Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Cable broadband has always seemed to be out in front in comparison to ADSL and that gap looks like its going to get even bigger with the latest news that Virgin Media will be offering 100Mbps broadband to its 4.1 million customers. That’s a staggering 24 times faster than what any of its current competitors can offer.

I currently subscribe to their 50Mbps which after a few teething problems getting my network up and running, has been outstanding. At first I didn’t really notice much difference between it and it’s 20Meg service but now it’s running smooth I can’t wait to see the full potential I’ll get when i can upgrade again. In theory at 100Mbps downloading will be lightning quick. 30 seconds for a HD TV programme and 7 and a half minutes for a full HD movie. Not to mention the speed for online gaming.

Company CEO Neil Berkett said: "There is nothing we can't do with our fibre optic cable network, and the upcoming launch of our flagship 100Mbps service will give our customers the ultimate broadband experience.” There’s already talk that Virgin Media are starting to test and pilot 200Mbps in the South West and the Midlands……………BRILLIANT!

Finally some decent news for British Broadband. Ofcom has published a statement entitled "Delivering super-fast broadband in the UK" outlining the framework it will use to regulate the rollout of BT's superfast broadband across the UK.

The key points are:

• allow wholesale pricing flexibility to enable returns appropriate to the considerable risks of building new networks, but constrained by the market in the interests of customers;
• ensure that any regulatory pricing allows investors the opportunity to earn a rate of return that genuinely reflects the cost of deployment and the associated level of risk;
• minimise unnecessary inefficiencies in network design and build as a result of regulatory policies, while continuing to protect the consumer interest;
• support the use of new, more flexible wholesale services by BT to offer super-fast services to other service providers and consumers at competitive prices; and
• safeguard the opportunity for further competition based on physical infrastructure, by facilitating fair opportunities for companies to synchronise their investments with BT’s deployments, should reasonable demand arise, and encouraging network design that takes future potential competition into account.

BT Group Chief Executive Ian Livingston commented:

Today's announcement gives us the green light to push ahead with our 1.5 billion pounds superfast broadband investment plans to reach at least 40 percent of UK households by 2012.
Today's announcement from Ofcom has set expectations for the whole UK industry as the market evolves into a fibre-based world.

One key point is that this latest statement from Ofcom concerns Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC), not Fibre to the Home (FTTH). The majority of the £1.5bn spend on fibre will be mainly on the cabinet based service, the regulatory requirements for the FTTH service have previously been covered by Ofcom.

There has been a lot of discussion and rumours of Virgin launching its 50Mbps ADSL product recently.

Virgin Media has started a viral campaign of the new product showing off the new cable modem/router they will be supplying.

While this may indicate the new service will be arriving any time soon Think Broadband previously announced that the roll out will take to April 2009 to complete and around 40% of us will have a choice of a 50Meg product by then.

Price wise it is said to cost £52 but this is unconfirmed and you will also have to sign up to a 12 month contract.

It will be interesting to see what the upload speeds are like. I find this speed becoming more and more important recently so a 50 meg down and 0.5 meg up would be a bit pointless.

It is also worth noting that cable does not suffer the same problems as ADSL when you move away from the exchange, however user congestion does play a part in the speeds.

T-Mobile has been ordered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to pull an advert which misleadingly implies that mobile broadband is of similar speed and quality to home broadband.

A leaflet for T-Mobile stated: “Emails to send, blogs to write, games to play, stuff-to buy- and everything else you love doing online…Broadband on the go for £15 a month...All the benefits of home broadband, on the move. No wires, no waiting, no worries.”

ASA ruled: “Because T-Mobile had not made clear in the ad that there were differences between home broadband services and mobile broadband services, particularly in terms of the potentially higher speeds of the former, and because we considered that that was likely to influence consumers' decision to subscribe to the service, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.”

I am quite glad this has happened, I have had several friends wanting mobile broadband for whatever reason, and most of them seem to think it will provide similar speeds to normal home broadband.

In one case I did a speed test for the mobile broadband provided by 3. I managed to receive 0.1 meg Up and Down. This is most likely due to poor reception, and would improve significantly depending where you are located, but it is clearly no where near home broadband speeds and I feel a lot of people seem to think it will be similar.

Via: Precision Marketing