It’s been a long time coming, but YouTube have finally signed a deal with Blinxbox that provides visitors from the UK – and currently, only the UK – access to a library of full length movies that net users can watch at their leisure. Before you get too excited though, it’s a very new service and while it include 400 films many of them are publically licensed and – by proxy – not all that great. We’re not really talking Hollywood quality here, and it’s nowhere near the full Blinxbox library.

It’s a start though, and perhaps with more support such a service might take off in the UK. However, it’s going to take more than a bunch of random old public licence films to excite people. When Spotify launched in the UK it already had many major record labels onboard and offering music for free. If it had just shipped with a few thousand albums that you could probably find in the storage room of your local charity store, it might not have taken off in the way it did.

YouTube are a little more optimistic about their new library however, pushing it as another way the video service is extending its range:

“This is one of many efforts to ensure that people can find all the different kinds of video they want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to full-length films and TV shows. We hope film lovers enjoy the range of titles in this free library, whether catching up on a mainstream hit or delving into the vast archive of classic films from decades past.”

It might be worth having a look even if the titles aren’t big name films, just to see if the service might be something you’d be interested in, in the future. There’s a number of services in the UK that can offer a similar service for a price, though none have come close to being as good as US film streaming website, Netflix, which cancelled plans for a UK expansion in 2004.

If you do decide to partake in some of YouTube’s new masterpieces make sure you’ve got the bandwidth too support watch an entire movie online. Even in standard definition streaming video can eat through a monthly bandwidth limit with surprising speed!

For the first time ever, a high profile consumer campaign has been launched to try and stop broadband providers from using the words ‘up to’ when advertising their broadband. Until now, most providers used ‘up to’ to stick their most highest possible speeds up in front of consumers either on the website or as a sales material in stores, tv or print. The gadget show is a well known channel FIVE television show which talks about different areas of technology and is hoping to make broadband advertising fairer.

The show referenced a recent Ofcom report that shows that the gap between advertised and real world speed has been increasing, especially for those currently using dongles for laptops and mobile broadband deals, but also even for regular DSL and Cable, with the average ‘up to 24 Mbps’ package only actually delivering an average of 6.5 Mbps!

Of course, there are some good reasons for the use of up to; it allows users to easily compare technology and much like many other forms of numbers used in sales, its there to give you a general indication and shouldn’t be used as an exact estimate. Because of this, it’s not likely we’ll see the term up to being banned from UK net advertise any time soon. We may however see some changes.

One of the most popular has already been announced by Ofcom that will let users leave their contract if their broadband speed doesn’t come close to the speed they were estimated – not advertised – when they signed up. However, currently this rule is voluntary and so for all intents and purposes useless for consumers in its current form. Let’s hope that this and other consumer campaigns can do something to change that. It is always advisable to compare broadband phone and tv packages prior to signing any contracts, and check what your estimated line speed is, not just your maximum speed for your chosen package. There is no point paying more money per month for the top speed package is your phone line is not capable of giving you a faster speed than the medium package, for example.

This week BT has revealed that it’s just received it’s 15 millionth connection in the United Kingdom, have received around 5,000 new users every day since around 2002, when BT was struggling to maintain around 200,000 subscribers. This leaves BT as the biggest internet provider in the UK by far – with Virgin following quite a long way behind with only 3.9 million customers.

However, the BT number isn’t just about people who are signed up for BT Broadband – it actually includes figures from Sky, TalkTalk, O2, Be and other providers that are actually not really a part of the BT network anymore and who run most of their network completely independently thanks to Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) technology which removes BT from having a monopoly on telecommunications.

Olivia Garfield, Strategy Director at BT said:

“Broadband Britain has been a success story with widespread availability, low prices and high take up. People were sceptical when BT backed broadband in 2002 but the figures speak for themselves with the vast majority of new customers choosing broadband over BT’s network rather than alternative ones where prices are far higher.”

In fact, in terms of the actual BT broadband server, people have been moving away from BT and looking at cheaper solutions and hunting out the best broadband deals. Many LLU providers offer better deals, a wider range of options and allow customers to access new technology faster than BT. If you live in a fibre optic cable enabled area, it may also be worth reading a few Virgin broadband reviews, to see if what Virgin offer is a good match for your needs. Another popular broadband provider (this time for ADSL) is Plusnet. again, it is abvisble as with any provider, to read a Plusnet broadband review (or several!) before going with them.

Around 73 per cent of households in the UK now have internet access, with around 9 million adults yet to go online in the UK – still quite a number for BT and the other providers to aim for! These numbers don’t include people using dongles for laptops or other mobile broadband connections.