October 19, 2001 - October 22, 2001
News - October 22,2001
CloudNine Circles Nutshell Carcass
By:mark.j @ 4:12:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] With barely any information being released from inside Nutshell following Friday’s suspension of unmetered services, it's no surprise rival ISPs have already moved into vulture mode.
The second such ISP, CloudNine, has today issued a new press release regarding their latest influx of ex-Nutshell customers:
Cloud Nine have seen a massive increase in subscriptions over the last 5 days following the suspension of the Net in a Nutshell unmetered service. We would like to welcome all the new Nutshell customers who have signed up and hope that they find our service to be of the excellent quality that we try to provide. The increase in new subscriptions is much bigger than that seen after the 08002go failure.
Emeric Miszti, CEO of Cloud Nine says "Cloud Nine are now in our sixth year of Internet service provision and over the last 12-15 months have demonstrated that is possible to deliver a good quality unmetered service whilst still maintaining profitability and a sound business model at appropriate prices. Our 5th year that ended in March showed both record sales and record profits and this was driven by the success of our Surftime unmetered packages."
Cloud Nine have been profitable for 3 years out of the first 5 and have financed investment essentially from cashflow, thus we are in the unique position in the ISP industry of being a totally debt free company! This sound model has been replicated for our unmetered services and our Surftime offering is now profit making and our FRIACO products will break even this month after just 3 1/2 months after launch.
Emeric Miszti says "In the increasingly turbulent world of ISP provision I am delighted that Cloud Nine has a sensible business model. We are a conservative company that doesn't believe in over-extending ourselves and consequently we should provide a good home for those that have been shunting from failed ISP to failed ISP. Our compound growth rate is 55% per annum and we believe that this is a manageable growth rate. We are just investing another £150,000 over the next few months that will enable us to continue providing a reliable and complete range of ISP services".
Cloud Nine have metered and unmetered packages as well as sophisticated web and email hosting options for home users, home workers as well as businesses.
We very much doubt CloudNine are the only ISP to benefit, although much like Lions in a jungle, they'll remain quite and wait for the carcass to be left alone before making a meal; provided there's any meat left.
Sources close to Nutshell have stated that they're currently in heavy negotiations with their supplier Cable & Wireless (C&W) and aren't willing to issue an update until there’s something to say. Apparently the ISP has been surprised by the anger it’s received on newsgroups and forums, which is a famously arrogant thing to say. |
COLT Telecom Continues Decline
By:mark.j @ 3:59:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] The COLT Telecom Group, which is behind several UK ISPs, has today reported a continuing decline in the wholesale bandwidth market and its flat third-quarter core earnings.
The telecoms operator said on Monday it had seen corporate customer demand grow, but demand in the wholesale bandwidth market had continued to fall.
"These trends are continuing and we do not expect any change before the end of the year," COLT Chairman Jim Curvey said in a statement.
Turnover rose 39% to 231.4 million pounds on the previous year, and five percent on the second quarter. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation was 6.4 million pounds in the third quarter, largely unchanged on the previous quarter. COLTs shares dropped 20% following the announcement. |
Hutchinson 3G Looks Toward Porn
By:mark.j @ 3:51:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] There's always one.. If you can put pictures on it then somebody somewhere will use it for porn, this time it's broadband wireless operator Hutchinson 3G UK.
The group plans to look at ways of delivering pornography over its third generation (3G/UTMS) broadband wireless mobile phone networks:
The initial technology available on the handsets, due to be released late next year, will allow users to download full colour static images.
Future plans will allow video clips to be downloaded and played on the phones.
Because of the huge costs involved, the operators need to recoup after shelling out over £20bn for 3G licences. Some analysts have said that third generation porn offerings could be a valuable revenue stream.
We can't help but be reminded of the disaster that befell mono screen WAP mobiles earlier in the year =). More @ VNUNet. |
Shareholders & Unions To Stone BT
By:mark.j @ 3:45:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] It looks as if BT could be in for a serious backlash during tomorrow’s shareholder meeting at the NEC in Birmingham. The Debt laden Telco plans to push through the demerger of its mobile division, although with rows of unions and shareholders, things could get hostile:
BT is confident that it will gain the 75% of votes needed to carry the demerger at the extraordinary general meeting (EGM), having held its own discussions with large shareholders to generate and gauge support.
But the Communications Workers Union, which contains around 80,000 BT employees, will be making “an eleventh hour bid to save BT from inflicting ‘insane’ damage on itself by breaking itself up.”
The CWU is expected to organise a demonstration of several hundred members outside the meeting as well as join up with Connect, the union for communications professionals, to question the BT board. The two unions will also hand out leaflets to shareholders asking them to vote against the demerger and have jointly organised a petition among their members to be presented before the meeting to the company.
It'll be interesting to see if BT survives the onslaught, More @ netimperative.com . |
V21 Snaps Up Surfbanana Users
By:mark.j @ 10:54:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] The 'child-friendly' unmetered dialup ISP, V21, has responded to the problems @ Surfbanana (see below) by offering ex-subscribers a special 48 hour trial of V21's own services:
V21 would like to offer all Ex- Surfbanana users a free 48 hour trial of our service.
To take advantage of this offer, please use the signup code of surfb .
Unfortunately for V21, Surfbanana’s appeal wasn’t that of a subscription service, but the ability to buy unmetered online time from a shop shelf using ‘Internet Cards’. |
Do-Do.tv/ISP Situation Update
By:mark.j @ 10:49:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] Two weeks ago we reported on a new unmetered ISP (Do-Doisp), which was apparently associated with David Singleton, the man most responsible for the BigBlueSky fiasco.
This was based on the fact that his personal E-Mail address had appeared in the 'Contact us' link / page; however was later explained as a database error. Despite seeming like a ridiculous excuse, we were inclined to believe it.
Soon after it was shown that while erasing his personal E-Mail, Singleton had neglected to update the forwarding details on Do-DoISP's own official E-Mails. Messages were thus being returned showing Singleton's personal address as the forwarded recipient.
We quickly set about chasing this up and are sorry to say that none of the companies involved are being very helpful. NeonHippo had kindly promised us a management contact for Do-Do, yet this failed to materialise.
Clearly the new evidence couldn't be so easily explained (lied?) away and somebody wasn't telling the whole truth.
To date Do-Do hasn't even attempted to respond or explain the situation, a quick visit to their website now returns a 'Could not connect to the server' error.
We may never know exactly what happened, although it's proof that you can't always put you're faith in what ISPs tell you, as if we didn't know =). |
Surfbanana Falls Victim To Nutshell
By:mark.j @ 10:10:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] Some of you might remember how we reported on a new 'Internet Cards' start-up by the name of Surfbanana (see unmetered list), which at one time found itself on BigBlueSky's domain.
Typically this was an unmetered 'Cards' service backed by Nutshell's system and has also bitten the 'suspension' bullet. A statement was posted in our forum, although typically they haven't confirmed it's authenticity with us directly:
We can confirm we learned late on Friday evening of difficulties our provider was experiencing in maintaining the SurfBanana service.
We regret this deeply and are doing everything in our power to ensure first, that the service is resumed as soon as possible and second, that all customers who have purchased a SurfBanana card are not left out of pocket. Users who wish to do so can return their card to the retailer from whom they purchased it, who will give them a full refund.
We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to all our customers for the obvious disappointment and inconvenience, and will let you know as soon as we are able to offer the service again.
Sales Administration
SurfBanana
We're hearing that Nutshell will be issuing further details regarding their service and its future sometime during today. It's worth noting that the service has been 'suspended', not 'closed', although it won't make much difference to angry customers. |
News - October 21,2001
Forum Upgrade - Progress Report
By:mark.j @ 12:57:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] UPDATE2: The status bug is fixed and we also fixed an issue with signatures (extra space) and re-added the 'stars' mod.
UPDATE: We've removed the ability to see 'User Status' (Member etc.) until such as time as we can fix the problem. Forum online.
We've upgraded the forums, although after getting around two bugs we came across one last showstopper, which must be fixed before we can fully re-open things.
The bug output data under the member status on the left of the post (Member / Moderator etc.); it'd show your last post and date/time for that last post.
This was output from one of the features we no longer have installed and wasn't removed with the rebuild process. We should be able to remove this through a crude STRIP method that removes unused lines from the member profile.
Typically we're having to backup 4,100 member files (takes time) first to be safe and then re-build the forums one last time, shouldn't be long now. |
ISP Review Weekly Update
By:mark.j @ 11:14:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] It's been another busy week as we continue our bandwidth saving efforts and report on all the usual news. Friday was especially difficult with the suspension of Nutshell's unmetered ISP service, which caused our forums to go offline.
Thankfully we're planning to upgrade the forum technology sometime today, which could be extremely tedious and time consuming. Note that because 90% of our forums features are third-part customization, it'll appear somewhat bare for two weeks until we re-add everything.
Many of the features such as 'Who's Online', 'Extra Smilies', 'Stars', and 'Poll / Surveys' etc. will be missing for this period and old topics using polls won't work. We're sorry but this has to be done and will ultimately result in a faster and more functional forum anyway.
As you'd guess all this unexpected work has delayed other things such as the new 'Reader Top ISPs' system, 'Articles', 'Reviews' and a new colour theme. Thankfully everything’s now built; it's just a matter of installing it all over the next few weeks.
In short, expect our forums to be offline for 2 hours (estimate) today while we upgrade them (starting soon after this news). When they're back we'll let everybody know and explain what's new. Note that the format will be bare until we re-add the usual features and our new layout (forum wise). |
News - October 20,2001
ISP Review Site Update
By:mark.j @ 10:22:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] UPDATE: We're happy to report that testing of our new forum software (private location) has shown the previous showstopper bug no longer exists.
Tomorrow we'll see if it'll still works when we install two of our essential custom features, if so then we shall upgrade the existing forums.
Sorry for yesterday night’s forum outage, Nutshell's Suspension forced more people onto it than we could handle. It wasn't a bandwidth issue, more related to the CPU cycles required for 100 - 200 people live on the forums at once.
Typically we took them offline for 10 minutes to run a rebuild, the moment they came back the same thing happened again and so we took them offline for the whole night. This is one of the reasons we need to upgrade.
On the subject of upgrading, the final forum code is now out and we'll be testing it over the weekend and into next week. More tomorrow.. |
PlusNET Introduce New Broadband
By:mark.j @ 10:14:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] Popular unmetered and broadband ISP, PlusNET, has today furnished us with their latest press release regarding a further increase to their range of R/ADSL services for business and home workers. We’ve removed some of the ‘common knowledge / descriptive paragraphs’ to save space:
ADSL choice is widened for professional users
(October 19th 2001 Sheffield, UK) - Today sees the launch of a further two new broadband (ADSL) products by PlusNet, the popular UK ISP. Offering exceptional high-speed Internet connectivity for both professionals and home workers, the new services enhance still further PlusNet's already comprehensive range of options available to business users.
"Our market research has shown that many people found the current range of ADSL services to be somewhat restrictive for users with a single PC," stated Alistair Wyse, Product and Services Director for PlusNet. "There was a noticeable demand for the higher bandwidth options of 1000kbps and 2000kbps from power users and home workers in particular. ADSL Professional 1000 and 2000 now offers those demanding higher bandwidths all the options they need, with room to grow as their business grows."
Indeed, those subscribing to PlusNet's new 'single-user' broadband ADSL Professional services have a fully-network-compatible ADSL Business account just a 'one-click' upgrade away, via their fully-interactive and configurable Portal web site.
"ADSL's 'always-on' capability and its high data transfer speeds, together with its fixed cost, makes it an ideal, cost-effective way to get any business online," said Mr Wyse.
If you'd like to hear more about how your business could benefit from
PlusNet broadband ADSL, call our friendly sales team on 0845 140 0200 today! |
Security Laws To Force ISP Price Hike
By:mark.j @ 10:06:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] It would appear that the cost of implementing all of the government’s new security and snooping measures, which are to be forced onto ISPs, will ultimately hit the customers; as you'd expect:
Industry watchers warned that without additional funding, ISPs would be forced to raise prices, threatening e-commerce. "Collecting and storing this data will be a burden on service providers. Where the government imposes this requirement, it has to help finance it," said Tim Conway, director of industry affairs at the Computing Services and Software Association (CSSA).
Home secretary David Blunkett told the Commons, "Being able to find out from service providers whether a call was made at a certain time makes sense. Holding that information for a longer period than would otherwise be commercially desirable threatens no one except those who are up to no good."
Apparently the final set of anti-terrorism proposals, at least that's what they call them, will be put before parliament next month for ratification. While some of the measures are fair, most have nothing to do with anti-terrorism and are simply riding the wave unhindered. Watch you're privacy disappear.. |
Hutchison Joins With 3G Lab
By:mark.j @ 9:53:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] The UKs newest 3G broadband wireless operator, Hutchison 3G UK, has signed a deal with 3G Lab to co-develop multimedia-type applications in time for the launch of Hutchison’s 3G network next year:
Operators are being especially coy about the types of applications that they will offer when 3G services become available, but the indications are that the two companies will be focusing on the consumer market, developing entertainment and media-type applications such as interactive games, news and video and multimedia messaging.
3G Lab sales and marketing director Bob Last outlined his expectations: “A lot of things will be consumer-led. Entertainment will be a massive dimension, as well as media and ‘novelty’ services. There’s a natural tendency for people to share information and send images of what they’re doing.”
He was more reluctant to comment on whether 3G applications are going to be ready in time: “Because 3G offers so many possibilities, its difficult to gauge progress.”
More @ netimperative.com . |
News - October 19,2001
V21 Unmetered Service Update
By:mark.j @ 4:17:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] Thankfully some more good news comes via way of a service update to V21's unmetered offering, which is as follows:
V21.co.uk is now pleased to announce another upgrade to their unmetered dial up platform. We have now brought online a new mail server, secondary dns server and an additional free web space server.
BT have finally agreed to completely rebuilt our private network thus put an end to the inconsistency of dns records and firewall issues. This is scheduled to take place on Thursday 25th October.
There's no mention of whether the rebuild will cause any network problems, although we'll no doubt find out soon enough.
V21 has also been quick to capitalise on Nutshells suspension (see our forum), suggesting Ex-Nutshell customer try V21. Yet people will be increasingly cautious following nutshells announcement. |
Fibernet To Launch Unbundled Broadband
By:mark.j @ 4:08:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] Finally some good news, Fibernet looks set to be one of the first operators to offer unbundled telecoms services to the public, such as unbundled broadband xDSL etc.:
One of the few companies to remain in the local loop unbundling process, it is set to announce at the end of the month that it is ready to offer SDSL (Synchronous Digital Subscriber Line) services from around 30 exchanges.
Fibernet has highlighted a total of 221 exchanges, which it believes will enable it to offer broadband services to more than 55,000 small and medium sized business.
Announcing its preliminary results for the year ended 31 August 2001, Fibernet reported increased turnover and profits at that Basingstoke-based company.
Sadly The Register doesn't mention any unbundled R/ADSL broadband options, which isn't surprising since most operators only seem to be following the SME business broadband path. Several other operators are currently testing LLU based services in private regional trials. |
Telco Service Quality Falling
By:mark.j @ 4:00:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] According to research from the Communications Managers Association (CMA), Fixed-line (BT etc.), mobile and Internet (ISP) services have deteriorated in the UK since the end of 2000:
Energis, Telewest and Colt scored seven out of 10 for the reliability and quality of their networks and services, just above the industry average of 6.2. BT and Cable & Wireless Communications scored six.
Mobile network Orange is the only company to have improved in quality, say its business customers.
In times of economic uncertainty, managers most want telcos to offer them security and quality, says Mark Smith, deputy director general of the CMA.
The survey conducted of 562 senior communications managers isn't anything out of the ordinary given the last year’s serious downfall in Dot.Com and Telco industry economics. Apparently companies using BTs fixed-line services also fell from 80% to 74%, with other Telco's such as C&W seeing similar declines. More @ VNUNet. |
Oftel Investigate BT Underselling ADSL
By:mark.j @ 3:53:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] BT has become exasperated following Oftels decision to investigate allegations that the troubled Telco is deliberately underselling wholesale R/ADSL services in order to force rivals out of business:
Following BT’s reduction of installation charges for wholesale high-speed internet services from £150 to £75 for a three month trial period starting in September, Oftel has demanded financial documentation from BT and has launched an investigation into its strategy.
However, BT has hit back, claiming that the price cuts represented genuine attempts to stimulate demand: “We find it a bit rich that we receive so much criticism from the industry for not reducing prices and when we do we’re put under investigation,” said a spokesman.
However, Oftel insisted it was only doing its job: “We’ve received complaints and are investigating cuts in BT’s wholesale prices. While we welcome price cuts if they benefit consumers, these allegations are of anti-competitive behaviour.”
Much as we hate to admit it, BT does have a point, although we'll have to wait and see how the investigation pans out before jumping to any conclusions ourselves. More @ netimperative.com . |
Nutshell ISP SUSPEND Unmetered
By:mark.j @ 3:35:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] Perhaps there was some truth in earlier rumours that Nutshell owed C&W £1,000,000 to £2,000,000 for the dialup (based on our internal contact), either way the service has today been officially suspended.
The following comes directly from their help page and explains all the engage tones (today):
Due to cirumstances beyond Nutshell's control, the Internet service is currently suspended. All enquiries should be directed by e-mail to cancel@nutshell.net
Much as you'd expect the backlash has already begun and despite all their promises the ISP now looks to be going the way of 08002Go only a week or two before it.
This is easily one of the heaviest blows to the unmetered ISP industry due to Nutshell's extensive links with other organisations and VISPs. Stranger still is the fact that Nutshell had actually started to improve during the early part of this week.
Hopefully this is only an issue confined to ISPs backed by Cable & Wireless (C&W), should BTSurf/WebPort24 backed ISPs using similar economics start to fade then more serious problems could be at hand. Ultimately we're awaiting a full statement from the ISP as to what the future holds.. Stay tuned.. |
ISP Review Site Update
By:mark.j @ 12:30:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] Whoops.. while backing up the news files an incorrect automation command erased the key news data file instead of saving it =(. Thankfully our archives were untouched and we've been able to restore those through the obvious (archives) section.
Typically the main news page is now looking a bit flat, although knowing us that'll quickly change. Also note that our ISP complaints page has been updated along with a small change to the unmetered ISP listings section. |
BBW Auction Did NOT Harm Industry
By:mark.j @ 12:19:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] One of the government’s parliamentary watchdogs, The National Audit Office (NAO), has rejected claims that the £22.5Billion auction of advanced mobile phone licences (3G) damaged the telecoms industry.
Apparently operators will suffer from paying for a radio spectrum they previously received for free, meaning their rates of return on investments and value of their businesses will be lower, the NAO said in a report on the auction.
"But though there has been a downturn in confidence in the industry since the auction, difficulties are not solely due to auction and operators are still able to invest in developing services," it said.
Some operators and analysts have said the high price of the licences will hurt the industry. This follows in the wake of recent changes to the way licenses are handled and paid for in France. |
24-7FreeCalls Special 3 Month Offer
By:mark.j @ 12:18:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] According to Net4Nowt the recently re-launched unmetered dialup ISP, 24-7FreeCall, is to offer the next 25,000 subscribers the first three months of access for £30 (£10 PM), after that it'll revert to £14.99.
Apparently the ISP went on to say that "Over the coming months we hope to be launching more innovative ISP services" concludes Abdin. "With Christmas coming up we feel that this is a good time to offer a service that provides a quality product for a very competitive price."
Sadly there's not a single mention of when this deal is due to start and nor is there anything on the web site itself. When we checked again (just now) the site couldn't even be reached, we haven't heard from 24-7FC directly in awhile. |
BTOpenworld Grabs GamesDomain
By:mark.j @ 12:17:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] In a bid to show that BTOpenworld 'IS' good for gaming (especially multiplayer) they've snapped up the assets of Games Domain, whom you may remember as previously offering a special deal on Nutshell's ISP:
Along with a UK user base of 800,000 players, BTopenworld has also acquired the rights to give Games Domain members access to online games without them having to pay the full purchase price.
The Software To Go trial is available as either a pay-per-hour, weekend, 48-hours or week option, with 10 minutes of free play on each title.
BTopenworld said that Games Domain would also serve as a platform for its own online gaming developments coming later this year.
The VNUNet item along with all the others we've read doesn't make it completely clear as to exactly how GD itself will change or merge into BTOpenworld, if at all. |
BTO Damaging R/ADSLs Image
By:mark.j @ 12:17:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] Several Industry experts (analysts) have today struck out against BTOpenworlds handling of such things as Peer-To-Peer file transfers, which could be doing damage to R/ADSLs image and consumer confidence in broadband:
Yankee Group analyst Andy Greenman believes that home Internet users could be put off from buying BT's broadband service. Other ISPs who sell ADSL services could also suffer, Greenman warned. He predicts that the episode could benefit ntl and Telewest, as it might encourage users to invest in their cable modem offering instead.
"Admitting to port throttling will add further doubt over the incumbent's broadband capabilities," wrote Greenman in a research note published this week. "Consumer confidence may be damaged."
ZDNet's item makes a very good point; with the high price and number of ISPs involved, damaged consumer confidence in R/ADSL broadband technologies is the last thing the market needs. |
Operators Respond - New LLU Pricing
By:mark.j @ 12:15:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE] Following on from Oftels recent changes to their Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) pricing structure, the first operators have responded.
Bulldog Communications were the first to welcome Oftels price change, although have been quick to point out a fault in Oftels "one of the lowest LLU prices in Europe" remark:
While the competitiveness of the charges might be below the EU average, it accepted, they were still higher than those in France and Germany, it said.
Following that and much as expected, the next operator to comment was none other than BT itself. As we're familiar with by now, BTs response wasn't a happy one:
According to BT, the company expected shared access prices to be pegged at the level settled on by Oftel, but rejected the regulator’s findings on co-location services: “BT has serious reservations about the underlying assumptions behind Oftel’s decision,” said a company spokesman.
BT has again rejected criticisms that it has obstructed the unbundling process, claiming to have recently installed a fully automated system for processing orders from companies needing local loop access: “It’s BT’s biggest IT project in about 15 years,” said a spokesman.
BT went on to highlight how a lack of demand for LLU was still a very serious problem with keeping the whole thing viable. You can read more @ netimperative.com and The Register . |
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