Broadband – Page 23 – Digital-Lifestyles

BT to Challenge BSkyB with Broadband TV Service; Partners with Microsoft on Web Conferencing

BT has announced it has plans to introduce a broadband television service in the UK, aimed to compete directly with BskyB’s Sky+ service. With the cheeky codename “Sky Plus Plus”, a nod to object-based programers everywhere, the project is intended to increase broadband adoption. This will be BT’s first foray into broadcasting, after months and months of false starts and speculation.

BT has already approached the BBC and ITV for content for the project, but will need much more than just those two if it really wants to compete with Sky+.

The telco had originally intended to launch the service in October, but delayed because they thought the initial package was too complicated as it comprised a digital set-top box and PC modem, plus subscribers would have to pay an additional fee for broadband internet access. They have not yet specified if subscribers will have to use a PC to view content, or if it will be viewable on televisions. Also undecided is whether the company will be streaming live programmes or just presenting video on demand. If they are to compete effectively with BSkyB, the BT offering must provide a much wider range of features, as Sky+ offers live television, pausing, archiving and renowned ease of use.

BT has also announced a new partnership with Microsoft – this time to deliver a next-generation collaboration service. Going far beyond video conferencing, the service basically glues together BT’s audio conference products and Microsoft’s Office Live Meeting.

BT have piloted the service internally in the past year, and claim to have saved 6.2 million miles of business travel, which also means 112 million less litres of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere from vehicles.

Microsoft’s Office Live Meeting

Bulldog’s 4Mps Broadband Service

Good news if you live in central London and are after a fast, reasonably cheap internet service – Bulldog, who were acquired by Cable and Wireless in June, have launched a 4Mps product for UK£30 (€44.88) per month. Bulldog 4 is being offered through the company’s own exchange equipment in 39 London exchanges, made possible by BT’s local loop unbundling programme.

Richard Greco, CEO of Bulldog said in a statement, “Having our own infrastructure enables us to do this, unlike other Internet Service Providers who are restricted by BT’s wholesale offerings.”

The connection is 4Mbps down and 400kbps up — still faster than most ADSL packages, but a deterrent to peer to peer uploaders.

This is sure to set a fire under BT whose 512kpbs product is only UK£5 (€7.47) cheaper than Bulldog 4.

Bulldog 4

Ofcom’s Broadband Ambitions, Appoints Telecoms Adjudicator

The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, has outlined its next steps and long term aspirations for the development of broadband.

Ofcom believes that their initial focus on rollout and coverage has paid off, with 512kbps services now common place and around 15% of the population taking advantage of broadband.

The regulator now wants to define and focus on a phase two: “the new generation of broadband services likely to emerge as competition increases between providers.”Ofcom are still as keen as ever to promote local loop unbundling, and have been successful at goading BT into faster action to improve third-party access to exchanges – they they note that the pace in the UK does not match those in other countries: “If there is sufficient progress in reducing costs and improving operational processes, local loop unbundling in the UK has the potential to deliver the same kind of growth and innovation emerging in, for example, France and Japan, where tens of thousands of local loops are unbundled each month.” Although Ofcom’s first attempts at promoting LLU failed, they are pleased that BT is finally getting the message, and is reducing costs.

By promoting greater competition in access networks, Ofcom believes that they can increase adoption of VoIP services in the next 3 to 5 years, with the majority of households benefiting from video-quality broadband by the end of the decade.

To assist in the further progress of LLU and broadband rollout, Ofcom are keen to promote the establishment of a Telecommunications Adjudicator, an independent post designed to resolve working-level implementation disputes. Indeed, they have today named Peter Black as the man for the job – a former senior executive at BT, Thus and NTL, Black is an experienced telecommunications exec.

The post is supported by BT, AOL, C&W, Video Networks, Wanadoo and others. Ofcom chief executive Stephen Carter said in a Statement: “We welcome the fact that 12 of the most significant companies have signed up to the independent Adjudicator scheme; and we hope this drives growth in the future.”

Ofcom’s aspirations

UPDATED: BT Cuts Broadband Prices By Up to 25%, but caps downloads.

With many companies getting in on the cheap broadband bandwagon, BT has been losing customers to upstarts like Wanadoo and Tiscali. In a effort to attract more customers, and keep the ones that it has, the British telco has announced cuts across their range of consumer broadband packages. And about time too, as they were the most expensive provider out there.

The standard BT Broadband package is down from UK£27 to UK£25 (€40 down to €37.30) for a 512k connection, whilst the BT Yahoo! Broadband 1mb product gets cut down to £30 from £41 (€44.75 down to €61.16) – more than a 25% reduction.

No doubt BT’s broadband competitors will react almost immediately with price cuts of their own, in order to keep winning business, but the question is: how low can it go?

UPDATE: The bad news is, that bandwidth is now capped.

BT have written to their customers to explain:

“So that we can continue to offer our best possible price to customers, we’ll be introducing a usage allowance of 15GB of data a month. This is more than enough for the vast majority of our customers – for example, you can still download up to 3,000 music tracks every month. ”

“You’ve absolutely no need to worry: the usage allowance will only be applied from early 2005 and, based on your current usage levels, you won’t be affected by this change to your Terms & Conditions.”

The danger here is – what happens when you want to view video on demand on your PC? At 2 megabits per second, a 2hr film will use up 1.9 gigbytes of storage, so you’d get just under nine films a month and no browsing or music. We’ll be coming back to this and exploring it in greater depth in the next few days.

BT’s broadband pricing

Qwest to Launch VoIP Service to Boost Internet Telephony

Qwest Communications are to launch OneFlex, a new voice over IP (VoIP) service, in July. The product is aimed at both business and home consumers, and will require VoIP phones to use. OneFlex has conference calling, voice mail and other added features, all controlled from a web interface.

Qwest are looking to roll the service out to 20 US metropolitan areas by the end of the year, but is launching in Boise, Denver and Phoenix. It uses the Qwest iQ Network and is intended to appeal to customers who want to get their broadband and telephone service from a single source, and is of course cheaper than standard long distance.

VoIP is facing a slow start in the US – a recent survey from Ipsos-Insight revealed that 50% of public did not know what VoIP was, and some 60% of the people who did know were confused about how it actually worked.

About Qwest

SCEA President: Cheaper Broadband is Critical for Future Consoles

Sony Computer Entertainment America’s (SCEA) president, Kaz Hirai has said that broadband, and cheap broadband too, is going to be essential for future of games consoles – and you can bet he’s talking about the PS3.

His presentation to the Congressional Internet Caucus focussed on Sony’s content strategy for their next iteration of the absurdly popular PlayStation console brand. Sony, and indeed most console and games manufacturers, are placing a lot of emphasis on online gaming as it carries a lot of potential for microtransactions – a constant stream of small charges for extra content, access to games and services. The notable exception here is Nintendo, who have done their best to hide the fact that there is a broadband adaptor for the GameCube and will even happily prosecute UK games stores if they dare try to sell one.

To encourage the growth of online gaming, and therefore the microtransaction business model, Hirai argues that broadband subscription fees need to be cheaper.

Hirai emphasised Sony’s commitment to online gaming by saying “For the next generation console, online is going to be like air conditioning in a car. You’re going to need it.”

Kaz Hirai’s presentation

UK Broadband Take-up Almost Doubles in a Year

New figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the UK broadband market has almost doubled in the past 12 months. In April, 27.2% of internet connections were now broadband, compared to just 14.5% a year earlier.

Broadband connections continue to increase their market share rapidly, whilst dialup connections decline – there are now less dial up subscriptions than when the index started in January 2001.

“The year-on-year decrease to April 2004 was 6.8 per cent for dial-up connections with a decrease of 1.9 per cent from March 2004 to April 2004,” the ONS said in a statement.

The growth is being driven by new pricing plans, increased availability and more demanding applications such as music, video and online gaming.

Dial-up internet access still accounts for 72.8% of internet connections, so there is still a lot of growth for broadband still to come.

The Office for National Statistics

Real Networks and Starz Launch Broadband Film Service

Real Networks and Starz Encore Group have launched a new service delivering films over broadband to US subscribers. A US$12.95 (€10.68) subscription to Starz Ticket gives viewers access to a library of major films encoded in RealVideo 10 with download times of as little as 20 minutes. Titles include such reasonably recent fare as Pirates of the Caribbean, and comedy fish movie Finding Nemo.

Content providers seem to like subscription models, either charging a flat rate for access to all content, or a lower subscription with content priced individually. It’s a good way of locking in customers.

“In the cable and satellite world the ‘all you can eat’ subscription business model has proven to be much more popular than the transactional pay-per-view model,” said Starz chairman, founder and CEO, John J. Sie.

Subscriptions are a cheaper business model too, as lots of small individual transactions cost money to process and unless all your customers suddenly jump ship one month, month to month income is more predictable.

It’s a shame that geographical boundaries still apply to distribution rights – there’s no other reason why Starz Ticket should be US only.

Starz

Real Networks

Napster and NTL’s Broadband Partnership

Napster UK and NTL have completed a deal to bundle the new music store with NTL’s Broadband Plus package. This will bring Napster a potential one million more customers, and will also include a 30 free trial subscription to the store.

NTL’s Broadband Plus package starts at UK£3.99 (€6), or UK£9.95 (€15) including a Napster subscription.

“This is a significant deal for Napster because we are partnering with the biggest provider of broadband services in the UK, and ntl’s own research has shown that over 75% of broadband customers download music each month,” said Brad Duea, president of Napster.

Napster’s catalogue now stands at over 750,000 tracks, making it the largest music store in the market at the moment.

Napster UK

BT Trialling Fibre to the Home

Quick – move to Martlesham Heath, Suffolk. 1,500 businesses and residents in three UK locations, Suffolk, Milton Keynes and Docklands are to take part in a one year trial of fibre optic broadband connections, running to September 2005.

The properties will be linked directly to BT exchanges by glass fibre, upgrading connections to an end-to-end internet protocol network – something that’s go to come to the entire country sooner or later.

Paul Reynolds, BT wholesale chief executive has stated that BT will not go out and replace all of the copper wires in the country if the trial is a success: only new building developments will have fibre installed. “At this stage we don’t envisage a widespread deployment of fibre to the premises or the cabinet in the near or medium term,” i.e. it would be hideously expensive. “While we believe the use of fibre can help deliver better operating costs in terms of maintenance, we need to balance this against the cost of installation and systems developments. These trials will help to shape our thinking and help us make strategic investment decisions.”

BT have also announced a five year plan to replace the old switched network to properly carry voice and data services, with migrations beginning in 2006.

BT announce their timetable