Archive for category Broadband Reviews
Sky add 711,000 customers in just one year
Posted by Jeremy in Broadband Reviews on July 30, 2011
Today Sky announced its full year results and the Sky Broadband arm of the company was shown to have had a rather impressive twelve months of trading. Sky Broadband has indicated that they have had 174,000 new customers joining Sky over the last three months leading up to June 2011, which means that they have enlisted a total of 711,000 new customers over the last twelve months, which is incredible news. given that most broadband companies feel that most of the people out there who are going to use broadband already use broadband, this figure would suggest that there have been major losses for other broadband companies out there, but not results from other providers can yet show a correlation to the enormous increase in customers for Sky.
These results are highly impressive, but they only really mirror what Sky have been seeing for years now with their broadband service. Sky have indicated that they have taken on an average of 77 new customers of every hour of every day since they started offering their broadband service five years ago.
Sky have also increased their overall number of users by 784,000 in the last quarter, to 25.4 million people, which is an incredible percentage of the demographic. Sky HD subscriptions are also up significantly to 3.8 million which is a 30% year on year increase.
Of course, this information indicates that Sky must be a pretty good bet for a good broadband connection, but you really do have to check information on the internet to make sure you use the right provider for you. Try to use the broadband comparison service sites that are available online so that you make the best decision possible.
Service providers are still misleading consumers regarding broadband speeds
Posted by Jeremy in Broadband Guides, Broadband Reviews, Latest Broadband News on July 30, 2011
Broadband speeds continue to rise in the UK with the national average at a fairly respectable 6.8Mbps, but we are still finding that there is a big difference between ‘up to’ speeds and actual speeds achieved.
Around half the people in the country are using broadband subscription services with an advertised broadband speed of 10Mbps, but very few people can reliably achieve speeds like this. Ofcom’s biannual report didn’t go as far as to condemn the latest policies regarding broadband speed advertising, but they did suggest changes be made to the way these services are advertised. Virgin Media was one of the few companies who didn’t fare too badly in the study, and they have in the past criticised competitors of misleading the public.
Although speeds have reached an all time high average, it is also true to say that the gap between advertised speeds, and those achieved has now widened to the largest gap since broadband has been available. The average advertised speed is now 15Mbps, but this is some 8.2Mbps higher than the national average.
Perhaps more worryingly, the report also revealed that 24% of services advertised of reaching speeds of 24Mbps actually failed to get any higher than 4Mbps:#
“The research is still telling us that some consumers are not receiving anywhere near the speeds that are being advertised by some ISPs,” said the Ofcom chief Executive Ed Richards.
However, the report also indicated that super fast broadband, which is classified as being in excess of 24Mbps, is now available in 57% of homes, which is quite a significant figure, given the Government’s promises to make this service available to the majority of the country by the end of 2015.
In some respects things are looking up, but more transparency would certainly help the general public to have a little more faith in the ISP’s currently dominating the market place.
BT set to upgrade 2.5 million homes with copper broadband
Posted by Jeremy in Broadband Reviews, Latest Broadband News on July 29, 2011
BT have announced that they will be upgrading more than 2.5 million homes and businesses with its copper based broadband service which offers up to 20Mbps
Only a year or two ago, BT were claiming that they were hoping to reach around 20 percent of the company with this service, but since that time, they are now looking at a more impressive 90% of the population that will be bale to access the service by the spring of 2013.
There will be upgrades to around 800 of the exchanges throughout Britain to make this happen, which is obviously quite an undertaking when the main focus is on the provision of fibre optic connections. Alex Pannell, the director of product management at BT said this on the subject:
“This is a significant expansion of our roll-out plan and is further proof of our commitment to serve rural areas. The faster speeds will support the government’s aim of enhancing broadband speeds for both town and countryside,”
The current president of the Country Land and Business Association was not quite as positive about the news though, and although he was pleased with BT’s efforts, he indicated that more could be done for the ten percent that are likely to miss out:
“The necessary copper upgrade of exchanges to provide access of at least 2Mbps will give economic power to rural areas. However, we are still concerned that at least 10 percent of rural areas may never have access to fixed line broadband and this is where the government’s promised funding for rural broadband should be targeted. Too many areas across the UK have very limited access to mobile telephony. Extending better mobile phone coverage to rural areas is as important as ensuring effective broadband for businesses to compete fairly with their urban counterparts and to prevent communities from being socially disadvantaged”.
It is clear that something has to be done to service those in the most remote areas, but it at least appears that BT is looking to deliver a widespread service that can enable as many people as possible in the shortest time possible, which has to be a good thing for broadband in the UK.