Topic: BT

BT has been told that it will not be forced into investing in a fibre infrastructure to existing homes.

Although the government will not force BT's hand in the matter it still believes that fibre is important for future of the UK economy.

While this won't make much difference to new developments such as Ebbsfleet it may make a difference to existing houses, which BT say doesn't warrant the significant investment needed without some guarantee of potential returns.

BT customers will soon be able to access BT Vision services via an Xbox 360, as part of a joint venture with Microsoft.

As well as access to BT Vision’s standard, free service of Freeview channels the new deal will allow any BT Vision customer with an Xbox 360 to ablo be able to watch content, as well as using the Xbox Live social network, send text and voice messages and shop on the Xbox Live market place.

Existing Xbox 360 owners will be able to access the service after a simple registration to the service and allowing a simple firmware upgrade as the BT Vision service is based on the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV platform.

BT must be hoping that this will bring more customers to it's BT Vision platform, since launching in late 2006 it has only attracted around 100,000 users despite a large advertising campaign, well short of the original target of two to three million customers.

BT will come under renewed pressure from the Government later to commit to an upgrade of the broadband network to fibre that could cost up to £15bn.

Stephen Timms, the competitiveness minister, has invited BT along with other operators including Virgin Media, Cable & Wireless, Carphone Warehouse and Sky summit to discuss the future of broadband in the UK. Mr Timms doesn't want the UK to fall behind such countries as Japan, Korea and France who have invested heavily in providing high speed fibre networks which put Britain's aging copper network to shame.

BT are planning high-level delegation to the event with chief executive Ben Verwaayen being joined by  Ian Livingstone, who runs the customer-facing division, and Steve Robertson, the head of the wholesale arm. They will argue that thay are currently spending £10bn to update Britain's network and adding fibre into the equation would add an extra £15bn to provide fibre to the door or £7bn to provide fibre to the cabinet.

They want industry regulator, Ofcom,to set the price which people will pay for these high speed services so it will be able to get a minimum value return on the substantial investment. Although this may not be popular with other telcos such are Virgin who already own a substantial fibre network, and also new players such as Tiscali and the Carphone Warehouse who maybe allowed to lay their own fibre to BT's exchanges.

BT's Homehub which hackers found a critical security hole in which would have allowed full control of the router has been fixed.

BT has updated the latest firmware for the router and has removed Remote Assistance, which gave support staff admin rights to investigate problems in the router. Although the feature has been disabled BT said that it has other ways of accessing the and the feature will still appear on the routers menu, but will return an error if clicked.

This is good news for the two million plus Homehub users as BT has previously been criticized for not responding to a previous vulnerability reported in another of its routers last year.

The update is automatic to users but a report on the BT site gives the details.

The chief executive in charge of BT's 21st century network (21CN) has decided to call it a day after only six months.

Andy Green took responsibility for 21CN when the has made chief executive of group strategy and operations after a reshuffle in April, and is the second senior 21CN manager to resign.
In June Paul Reynolds who was chief executive of BT's wholesale also decided to leave the company, but BT was quick to respond saying that there was no connection between the moves and that it wasn't related to 21CN  "Andy's departure is in no way related to 21CN," "Andy felt he had completed the tasks put in front of him and the opportunity was too good to turn down."

Green will not be replaced with his job being divided between two of his staff, the 21CN programme will now be fronted by Al-Noor Ramji, chief executive of BT Design, and Roel Louwhoff, chief executive of BT Operate, who will report directly to group chief executive Ben Verwaayen.

Hacking group Gnucitizen have claimed that they have discovered a vulnerability in the Thomson Speedtouch 7G router, which is bad news for BT HomeHub users.

The HomeHub is BT's standard router and is based on the Speedtouch 7G and it's estimated that there three million in the UK. BT also plan to allow the hub to be opened up to passing Wi-Fi users of FON in a shared community, so this is of concern to many users if this exploit is true.

According to the group they have three demo exploits which will allow anyone to connect to the router via the internet, steal WEP/WPA keys and eavesdrop on VoIP conversations.
All that is required is that a user visits a carefully crafted webpage which then alerts the group to the location of the router.

The group have posted a video of the process, but it is a little short of details so verifying if this is an actual problem for HomeHub users becomes a little tricky. They claim to have revealed the details to BT and Thomson, but have had no response.

Hopefully if there is a problem BT can fix the issue when it upgrades the firmware to allow FON connections to be made from the router.

Wi-Fi operator FON and BT have tied up to create "a people's network of Wi-Fi".

FON have been trying to get broadband users to share their Wi-Fi connections for quite a while now, but one of it's greatest problems is than many ISP's terms and conditions have tended to prohibit sharing of broadband connections.
But BT seem to have embraced the idea with a scheme to get BT Total Broadband customers to open up a secure channel on their wireless router, and in return users will be able to use FON's network of wireless hotspots, as well as the wireless networks of other BT Total Broadband customers for free.

What this effectively does for BT is to extend it's Openzone Wi-Fi network across a potential three million BT Home Hubs. It was announced that there will be 500,000 members of the community at launch, whose wireless networks will be available to use for all community members, as well as 190,000 FON Wi-Fi hotspots around the country.

While this does appear to be a good, a customer on Option 2 of the BT Broadband packages only has 8GB of download allowance per month and while customers living in rural areas probably won't be affected, those in busy public places could see their monthly usage shoot up, and it's unsure if BT would be sympathetic to claims that "it wasn't me it was the shared Wi-Fi."

BT has hinted that it could bring fibre to households and businesses to replace the antiquated copper and aluminium lines.

It's retail chief Ian Livingstone said that the telco "remains very interested in further expanding the speed of access for customers, whether that be through faster copper, fibre to the home, [or] fibre to the cabinet". Originally BT's stance was to distance itself from investing huge sums of money on the project, but recently it seems to have come to realise that it's not a question of if they will, but rather when.

This maybe due to pressures from within government, ahead of the forthcoming Broadband summit later this year, which will discuss the the direction the UK will take to avoid being left behind in the broadband race, and to address if there was a case for public sector investment in the new infastructure.

BT Retail has become the only UK ISP to hit the 4 million customer milestone, and the a staggering increase of 2,000 a day

Over the past five years BT's broadband customer base has been growing at a rate of one customer every 40 seconds, growing from 172,000 back in June 2002.
While this growth has been in individual new customers the telco's purchases have helped along the way, for example it's purchase of PlusNet netted it an extra 190,000 customers overnight.

Subscribers to BT Vision, it's video-on-demand service, will be able to see a range of live and near-live Premier League games.

For a £4 monthly subscription or a £1.99 per match charge customers will be able to see highlights and full coverage from 10pm on the day of the match. Alternatively paying £12 a month will allow you to access Setanta Sports' live games, which will include 46 Barclays Premier League and 60 Scottish Premier League matches.

BT also claims that its customers will have access to more matches this season than customers of any other service as it also includes 125 Coca-Cola League and Carling Cup games.