Topic: Nildram

Nildram have announced it's new pricing structure which could mean that certain products have been reduced by up to 42 per cent.

It is reducing it's product range for domestic customers into two streams of service, the new Broadband2 and the existing Broadband 2gO products.
The Broadband2 service which will offer a 2Mbps connection will be priced at £25.99 while the 2gO service has been reduced in price to £15.99 with any additional usage being charged at 99p per GB, although no mention is made of a price ceiling.

From April, Nildram’s existing DSL1000 and DSL2000 customers will have their price reduced to £25.99, essentially putting them on the Broadband2 service, while PAYG customers will be moved over to 2gO
In July, Nildram will begin to upgrade all its DSL and PAYG customers to 2Mbps for free as part of a rolling upgrade programme, those who cannot wait can opt for a fast-track upgrade and pay a one-off £12.93 fee. Surf500 customers will also be able to upgrade to Broadband2 for a one-off fee of £12.93.

Full regrade details can be found at Nildram.

February 1st is the beginning of the end of Nildram's own usenet services.

In a move that has surprised usenet users, Nildram has decided to begin the process of closing its Usenet server. As a replacement, an agreement has been reached with Giganews which will provide an outsourced service.

Users will use their Nildram username and password to gain access to the Giganews system. The service comes with speed restrictions of two concurrent 256 Kbps connections and a maximum download limit per month ranging from 10 to 25 Gigabytes, depending on the Nildram broadband product purchased.

Many are frustrated at the short notice and some have expressed security concerns regarding passing their Nildram username and password over the internet as these are the same passwords used to alter product broadband options and mail. Additionally, Nildram users of 1Mbps and 2Mbps services feel somewhat disenfranchised by being limited to the same speed as 512k customers.

For full details you can read Nildram's public statement.

Nildram yesterday launched a new 2Mbps service, "Broadband 2gO" (Broadband "to go"), a service lining up with the ISPs existing "Pay as you Go" services, a concept offering broadband services as cheap as possible, but with limited usage.

The service costs just £17.99 per month, which itself is a pretty decent headline grabbing figure, however 2gO is capped at just 1GB per month with additional bandwidth charged at £1.75 per GigaByte, although with a minimum 2GB purchase. Worryingly at the time of writting this article there's no mention on the Nildram website about any price capping on this product which if not just a mistake could lead to some very expensive monthly broadband bills.

Nildram cite the service is perfect for occasional users needing fast connections, but who actually download very little over the course of a month. Converts to broadband from dialup could find services like 2g0 expensive given the low inclusive bandwidth offered, as many users when first exposed to broadband find they do lots of downloading just to "experience" what broadband speeds can offer.

The service comes with a respectable 30 day minimum contract for those who do not like agreeing to a full year, and a setup fee of £58.75 applies to all, whilst migration from another broadband ISP comes free of charge.

Symmetrical DSLs' popularity, which offers an equivalent upstream rate to that of the downstream rate, might have just received a promotion boost, thanks to an announcement by Nildram detailing an almost 30% price slash in the products' monthly price.

Nildram's SDSL solutions are available in the 3 common "flavours", 512kbps, 1Mbps & 2Mbps, and for a limited time there's also a removal of the setup costs for the ISPs more popular 1Mbps & 2Mbps services on a "Wires Only" scheme - saving £475 (512kbps setup costs remain however, at £249. Nildram's "Fully Managed" option also has no setup fee, and all prices exclude VAT.

All SDSL products come with a typical 12 month term, with the cheaper Wires Only, subscribers have the opportunity to purchase a suitable pre-configured Zyxel 791 for £350 + VAT. Fully Managed subscribers will get a Cisco 1721, which Nildram install themselves.

Deciding to partake in a customer satisfaction survey, Nildram deemed it necessary to inform its users of such - a good idea you may think.

Unfortunatley, in doing such a good deed, the ISP also revealed "hundred"s of its customers private email addresses at the same time, according to a report on the ISPReview website.

The latest press release from Nildram showcases how the ISPs product set has improved a Hairdressing Salon management system. Yep, thats right - Hairdressing. No, we didnt think we'd ever write about beauty industry either.

The release features one Mascolo Support Systems’ SALONGENIUS management solution, coupled with Nildram's ADSL offerings, enabling Salons with VPN (for stock and credit card transactions) and spam measures for email amongst other things.

The release is also keen to point out that Nildram ADSL connections will also soon be made available to 200 Toni&Guy centers in the UK with featuring upto 2Mb downstream rates. Does that make for a faster cut and blow dry then ?

Press Release.

Pipex have announced to the city that they have acquired rival ISP Nildram for £12.9m in a cash sale.
Since it acquired GX Networks in October 2002 Pipex have taken over six companies underlining it's plans for substantial growth within the telecoms market.

Where this leaves the 35,000 broadband customers of Nildram remains to be seen as no details have been announced as whether Nildram will continue trading as a separate company, or come under the large Pipex corporate brand. Of note is that an estimated 30% of Nildrams customers area those in the business sector.

Nildram are quite a big catch for Pipex, the reported yearly turnover of Nildram to March 2004 was £14.1m.

This seems to follow the recent trend of a 'globalization' of the UK broadband market, with the smaller successful ISP's being snapped up by the larger players.

The press release to the city can be found in our forums, and a further release from Nildram is promised shortly.

Edit:
It looks as if they will remain as distinct companies, at leat for the moment.
"AccentUK will remain a separate and distinct division within PIPEX under AccentUK's existing MD and Senior Management Team, reporting to Mike Read, (Chief Executive Officer of PIPEX)."

Following in the wake of the recent cuts in broadband prices from the major ISP's, Nildram have announced their response.

They have reduced the monthly cost of the dsl500 PAYG to £15.99, also adding 2 more higher speed PAYG connections. The new dsl1000 PAYG is priced at £23.99, with the dsl2000 PAYG available for £31.98.
Those on the 'classic' broadband connections are not left out, as these have been reduced by up to 20%, but at the present Nildram haven't announced the exact details of the new pricing structure.

Also the data transfer capping on the 1Mb and 2Mb classic products has been removed. Even though this was set at a very generous 150Gb per month it is welcomed, as most other ISP's are adding and lowering their data caps.

Free migration and re-grades are back on the cards again, but one disappointing omission is that the charges for the optional single static IP and IP blocks remain.

The full press release can be found in the usual place......no link, you know where it is ;)

Nildram are now offering a 54g wireless router to their hardware options.
The Netgear DG834G wireless router, and it's sister DG834 wired router are now being offered with ADSL contracts alongside it's existing hardware options.

The cost may put some people off, as it's £127.49 including VAT and delivery, which is over £20 more than most suppliers!

The full press release is in the forum.

A few years ago the mobile phone industry experienced a boom with the introduction of "pay as you go" style packages which saw subscribers simply paying for their time they used - no more, no less. Over the past year, broadband ISPs have adopted the same method with varying degrees of uptake. Now Aylesbury based ISP Nildram, have added a twist.

Based on the ISPs unlimited 'dslSurf500 Classic' package, Nildram have introduced two flavours in a "Pay as you Go" theme. The first comes styled on time, where 50 hours of connection time is included per month. 'dslSurf500 PAYG time' costs £19.49 per month (plus £58.75 setup fee) and additional hours can be purchased at £1.50 per 50 block - but Nildram have seen fit to stop charging after users have clocked up 200 hours - meaning should one month you find yourself online more than you estimated your total monthly cost will be capped at £25.34 (3 x 50 hour blocks @ £1.95, plus basic £19.94 rental). In this scenario, users will be paying £2.35 more than the ISPs unlimited 'dslSurf500 Classic'. All prices include VAT.

The second "PAYG" account, unsurprisingly, basis itself on the amount of data that you download. 'dslSurf500 PAYG data' includes 1Gb of download for the month, but like the 'dslSurf500 PAYG time' package, additional allocation can be purchased. Again costing £19.49 per month (£58.75 setup fee), users can purchase extra 1Gb blocks, also at £1.95 each. Nildram cap the cost charged once users have purchased 3 additional blocks. This results in an identical maximum monthly cost of £25.34 as the 'time' PAYG option. Again, all prices include VAT.

Clearly potential subscribers will be tempted by inevitable fact that they do not download the same amount of data each and every month, nor do they spend the same amount of time online each and every month. In order to realise the savings, subscribers would need to spend less than 100 hours per month (just over 3 hours per day) online, or download less than 2Gb per month (around 65Mb per day)

Of concern however, is the time based option. With many users opting for more advanced hardware solutions replacing the basic functionality of ADSL Modems, its clear that the onus will be on the subscriber to ensure that their hardware does not maintain a permanent connection using up their allocated and or purchased hours.

More information and purchasing details can be found on the Nildram website here.

Nildram have announced two new offers to encourage users to switch to a higher speed package or migrate to them.

For an unspecified limited period the usual £35+VAT charge which is levied when re-grading a service have been removed. This will allow customers to re-grade to a higher speed product without any additional fees, only paying the increased monthly premium for the service required.

Also this will allow customers migrate to Nildram without any charge, but this had to be from an equivalent service (ie 500k to 500k) as this is required by BTwholesale. However once on a similar Nildram service they can re-grade to a higher speed, once again for free.

This is especially beneficial to those who are on an engineer installed service and wish to move to a higher speed than the old USB500, which would have previously required them to cease-provide with all the additional costs.

Nildram have announced that they are changing their news server details.

This is not as previously announced a few weeks ago, as it seems they have listened to comments from it's users.

Nildram are to start bonding ADSL connections for users, and will take orders from the first week in December.

Bonding is the process of joining two or more ADSL lines together to make one ADSL connection with the sum of the speeds, less a little overheads (approx 4-6%).

So why bond 2x512Kb connections and not get just one 1Mb line? As BT restrict the upload speed on all ADSL connections to 256Kb the the only way to get an increased upload is by bonding, which would give 1Mb/512Kb.
Also if the line conditions will only allow 512Kb then bonding will enable 1Mb connections, or more.

It all sounds so good, except the cost!! A BT line and an ADSL subscription would be needed for each bond, as well as CPE equipment on the customers premises, which they would have to purchase (a Netopia Router with bonding options is ~£600).

Nildram have said they plan to bond a maximum 4 lines, but have spoken of planning to do a connection with 30 lines!!

While is sounds like a good idea, in practice this is aimed at business users who cannot get SDSL or as a cheaper option to leased lines, as the equipment/rental costs would put this in the reach of only the most of affluent home users.

Some details about bonding ADSL can be found here.

EDIT: Details have now been released by Nildram.

Nildram have announced they in the process of upgrading their news servers. This may affect the server you need to use.

Details are in the forum.

It seems Nildram have had some luck with the recient problems with routers which have Globalspan chipsets.

This mainly affected Solwise router owners who were either unable to connect to Nildram or experienced intermittent connection problems.

Globalspan have been working on an updated firmware which should solve this problem, but Nildram have updated the Cisco code in their routers to improve the situation.

Nildram have announced that they won't be applying any price rises even though BT Retail are raising their prices as announced earier this week.

Iain Ogilvie, Nildram's Marketing Manager commented: "The rise in the wholesale cost from BT was a surprise, but we are pleased to be able to assure customers that we won't be passing this on. With the recent re-launch of our Broadband portfolio, including a powerful new mail service, including anti-virus and anti-SPAM controls, combined with yet another month at the number one slot for performance on the ADSL Guide, the choice of Broadband provider should be a simple one!"

Nildram are pushing ahead with their vigorous onslaught on bringing improved deals to their broadband consumers according to their press release.

Reducing their minimum contract on their Home500 Lite and Home500 accounts to only one month, brings Nildrams complete consumer offerings down to the minimum that could be expected.

Iain Ogilvie, Nildram’s Marketing Manager said "We are pleased to be able to reflect our success and industry leading position in terms of growth, performance and customer care, with this reduction in minimum contract periods. We believe this will add to the demand for our already popular Broadband services – especially amongst users who may need flexibility when it comes to changing address".