Virgin Media loses strategy director

Ernie Cormier, Virgin Media’s managing director of strategy, is leaving the company in the new year, as  is Steve Stewart, Virgin Media’s head of customer care.

These departures come at a time when the Virgin Media  acting CEO, Neil Berkett, is making his mark on the organisation with restructuring and new directions.

Read more in The Times.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

Virgin Media cuts price of V-Box personal video recorder

Virgin Media has cut the price of installing its V-Box.

The V-box is a personal video recorder that allows you to record two programmes while watching a third, and pause, rewind and record live TV.

Installation, usually £150, is now only £75.

To get a V+ Box, you need to be a Virgin TV customer.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

BT Tradespace launches BT Tradespace Communities in beta

BT Tradespace, the online small business network,  has signed up of more than 30,000 businesses – and is now also launching a new interactive area, BT Tradespace Communities.

BT Tradespace Communities  is currently in Beta, so users can try the service out and contribute to its future development. It allows small businesses to create or join interest groups, ask questions and get recommendations from other members.

The Communities zone is linked to businesses’ BT Tradespace profiles, and users can carry out tasks such as commenting on or endorsing a service, and making purchases. The result is a social utility which helps organisations and businesses to connect and engage in commercial relationships.

Visit BT Tradespace.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

BT Vision does deal with Paramount

BT Vision has announced a deal with Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment that will see 150 films distributed by Paramount available from the BT Vision Download Store. The BT Vision Download Store is an online video store available to all UK broadband customers, regardless of which broadband provider they are with.

Download Store users will now be able to download and own current and classic titles distributed by Paramount including Babel, An Inconvenient Truth and the Star Trek series and watch them on PCs and portable devices.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

ONS finds nearly 90% of web users on broadband

The Office for National Statistics has found that in September over 88% of web users accessed the internet with a broadband connection. This is a 26% rise over the last 12 months.

And nearly half (49.2%) of these broadband connections with advertised download speeds of at least 2Mb.

Read more on the BBC website.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

Superfast broadband summit on the way

A broadband summit – bringing together broadband providers and industry leaders with government ministers – is to take place to discuss how the UK can improve broadband speeds.

Currently the average broadband speed in the UK is around 4Mb, but many countries have much faster broadband networks – some can reach speeds of up to 100Mb.

According to the report on the BBC News website, BT has said it would ” struggle to pay for an ultra-fast network”, but Virgin Media is planning to start rolling out up to 50Mb by the end of 2008.

Read more on the BBC News website

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

ICO warns young people not to damage career prospects with too much info on social networking sites

The Information Commissioner’s Office is warning young people to be careful over how much information they share over social networking sites such as facebook, as they could end up damaging future career prospects, according to a report on the BBC News website.

The ICO discovered that over 50% of those asked made most of their information public. However despite this, 71% of 2,000 14 to 21-year-olds surveyed said they would not want colleges, or employers, search for information about them online until they had removed some of the information on their social networking pages.

The ICO was also concerned at the amount of private information, such as dates of birth, that young people were putting online.

Read more on the BBC News website.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

Sky launches See, Surf, Speak £19 bundle

Sky has launched a broadband, phone and TV bundle for £19 per month.

The deal includes free broadband up to 2Mb. The Sky TV element costs £19 per month and includes four entertainment mixes.

There is also a £10 credit when customers order online, and a free wireless router.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

Virgin Media TV plans on hold in favour of broadband

A report in The Times says that Virgin Media acting CEO Neil Berkett  feels that superfast broadband is the Virgin Media “hero product”- and that it is therefore to put on hold its plans to roll out TV, phone and broadband over non-cable lines across the country. Virgin IPTV over phone lines was originally supposed to come in in 2008 under a deal with C&W.

Virgin Media can now offer up to 20Mb cable broadband.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder

Broadband provider Orange agrees WiFi deal with the Cloud

Orange has announced that it has signed a contract with The Cloud, Europe’s leading wireless broadband provider. The agreement will mean Orange customers can access The Cloud’s 7,500 UK wifi hotspots across the UK – and that Orange is now offering access to one of the UK’s widest wifi networks through its Orange WiFi Access service. The Orange WiFi Access service can be accessed through Orange’s Business Everywhere mobile data card offering.

Orange already has wifi agreements in place with BT OpenZone, France Telecom and WeRoam. In the UK this latest agreement extends Orange’s WiFi access to more than 10,000 hotspots.

By Sarah at UK Broadband Finder