Telecommunications giant BT has been in the news a considerable amount recently, especially when it comes to their broadband services. Many are claiming that the company is unfairly monopolising the market while not providing customers promised service levels, which is why they may find it surprising that the company is planning on expanding into the mobile industry.
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Topic BT EE mobile operators Broadband News Telecommunications O2
Within the telecommunication industry we are aware of some of the external problems that can affect our last mile access networks. During my 16 years working in these circles, I’ve witnessed everything from DSL slowing down due to frost, to a wireless networks poor performance being blamed on the heat.
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Topic DSL EE mobile News Weather O2 Vodafone
At the end of a complex bidding process, the 4G auction has its victors and has raised £2.34bn for the public purse. About 90% less than the price paid at the 3G sale 13 years ago - at the height of the dot-com bubble. It's also more than £1bn short of what the chancellor estimated in his autumn statement. The relatively modest amounts raised by the auction may well be attributable to the limited success enjoyed by EE since launching the 4G service. Results published last week for EE’s financial end of year show contract net additions actually falling by over a third in 2012 Q4. It’s been suggested that this may be down to the way EE have been pricing their data bundles; offering only the same amount of data as on 3G platforms (resulting in customers running out of data early within the contracted month). The recent reduction in the price of EE’s most basic tariff (by £5 a month) may well be a move to remedy these perceived short comings.
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Topic BT EE Niche 4G News Three 3 3G O2 Vodafone
The topic of net neutrality has been hot in the press in recent years and more so in the past few; not only have there been legislations put in place to block illegal websites, such as pirate bay. But, last week saw the release of a new voluntary Open Internet Code of Practice (OICP); its presence is designed to tackle the concerns surrounding net neutrality. Members are to ensure that the internet is ‘full and open’. The code, however, has received a mixed response from UK ISP’s.
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Topic BT OICP News Sky TalkTalk O2 Open Internet Code of Practice Virgin Vodafone
TalkTalk confirmed this week that they have officially joined the ‘Pirate Bay Blockade’, becoming the fifth ISP do to so (along with SKY, Virgin Media and O2) following an April High Court hearing which ordered ISP’s to block the infamous bit torrent website. BT are expected to follow suit imminently.
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Topic Ed Sheeran High Court Pirate Bay News Sky TalkTalk Jessie J Justin Bieber O2 Tim Berners Virgin Media
Over the next few years we may well be paying for our goods by using our mobile phone. This is a concept that has been around for a while, and now looks as though it’s finally happening. Over the last fortnight Orange/ T-Mobile , Vodafone and O2 have agreed to create a single platform to support mobile transactions. This step brings the whole concept closer to market realisation - as retailers will now only need to plug in to one joint platform.
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Topic Barclays McDonalds Orange Pret a Manger Contactless News NFC Starbucks Tesco O2 T-Mobile Vodafone Wilkinson
The telecoms market has witnessed a sizable proliferation in mergers and acquisitions over the last couple of years. The acquisition of BE by O2, and Cable and Wirelesses’ buy out of Bulldog remain the most prominent in my mind. But among others we’ve also seen big players like Tiscali and Easynet be bought out by Carphone Warehouse and Sky respectively, while Chess and Daisy have both embarked on aggressive acquisition strategies. Naturally, the financial crisis has provided fertile ground for such activity – with depreciated assets and estates proving attractive to those looking to strengthen their market position.
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Topic Carphone Warehouse Chess Daisy Easynet McKinsey BE Cable and Wireless M&A News Sky O2 PwC Tiscali
With the wide availability of Annex-M technology on the O2 network, new opportunities should be opening up to wholesalers. With bandwidth hungry technologies such as remote backup, database replication and FTP, high upload is a key factor in delivering these services to business. However, reliability is also a key requirement, and for the first time businesses can feel confident in moving their voice and video from legacy solutions such as ISDN over to ADSL2+ based services.
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Topic Annex-M News adsl2+ ISDN O2