Weekly Broadband News Roundup (21st Mar 08)

By Neil Hawkins Staff Writer Friday, 21 March 2008

PLUSNET can do no wrong as it collects another award for generally being a good egg all round. Meanwhile Virgin Media makes it cheaper for broadband customers to get help and the internet’s architect has a word about privacy.

Featured Broadband Providers This Week Compare the broadband packages of: Compare broadband packages from Plusnet Compare broadband packages from Virgin Media Compare broadband packages from Red Ten Related Broadbands News See our other recent related news stories: Which broadband providers offer free telephone support? ARE you paying too much for your broadband providers' technical support? Is your broadband provider in the telephone support Hall of Fame or Hall of Shame? Julia Kukiewicz reveals the best and worst for broadband telephone support. Broadband News Roundup (14 Mar 08) IN his weekly roundup of broadband news, Neil Hawkins looks at the catrastrophe over at Redten Internet as well as lower prices for Plusnet broadband. Broadband News Roundup (07 Mar 08) LOOKING back at the week's broadband news, Neil Hawkins discovers O2 Broadband has already reached 100,000 customers, Virgin Media's £10 broadband size M is back, how YouTube became NoTube and wonders how many times will Samuel L Jackson say the word 'Motherf*cker' in his new Virgin Media advert.

David destroys Goliath in Broadband Provider awards

THE 2008 Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) awards were announced at the end of last week and the top 10 biggest ISPs won a resounding zero.

Broadband provider PlusNet walked away with the ‘Best Consumer ISP’ award beating such giants as BT, Virgin Media and Orange Broadband whilst the relatively unknown NewNet took away the coveted ‘Best Broadband Provider’ gong.

PlusNet’s attitude toward customers was highly praised.

“The judges agreed that PlusNet put their customers first with transparent usage allowances rather than vague fair use policies and their self developed traffic management system," said an ISPA spokesperson.

"The judges also felt that PlusNet’s one month contracts were very beneficial to consumers.”

Virgin Media cut support costs for customers

VIRGIN Media has finally decided to drop its overpriced technical support telephone number in favour of a cheaper one. Yippee!

They are bringing in an 0845 number to replace the current 0906 one which means call costs will be reduced from 25p per minute to between 0.5p and 2p per minute for BT landlines and free for Virgin Cable customers via 151.

A spokesperson told The Register that "Whilst calls to the premium rate broadband support line are already refunded when there has been a fault with our network, perhaps that wasn't clear.

"We have been working hard to improve customer service and listening to what our customers say, so will now be removing this charge from the outset."

The changes to the costs will become effective in June, and will effectively remove Virgin Media from our phonecall support Hall of Shame!

Redten update

RED faces at broadband provider Redten this week as the debacle over its forced migration of its entire customer base onto a network run by NJP (providers to Fast4) was completed.

The majority of Redten’s customer’s are back online but Redten has lost some souls who jumped ship or have been cut adrift as a result of the fiasco.

The biggest concern, now that customers have their broadband connections back online, is whether or not the service will continue to be at the level received before the migration.

There are early indications that despite formerly being on a generous unlimited package now users face being seriously slowed down to about 5kbps, which pretty much makes the entire internet unusable, after using 5Gb worth of bandwidth.

This could lead to interesting developments, as if this is something that doesn’t change then there are rumblings of a mass desertion by Redten customers citing breach of contract on Redten’s part.

And with a small customer base this could hurt Redten badly.

Inventor of Internet says ‘no’ to snooping

IN an interview with the BBC Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man attributed with creating the Internet, has said that he would change his broadband provider if it began to track the websites he visited and then targeted him with personalised advertising.

This is the highest profile denouncing, if you will, of the Phorm advertising system being trialled by broadband providers BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk.

In a nutshell the system tracks what websites you visit and then supplies you with targeted and relevant adverts rather than the random assortment you currently get.

Obviously this has provoked a storm of discussion from users and privacy groups who see it as a blatant infringement of privacy rules.

Sir Tim advocated an opt-in system of implementation, whilst the government said that it was legal as long as consumers had given consent.

It hasn’t helped that the big broadband providers have been all cloak and dagger about the situation, it even became clear last week that BT had already completed a clandestine trial of the system with 10,000 customers!

To its credit, TalkTalk has made the Phorm system opt-in only, meaning that TalkTalk customers will have to physically sign up if they want Phorm operating on their broadband package.

If BT and Virgin Media follow in TalkTalk’s footsteps then it will be a victory for the consumer, if not then it could be a victory for TalkTalk.

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