Continue reading »]]> O2 recently announced that Pay Monthly customers will lose their free access to The Cloud wifi services as of February 2012.

If you’re on a data plan with O2, you may be aware that you currently have free access to both BT Openzone and The Cloud as part of your contract. Handy for making sure you’re not using your limited data allowance when you’re in a public place.

Sadly, as of 1st February 2012, O2 customers won’t be able to use The Cloud for free wifi. O2 say all data customers will still have access to BT Openzone and also to their own wifi networks (but O2 wifi networks are free to anyone, anyway).

This probably has something to do with the sale of The Cloud to BSkyB. Bit of a shame really, as there are The Cloud hotspots at my local train station and at various other public places that I use – but no major loss I guess.

Continue reading »]]> I had a nice surprise today when I got home from college. My flat’s broadband is typically about 1.8Mbit per second down and has been since I moved in. However, as BT have been promising free fibre upgrades to people who can get it, clearly I’ve had an upgrade.

This is the new speed that I’m very much getting used to:

Now that’s more like it!

Continue reading »]]> Orange has decided that it will revamp it’s broadband packages in just over a week. This is probably an attempt to try and regain some of it’s lost customers following the company’s shameful performance over the last few months.

Customers have become fed up of the poor customer service and vague fair use policy. As a result, Orange has been loosing customers to other ISPs with better deals and clearer agreeements.

The new plans will replace the current plans and hopefully make the deals a little simpler.

However, ISPReview says that the “unlimited” packages will remain. So, unless Orange do something about their bizarre fair use policy, they won’t get anywhere. In addition, new packages won’t resolve any problems with customer service.

We’ll have to wait and see what the new plans bring. I don’t think they’ll be much to be excited about – long contracts, stupid policies, cheap routers and awful speeds. Surprise me, Orange.

(Source: ISPReview)

Continue reading »]]> Following the release of the new broadband plans, I was quite intrigued by the Extra package.

The new plan costs a mere £11.49 a month (in Market 3 areas – go to www.samknows.com to check your exchange). For that, you get a large 60GB monthly usage allowance with unlimited usage between 12 midnight and 8am. You also get a connection up to 20MB and the possibility of not having a contract.

So, we took the offer up. We got the offer with the first 4 months free too (offer expires 27th May) so the only down payment was a £25 setup fee and we chose not to have a contract. Within 5 days it was up and running, and I was astonished with the results.

Our previous provider, IDNet, was giving us a speed of 5Mbit per second (on average), but now with PlusNet (we are still in testing period, I know) we’re getting 8-9Mbit per second – a huge improvement.

There is traffic management, but it’s very well organised. YouTube is throttled to 2.5MB per second between 6-10pm, and many large download sites (such as Megaupload – which often contain illegal content) are throttled during most of the evening and night, but that’s about it. At least we actually get to know how the traffic management works – most ISPs don’t reveal that information.

The offer almost seems too good to be true – but evidently it isn’t. I’m really happy with the fantastic value service. So overall here – a definite win. A fantastic price that can’t be beaten. Amazing!

Continue reading »]]> So as you probably know, I recently built my own computer. It’s all going brilliantly. Except from one thing…

Orange are a little bit annoying sometimes. In fact, they aren’t what you’d call an A* ISP. Their router is a little shabby (it can’t decide whether it prefers English or French, and it often forgets that it has ever been turned on), and their customer service isn’t brilliant either.

However, the one thing that annoys me most of all is the poor management of bandwidth usage. It’s a pain. I know that Orange seem to provide 40GB of monthly usage but they give you no means whatsoever of monitoring how much bandwidth you have consumed in one month.

Then, they say that if you use more than 40GB a month they’ll send you a warning and then cut your speed to 512kbps!! What the hell? They won’t let you monitor your bandwidth but they’ll send you a letter if you go in the slightest over 40GB.

And then if you fail to lower your usage after that, they’ll cut your connection!

Frankly, I’d rather pay a little extra per month than have my speed throttled if I go over my usage. Doesn’t that seem like the more sensible thing to do from a company point of view? They make a little more money rather than loosing a customer.

Honestly I think Orange are making big mistakes and ripping us off. Bethere do unlimited 8MB broadband for £13.50 per month on a shorter contract (12 months, compared to Orange’s 18 months) and there’s no set limit on how much you can use per month!

Come on Orange, this is rubbish!

Continue reading »]]> Earlier today I was thinking about the benefits (if any) of the 50p phone line tax. There clearly aren’t any.

And then it made me think. Why the hell is the government trying to make us pay phone line tax when it’s become very clear the way forward is mobile broadband – not landline broadband?

I only realised today, but the 50p phone line tax is a total load of rubbish, because statistics have shown mobile broadband is rapidly becoming more popular and at this rate mobile broadband will overtake landline broadband in a very small amount of time.

To be totally honest, I think the 50p phone line tax is a waste of money and it, frankly, will get the country nowhere. In ten years time I suspect our mobile broadband networks will be huge and everybody will be using their phones or minuscule laptops to browse the network wherever they are. Why should the government make us pay a tax that nobody seems to agree with? There’s no evidence whatsoever that the tax will get Britain anywhere and there are too many people who are against it. What is going on?

Continue reading »]]> ISPReview UK has reported that O2 have successfully trialled 150Mbps broadband in the Slough area of the UK.

This is great news because this means that we could be seeing extremely high broadband speeds within the region of 150-200Mbps by the end of 2010. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

However, it’s not all good news quite yet. For starters, the tests weren’t conducted with a large number of people so (as ISPReview says) it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll be getting 150Mbps speeds if the bandwidth has to be split between several customers.

On the bright side, it would be nice to be seeing my download speed in the hundreds of Mbps. It’s about time our broadband speeds rose – I’ve been coping on 2Mbps broadband for years now.

Ah well, we’ll just have to see how this progresses. It looks like we could be getting some nice new technological services next year – not least with this faster broadband and Freeview HD.

Continue reading »]]> Yes – it’s been confirmed – those annoying people we call government have decided that they are going to add VAT to the proposed 50p per month phone line tax. With the VAT rate about to rise back to 17.5%, that makes the tax 58.75p per month or £7.05 per year.

This is seriously frustrating. The government just wants to reel in the money. Has anyone realised that it is impossible to revolutionise UK broadband networks in under 10 years. Frankly, I’d call this idea more of a scam, and sadly it looks like it will become a reality.

I really think the government has no idea what it is talking about. How the hell does the goverment expect to upgrade 5000 exchanges (5600 exchanges in UK approximately) to next generation broadband in under 10 years. With our government, there isn’t a hope in hell.

The Treasury has said approximately £175 million per year with this tax and I suspect very little of it will actually get spent on upgrading our broadband.

It has also been confirmed that the tax has been given the “green light” so it looks like the government will be pickpocketing more money from us within the next few months.

Continue reading »]]> This website has been around for quite a while (I think, anyway) but I only recently came across it from another tech blog I was browsing through. I find it really useful for determining the most popular software as well as search engines, ISPs, and more!

It can be found here (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/) and it is really worth looking at if you are interested in market shares in the technological world!

It can also show you trends – so you can see where browsers (for example) are going in terms of how popular they are. There are some handy graphs and charts.

It doesn’t cost anything and be extremely handy. I shall definitely be referring to it in future posts as I think it can be very useful.

Continue reading »]]> OK, so I was reading online that the government in the UK has decided that the 50p phone line tax may well take place after all. You may have heard that it was fought over a while back, but the government seems to have brought it back into the finance equation.

Anyway, if you don’t know already, the government is imposing that every fixed phone line payer in this country pays an extra 50p per month on their phone bill. With this the government aims to have 90% of homes/businesses in the UK on next generation broadband lines by 2017, or at least that is the target.

I, personally, have a large number of problems with this and have listed these below:

• The government recons 90% of homes/businesses in the UK will be on next gen broadband by 2017 with the help of the tax. OK, so what about the remaining 10% of homes/businesses in the UK with phone lines. They are paying 50p per month (£6 per year) on something that won’t even reach them. So the government is, frankly, stealing £6 per year from 10% of fixed phone line bill payers in the UK and they get nothing in return. Isn’t that some sort of fraud?
• Many elderly people do not broadband, and probably never will, so what benefit is this tax to them?
• Low income families will find this tax difficult to pay.
• By 2017 (that is 8 years time!) it is most likely 20MB broadband (or whatever they are considering next generation) will not be next generation. Internet (as a service) has come long way in the last 8 years, so in a further 8 years time what we consider now as next gen will most likely not be next gen.
• I personally think this will encourage a lot of people to cancel their fixed phone lines and move to their mobiles. Think about it – this is a great opportunity for mobile contract broadband providers to start offering large amounts of minutes to customers for cheap prices, and that may well make people scrap their phone lines altogether.
• There’s no guarantee that this 90% figure will be reached by 2017, so we might well end up paying even more tax.

I’m sorry Gordon, but this doesn’t make sense. However, if the government can get this tax on our bills before the next general election, we aren’t going to have much choice on whether we pay this tax or not.

The government really needs to get its act together on broadband – their plans to make our country “next generation” are just pretty pictures and unrealistic imaginations.

The government wastes too much of our money on stupid MP expenses so they’ve hardly got my trust in a brighter future for broadband.

This is a waste of time Gordon.