, “As far as the ic24 subscriber is concerned, they are going to get a cracking service. They are not going to lose any of their familiarity with ic24


In other words existing subscribers can either stay with their current 0845 dialup or invest a little in the new unmetered offer. Nobody really expected the originally offer to come back, it's now too economically unviable.

ISP Review Site Updates

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

Another Friday and yet another spate of general site updates, this time the 'Broadband', 'Complaints' and 'Unmetered ISP List' have seen the hand of change.

On the complaints front, SupaNet is once again the ISP seeing most problems and it seems they haven't managed to fix things, in fact they're getting worse. With no sign of improvement we've had to mark it down in our review. Avoid them until service improves.

The Unmetered/Freecall ISP list has also been split into three pages instead of the previous two pages; as yet we haven't made similar changes to the forum listings (may do later). So on top of a few updates and changes to the list itself, this should now make it load a little faster.

Finally the broadband page has been given the option to see 'ALL' the news posts for the past 200 days under any given type (ADSL, Satellite etc.). Simply click the '[More]...' link to see them. We'd integrate this into the main page as well, but time is short.

BT To Cut 6,000 Jobs

By:mark.j @ 10:29:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Due to their recently announced 70% fall in underlying first-quarter profits, it comes as no surprise that BT now plans a major culling of jobs. They'd recently proposed a 5,000 strong cull, although the new financial data means a 6,000 cut is more probable:

The company said on Thursday that its job cuts could total 6,000 this year rather than the 5,000 previously indicated, with 1,500 jobs likely to go at its Ignite corporate data business in Europe.

Given their other announcement below, none of this would seem to affect the pricing of R/ADSL. In fact it strengthens the ideals for using 'Wires-Only' / 'D.I.Y' R/ADSL installations, since there'll probably be less staff to do it anyway. More @ ZDNet.

BTs SHOCK USB ADSL Price Reduction!

By:mark.j @ 10:17:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Hats off to ADSLGuide this morning for bringing the top news of the hour, BTwholesale are to drop prices (to ISPs) for their BTipstream 500 service by £5, taking it from £35 to £30 per month.

We've been rumouring this to happen from internal contacts within BT for sometime, yet had thought BTs recent and poor financial results would've killed it. More so given today’s announcement of a potential 6,000 job loss @ BT.

Despite this and as predicted, the cut will take place from 1st September 2001:

In addition they have announced plans to run a field pilot in the next month for self-install ADSL, i.e. micro-filters which combined with the 'wires-only' option is intended to increase the demand for the service.

Paul Reynolds, CEO of BT Wholesale, said: "This pricing initiative is part of BT Wholesale's ongoing commitment to stimulate demand for broadband services in the UK."

The press release doesn’t mention whether the price cut will be passed onto ISP's for end-users who are currently in their initial 12 month contract term.


Sadly you shouldn't be expecting the savings to affect the cost of end user packages, although no doubt some ISPs will take advantage. If anything the cheaper providers will remain the same and the most expensive ones may drop slightly.

R/ADSL is still a 'knife edge' technology with ISPs making very little profit, thus most will probably use the savings to invest in further promotion and or service quality. Never the less it's a big step in the right direction, pity it only affects the USB 500 services.

High GPRS Pricing To Cause 3G Failure

By:mark.j @ 10:03:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

With all the major operators fighting tooth and nail to build the biggest and best 3G Broadband Wireless mobile networks for 2003, it’s no surprise the new GPRS technology is being eclipsed by the media.

Worse still, a new report by ‘Yankee Group’ spreads concern that unless GPRS prices fall fast, 3G could flop:

The Report examined the various pricing strategies employed for mobile data, including SMS, WAP, and i-mode, with a particular emphasis on GPRS, given its role as a test bed for future 3G applications and pricing models. It also makes recommendations on optimum pricing paradigms to stimulate demand, and ultimately, profitability for future data services.

"In most cases operators are still assessing market requirements through service trials, so strategies are still being refined, but the favored model at present is to charge by the amount of data consumed," according to Farid Yunus, senior analyst for the Yankee Group's Wireless/Mobile Europe research and consulting practice.

"This has been determined for the most part by legacy billing platforms and capabilities," he acknowledges, "but given the diversity and range of future data applications, this approach will prove inadequate both in the long term and in stimulating demand right now. While we understand the need for operators to recoup 2.5/3G network and service development costs as soon as possible, without lower and more flexible pricing we seriously doubt that consumers will be enthused and that a mass market will be created."


The item @ Infosync presents a problem that the industry must address if it's to succeed with 3G, especially given the gamble they're taking.

However despite the report, operators are unlikely to lower prices further given the debt mountain incurred by 3G licenses and network building. Certainly the mandatory option of having to pay for data traffic is putting most customers off, us included.

BTs Free Telephone Answering Service

By:mark.j @ 8:57:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

BT sent us along a short PR regarding their new-ish BT Answer 1571 service, which is an automated answering machine based on their digital exchange (DLE) technology:

With BT Answer 1571 you need never miss a phone call when you're surfing the net. Or when you're out and about, or already on the phone.

BT Answer 1571 greets a call with a pre-recorded message. In fact, it can answer at least two calls simultaneously. Then it takes the messages for you and plays them back when you're ready. *

The other good news is that BT Answer 1571 is absolutely free, even when you dial 1571 to retrieve your messages.

If you already have an answering machine you can still switch it on when you go out. But the beauty of BT Answer 1571 is that it will pick up messages that your answering machine can't - while you're on the phone or surfing the net.

* Messages cannot be accessed remotely and customers cannot change or personalise the BT Answer 1571 greeting. BT Answer 1571 is not available to customers on some exchanges in a small number of remote rural locations. Messaging service available from other suppliers. BT Answer 1571 is not compatible with the Net Chat software at present, so you will not be able to use BT Answer 1571 if you subscribe to Net Chat.


Apparently BT is investigating a way in which the technology can be integrated and accessed through their website, although this is still someway off.

News - July 26,2001

Oftel finalises plans for Telecoms Ombudsman

By:mark.j @ 4:19:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Hot off Oftels very own press page is their latest press release regarding the finalisation of their plans for the new Telecom Ombudsman. It's a fairly short PR and the important part follows:

Final plans for setting up a new Telecoms Ombudsman, in the first half of next year, to resolve disputes between consumers and telecoms companies have been published today by Oftel.

The Ombudsman will provide a new independent and impartial service, enabling consumers to resolve disputes with their telecoms company more quickly and easily without having to go to court.

Oftel has today set out the timetable for the introduction of the Ombudsman. The following are the key stages for implementation:

*The appointment of a Governing Board made up of public interest members;
*The Governing Board to appoint an Ombudsman;
*Agreement of the Ombudsman’s Terms of Reference and detailed Memorandum of Understanding with Oftel;
*Publicity campaign to raise awareness of the Ombudsman’s existence;
*Operational launch of Ombudsman.

Oftel believes that the industry will accept responsibility for establishing and running the scheme. This will ensure industry ownership and commitment and allow for greater flexibility in the detail of the scheme.

Oftel will work closely with the industry and consumer groups to ensure effective implementation and will take any necessary action to keep the project on track.


What follows that is the usual comments from Oftels director general, David Edmonds, about how happy he is with the plan, to be completed by summer 2002. Up until now Oftel hasn't been very good in dealing with direct consumer affairs and mostly handled business complaints/recommendations etc.

Hopefully the new system will open Oftel up to handling some of the more general problems than can inflict so many, yet often go unnoticed.

WonkyPig Refunds & Live Chat Update

By:mark.j @ 4:09:PM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

After going through more changes than a riverbed, the new unmetered ISP WonkyPig seems to finally be returning to some sense of normality.

The first good news from the ISP follows on from the refund issues raised after BigBlueSky's unmetered suspension, which WP once used before signing a new deal with BT Ignite:

Refunds
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2001

Customers who cancelled their service due to the Big Blue Sky closure, will be pleased to hear we have now refunded all customers today - Money should appear back in your accounts within the next 3 - 4 working days.


WP has also opted to go one step further, into a realm most ISPs have chosen not to take due to risking the ever-present wrath of any unhappy customers. They've added a live chat room for conversing with customer support staff and avoiding the expensive phone line:

Its Good Good To Talk
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2001

You can now contact us live via the web using our new liveperson software, our support team are available from 9am to 6pm on the web and phone as always - save your self 60 per min and use the web!


It's a bold move and we'll be interested to see whether it's a success or not, it's also good to hear that those waiting on a refund should finally get it. Hopefully this 'upward' trend will continue into future days, weeks and months. So if you think it’s “Good Good? to talk with WP live over the web then check their front page.

Industry Pressures ISPs Over File Trading

By:mark.j @ 3:55:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Freedoms of speech activists are likely to bite again following pressure on ISPs from the movie and music industry to crack down on post-napster illegal file trading (piracy):

ISPs say the last few weeks have seen a sharp upturn in the number of requests they're getting to pull the plug on subscribers who are using file-trading software, such as Gnutella or iMesh.

Driven by a combination of high-profile summer movie releases and a growth in the business of independent piracy hunters, these requests are putting service providers in an awkward position. Even as they avoid facing media-industry lawyers, these ISPs risk losing their customers to competing Internet access companies that may be less aggressive about curtailing the use of file-trading software.

High-speed Internet provider, Adelphia, a cable company based in Pennsylvania, is one of the latest to join the list of ISPs cracking down on file swapping in the post-Napster world. Like many other ISPs, it has started suspending accounts of people who have been identified by record companies or movie studios as file swappers.


The ZDNet item is long and well worth a read by anybody concerned for their personal online privacy. What worries us is not the current system of 'Inform and remove/suspend', but that it could lead to ISPs being allowed to monitor online users without regulation.

In essence we're back to square one with ISPs being made the police, something they're not trained to be. This is an issue still well open to debate.

BT Blames Loss On Broadband & Mobile

By:mark.j @ 3:41:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Nobody was expecting a huge improvement from BT given the current market conditions, although the national Telco was quick to blame its broadband and mobile services for much of the loss. This follows the publishing of their latest financial results:

Last year's £45m profit for the same period at BT's mobile division, BT Wireless, turned into a £95m loss. The company is expected to spin off its wireless division later this year. BTopenworld and BT Ignite continued to lose money.

Analysts believe that BT should have demerged its mobile division before now, and that the delay has wiped away a quarter of its market value.


As the VNUNet item states, they may have shaved a colossal £10Billion off their £27Billion debt, but there's still someway to go. This only serves to cast further doubt over hopes that BT might drop the monthly rental on consumer R/ADSL lines a little by Christmas.

The UKs Largest Internet Kiosk Network

By:mark.j @ 9:46:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Yesterday it was Bill Gates and Microsoft, today it's the government bringing enhanced Internet services (Kiosks) to various places around London for all to use. Touted as being designed to help stop the digital divide, 12 such Kiosks have now been placed around the city:

The i-plus points -- a joint initiative between technology company Cityspace and street furniture firm Adshel -- will provide free and accessible online services to residents and tourists, offering a convenient way for people to obtain local information, or communicate concerns about the area with their town councillor. It will also encorporate a free email service for incoming messages only.

"Westminster is one of the busiest areas of London, with an average daytime population of one million people, and the information points will provide them with up-to-the-minute, convenient information," said Robert Davis, chairman of customer services at Westminster City Council.

The flagship kiosk was opened in Oxford Street this morning, with a further 11 to be piloted in busy locations such as Bayswater and Victoria Street, and residential areas like Queen's Park and Pimlico. Local councils will host services on the i-plus points along the lines of Streetscene, which allows locals to alert the council to faults in the area such as out of order streetlights or litter problems. A further channel called e-street will contain details of events in the area and information about local shopping and entertainment facilities.


Although the ZDNet item doesn't say it, we'd like to think the new kiosks won’t go the way of the phone booth; used as an 'after hours' toilet.

BT Ignite Starts Promoting D.I.Y R/ADSL

By:mark.j @ 9:36:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Following BT Ignites recent meeting (Tuesday) with ISPs and operators regarding future ways of installing consumer R/ADSL, it would seem they have now started openly promoting the 'under trial' methods:

There is currently one trial going on that is "wires only", meaning that you are responsible for the modem and a BT engineer will install a service plate. What's a service plate? "It's a front plate that goes on your phone socket," a spokesman explained.

Why do we need an engineer to put a plate on the socket? Well, that's trial number two - soon to start - that will see a "microfilter" delivered to your home, which you put into the socket and enables phone and data traffic to be split.

The word "trial", especially coming from BT's mouth, may send a bolt a fear down your spine (ADSL was "trialled" for four years before the current sub-standard effort to make it available was started) but it reckons that they will be finished by the end of this year and you might get a DIY DSL pack in your Christmas stocking.


The Register goes on to explain how it won't help you get R/ADSL any quicker if your exchange isn't already enabled, but it should save both parties some time and money. Despite what the item states, BT is actually moving very fast (they have debt to cut) and as previously reported, a second meeting is set for 31st July.

Rumour has it that we should start seeing some early pricing details among other information on or before September 2001, the date when the first stage of BTs R/ADSL rollout will complete.

Entertaining New Blueyonder Promotion

By:mark.j @ 9:24:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

It was bound to happen sometime, as part of Telewest's £2.5Million broadband marketing campaign they've hit upon using 'police' methodology. DigitalSpy reports that the latest promotion for the cable modem based 'blueyonder' service is like a speeding ticket:

"Speed: 512kbps; Offence: Exceeding the speed limit by nearly 10 times"

Chad Raube from Telewest said of the new initiative:
"The mailer looks realistic and may leave people guessing for a few seconds, but, although we warn people that blueyonder is nearly ten times faster than a standard 56.6k modem, we do point out that it is perfectly legal!"


Whether it'll work or not remains to be seen, what we find most interesting is the use of 'nearly 10 times'. In fact even the PR guy uses 'nearly' in his language, possibly a sign the last 'Advertising Standards Agency' investigation (it failed) had some slight impact.

News - July 25,2001

Invasion Of The 'ANNOYING' Worms

By:mark.j @ 3:51:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Internet Worms are best described as a form of Trojan, meaning something that’s hidden behind something else, usually under a malicious pretence.

Over the last seven days several new Internet E-Mail worms have found their way on to the Internet, steadily causing chaos wherever they go. Although the majority of them are moderately harmless, there's no doubt that hundreds of thousands of sites and people around the world have been hit by one in the last few days.

They usually arrive as a .vbs / .bat or .exe file attachment with strange E-Mails, often from people you know. Apparently when run (never execute such things!) the Trojan will propagate and send itself on to all the people in your address book.

We ourselves have already seen a mass of these come from readers and some ISP E-Mails. What's worse is that if you don't remove the worm then it just keeps sending. We know several ISPs have had their customer support computers affected and that's part of the reason for today’s lack of ISP news.

We always say this and can't stress it enough, having a virus checker alone isn't enough to keep you safe; you must be vigilant. NEVER open attachment files on an E-Mail unless you can be 100% certain you know what it is, once you're infected it's difficult to remove.

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