Topic: Be

Be Broadband has said that it plans to roll out ADSL2+ technology to an additional  400 UK telephone exchanges by June this year.

The company, which is owned by O2, has said that this will enable it to reach two million more households which will give it a coverage of 67 per cent of UK homes. As O2 broadband use the Be network infrastructure then this effectively increases it's network coverage also.

Be offers three packages which all use ADSL2+ technology, starting with the basic 8Mbps package at £14 a month rising to the Be Pro which will allow the full 24Mbps if line conditions are ideal, this costs £22 a month.

Be Broadband has been slapped on the wrist by the Advertising Standards Authority's (ASA) code of conduct for breaching it's rules.

The problem occurred when a member of public saw an advert punting a 24Mbps connection for £14 per month with a capped usage near the end of September, on a social-networking website, but then found out that the offer had been discontinued at the end of August.

To be fair to Be, they said that the ad was placed by a media agency and did not have direct control over it's placement, by the ASA said this was still misleading and withheld the complaint.

Be has dropped the price of it's broadband products, possibly to bring it closer to O2's proposed offering.

This is no surprise as Be is owned by O2 and the mobile operator will be using the Be network to provide it's broadband services when they are finally released. Be Unlimited, which is an ADSL2+ service which offers up to 24Mbps downstream with a 1.3Mbps upstream speed, this falls from £24 a month to £18, although email is not included. Be Pro, which was £40 a month, drops to £22, this is similar to the Unlimited package except that the upstream speed is 2.5Mbps and a static IP is included.

The reductions apply to both new and existing customers with existing Be customer seeing the reduction on their December bill, they will also see a refund for the period to the end November.

Be is to revamp its business prices which could mean savings for some users.

Customers currently on the Be Office package, which costs £75 per month excluding VAT, will be automatically moved to the new Be Pro package. One difference customers will see that all prices will now me gross (including VAT) rather than net (excluding VAT) as previously, one reason for this is that they hope to capture 'power users' who opt for business packages to keep clear of usage limits found on many 'home' products.

 A £40 a month package will get 24Mbps down and 2.5Mbps upstream unlimited package with a static IP, although a package without the extras like a static IP or the extra upload speed can be had for just £24.

Although Be is only available in 36 percent of UK exchanges it's hoped to hit 50 percent by the time autumn gets here.

Broadband provider Be has unbundled its 500th exchange increasing it's ADSL2+ coverage to 33% of UK households.

They have recently installed Annex M as standard for Be Office customers, which raises the potential upload speed to 2.5Mbps, the idea being to target SDSL users.

The trouble with ADSL2+ is that like ADSL, although more so, speeds are dependant on distance and quality of the copper line from the telephone exchange and other environmental factors, and while a maximum speed of 24Mbps is touted, many cannot even receive an ADSL2+ service.

Be Broadband said it is on target to reach over 800 exchanges by the end of the summer this year, which gives 50% population coverage of the UK.

LLU ISP Be has been snapped up by telco O2 becoming the third mobile operator to acquire an ISP recently.

The £50m deal will give O2 access to Be's 9,000 broadband customers, but O2's interest is mostly down to Be's local loop unbundling strategy, which has seen it install its own equipment in roughly 150 telephone exchanges. Be expects to make its broadband network available to about half of the UK population by the end of this year and 70 per cent of the population by the end of next year.

Be prepared for more 'free' broadband offers heading this way in the month to come.

Civil unrest in has left ISP Be's call centre out of action.

The centre in Bangalore, India, has had to be closed due to a 24 hour curfew imposed by the government to curb civil unrest in the city.

For the present it has sourced a small team of contractors from the UK to provide emergency back-up.

According to ISPReview local loop ISP 'Be' are planning to increase trials, ongoing since the end of last year, to increase users upload speeds.

As part of it's ADSL2+ Annex M trial, users can expect a maximum theoretical upload speed of 2.5Mbps, and trials so far have produced an average of 1.9Mbps.

Be plans to announce an upgrade of it's Office product once the trials are complete which will allow 22/2.5Mbps speeds without any extra cost, as Be points out this is a quarter of the price of a standard 2Mbps SDSL connection, with 10 times the download speed.

The downside is that as with all ADSL connections the quality of the line greatly affects the actual speeds users can expect.

A 'Be home email' service has been set up in partnership with email hosting firm, Outblaze, for Be* customers.

But it's not going to be free, the service will costs subscribers £2 per month for up to five webmail accounts with 1GB of overall storage, an online calendar and 100MB of webspace.
Customers will also receive POP3 and SMTP webmail capabilities, along with anti-spam and anti-virus protection.

24Mbps ISP Be* announced that it has secured funding for a national roll out of it's product using ADSL2+ later this month.

The funding of £24.5 million will be initially provided by it's founders Boris Ivanovic and Dana Pressman, with the remained provided by by the Novator One investment fund, with two of it's partners, Bruce McInroy and Constantine Gonticas, joining the Be* board.

Be* has already enabled 52 exchanges in London with the expansion planned for London, Manchester and Birmingham, with plans for half the UK population to be covered by the end of 2006.