After conceding to SamKnows that the property slump was having an impact on its broadband sales Carphone Warehouse has now roughly halved the number of new customers it expects to connect this year, from 400,000 to between 200,000 to 250,000.
However the latest figures from the group also revealed what it is admitting as ‘disruption’ causing
O2 has kicked off a mobile broadband promotions war which will dominate broadband deals this summer and early autumn.
Until the end of October customers taking out its mobile broadband product for £20 per month will now get free home broadband for a year as long as they live with the O2 Home Broadband Network, which
BT have caused a bit of a stir this week by mailing a personalised letter to current or former Tiscali group broadband customers (these include Pipex, Freedom2Surf and Nildram). A photograph of one of the letters is available here, having been discussed in various forums earlier this week.
The letter points out the attempts by Tiscali
In the same week that BBC Radio One and the Guardian put out an appeal to hear from UK web users who had received a letter from Virgin Media warning of illegal file downloading on their account (with tips on how to avoid it), the American courts took a far more draconian stance on privacy.
As
Orange have today introduced a new broadband pricing structure that sees them differentiate pricing according to coverage of their LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) network. Like other LLU operators including TalkTalk and Sky, Orange provide broadband services over their own LLU network where they have coverage and fall back to BT’s IPStream network where they do
It seems that at the beginning of each year someone somewhere heralds the coming year as being the “year of broadband”. 2007 was no different, with many predicting that LLU would truly take off. In many ways this has held true - there are now in excess of 3 million unbundled lines in the UK,
Two changes have been made to the availability checker today. Firstly, AOL LLU data has now been fully incorporated in to the checker (and the rest of the site). The checker will now report whether or not AOL has unbundled your exchange. Similarly, you can view this information on your exchange page as well.
Sadly, the
AOL UK have today launched new pricing for their broadband services. The new pricing raises the cost of AOL broadband on non-LLU exchanges, and keeps the cost the same for AOL unbundled exchanges. It is believed that AOL have currently unbundled around 390 exchanges, and plans to increase this number significantly over the next year.
Carphone’s targeted rollout of 1,000 exchanges just over a year ago has already been surpassed. No less than 1,134 exchanges have been unbundled now. What’s potentially even more interesting is that they are targetting a further 500 exchanges by March 2008 (see page 36 of CPW’s annual strategy day PDF). Also of interest in the
A much needed update of the Availability Checker has finally been completed. This adds support for ADSL Max, Be, Wanadoo, Zen, Edge and also improved data for Now wireless services. There are also a few other additions that will be completed over the coming weeks.
The updated checker builds directly on top of a new Availability
Easynet are to offer LLUStream via their network of LLU exchanges - list here
Pricing is unclear as yet but in the press release from Easynet they are making noises about being significantly cheaper.
2005 should be a interesting year for LLU developments.
Wanadoo looking at rolling out LLU services
AOL has also mentioned that LLU rollout is a