Topic: BT Yahoo!

BT and Yahoo have signed a long term extension of their strategic broadband partnership, which began in September 2003.

As a result all new and existing BT Broadband customers twill be able to take advantage of the the 'Yahoo! broadband experience' as from October 24th.
All BT of Broadband customers across all four of their broadband options will now receive services including a premium level radio station, access to the Web's largest catalogue of music videos streamed at higher bit rates, a personalized broadband homepage with access to more than 750,000 content sources from across the Web, award-winning premium e-mail with industry-leading spam protection with 2 gigabytes of storage for primary accounts.

It has also announced changes to it's range of packages, BT Broadband Option 1 will now provide access to a premium Yahoo! broadband experience and a full range of leading tools and services with the price remaining at £17.99 a month.
A new package, BT Broadband Option 2, is priced at £22.99 a month. This will additionally offer a wireless router from just £25 and enhanced security including PC anti-virus and firewall software for further protection. Options 3 and 4 will offer a wireless router for free along with other enhanced features.

It also seems that the existing iTunes promotion is also included, details at BT.

Over a year ago, we first revealed how BTYahoo customers were facing impending capping of their usage of their broadband. Since the announcement, the introduction of such restrictions has been delayed. Now, finally, after over a year of bad reactions from its customers, BTYahoo have announced that its to stop vigorously enforcing any capping, and its scrapped the concept of charging for excessive usage all together.

Detailed on BT's 'holding page, BT are not totally removing restricted usage all together, but rather taking a more relaxed approach.

Firstly, the monthly caps have been increased (up to 40GB for its top tier BT Yahoo! Broadband, charged at £29.99 per month) and secondly, users who occasionally drift over the 40GB limit will not face penalty. Those who consistently exceed this limit, will, in BT's words, be contacted about moving to a more appropriate product. Quite what product someone on the top tier option could move too without leaving the ISP is bewildering though.

One final conundrum comes from the lack of any facility for subscribers to check their current usage. Rumour on the grapevine is that BT's metering system has been plagued with problems, and could form part of the reason that BT are scrapping the facility all together.

Emails detailing the change are expected to have been sent to subscribers by the time this article goes to publication.

BT are offering even more deals to new customers, this time is a 10% discount on  clothing, towels, DVDs  and other items when customers visit Wimbledon's online shop.

The deal is to highlight BT's continued partnership with the All England Lawn Tennis Club, who run the tournament. The deal will enable BT Broadband and BT Yahoo! Broadband customers to be able to view up tto six hours of live streaming broadcasts every day as well as highlights, interviews and archives during the championship. Non BT users can also access the service, but at a cost of a one off £7 charge, users should log into http://www.wimbledon.org

Now all tennis fanciers have to do is find home delivery of strawberries and cream!

As we reported a few days ago BT are going to continue with the offer of reduced broadband costs for the first three months to new customers.

The savings of up to £3 per month, detailed below, will be available is users sign up between 21 April and 2 June 2005, and after the first three months the prices will resort to the usual tariff.

• BT Broadband Basic (up to 1Mb) down from £17.99 to £15.99
• BT Broadband (up to 2Mb) - down from £24.99 to £22.99
• BT Yahoo! Broadband (up to 2Mb) - down from £26.99 to £24.99
• BT Yahoo! Broadband (up to 2Mb) - down from £29.99 to £27.99

All the products will continue to offer free connection and a router when purchased online.

Following on from this mornings earlier story, a number of readers have contacted us informing that BT are separately offering existing BT Yahoo dial up users an upgrade to a 2Mbps broadband service (where available of course) at a discounted price for 6 months, at which point, normal, current charging resumes. Users can elect from 2Mbps (15GB) for £15.99, or the ISPs 2Mbps 30GB service for £18.99. The discount comes as a credit of £66 to the subscribers 2nd bill.

Its not clear if this is a global promotion to all of BT's dial up users, as some readers suggest some authentication is being done on the BT Yahoo upgrade web site, in order to accept the offer.

Back in November 2004, it was announced that BTYahoo were to tempt its dial up subscriber base with the proposition of cheap 512Kbps broadband, priced at a then, fairly competitive £15.99, a similar price point to the users existing dial up service. At the proposed end of the promotion, users had the choice of continuing their 512Kbps service at the current normal price, or dropping to a 150Kbps, 1GB/Month service at £15.99 price. 6 months later, and as we near the end of the promotion, rumour is that BTYahoo! are set to announce an extension of the offer.

We've not received any official reason for the extention (even the news that there is an extension isn't official - yet!), although one source identified "systems issues [...] preventing the full deployment of Anytime Plus speed restrictions". We'll take that to mean, BTYahoo can't drop users speed from 512Kbps to 150Kbps then.

Emails (all 60,000+ of them) are expected to be sent out to relevant users early next week (25th to 27th April 2005), unsurprisingly citing ‘Good News, your trial of BT Yahoo! Broadband has been extended".

BTYahoo have delayed the introduction of their usage caps until August & September 2005, according to sources.

Rumoured since January 2004, the impending caps were originally scheduled for introduction from "early 2005" - although lately, this was believed to be from May 2005.

Customers who signed up for BTYahoo Broadband 17th February 2005, who see their service capped from 1st August, whilst customers who signed up before the 17th will be capped from 1st September 2005. No official reason has been given for the postponement.

The delay in bringing in the capping is also confirmed on the following BT page.

BTYahoo! will increase the already generous 250MB email storage available to it's free customers.

In an obvious bit to match a google Gmail account it is increasing storage to a massive 1GB, which should be plenty for most users. The increase will be effective from April, with users automatically seeing the change.

Following todays earlier article announcing BT retail ISPs intention to upgrade all its customers, its also rumoured that a price reduction of £3 for 3 months for some, if not all, of its broadband customers is also in the offering.

At the moment, we're aware that 1Mbit customers will pay the slightly reduced £27.00 for 3 months (starting either February or March, depending if you've already been billed yet) - saving just short of a tenner over the 3 months. Hopefully, consumers on other speeds are also to get this bonus from BT.

As widely expected, BT Retail ISPs are today announcing the free speed upgrade of all their customers, following suit of many of its rivals. The upgrade represents an complete overhaul to both the BTYahoo and BTOpenworld Business product portfolio.

For the main, all consumer and business customers will be upgraded to 2Mbps where the line is capable, which could see 4x increase in downstream rate for those customers on 512kbps products. The only exception to the rule is that BT Broadband Basic customers on 512k will get a two-fold increase in their downstream rate, to 1Mbps. The upstream rate remains unchanged at 256kbps.

As said, the changes reveal a complete overhaul of the BT Retail ISP offerings for both businesses and consumers. BTYahoo Broadband and BTOpenworld Broadband's new product line up is shown in the tables below.

For the consumers (prices include VAT) ...

... and for Business customers (prices exclude VAT) ...

The new speeds take effect from 17th February 2005 for all new consumer customers, and 1st April for new business customers. Existing customers can expect to be migrated from the same dates (we've checked, and its no April fools joke!). The change will effect all BTYahoo and BTOpenworld Business customers.

Worthy of note, is that there is no change in the line capability to receive a 2Mbps downstream service, which continues at 43dB.

The news follows our article earlier this week detailing a bit more info on BT Retails 'usage allowance'.

For those 512k or 1Mb users users not happy with the impended cap being introduced, they'll now have a mixed bag of feelings. Its nice to be upgraded for free and to reap the benefits, but that also means a user can potentially hit their cap significantly quicker. Details have it that an option for BT Yahoo customers who have hit their monthly allowance, could be to accept a reduction in speed on their service. Given that all (most) connections would be 2Mb, using a service crippled to 150kbps , less than 10% of their theoretical maximum, could just be a step too far for some.

Edit : We're also aware of a 10% discount to be applied to at least some BTYahoo 2Mb customers, seeing a reduction from £29.99 to £27.00 for 3 months. Details here.