40MBit/s fibre for London and Wales from BT

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Do you live in Muswell Hill, London or Whitchurch, Cardiff? If so, you’ll be pleased as punch to hear that you’re soon going to be offered 40MBit/s broadband from BT. Of course, by “soon”, I actually mean “they’re going to send the engineers in soon”, so you won’t get your hands on it till early 2010 at the earliest. In the meantime, there’s always Virgin Media

RUMOUR: Virgin Media 50Mbps cable in a few weeks?

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ThinkBroadband are reporting that a poster to their forums has leaked some info regarding a 50Mbps product from Virgin Media on their cable broadband network. The rollout is apparently due to start in “two weeks”, and should be completed by April 2009.

Price-wise the service won’t be cheap, with 50Mbps setting you back £52 a month. It’s purported to be a mandatory 12 month contract too, meaning you’ll be dropping £624 over the year on your extra-fast broadband, before any setup or connection fees…

Sky to offer truly limitless Broadband

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Sky have confirmed on the Digital Spy message boards that they have dropped the Fair Usage Policy from their top-tier broadband package. Most ‘Unlimited’ broadband packages actually have a “fair use” limitation, which means that if you end up using extreme amounts of data, they reserve the right to cut you off. Sky have announced that with immediate effect, their ‘Unlimited’ package will have no limits. It sounds weird saying that. A spokesperson posted…

Ofcom: 50MBit broadband in every home "possible" using only copper wires

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Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, has come out and said that it reckons nearly every home in the UK could hypothetically have 50MBit/s broadband in the future using copper wire, negating the need to put a fibre-optic line into every single home.

This sounds great – the only caveat is though that it sounds like it needs a hell of a lot of work to become a reality. Apparently it based this assertion on an “idealised situation” where all of the right kit is in place and everything works as planned. So it’s a bit like saying that in the future we’ll all be wearing silver and driving flying cars – probable, but requiring massive technological changes in every part of the industry…

O2 offers joint mobile and home broadband package

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O2 has claimed it’s the first broadband provider to offer both home and mobile broadband in the same package, and has also introduced the “O2 Home Broadband Takeaway”.

Anyone purchasing O2 Mobile Broadband for twenty quid a month will also get the standard Home Broadband package free for one year. This means “unlimited” downloads when at home and 3GB of data and unlimited Wi-Fi when mobile. Alternatively, users can get a £7.50 per month discount on faster home packages for one year…

The internet is saved! Ofcom calling for investment in nationwide fibre optic network

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Telecoms regulator, Ofcom, is making a fresh push to secure the future of the UK’s broadband infrastructure. Chief Exec, Ed Richards, told the Intellect conference in London “Ofcom favours a regulatory environment for the next generation of networks and access that both allows and encourages operators to make risky investments, to innovate for the benefit of consumers and, if the risks pay off, for the benefit of their shareholders too.”