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)

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!

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!

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?

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.

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.

Here on GEEK!, I’m fed up with ISPs that claim they supply unlimited broadband when they actually don’t, after you’ve spent ages reading the Fair Use Policy.

I think this is totally unfair and must be stopped. If ISPs don’t want us to use as much bandwidth as we like, then they should say so, before they tangle us in a 12 or 18 month contract. It’s stupid!

I’m not going to mention ISPs that do this – but there are plenty. It’s totally unfair that ISPs expect us to read a fair usage policy and understand what bandwidth is. I do, but most people don’t have time to dig through pages of FUPs and frankly aren’t interested.

It must stop here. GEEK! has set up a petition and if you have a problem with ISPs falsely promoting “unlimited” usage broadband please feel free to sign it below. You’re information won’t be given to any third party other than Ofcom if GEEK! decides to hand the petition results over. All that is required is your name and email address.

If GEEK! gets enough people on the list, he’ll hand it over to Ofcom and see what they say.

Thanks for your interest in the petition.

The GEEK! Broadband Petition: Stop ISPs falsely advertising “unlimited” broadband bandwidth!

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.

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.

Following up from my investigation into which ISPs actually provide unlimited broadband, I am beginning to wonder why some ISPs advertise “unlimited” broadband when it clearly isn’t.

It confuses me – why can’t ISPs just advertise the amount of bandwidth that you are actually allowed to use rather than advertising a service that isn’t correct? Isn’t that some sort of fraud? I mean if I went out and bought five pints of beer and only got three, I’d be a little annoyed (honestly, I’m not like that – I don’t drink!, it’s just a scenario). It’s a similar sort of service.

Unlimited means something that has no limit. We all know that. So why are ISPs telling us a lie?

It just doesn’t make business sense to me. If you are an ISP, why do you want to tell customers they can download as much as they like when they really can’t? It just creates hassle - if users download more than you want them you have to send them a letter complaining that they are downloading too much, then another letter if they don’t have a reaction to your first letter, then threatening warnings about legal action, then court cases – it goes on and costs money!

Wouldn’t it just be simpler if ISPs just made it absolutely clear how much you can download per month without having to go through endless “fair use policies” that often don’t claim the usage allowances anyway? Aghh! This one is very frustrating.