Top 10 Broadband Awards 2009 nominees revealed
The nominees for the annually Top 10 Broadband Awards, being held for the second time now, have been unveiled with 3, Virgin Media and O2 leading the nominations with 4 a piece.
The Top 10 Broadband Awards are based on ratings of more than 1.5 million customers as well as speed tests carried out during the last year by Top 10 Broadband, the most popular independent site for comparison of broadband prices, thereby making it the most valued customer awards in the industry.
The awards ceremony will be conducted in the 24 Club, a cutting – edge venue located in Soho, Central London in September the 15th. Nominees will lock horns in 11 categories, including fastest service, innovation, best value and customer satisfaction.
The panel which made the nominations observed the detailed speed test as well as the customer rating data, nearly thousands of customer reviews left on the website and put all the packages of broadband providers to the most strict quantitative and qualitative test in order to come up with the nominations.
O2, 3 and Virgin Media are in the front in nominations and have been short – listed in 4 main categories. O2, TalkTalk, T-Mobile, BT and Vodafone have 3 nominations each.
Customers have continued to make their views count in the awards by rating their broadband providers as well as the speed that they get.
The director of Top 10 Broadband, Alex Buttle, said that the Digital Britain report preceded the rolling out of extremely fast home broadband as well as an increase in the number of customers seeking mobile broadband dongles as well as other related devices.
Therefore, he continued, it was pertinent that excellence was recognized and was duly awarded in this highly competitive industry. They, he mentioned, were happy to celebrate the success of companies who’s commitment to excellence and innovation in the industry was helping to make the digital future of the country better.
O2 is awarded with a top prize after results of a broadband survey
O2, a leading broadband service provider, has been honoured with a top award after the results of a broadband survey which involved nearly six thousand and five hundred people.
The PC Advisor Broadband Survey, conducted recently, saw O2 snatch one of the top awards and saw off competition from other broadband providers. The results of the survey led to O2 winning the ‘Best Buy’ broadband title, a prestigious one, despite close competition from other companies like ZEN Internet and Be Broadband.
More than six and a half thousand people were part of the survey and they were asked their opinions on a number of aspects of the broadband package they hand, including the download speeds, the reliability of service as well as the level of customer service. After the analysis of the responses to the survey, O2 came trumps and won the title ‘Best Buy’ broadband.
Commenting on the award, an O2 official said that they were very happy to have got the award and that it was a fantastic year for them and that they felt that they had a very impressive product at a reasonable price. He also said that their customers never have to worry about anything when they avail of O2’s services as they provide a number of benefits such as access to free internet security, no connection charges and free customers service. He also thanked everyone for voting for them and looked forward to the next year.
A spokesperson on behalf of the PC Advisor said that with a big response rate, their survey has gained its place in the country as one of the most trusted survey of its kind and that this year saw the rating and ranking of the top 14 ISPs in the country. Most of the ISPs got good results but O2 scored the most in the 3 fields mentioned earlier.
MiFi – Making your Home a Hotspot
If you are a Verizon broadband subscriber, you can enhance your WiFi experience by getting a personal WiFi hotspotting device that will allow up to five of your friends to access the internet from their netbooks of mobile phones in your home. The Verizon MiFi basically makes your home a hotspot. But because it’s portable, anywhere you go becomes a hotspot. This device is ideal to any subscriber who has to trek into remote locations with weak or absent WiFi hotspots but has to go online most of the time. It’s also great for anyone wanting to give access to the internet at home without having to spend on all those cables and routers.
How It Works
The MiFi Intelligent Mobile Hotspot from Verizon is a petite battery-run EVDO cellular modem device the size of 8 credit cards stacked over each other. Wherever you bring the MiFi with you, once turned on, it detects a Verizon Wireless 3G network near you and enables a more reliable broadband WiFi connection to your laptop, netbook or mobile phone. It even lets your iPod Touch connect to your laptop.
The MiFi’s lithium-ion battery can give for 40 hours on standby mode just like any mobile phone. Turning it on with the flick of a miniature side switch gives you 5 hours continuously enveloping you with a 30 foot WiFi radio bubble so you can get your emails or surf on the internet wirelessly. At home you can just tether the device to its charger for indefinite use.
Admittedly you really can’t go unlimited surfing as you’d be limited by the amount of data downloaded specified for a billing period. So depending on the plan you take out, you can go as low as 250Mb up to 5 GB. With a low plan, you might not be able to extend this to your friends or neighbours within a 30ft radius. But if you’re the generous type, why not?
Wireless Router – Every Home Should have One
A wireless router functions twofold, it first acts as wireless access point that established sessions with your device such as a desktop PC or portable devices like Laptop, netbooks and mobile phones. Second, it acts as a network router that determines the first available network to which your session’s packet information can be sent and conversely received and delivered to your device.
How They Work
Wireless routers follow certain transmission protocols like the IEEE WiFi 802.11x family of standards. Once connected to a wired local area network, the router starts to broadcast a certain frequency with this your portable device with suitable wireless capability can detect so that a session can be established, such as an internet access. Most laptops and netbooks as well as mobile phones already have built-in wireless capability, usually a WiFi compatible antenna. Otherwise, there are USB dongles that allows wireless connection when connected to the Universal Serial Bus port of your portable device.
Advantages
If you have a broadband LAN connections at home or the office, a wireless router can allow multiple users to access your LAN without further investments in hardware to wire your device to the LAN. In addition, as a router, it has firewall features that provide better protection of your PC or laptops against hackers because individual PC or laptop IP address are not directly showing on the internet. As integral to its router function, unless you need something more robust and powerful, you won’t need the usual firewall software that consumes computing resources on a server.
Wireless routers have gone a long way since it first appeared as a consumer product where before it was an industrial-grade computing hardware. The costs has significantly dropped and it offers more bandwidth courtesy of the WiFi 802.11g standard most of them comply with.
What are MAC Codes
MAC code stands for Migration Authorisation Code which in the UK is a 17-19 character identifier uniquely used by customers of broadband services whenever they elect to switch between internet service providers or ISPs. MACs are useful for 30 days once issued after a request made by the customer to his incumbent ISP. This should be sufficient time for the customer to get a new ISP as it takes only 6-10 business days for accounts to be processed in the transfer from ISP to another.
MACs usually start with “BBDS”, “BBIP”, “FTIP”, or “BBDP”, and have 4 letters, 7 to 9 digits, a slash, 2 letters, 2 digits and ending with 1 letter, or something like BBIP87654321/AB12C
It was introduced by BT as a sound consumer practice that’s optional but in 2007, it became mandatory as part of the General Conditions 22 governing Service Management stipulated in the operating licenses of broadband network operators. ISPs are mandated to comply with a customer request free of charge within the stipulated timeframe. The rules came into force as a means to facilitate customer migration from one ISP to another.
Refusing to Give the MAC
Once a customer MAC request is received, the incumbent ISP should provide the MAC in five business days. There are some valid reasons for refusing a customer’s request. They include the following:
- The identity of the account holder cannot be confirmed with standard checks.
- The service contract for broadband services has been terminated before the request is made.
- The ISP has already been issued to the customer from an earlier request.
- A cease request for the broadband service has been submitted by the ISP.
The ISP could not send a MAC because the underlying broadband network provider is unable to generate a MAC. In the UK, British Telecom is usually the underlying network provider.
IEEE – Defining Our World
The IEEE reads as eye-triple-e. The name was historically the acronym for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc. but today, its scope goes beyond electrical and electronics to cover related areas and is thus, simply referred to by its name, eye-triple-e. The IEEE is a non-profit organization that was formed and incorporated in New York, USA in 1963 with the merging of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIRE) founded in 1884 and the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) founded in 1912. This effectively puts the IEEE as having its roots in 1883, making the organization celebrate its 126th anniversary this year.
Organizational Focus
The history of the IEEE is precisely the history of electricity-based technologies of the 20th century that were given due recognition by various societies like the AIRE and IRE. With the merging and the advance of electronics at that time, the IEEE's constitutional by-laws emerged to define precisely what the organization is for. It defines its purpose as “scientific and educational, directed toward the advancement of the theory and practice of electrical, electronics, communication and computer engineering, as well as computer science, the allied branches of engineering and the related arts and sciences."
In pursuing these purpose, the IEEE has evolved into a global enforcer of industrial standards over a wide range of professional disciplines like power, biomedical technologies, information technologies, telecommunications, consumer electronics, aerospace, transportation and nanotechnology, among the major ones. To this end it is the IEEE Standards Association that takes care of the promulgating the standards of the IEEE.
The IEEE also functions as a leading publisher of scientific and engineering journals as well as a conference organizer on its areas of expertise. It publishes about 30% of the world’s printed and online materials on electrical and electronics engineering as well as computer sciences and related derivative fields with well in excess of 100 peer-reviewed scientific and engineering journals.
Fiber-Optics – making Broadband Possible
Fiber Optic or optical fiber cables are pervasively deployed by telecommunications companies to comprise their main backbone network infrastructure. These cables are often laid out in underground conduits as well as on ocean floors over long transoceanic distances to carry high-density high-bandwidth transmission capacities from which telecoms service providers and ISPs can tap into for their networking requirements.
Fiber Optic cables are most suited for main telecoms backbone as they carry the most signals compared with the traditional copper cables that are subject to corrosion and throughput diminution over time. In fact, most network providers have started replacing their old copper cables with more resilient high bandwidth fiber optics in many countries undergoing telco infrastructure improvements.
Advantages
- Electrical signals when converted to light suffer lesser interference and attenuation over fiber optic cables than they would through regular metal cables.
- This low attenuation is ideal for carrying signals over long distance communication.
- Data throughput is very high typically reaching the Gigabyte range as each fiber in a fiber optic bundle can carry many channels independently using various light wavelengths in a propagation method called wavelength division multiplex.
- Light is immune to electrical interference so signal integrity can be conserved from point of origin to destination over long distances with the cable going through high interference density location.
Disadvantage
- Fiber Optic cable installation require training as its successful installation hinges on compliance with cabling and termination standards not strictly required in regular copper cables
It’s expensive to install but is cost effective when high bandwidths are needed as the cost per megabit can be lower. Fiber Optics is strongly recommended in cabling tall buildings or premises where many users are expected to tap into the premise network so that cost can be equitably spread among users.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
What is VOIP
If you are using Skype to call anyone on their VOIP PCs anywhere in the world, then you have come across the term and most likely familiar with it. It’s Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP that is short for internet protocol telephony (IP telephony), referring to the set of transmission technologies that deliver voice grade communication over the IP networks such as the popular internet or other packet-switched telecoms net works.
VoIP provides a more cost effective alternative to regular PSTN phone calls especially when involving expensive overseas calls. Many homes and offices have realized substantial savings when going into VoIP when making overseas calls.
How It Works
VoIP technology starts with a headset designed for the purpose. Either this or your PC can be equipped with an audio card with a headset and microphone to accept your voice. Your voice get converted into digital signals and “packetized” for internet transmissions using the IP standards. The process is just reversed at the other end with a VoIP equipped appliance or a service provider delivering the service to your PC, like Skype.
Broadband internet makes this very viable as digitized voice can be bandwidth hugging. And it was not until broadband became pervasively cheap that companies started implementing VoIP across offices that reduced substantially its overall telephone bills. Traditional PSTN companies initially resisted VoIP incursions but eventually rode on the bandwagon, offering VoIP services to their existing client base.
Disadvantage
A lot has been said about the significant savings from VoIP implementation. But as in any internet application, there are problems and the major quality of service remains a major consideration. If you want crystal clear voice calls that you can understand without dropout, you’re still better off with standards PSTN voice calls.
As it is just another packet data streaming into the internet, latency and dropouts can make voice calls unintelligible unless some dedicated VoIP bandwidth is allocated to it.
Neil Berkett
Virgin Media chief executive
Neil Berkett assumes the enviable position as CEO and Director of Virgin Media, Inc., one of the key telecommunications and media company based in the UK. He has served as its COO at the old NTL when he joined the company in September 2005 and engineered the merger between NTL and Telewest to become what is Virgin Media. Right before his appointment, he has served as acting CEO after Steve Burch resigned his CEO position in August last year.
Promotion
Chairman Jim Mooney is all but praises for Neil, proclaiming before the board that Neil more than deserves the promotion. He clearly demonstrated “strategic vision and operational experience to take the company into its next phase of growth”: after driving the successful NTL-Telewest merger. He added that under him, the company has seen the best financial results since the merger.
During the year Virgin media saw its total customer base grow to almost 5 million with Neil doing most of the work designing and promoting the company’s products and services for the new millennia. The company saw an added 61,000 subscribers for its TV service up from a 20,000 increase in the previous months.
Excellent Credentials
Neil has more than 25 years of corporate experience in highly competitive customer-facing businesses. Before joining Virgin Media before the merger in 2005, the now 53-yar old Neil Berkett was the managing director at Lloyds TSB Bank plc since 2003 in charge of its distribution. He was the COO of Prudential Assurance Co., Ltd for a year since 2002. Before that, he occupied a concurrent role as CEO of chief executive of Trek Investco Ltd and a principal at Marsh Mill Consulting Ltd. He headed the retail operations of St George Bank and had worked overseas before that as Sr General Manager of Citibank’s Australian division, CEO at Eastwest Airlines Australia and Financial Controller at ICL Australia in succession.
GSM Association
The GSM Association Governs Mobile Telephony
The GSM Association (GSMA) is an organization consisting of mobile phone operators and mobile handset makers and related companies who share the same passion for promoting and further developing the mobile phone systems under the GSM (Groupe Speciale Mobile) or Global System for Mobile standards. Representing the interests of about 800 network operators and handset manufacturers and suppliers across more than 200 countries worldwide, the GSMA is considered among the most influential and powerful trade aggregations in the world with enough clout to lobby governments anywhere on just about everything related to regulating the mobile phone industry and consumer businesses.
As a group, the GSMA unifies the various sectors in the mobile phone industry to drive new software and hardware development, usher in better telecommunication technologies and well harness the media and entertainment industries for emerging multimedia mobile experience with the sole purpose of creating and sustaining business growth for its members and the advancement of mobile telephone for consumers.
A Short GSM History
The GSMA had its roots in 1982 when the Confederation of European Posts and Telecommunications (CEPT) organized the GSMA with the purpose of designing and deploying a pan-European mobile telephony standard. It was not until 1989 that the GSM standards were complete and the first GSM networks deployed culminating with the first GSM call made in Finland in 1992. Its works didn’t end there but further enhancements to its 2G network saw the introduction of GPRS and EDGE and HSPA enhancements.
By 2005, the GSM technology dominates the mobile phone industry with more than 1.5 billion customers. The first HSDPA network goes live while SMS messages have surpassed the one trillion messages mark sent throughout the year.
The GSMA also sponsors the annual premiere industry trade show and conference called the Mobile World Congress annually held in Barcelona, Spain and the Mobile Asia Congress. Another one will be held in Hongkong this November. These two yearly events spaced months apart, are attended by the captains of the mobile phone industry and the press eagerly anticipating to catch new announcements related to new Mobile phones and emerging mobile technologies.
