Internet in Britain 2007 – survey shows digital divide still to be bridged

The digital divide is still with us – as shown by the new Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS) report The Internet in Britain 2007.

The report found that:

• two-thirds of Britons access the internet and used it at home in 2007.
• most of those online at home use broadband.
• more users are mainly dependent on search engines for information – two-thirds in 2007 as opposed to one-fifth in 2005.
• internet use is higher among men, students, those who have been through higher education, and people earning high incomes.
• few people use the internet for civic participation. Less than 10% of people sign e-petitions (the most popular form of online civic pariciptation).
• the most popular online entertainment activities are, not surprisingly, downloading music and videos and playing games
• women, retired people, people with disabilities, and those with lower levels of education and lower earnings access the internet less
• only a quarter of the population has never used the internet.
• only 5% of the population are ex-internet-users.
• non-users tend to say they are non-users because they lack skills to access the internet. Ex-users tend to blame a lack of interest, or no access to the internet. Ex-users use proxy users more than non-users do. (A proxy user is someone accessing the internet on your behalf).
• despite frequently voiced fears that internet users can end up replacing real-world relationships with the virtual world, internet users actually consider themselves to be more extrovert than do non-users.

Find out more about the study findings on the OxIS website now.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

BT signs up 4 in 10 broadband customers

BT is the UK’s number 1 retail broadband provider. It has surprised analysts by announcing that it signed up nearly 4 out of every 10 broadband customer in the three months to 30 June. It had been expected that BT’s share of non-cable broadband acquisitions would drop to under 30%, but in fact it rose to 38%.

The higher value broadband packages were partocularly successful, with 58% of customers taking BT Total Broadband Option 2 or BT Total Broadband Option 3 (BT Broadband Option 1 is BT’s entry-level and cheapest broadband deal). Of that 58%, two-thirds took the most expensive broadband package, Option 3. All of BT’s home broadband packages offer download speeds of up to 8 meg.

Outside of retail, BT Wholesale also did well – by 30 June it had 8.8 million DSL broadband connections, up 701,000 year on year.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

Epitiro ADSL broadband survey has BT Demon Pipex PlusNet Tiscali as Top 5

Epitiro’s second quarter 2007 Internet Performance Indicator (IPI) has an interesting top 5 for broadband providers – while BT is number 1 for the fifth consecutive quarter, Tiscali makes an appearance for the first time while PlusNet have re-entered the top 5 for the first time since Q3 2006.

The top 5, in order, is now: BT, Demon, Tiscali, Pipex, PlusNet. BT also had the fastest download speed, but Tiscali had the fastest connection times.

This report covers 30 April 2007 to 30 June 2007. Epitiro is a customer experience management company. For its benchmarking service ISP-I (pronounced I Spy), it regularly measures the performance of the ten largest competing consumer ADSL broadband providers. Tests cover ADSL and ADSL Max only.

Cable and ADSL2+ will be added for Q3.

Find out more on the Epitiro website.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

New sports package from Virgin Media and Setanta

Virgin Media and Setanta Sports have announced that new and existing customers who take Virgin Media’s XL basic TV package will also get six Setanta Sports Channels, free. The service launches on 26 July 2007.

It means that 250 live sporting events each year are available without the need to buy a separate sports package. Coverage includes:

• 46 live games from the Barclays Premier League
• 60 matches from the Clydesdale Bank Scottish Premier League
• US PGA Tour golf
• European League football
• rugby
• horse racing from around the country
  

Virgin Media claim that someone watching all the live televised matches from the Barclay’s Premier League will pay over £110 less with Virgin Media than they would with Sky.

Additionally, this deal means that from the start of the new football season, Virgin Media will be the only provider to offer all these matches under a single contract.

From 2008, customers will also get 25 of the 40 televised fixtures from the English FA Cup, a selection of England football Internationals and the Community Shield.

Virgin Media’s sports offer comes hot on the heels of BT’s BT Vision Sport, a Premier League catch up service.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

More potential buyers checking out Virgin Media

There are now two groups eyeing up broadband, phone and TV provider Virgin Media for a potential purchase – as well as private equity group Carlyle, American buyout firm Providence has apparently instructed advisers to prepare an £11 billion offer.

Virgin Media itself is working with its advisers UBS and Goldman Sachs to increase interest from other potential bidders. It is expected that a first round of offers will appear some time in August.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

Pipex launches cheap broadband and free calls offer

Broadband and voice provider Pipex, soon to be bought by Tiscali, has announced a new broadband offer.

Sign up to PipexMini broadband and pay only £8.95 per month for the first three months.

The broadband package price then reverts to £14.99 for the remainder of the 12 month deal. And for those who want free calls, Pipex Mini broadband taken with the Hometime Calls plan costs the same – so customers will save £3.90 a month on the cost of the Hometime Calls package, which includes unlimited free national and local phone calls offpeak (evenings and weekends).

And on top of that, with both broadband packages there’s a free wireless router.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

Google cookies to self destruct after two years

Google has decided that its cookies will auto-expire after two years. The company is looking at privacy issues for server and for client.

Although online privacy is now a huge issue, one of the problems has been that the Google preference cookie holds important information about the searcher’s preferences – what language they want their results in, how many results should appear in a results page, etc. They have up until now been set to expire in 2038.

Over the next few months, cookies will be issued that will be set to auto-expire in 2 years – but for regular users their cookies will  set to auto-renew after two years, rather than expire. This means their preferences will be retained without them having to re-enter their preference information.

As now, users will also be able to manage their cookies and acceptance policy for cookies via their browsers.

Google is also going to anonymize IP addresses and cookie ID numbers  after 18 months.

You can read more about this on the official Google blog.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

ASA investigates Virgin Media campaign

A report in The Times today says that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has received 12 complaints from the public about the Virgin Media advertising campaign Truth, Lies and Broadband.

The adverts say that Virgin Media’s broadband is “delivered via a fibre optic cable”. (Fibre optic cable delivers faster broadband than the standard copper wires used from BT exchanges to UK homes). However Virgin Media’s fibre optic cable goes only to street level, not to people’s homes, where standard coaxial copper cable is used. Additionally, some users could get faster broadband via BT exchanges if they lived close enough to the exchange.

The ASA has written to Virgin Media for evidence to substantiate the claims and will adjudicate once it has the broadband, TV, phone and mobile provider’s response.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

100 Meg broadband available but not in UK finds OECD

A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found that broadband top speeds and entry level prices differ greatly between countries with some people on up to 100Mb broadband connections, or enjoying broadband prices of only £5.40 a month.

The OECD represents 30 of the leading democratic economies – and it found that 60% of its member countries’ internet users are now on broadband.

Across member countries, in the year to October 2006, entry level DSL broadband prices fell by 19% and speeds increased by 29%.

However while in Japan some consumers are paying only 11p per Mb (megabit per second), in Turkey the cheapest available works out at £40.56 per Mb. In the UK the cheapest megabit per second is £1.81. Japan also has one of the fastest networks – the Japanese enjoy blistering speeds of 100Mb, as do people in Finland, Korea and Sweden.

In the UK some providers such as Be are offering ADSL2+, but this still reaches only a maximum of 24Mb. Many broadband packages offer only up to 8 Meg (or even less). This is because most consumer telecoms services in the UK are still supplied over copper wires, rather than fibre optic cables which allow these really fast broadband speeds.

Read more on the BBC News website, or The Telegraph website.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

Ofcom making it easier to move your mobile number to your new phone

Ofcom has announced that the process for moving a customer’s phone number from an old network to a new network (with a new SIM card) must now be completed in two working days, rather than five working days as previously – this will take effect on 1 April 2008. This follows a consultation they held in November 2006.

The regulator is also launching another consultation, this time with a view to making it a requirement that this be reduced right down to two hours. They are aiming for this to happen by the end of September 2009.

Find out more on the Ofcom website.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder