FREE broadband from Google
April 9, 2007 by go broadband
Google announces free in-home wireless broadband service
Google has announced “Google FREE broadband” with the launch of Google TiSP (BETA)™,. It is a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online broadband connectivity via users’ plumbing systems. The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.
Google Co-founder and President Larry Page, a longtime supporter of so-called dark porcelain research and development.
“We’ve got that whole organizing-the-world’s-information thing more or less under control. What’s interesting, though, is how many different modalities there are for actually getting that information to you – not to mention from you.”
For years, data carriers have confronted the “last hundred yards” problem for delivering broadband data from local networks into individual homes. Now Google has successfully devised a “last hundred smelly yards” solution that takes advantage of preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic data-transmission capabilities.
“There’s actually a thriving little underground community that’s been studying this exact solution for a long time. And today our Toilet ISP team is pleased to be leading the way through the sewers, up out of your toilet and – splat – right onto your PC.”
Users who sign up online for the TiSP broadband system will receive a full home self-installation kit, which includes a spindle of fiber-optic cable, a TiSP wireless router, installation CD and setup guide. Home installation is a simple matter of GFlushing™ the fiber-optic cable down to the nearest TiSP Access Node, then plugging the other end into the broadband/network port of your Google-provided TiSP wireless router. Within sixty minutes, the Access Node’s crack team of Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) should have your internet connection up and running.
According to Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience:
“I couldn’t be more excited about, and am only slightly grossed out by, this remarkable new product. I firmly believe TiSP will be a breakthrough product, particularly for those users who, like Larry himself, do much of their best thinking in the bathroom.”
Interested consumers, contractually obligated partners and deeply skeptical and quietly competitive backbiters can learn more about TiSP at http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html
Press release date – April 1st 2007! 
Go broadband
April 5, 2007 by go broadband
Its odd how Google will not show my new domain as a search result for the look-up phrase. Perhaps putting it in a link name will help. Here goes. .. Find out the latest news and information about broadband at Go broadband.
It will be interesting to see how much influence the keywords in the actual link text have on whether a broadband website gets indexed or not. Have to wait and see. Almost impossible to find the website at the moment.
Over half of UK households use broadband
April 3, 2007 by go broadband
There are some really usefull facts in the latest broadband results published by Ofcom for the UK broadband market. Key highlights from the report:
- broadband has now reached 50 per cent of UK households.
- The broadband penetration figure rose from 39 per cent take-up a year ago – and now more than 13 million homes and SME offices are connected to broadband.
Ofcom has published its latest on the broadband market. The report looks at levels of broadband take-up, usage and the types of services available in the broadband market.
In the seven years since its mass market introduction, broadband has become one of the fastest growing communications technologies. The report shows that over 50% of UK adults now have broadband at home – up from 39% a year ago and a seven-fold increase over the last four years. More than 13 million UK homes and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are now connected to broadband, compared with 9.9 million a year earlier and 330,000 in 2001.
Many new internet users are choosing to go straight to broadband rather than first taking dial-up. According to Ofcom’s research, 23% of people with no internet at home said they were likely to connect in the next year with 76% of those saying they would opt for broadband.
The report also shows that broadband prices are continuing to fall. Speeds of up to 2 Mbit/s were available for £15 a month in 2006, down from £50 in 2003. In 2006 a number of communications providers started offering a broadband service at no extra cost to consumers who took other services in a bundle.
Bundling is an important factor for consumers when choosing an internet service provider (ISP). At the end of 2006, over 40% of all adults with broadband at home took broadband alongside other communications services from the same provider. When asked what the most important factor influencing ISP choice was, the same proportion of broadband users cited the possibility of bundling with other services (27%) as did price (27%).
Other key findings were:
- Broadband speeds continue to rise. The estimated average broadband connection speed was 3.8 Mbit/s at the end of 2006, up from 1.6 Mbit/s at the end of 2005.
- Despite these increases in speed almost half (48%) of residential consumers were unaware of their headline connection speed in February 2007.
- At the end of 2006, one in ten UK adults said they were making calls over the internet via VoIP on their broadband connection, double the proportion that said they did this at the end of 2005. Of these, 14% said they did it daily and a further 30% did so several times per week.
- Around half of broadband users have accessed online audio or video content at least once; 29% listen to or download online audio and 26% watch video clips online on a weekly basis.
- Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) continues to grow. In February 2007 there were 1.7m residential and SME unbundled broadband lines, accounting for over 10% of all connections compared to 2% a year earlier.
- Ofcom’s research showed that 21% of all UK adults owned a Wi-Fi enabled laptop in February 2007 and over one third of those had used public Wi-Fi hotspots to access the internet. In September 2006 there were around 12,000 public hotspots in the UK, a 32% increase on the previous year.
- One in three UK adults said they owned an internet-enabled mobile phone in February 2007 and half of those had used their mobile to go online.
- In 2006 residential and SME connections generated £1.84bn in revenue for broadband providers – a fifteen-fold increase in six years.
Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards said:
“With over half of UK adults now using broadband at home, we have reached a very significant milestone in the development of broadband Britain. Consumers are responding positively to the competition and innovation that the UK market now offers.”
The full report is available at: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/broadband_rpt/
Broadband for mac
March 31, 2007 by go broadband
If you are looking for broadband for your mac laptop or computer then you will soon be able to find the answer at broadband4mac and broadband for mac
These two mac broadband only websites will be focusing solely on the best broadband providers in the UK. They’ll be researching the broadband market-place and compare the best broadband deals available. I’ll keep you posted.
Broadband ‘unlimited’ misleading
March 28, 2007 by go broadband
There is a new petition surfacing on the Prime Minister Petition website.
Many broadband ISP’s (Internet Service providers) are advertising Broadband with ‘Unlimited’ downloads. Yet this is not the truth – the majority of the broadband services being promoted are not unlimited.
Instead the broadband providers tend to hide a ‘fair usage policy’ in their terms and conditions.
- Some broadband suppliers cap the broadband usage at a defined amount.
- Other broadband supplier use an undefined criteria that only they know!
To get involved and sign the petition to force Broadband providers to be honest/regulated in their product advertising – visit: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Unlimited-ADSL/
Virgin broadband faster than ever
March 28, 2007 by go broadband
Virgin Media is to break broadband speed limits later this year, by doubling the speed of its flagship ‘XL’ cable broadband service from 10Mbps (megabits per second) to up to 20Mbps.
The company says the 100 per cent speed increase will mean an MP3 music track could be downloaded in around two seconds, making the Virgin XL broadband service the fastest widely available home internet connection in Britain.
Virgin added that bandwidth boosting will take place from May 2007 and will coincide with a small price increase on the fastest broadband service, from £35 to £37 per month. Upstream broadband speed will also be increased, to 768Kb, and all Virgin broadband services will continue to offer unlimited downloads and an online security package.
Ernie Cormier, chief commercial officer of Virgin Media, said:
“We want to make entertainment and communications the simple and exciting world it should be, but our technology also means we can offer an ultra-fast broadband service that our competitors can’t match.”
Virgin is favorite to buy Pipex broadband
March 26, 2007 by go broadband
Virgin Media is hot favourite to buy broadband company Pipex broadband for about £470m, with a deal possible this week.
Pipex is the sixth largest broadband company in the UK and recently appointed UBS, which holds 18.2% of its equity, to find a buyer. BT broadband , Carphone Warehouse, Orange broadband, Tiscali broadband and Sky broadband have all shown an interest but industry sources suggest that Virgin Media is now odds on favourite to tie up an agreed deal within the next couple of days.
Pipex focuses on the UK consumer broadband market. It is willing to heavily discount its broadband charges for those consumers willing to commit to taking bundled services on 12 or 18 month contracts. It is Pipex’s domain name registration business that is lacking in Pipex broadband’s rivals and therefore proving to be a key-factor in the purchase negotiations.
If the deal goes ahead, Virgin media will face a regulatory probe. If Virgin, which has 3.3m internet customers buys Pipex broadband it would add 570,000 more customers and would then walk into a regulatory storm over its market share. Virgin is already the largest internet provider in the country, but acquiring more customers through the Pipex deal –whose customers are carried on BT lines – could be investigated by the Office of Fair Trading.
In a bid to avoid a referral, Virgin would argue that its business provided over cable networks is not part of the same market. If they go down that road, there is a real ‘gotcha’ for the likes of Carphone and BT because of the open network issue.
Rival bidders for Pipex, including The Carphone Warehouse, BSkyB and BT, say they cannot compete fairly with Virgin because it does not have to open up its cable network to them. BT and The Carphone Warehouse are pushing Ofcom to make Virgin let rivals use its network so they could win customers from Virgin without installing new phone lines.
The Pipex sale has also raised speculation about the future of Sardinia-based Tiscali, which has two million UK broadband customers.
Go-broadband.co.uk now indexed on Google
March 24, 2007 by go broadband
WOW it has only taken 4 days to get my new broadband domain indexed on Google. (so much for the sandbox)
The power of blogs! This site has been crawled by Google-bot since day 1. Google has been popping into the Go-broadband blog to say hello every few hours. On day 1 I also subscribed up to the FREE edtion of Feedburner and that has been pumping out my bolgs to the wider world. I noticed Technorati in Feedburner’s list of blogging sites so I popped over there too.
I have now signed-up to Technorati and today noted that my original post on the Google-indexing topic has been picked up and tagged up under ‘indexing‘ on their website. Come find me at technorati at http://technorati.com/blogs/http://gobroadband.blogspot.com
Anyway – seems like it has only taken a further 3 days for Google to wonder off my blog and onto the intended target over at www.go-broadband.co.uk.
This means I can now move this index off blogspot and onto www.go-broadband.co.uk/blog. Well thats the plan – if I can figure out the Blogger FTP system.
Well it should be straight-forward enough. Shouldn’t it?
Tiscali broadband – new £15/month ‘Broadband + TV offer’
March 24, 2007 by go broadband
Tiscali Broadband + TV for £14.99
Tiscali broadband has revealed its latest plans for its broadband service. Following the acquisition of the pioneering Homechoice IPTV service in August 2006, Tiscali broadband has launched a national roll out of Tiscali TV .
Tiscali broadband + TV launched on 1 March 2007 when over 40,000 Homechoice subscribers will become part of Tiscali broadband. Their customers will immediately benefit from the new competitive offer of broadband plus TV for £14.99.
Tiscali broadband + TV is currently available in London and Stevenage but will be available outside London in Birmingham, Edinburgh and Newcastle during April and May 2007, and in areas of Leeds, Sheffield and Liverpool by mid 2007. By the end of 2007 Tiscali TV will be available to a footprint of over 10 million UK homes. The roll out will continue through 2008 and the broadband + TV service will be available to Tiscali’s entire unbundled local loop network by the end of 2008.
The Tiscali broadband + TV pack offers consumers over 30 digital TV channels including all of the free digital channels from the BBC, Channel 4, Five and ITV, including E4, BBC Three, fiveUS and ITV2, also a ‘Replay or Catch-up’ service allowing subscribers to watch over 50 hours of key BBC programmes up to seven days after they have been broadcast, and access to a further 100 hours of on-demand programming including complete series of Dr. Who, Friends, Sex and the City and Prime Suspect. Tiscali broadband + TV is free to all subscribers who buy the 2Mb broadband product in Tiscali broadband + TV enabled areas. Subscribers can also access over 1000 movies on demand to watch instantly with prices ranging from £1.99 to £3.49 per movie.
In addition subscribers can upgrade to the ‘Big Pack’ adding an extra 25 channels and 1000 hours of on-demand TV programmes. They can also choose the award-winning Music or Kids packs which include VMX with 5000 music videos and Scamp the exclusive pre-school channel. Tiscali broadband + TV has the most on-demand content available from one provider.
Tiscali will also offer the UK’s best value ‘triple play’ package. For £19.99 the customer will get 2Mb broadband, the TV pack, line rental and free weekend telephone calls. This compares favourably with the entry-level cable triple play package at £30.
The company will also launch a new set top box in July 2007, with a 160Gb, Hi-Definition enabled, personal video recorder (PVR), allowing subscribers to record any shows they choose and watch in Hi-Definition if they have an HD TV.
Mary Turner, Chief Executive Tiscali UK:
“Tiscali TV will give our subscribers real value for money, choice and flexibility – things that are core to our brand values. We believe there is a real gap in the market for our TV product. The success of Freeview has shown that customers want more than five channels but don’t necessarily want to pay a high monthly subscription. Our TV service gives customers broadband plus the channel choice they want and free on-demand programming, all for the price you would pay for a standard broadband connection”.
Tiscali broadband + TV is delivered into your house via a landline broadband connection so there’s no need for cabling or a satellite dish on your building. All you need is a phone line to the house. As at March 2007, Tiscali Broadband with the TV option will cost £14.99 per month
Orange broadband network problems
March 22, 2007 by go broadband
Orange broadband experienced problems over the weekend, but says only a small percentage of customers were affected and the service is now up and running again.
An Orange broadband spokesperson released the following statement:
“Orange can confirm that a broadband network outage occurred for less than an hour on the evenings of Sunday 18 March and Monday 19 March. The outage affected just under three per cent of our broadband customer base, and we are currently working with our suppliers to rectify the fault. We apologise to those customers affected.”
But according to Orange broadband’s online help page:
“Customers in Liverpool, Newcastle, Tannockside and Cardiff may be experiencing intermittent disconnections or slow browsing due to a known network issue. This is a known fault which is currently under investigation.”