European Commission seems happy but rival firms could yet put a spanner in the works.

The X-Factor may have missed out on a Christmas number one this year, but TalkTalk believes the hit show it sponsored played a star role in it more than trebling analysts expectations for net new broadband customers in the last three months of 2009.
Figures out yesterday show that the ISP acquired 36,000 net new broadband [...]

Internet service provider Orange, which operates a broadband business that used to be one of the UK’s biggest, has just revealed its still losing subscribers at an alarming rate. Meanwhile, rival ISP Virgin Media has announced it’s getting closer to the four million mark in terms of its customer base.

With mobile data traffic set to increase twenty-five fold by 2012, our mobile networks could soon be overloaded. That’s according to data analysts Informa Telecoms and Media, which says we’re facing online traffic jams on our phones if the network operators don’t take action.

A host of internet service providers are upping their top speeds to 20Mbit/s. ISPs Orange, Plusnet and Zen Internet have all announced they’re raising their respective bars over the past few days. In doing so, they’re making up ground on the likes of Virgin Media, BT, BE and O2, which all already offer “up to” 20Mbit/s services.

A new report’s been released that highlights the problems consumers and small businesses are having with their mobile operators. The Communications Consumer Panel (CCP) says that, as things stand, not even 2G coverage across the UK is up to scratch – never mind networks capable of supporting mobile broadband.

Mobile phone operator O2’s just announced it’s going to start trialling what’s being billed as a 4G network – and it could reach speeds of 340 Mbit/s. Meanwhile, BT’s revealed its first fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) at a UK “brownfield” site. Both are slated to begin next year.

The merger of Orange and T-Mobile is almost certain to cast further doubt over the speed of mobile broadband roll-out plans and further delays are possible if 3 were also bought.
That is the conclusion of Matt Hatton, Principle Analyst at Analsys Mason. He has been looking at the current consolidation in the UK mobile market [...]

The UK’s third and fourth biggest mobile phone companies are merging, creating a British telco juggernaut that would become the country’s biggest network. While the Orange and the T-Mobile brands will survive as separate entities until at least 2012 under the terms of the deal, the aim is for £445 million per year to be cut from their combined expenditure by 2014. Meanwhile, the move is another setback for the slow-moving negotiations on the role mobile broadband with play in Digital Britain.

BT, TalkTalk and Orange have taken the unprecedented step of joining forces with consumer groups to urge the government to ditch Lord Mandelson’s plans to cut off suspected illegal downloaders.
Mandelson’s disconnection plans were revealed last month and are in stark contrast to a more placatory approach outlined in Lord Carter’s earlier Digital Britain report. It [...]

It was back in February that the competition authorities delivered their knock-out blow to Project Kangeroo, the joint video-on-demand (VOD) service bankrolled by the UK’s terrestrial TV stations. Now, after months of the technology behind it being in the shop window, it finally has a buyer – and it’s British: Arqiva.

Vodafone and O2 can breathe a sigh of relief. A Government spectrum farming report has decided that neither company should be forced to give up any of its most valuable mobile broadband spectrum. However, the carrot of spectrum released by switching off analogue tv in 2012 remains in front of the pair to tempt them [...]

New music services from Virgin Media look inevitable after the fibre broadband provider announced today it had appointed Richard Wheeler to the newly-created post of Head of Music. A company statement summed up the new role has having been created ‘to develop Virgin Media’s music strategy and bring innovative new services to consumers, across mobile, [...]

Project Kangaroo, the failed broadband TV venture between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, could be bouncing back, with Orange a potential buyer for the technology behind it. The mobile phone provider is thought to be one of two firms – the other a tech company – in the running to buy Kangaroo’s assets.

Orange, [...]

After defending the proposed Kangaroo multi-channel IPTV catch-up service to the Competition Commission, Ashleigh Highfield has resigned to join Microsoft.
The chief executive’s departure will come as a major blow to the proposed online television service for which the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are hoping to get clearance from the Competition Commission. Highfield, who had [...]

We’re currently deploying a large batch of Performance Monitoring units that will form the basis of our next report. Keen readers of the site will know that a few months back we sought volunteers for the project via a posting in the news here. Well, we took over 1000 registrations in a day, which was [...]

Orange will relaunch its home broadband service online on Monday with an offer of free broadband for all its pay monthly mobile customers. Previously the offer had been limited to pay monthly customers on a tariff of £30 or more. The offer is currently available in-store and on telesales but will be promoted online from [...]

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 [...]

The ice cold relationship between the music industry and the ISPs it expects to police the internet is showing signs of thawing, but only a little and only after the threat of government legislation.
The six leading ISPs have agreed to send out educational letters to subscribers the BPI believes have been downloading music illegally. BT, [...]

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 [...]