BT has announced that it will be doubling the speed of its entry-level broadband service.
The move was announced just hours after Wanadoo UK revealed its intention to tempt new punters with a two meg connection for just £17.99 (~€26 ~US$32) a month.
From tomorrow, all new and existing BT subscribers should be able to get 2 meg as standard, with no upgrade charges.
BT group managing director Gavin Patterson said: “Today’s announcement creates a standard of a minimum broadband speed of 2Mb for all our retail broadband services – these higher speeds open up a wealth of new possibilities for the use of broadband.”
BT’s generosity knows some bounds though, with its no frills package retaining its monthly usage limit at 1 gig.
As competition in the broadband sector heats up, customers should be able to take advantage of lower prices and faster connectivity.
This is the second free upgrade that BT has introduced, with the telecoms giant upping the speed for all of its retail broadband customers back in February.
Broadband users can calculate their current connection speeds with the handy app at ADSLguide.org.uk and check to see if their broadband speed matches their provider’s claims.
A recent informal survey on urban75.com asked over 60 subscribers to compare their broadband connection speeds using the ADSLguide Website.
I quickly learnt that not only was I paying more than most, but my BT connection was as swift as a sleepy sloth on a hot day compared to the rocket-like speeds quoted by others.
Seeing as BT has declared that the “battleground in broadband will be in differentiating services rather than price and speed as it is today”, I’ll be monitoring this upgrade very, very carefully indeed.
The BBC has announced a pilot scheme to premiere some new TV programmes before they are broadcast on over traditional channels. 
Jana Bennett, The BBC’s Director of Television, said: “The broadband premiere of The Mighty Boosh is a significant step forward in offering our audiences even greater value in a changing television world. 
There’s something of a stampede starting up of companies ready and willing to experiment with video over broadband, with BT announcing that it planned to begin trials of 
Abertis Telecom, Nokia and Telefonica Moviles Espana have emerged smiling from a big converging huddle with news of a mobile TV pilot using Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H) technology. 
These will be equipped with a “special accessory” to receive the mobile TV broadcasts. 
Outdoor and indoor signal and broadcast quality will also be tested to help fine tune the best technical parameters for the viability of DVB-H based services. 
It used to be that attending a festival was more akin to a long trek in a distant country, with festival-goers vanishing for days on end, uncontactable by the outside world. 
Like Glastonbury, Live 8 and several other big music festivals, band’s performances at the Reading Festival will be available to view over the Web via a streaming Webcast, with official sponsors Tiscali providing the coverage. 
The festival, now corporate branded into the “Carling Weekend Reading Festival”, takes place over the August bank holiday weekend. 
AOL launches video search service 
Podcast subscriptions have rocketed over the one million mark, with figures from Pew Internet and American Life suggesting that over 6 million Americans – nearly a third of the estimated 22 million owners of MP3 players – have listened to podcasts. 
Life on the Web going to get considerably faster for some denizens of London, thanks to an ultrafast 24Mb broadband connection offered by Be* Unlimited. 
Cable company Telewest Broadband is making Teleport, its TV-on-demand service, available to over 26,000 customers in Cheltenham and Gloucester today. 
Teleport Movies offers around 200 current and library films from FilmFlex, with rental charges costing between £2.00 (~$3.59, ~€3) and £3.50 (~$6.28, ~€5.20) for a 24-hour rental period. 
Eric Tveter, president and CEO of Telewest, mused: “Teleport has arrived and it’s genuinely going to change the way people watch TV. The schedule normally dictates viewing, but our customers will have the choice and convenience of a service they can tailor – it’s TV on their terms.” 
Delivering a king size slipper to the ample bottom of BT, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that BT’s PC-based internet telephony service, BT Communicator, does not make “free” calls. 
The Kentish complainant pointed out that by using the VoIP service he’d rapidly burn up the 1 gig a month usage limit that BT slaps on its Broadband Basic packages – and once he exceeded that limit, he’d have to start forking out for additional time online. 
Smarting from a derriere rouge par excellence, BT was told “not to describe calls that depleted a consumer’s usage allowance as ‘free’ and to state prominently in advertisements for BT Communicator that making telephone calls depleted a consumer’s broadband usage allowance”. 
The well-recognised Freeserve name was taken over by Wanadoo just 14 months ago, but France Telecom insist that the latest rebrand will better reflect the portfolio of services to be offered. 
The spokesman added that customer’s email services will be uninterrupted, with users still contactable whatever their domain name. 
In a cornucopia of convergence, BT has announced their intention to use the Microsoft TV Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) Edition software platform to deliver TV over broadband in the UK. Internally within BT, the project is referred to as Project Nevis. 
Unlike most consumer pay-TV delivery systems, the Microsoft TV platform allows network operators to integrate the delivery of pay-TV services with other networked broadband services in the home such as PCs, telephones, game consoles, mobile devices and other gadgets. 
As the sound of mutual backslapping threatened to reach ASBO-generating levels, Moshe Lichtman, corporate VP of the Microsoft TV division gushed: 
In a novel move to publicise the benefits of broadband for regional dwellers, the Welsh Assembly Government’s Broadband Wales Unit sent mobile Internet gateways scurrying around the valleys and mountains of lovely, lovely Wales. 
The Get Smart – Get Broadband campaign revs up at Swansea Party in the Park this Sunday, where fans will be able to send messages (known in the vernacular as “shout outs”) from the Smart Cars to a giant onstage screen.