 |  | By Bruce Stevens Staff Writer Friday, 25 January 2008 |
NEIL Hawins is away this week, so Bruce Stevens delves into the sewers and discovers a high speed broadband cable, rolls out the red carpet to see Virgin Media striding down it and struggles to understand why a company that neither sells carphones nor resembles a warehouse is pulling more customers than ever before.
Broadband Oscars announce nominees
ROLL out the red carpet and remind Halle Berry to bring her tissues – it’s that time of year when the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) announce the finalists for the Oscars of the broadband world, otherwise known as the ISPAs.
There are 13 categories covering all of the UK internet service industry, including the coveted Best Consumer ISP category.
Other categories include Best Dial-up, Best Internet Telephony, Best Business Broadband and Best Portal.
While the Best Consumer ISP category finalists have yet to be announced, we predict to see Zen appearing there after another blinding year of great customer reviews.
So without the coveted category finalists, it is the Best Consumer Broadband category that is generating most interest at the moment and this year’s nominees include some surprising entries, as well as some surprising omissions.
We’re interested and thrilled to see Virgin Media nominated for Best Consumer Broadband. They are in fact the only ‘big’ player amongst the finalists which also include minnows such a s Entanet, NewNet, Seriously Internet and, er, Waitrose.
The fact that Virgin Media has been nominated is a clear sign that the troubled cable broadband provider is no longer sailing so close to the wind.
We’re surprised to see that O2 broadband and Be were omitted from the Best Consumer Broadband category, but hold out hope that these two excellent providers will make it to the shortlist of Best Consumer ISP.
All finalists for the ISPAs are selected based on certain testing and performance metrics from Epitiro – the global broadband benchmarking organisation.
Free laptops help Carphone Warehouse
WHILE big broadband providers like Tiscali are seeing big downturns in customer signups, the Carphone Warehouse Group which owns both AOL and TalkTalk has seen a massive 21% increase in broadband customers in the last 12 months.
Figures from the group’s third quarter financial report reveal that they’ve snared 118,000 new broadband customers between AOL and TalkTalk. In one quarter alone!
There is no doubt that the AOL free laptop offer has been a huge driving force behind this increase, especially if you consider that TalkTalk has not been promoting itself with nearly as much gusto as AOL.
With the AOL free laptop (and free PS3) offer scheduled to run only until the end of March 2008, it will be interesting to see whether they decide to push on with it indefinitely.
Carphone Warehouse’s figures also revealed that the group had over 2 and a half million broadband customers and that TalkTalk appears to have one of the most extensive networks of unbundled exchanges.
Sewers to carry high speed broadband by Autumn
THEY always said that the internet was a great purveyor of filth, so how ironic that filth would become the great purveyor of the internet!
Residents in Bournemouth, Northampton or Dundee will be the lucky recipients of a new form of high speed broadband cable that is fed through the existing sewer system rather than being laid down at great expense by digging up the roads.
Fibre firm H20 – surprisingly refreshing name for a company with such a down-and-dirty unique selling point – has announced that one of the towns above will soon be receiving 100Mbps via their waste systems.
We can confirm that the cables will not come up out of the toilet, but will in fact be delivered to the user’s home via a small box attached to the outside of the house.
The rollout of the service is due to begin in August, but will take 18 months to complete.
Meanwhile the citizens of Ebbsfleet in Kent are enjoying Openreach’s 100Mbps trials of their own, non-sewer–based version of high speed broadband.
Neil Hawkins will be back next week
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