Recent news about broadband in the UK
We have gathered together some recent news articles relating to broadband internet in the UK.
Virgin Media promises to speed up to 100Mbps broadband (BBC News: 25/02/2010)
Virgin Media says it will start rolling out broadband with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to homes by the end of this year.
It says the high-speed service will provide "very close to advertised headline speeds".
The company says this is due to its use of cable, rather than the more widespread ADSL technology used by competitors.
In some areas Virgin says it will offer even faster speeds of up to 200Mbps.
Virgin Media's chief executive, 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."
The extra-fast service, says Virgin Media, will let customers download a music album in as little as five seconds, as opposed to the 75 seconds the same download would take on a 24Mbps ADSL connection.
Conservatives would end BT monopoly to deliver superfast broadband (Guardian: 01/01/2010)
The Conservatives today claimed they were willing to loosen BT's grip on the local telephone network and use parts of the BBC licence fee to deliver "superfast" broadband to the majority of Britain's homes by 2017.
Using "market-based solutions" the party believes the UK can be the first leading European country to have speeds of "up to" 100 megabits per second (Mbps), the shadow chancellor George Osborne said. He said "the Conservatives would support changes to the regulatory framework", adding that private investors being allowed to pay for better cabling would encourage competition. If the market failed to deliver, then 3.5% of the licence fee currently used to pay for digital switchover could be diverted to pay for broadband expansion, Osborne said. That would raise between £750m and £1bn on the basis of 25m TV licences.
UK broadband slower than Greece (Telegraph: 15/12/2009)
The UK ranks 21st out of 30 countries surveyed by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, falling behind the likes of Greece and Spain.
Japan, Finland and Sweden make up the top three countries with the widest provision of high-speed broadband and Belgium, Turkey and Mexico make up the bottom three.
The OECD’s figures also show that the UK comes 13th out of 30 countries when it comes to broadband penetration, again falling behind the likes of Finland, Denmark and Sweden, but beating the US, Greece and France.
PlusNet Reduce Contract length (: 15/09/2009)
Plusnet have announced that it has reduced the length of its broadband contracts from 18 down to 12 months.
View PlusNet deals
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REVEALED: THE GREAT BROADBAND RIP-OFF (Daily Express: 28/07/2009)
NO broadband customers are receiving the top download speeds advertised by internet service providers (ISPs), the communications watchdog said today.
More than half of broadband users are on packages that offer speeds of "up to" 8 megabits per second (Mbps), but research by Ofcom found in practice they received an average speed of 3.9 Mbps - less than half of the advertised maximum speed.
Ofcom said it was impossible for customers to receive the so-called "headline speed" of 8 Mbps, because some capacity is reserved for technical reasons.