Welcome:   BT TalkTalk & Orange

TalkTalk break off to go it alone Virgin style whilst Orange chicken out and hand their network over to BT:

TalkTalk has announced it will be switching its customers from BT to its own fibre optic infrastructure, however it has not given a timetable of when this might happen. TalkTalk has added 1700 phone exchanges across the UK which means that 80% of houses in the UK should be able to have coverage. They say they will be able to increase this to 90% in the next year. This makes them the only provider with this percentage of coverage. Mark Schmidt from the provider has said that the expectation is that consumption of data will increase by 50% in the next few years and TalkTalk is equipping themselves to deal with this.

Meanwhile Orange have taken a different tack and have handed their fixed line broadband operation to BT. The providers network had been dogged by customer service and reliability issues and only covered 65% of the UK. Bruno Duarte from Orange admitted that their performance in the sector had been poor and their customer base was declining. They have decided that by joining with BT they will be able to reach most of the UK. 61 members of staff will be transferring to BT.

A survey which claims that women find owners of the iPhone more attractive than those with other handsets was suggested as being a fake however it may have come from a survey carried out by Phones4U. The survey had said that more than 50% of women thought that men who owned iPhones were more reliable, humorous, well groomed and intelligent. Phones4U have said they did not conduct such a survey and it later emerged it had been carried out by its digital marketing agency Sticky Eyes without their permission.

Ian Chisnall from the Wealden Local Strategic Partnership have commented on how funding for broadband services should be spent. He has suggested that the governments plans to make 2Mbps available to all households is inadequate considering that many household already have 50Mbps. He says that homes and businesses need improved speeds.

However, the chief executive of Virgin media has said that efforts to launch fibre optics in the UK are moving at a good pace. He says that the government is doing the right thing in trying to accelerate fibre optics growth. Virgin Media are working at making broadband a trusted product and offering various services such as entertainment, information and communication, he said.

A study by Moneysupermarket.com has found that 18% of UK web users has downloaded content illegally and 74% of these opt for music. 41% download films and 25% look for pirated software. Most of these illegal file sharers are aged between 18 and 34 and are more likely to be men than women. Mike Wilson from the comparison site said that the problem is growing and that people consider broadband to be an essential part of their lives. He points out that people who have WiFi need to use passwords to protect their internet access from hijackers who can use their IP address to download illegally, escaping detection.

O2 is the latest provider to offer broadband deals to iPad owners with a range of tariffs for customers to choose from. The iPad will be available from the end of May, one month after it was originally going to arrive in the UK. O2 has kept the details of its plans under wraps as have Orange and Vodaphone who also have packages available for iPad owners.

Comparison site Broadband Genie has tested broadband speeds for users of dongles during a long train journey from Cambridge to Bournemouth. The top speed during the trip was 3Mbps while the average was just over 1Mbps. Unfortunately the tests also revealed that web use failed more often that it had during a test which was conducted the previous year. Dongles from 5 providers were tested on how well they were able to stream the BBC podcasts, YouTube and Spotify. T-Mobile came out top and was more reliable than others, but some had faster speeds. Chris Marling from the site said that providers have real issues with getting the internet to work well while people are on the move and they should work towards setting a minimum standard for all of the UK. † [last update: 22.04.10]

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