Archive for September, 2010
Virgin boosts broadband upload speeds
Posted by Goobenation in Latest Broadband News on September 30, 2010
Virgin today changed the battle ground of the broadband sector by focusing on the upload side of their business.
Claiming that the growth of social networking, media sharing and video blogging sites has called for a drastic increase in the demand for high-speed reliable uploading the broadband company has doubled the upload speeds across all of their packages.
This free speed boost comes in the face of ongoing debate in the sector regarding the cost of up scaling connection speeds both in urban areas through the use of superfast fibre infrastructure and in rural areas with mobile, fibre and old-style broadband roll outs all on the cards.
To match the increase in speeds available, Virgin has also increased the allowances it gives for data transfer during peak times to ensure that the increased speed is not rapidly re-bottle necked by the traffic management systems.
Changes are afoot too on the download side with the company announcing that they are continuing to refine their network management with an aim to reserve three quarters of their network resources for requests that are time sensitive with other traffic being tiered below.
For an unbiased opinion of Virgin Media’s broadband service, you may want to read some Virgin broadband reviews.
As before, where accessible, Virgin continues to offer its fibre optic broadband without any monthly usage limits. For people not living in a cable enabled area (fibre optic cable, specifically), it is best to check out reviews of various ADSL suppliers, such as this Plusnet broadband review
Broadband not good enough say small businesses
Posted by Goobenation in Latest Broadband News on September 27, 2010
Over 60% of small businesses in the UK are unhappy with the current government progress on the improvement of broadband speeds, a survey commissioned by the FSB has uncovered.
Amongst the primary complaints of the 63% of small ferms who wanted the government to do more to boost speeds were internet service providers giving inaccurate advice and poor provision of broadband in rural areas.
The net effect the national chairman of the FSB, John Walker, said is that barriers to expansion and modernisation are stifling small business. Indeed the inability to rely on high-speed internet access means that more efficient and flexible solutions such as cloud computing and e-commuting were not currently viable for small business.
This is seen to have an impact not only in terms of the balance sheet but also in terms of being able to go out and compete with larger corporations who can bankroll improvements in their infrastructure.
Moreover, for start-up firms wishing to avoid major costs the inability to move to cloud services and to downsize office space and staff could make beginning new internet-reliant businesses prohibitively expensive.
The hope is that this research, released in the period before the Conservative and Labour conferences will spark debate and hopefully highlight the issues faced by small businesses in the sector.
Getting The Best Broadband and Phone Deals
Of course, whether you are looking for home or business broadband, it is always a good idea to shop around for the best broadband and phone deals, so that you are certain you are getting the right deal for you.
3 Tops Mobile Broadband Consumer Testing
Posted by Goobenation in Latest Broadband News on September 23, 2010
3 has been picked out as the number one mobile broadband provider in the UK in a set of recent tests carried out by Broadband Expert, the broadband comparison site.
The road to the top wasn’t easy though with Vodafone wining the mantle of the quickest provider with an average download speed of 1.78Mb (with 3 clocking in at 1.76MB). T-Mobile managed to pick up two awards being voted top of both the Customer Satisfaction and Fair Pricing categories. Overall though it was 3 that was ruled to be the best all-rounder as well as offering the best reception across the UK.
Along with crowning 3 as the top provider, Rob Webber, Commercial Director of Broadband Expert. gave T-Mobile an honorable mention.
The tests were drawn from a combination of customer surveys and speed tests over the first eight month of 2010 with a whopping 11,000 mobile customers taking part.
The profitability of the mobile broadband sector though has been questioned in recent months with dongle sales falling by over 50% over the course of the last year. This is in the face of fantastic changes to both speed and coverage of networks, which were the two major criticisms of early adopters.