Over 74% of consumers in Northern Ireland believe they are getting value for money by stating they were “very or fairly” satisfied with the service they are receiving. It was also noted that whilst many NI consumers are not satisfied with their overall broadband, home phone and mobile broadband services they are less likely to switch provider than other comparable areas.

Virgin Media Broadband offer speeds of up to 50Mbps and great value broadband/cable TV combo bundles are available – see Virgin Broadband Belfast for more details.

BT Total Broadband offer packages of up to 20Mbps and can also be bought as part of a TV bundle – see BT Broadband for more details.

Other, less well known, providers such as Pusnet offer some fantastic deals e.g. £6.49/month for broadband with speeds of up to 8Mb and £11.49/month for up to 20Mbps! Full details can be found at Plusnet Broadband Belfast

Dimitris Mavrakis, an analyst with Informa, says the firm is currently seeing major bottlenecks in the mobile data networks around major cities such as London and New York. Mavrakis also claims that the situation is only going to worsen as demand for mobile data continues due to the popularity of mobile broadband dongles and smart phones such as the iPhone.

Analysts believe that “Long Term Evolution” or LTE technology being developed by a number of mobile carriers will help alleviate the problem. LTE technology will provide speeds of up to 150Mbps and is likely to appear in 2011/2012.

The move comes after reports that Orange has been losing market share to rivals such as Talk Talk and Sky. The four new price plans will range from £6.50 to £13.50 per month and will include Unlimited downloads – with existing Orange Mobile Phone customers getting the cheapest available prices.

All of these new broadband packages are available on 18 month contracts and are effective immediately. Please visit Orange Broadband Northern Ireland to find out more.

This follows an earlier law put in place that guarantees citizens 100Mbps broadband by 2015. Some variation on this speed will be allowed to account for remote areas, mobile broadband access and so on.

It is good to see a country taking the lead on the broadband issues – I know that a lot of people in Ireland & Britain would happily settle for speeds of a lot less than 100Mbps so lets hope we start to see other governments follow this example.

The trial, in partnership with Vtesse Networks, is running in Cornwall in England and involves delivery of both digital TV and broadband services.

To ensure optimal delivery of the service customers must live within 3.5km of their exchange – though it is possible that this reach may be expanded in future.

If the trial proves successful we could well see the technology being deployed across Virgin Medias entire customer base.

The study, carried out by the International telecommunications Union, indicates that mobile broadband connections across the world is on course to top 600 million by the end of 2009 – in comparison to an estimated 500 million fixed line broadband subscribers.

The study also suggests that mobile broadband use in developing countries, where many users do not have access to fixed telephone lines, may account for this rapid increase.

It appears that these figures will continue growing over the next few years as many mobile broadband providers are investing in new “superfast” mobile technology. O2, for example, recently announced plans to trial “superfast” mobile broadband that could reach speeds of up to 340Mbps.

Virgin Media broadband customers receive average download speeds of 7.238 Mbps – ahead of second place O2 Broadband at 5.535 Mbps. The average speed of all broadband providers was 4.361 Mbps so Virgin certainly appears to be well ahead of the pack.

Virgin has been investing heavily in next gen fibre optic networks across Ireland and Britain – including a new high speed (40Gbps) undersea link connecting the two. Virgin is also offering 50Mbps packages in certain areas – mostly cities with existing cable and fibre infrastructure.

Despite regarding reliability as the most important factor over 70% of consumers felt let down by download speeds that did not meet their expectations – or indeed what their broadband provider had been using as a guideline speed.

More worryingly still is the fact that 35% of consumers said that their number one complaint was poor customer service from their broadband provider – this is backed up by the 55% of consumers who filed complaints indicating that they had not reached a satisfactory conclusion with their provider.

I am sure all will agree that this is unacceptable behaviour and that Ofcom must put in place some form of regulation regarding which figures a broadband provider can use in their marketing materials e.g. download speeds, the use of the term “Unlimited” and so on.

A more interesting effect is that consumers who already have broadband but are not getting a particularly good download speed will see a significant boost in this speed. This is great news for the thousands of homes in Northern Ireland that are at the “distance limit” of their broadband line i.e. those homes that are 4-6 KM from their exchange and are receiving broadband but at a much slower speed than is ideal (typically 500Kbps - 1Mbps)