It is the last day of the year and what a year it has been for the broadband, home phone, digital TV and mobile markets.

Broadband

2006 was the year the free broadband was born and totally revolutionised the industry. In April, TalkTalk were the consumer champions, entering into a brave new world of “free broadband forever”. Now they are the villains, with massive customer service and connection issues. Orange has also suffered similar problems with their free broadband service. Have they tainted the reputation of free broadband? Well, in 2007 consumers will no doubt be very suspicious of free broadband offerings from TalkTalk, Orange and Sky. Many people are already opting to turn their backs on free broadband and instead choosing to pay for a service that is more reliable. Over time, free broadband will recover as providers sort out the problems with the service.

Home Phone

The days of home phone providers being called “Telco’s” and broadband providers being called “ISP’s” are gone. 2006 was the year in which the two became interchangeable. “Convergence” was the new industry buzzword. Home phone providers moved into broadband if they hadn’t already and ISP’s offered home phone and broadband bundled together.

BT finally became slightly competitive with price controls being lifted by the industry regulator, Ofcom. You are still better off to use an alternative provider though.

Digital TV

The UK’s biggest Digital TV provider moved into broadband with its free broadband offering to Sky Digital customer.

Awareness “digital switch over” increased with more noise being made by Ofcom, DigitalUK and providers like Sky, Telewest and ntl.

Mobile Phone

Naturally, advances in mobile technology continued. 3 mega pixel camera phones became the new threshold that aspiring manufacturers had to reach, with Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Nokia leading the pack.

Cash back deals from mobile retailers became common place with retailers giving money back to customers as long as they send in their mobile bills at designated times.

Convergence with broadband extended to mobile operators with Orange entering the free broadband club (following the rebrading of Wanadoo as Orange Broadband), Virgin Mobile merging with ntl/Telewest, O2 buying broadband provider Be and Vodafone developing its broadband product. T-Mobile is also rumoured to be entering the broadband market soon.

2007 Predictions

In 2007 we are likely to see the big players like Virgin, Orange, TalkTalk, Vodafone and BT will battle it out of market share. We are likely to see even more consolidation in all markets with these bigger providers buying up the smaller providers. Smaller providers will simply not survive in this cutthroat world.

Convergence will continue with companies offering the triple play products of broadband, home phone and digital TV or broadband, home phone and mobile.

The newly merged Virgin Mobile, ntl and Telewest will be determined to gain some dominance in the market with its quad play offering of broadband, home phone, digital TV and mobile.

It will certainly be an exciting year ahead, and we are likely to see more stellar deals!

Happy New Year

Useful links

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BT’s new telephone network, called the 21st Century Network, is well underway with the first call being made yesterday.

The new network will use voice over internet (VoIP) technology to carry calls and will cost BT £10 billion to complete. It will be finished in 2010.

The 21st Century Network will lead to lower costs to consumers, faster speeds and more services being made available. It certainly is the future of telecommunications and will be one the most advanced telephone network of its kind in the world.

More information at BBC

Vodafone has announced that it will offer a broadband and home phone bundle, called At Home. For £25 per month, you will receive an 8Mb broadband service, all your UK phone calls and a 25% discount on mobile calls. You must be a Vodafone mobile customer to get the deal for £25 per month. If not, it will cost £35 per month. The Vodafone At Home package will be available in January 2007.
Vodafone joins a number of big name brands, such as Orange, Sky, Carphone Warehouse and BT who are battling it out in the broadband sector by offering very competitive bundled packages.

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Read more on the Vodafone announcement from the BBC

NTL:Telewest are planning on selling their triple offering of broadband, home phone, digital television and mobile phones through Virgin stores next year. The merged company of NTL, Telewest and Virgin Mobile will be re-branded under the Virgin name. Part of the deal allows the products to be sold in Virgin’s 120 high street stores.

This will allow NTL:Telewest to really take on the likes of the Carphone Warehouse. It is also seen as a reversal of the trend for businesses to move their sales functions online.

Full article at This is Money

The newly merged ntl Telewest and Virgin Mobile has announced a bundled broadband, digital TV, home phone and mobile phone service. Industry insiders call this “quad-play”. Until now, the most any single provider has managed to offer is “triple play”, which is a bundle of 3 services, normally broadband, digital TV and home phone.

The new quad-play service offers great value for money. For £40 per month you will receive all four products. You will enjoy the following:

Broadband

• Up to 2Mb
• Firewall and anti-virus
• Installed by an engineer

Digital TV

• Over 30 channels, including Sky One, E4, UKTV Gold, Film 4, ITV2 and Living TV
• TV on demand
• Set top box. No need for a dish

Home Phone

• Unlimited weekend calls
• Line rental
• Standard features like 1471 and voicemail

Mobile

• Virgin Mobile SIM (mobile handset not included)
• 300 minutes and 300 texts any network, any time of the day
• Free voicemail
• Virgin Bites entertainment service

If you do not want all four services, you can order the Virgin Mobile service with any other ntl or Telewest service for an extra £10 per month (normally £20 per month).

To sign up to the £40 per month broadband, mobile, digital TV and home phone service, visit either the ntl or the Telewest website by clicking on one of the following links. This will take you to a 3 for £30 page (broabband, digital TV and home phone). You will be able to add the Virgin mobile service to the bundle during the ordering process, bringing the total price up to £40 per month.

Visit ntl

Visit Telewest

Orange has announched that it will offer a new service that combines a mobile phone with a VoIP service. A single mobile handset will act as a landline and a mobile. The handset will operate in the customers house using WiFi (Wireless Internet) to access a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol - making phone calls over a broadband connection) connection. Outside the customers house, the handset will work as a normal mobile phone.

The service is very similar to a BT service called BT Fusion. The Orange service will be available in November.

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Find out more about VoIP

Visit Orange

Pipex has purchased two businesses, Toucan and Bulldog, increasing its customer base by 1.14 million.
Toucan has been bought from American firm IDT for £24 million. Toucan has 185,000 broadband, home phone and mobile customers.

Pipex has bought Bulldog from Cable and Wireless for £12 million. Bulldog has around 100,000 broadband customers.

This move will allow Pipex to offer “triple play” products. Triple play is the term used to refer to a provider that can offer broadband, mobile and home phone products (or broadband, digital TV and home phone products). Triple play is becoming an essential strategy for telecoms companies to survive in an ultra competitive market.

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Visit the Pipex website

Visit the Toucan website

Ofcom, the UK telecommunications regulator, has removed price controls on BT. Price controls were first placed on BT when it was privatised in 1984. At the time, BT had a total monopoly on the UK market and price controls were in place to prevent BT from over charging. Since then, intense competition has developed in the market. BT’s many competitors were significantly more competitive than BT and BT was powerless to react. The price controls were seen as a way to allow competition to flourish but preventing BT from using its dominant position to undercut the competition. Now that competition is rife, there is no need for Ofcom to control the prices that BT can charge.

As a response to the lifting of price controls, BT has announced the following reductions in its prices:

• BT Together Option 2 - reduced by 28% to £3.95 per month
• BT Together Option 3 - reduced by 31% to £9.95 per month
• From 15th August - free evening and weekend calls to anyone signing a 18 month contract
• Oct 2006 - calls to 0845 and 0870 reduced. Reduced rates to mobiles
• End of 2006 - 25p off line rental if you receive your bills online
• Voice over Internet - reduced by 29% to £4.95

This news certainly is good news to BT customers. Non-BT customers will also benefits as competitors will be forced to react by dropping their prices.

At long last Virgin has accepted an offer of £962 million from NTL for Virgin Mobile. This will create the UK’s first “quad play” provider offering home phone, digital TV, broadband and mobile products and is part of NTL’s vision of become a massive force in the telecommunications market. NTL recently merged with fellow cable provider Telewest. NTL will rebrand as Virgin, but only if Richard Branson is happy with improvements to NTL’s rather dodgy customer services. Virgin has a good name in terms of customer services and its focus is on keeping its customers happy. That attitude is likely to be forced on NTL in an attempt to bring NTL out of customer service hell. This is great news for existing NTL customers.

More info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4874694.stm

At long last, the marriage we have all been waiting for. Well, not quite, but there are reports that ntl and Virgin are about to announce a deal. The Register is reporting that ntl has offered £900 million for Virgin Mobile after Virgin turned an earlier offer of £817 million.

What does this mean for you? It will allow ntl to be the first company in the UK to offer “quad play”. Quad play is a bundle of digital television, home phone, broadband and mobile products. You can receive one bill and have only one company to deal with for all four products. As with other bundles, ntl are likely to offer the bundled products at a lower cost than if you took all four separately.

Bundling is a win-win situation for both provider and customer. It gives the provider the chance to earn extra revenue from one customer and it gives the customer a discount from individual products. Telewest and ntl already offer “triple play” bundles, which is digital television, home phone and broadband. Companies such as Toucan and TalkTalk offer home phone, broadband and mobile bundles.

Our advise to any customer is to look at their needs and investigate the bundle options as well as individual options. It is still often cheaper to take the lowest cost products from individual providers than it is to take a bundle.