 |  | By Neil Hawkins Staff Writer Friday, 22 February 2008 |
THERE’S some serious competitiveness building up amongst ISPs recently and this week there have been more broadband price cuts announced. Meanwhile Plusnet shows us how BBC iPlayer is costing ISPs cash.
O2 extends discounts to Prepay mobile customers
ONLY last week we noted that O2 Broadband had received a position amongst the top 5 ISPs in a survey carried out by Epitiro.
Well it seems they are looking to cement that accolade by tempting lots of new customers to a life
in the broadband fast lane.
From today, all O2 mobile customers - whether Prepay or Pay Monthly - will be eligible for discounted O2 Broadband deals.
This means that all O2 mobile users can get O2 Broadband Standard 8 Mb package with unlimited downloads for just £7.50 per month.
There are two other faster deals available O2 Broadband Premium 16 Mb for £10 per month and O2 ultimate with speeds up to a stonking 20 Mb for £15 per month.
The only requirement is that you nip down to the shops once every three months and top up your mobile for a tenner. Not bad eh?
Carphone Warehouse free laptop drives onwards
CARPHONE Warehouse has updated the specification of its hugely popular free laptop offer in conjunction with AOL Broadband.
Instead of a free Dell laptop you now get a free HP laptop. The specification of the free laptop is almost identical: Intel Celeron processor, 1Gb memory, 80Gb hard drive, DVD-Rewriter and Wireless ready.
Like its predecessor you need to sign up to one of the AOL Broadband Wireless Plus packages which includes an AOL Talk bundle. These start at £19.99 a month.
Each package has a 24 month contract and you will have to pay £14.99 for delivery of the free laptop.
Plusnet reveals revealing data on BBC iPlayer
PLUSNET has released data which shows just how much extra internet traffic has been generated by BBC iPlayer.
Website Telco 2.0 took a detailed look at the information and decided that the future is not necessarily all rosy for ‘unlimited’ broadband providers.
The basic cut and thrust of it is that more people are streaming more data more of the time. ‘Well duh!‘ I hear you cry!
The reason this is important is because this is the first data which shows how much it has cost a broadband provider to handle this extra traffic.
The increase hasn’t been insignificant, in fact it’s been insignificant to the tune of 200%!
Suddenly the sound of people complaining about their gas bill has disappeared!
In all seriousness though for Plusnet this meant an increase in its own data charges from £17,000
to £51,000. Repeated across the industry and the figure is a rise from £500,000 to a rather large £1.5m. Oh yeah, and that’s per month!
What this could mean is that either broadband providers keep demanding that content distributors like the BBC pay more to help with the burden of cost or otherwise it’ll be shoved on to consumers.
Virgin Media forgets its own rules
AN article in The Guardian reported that Virgin Media has been ringing up customers and asking them for personal information and passwords.
Oh how we all had a good laugh. Those pesky guys from Nigeria had clearly got sick of EBay we thought. But then we discovered that it was true and oh how we all couldn’t believe our ears!
Its really surprising that any company that deals with personal information and preaches about how you should never give out passwords online can get it so wrong.
They seemed to think it was standard practice, most people could tell them it is not.
A word of advice: if you are called up by Virgin Media and they ask for your password, ask them for their bank details first.
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