Photo: Ofcom

Anyone who has ever signed a long-term contract with landline or broadband providers knows the feeling of seeing a better deal come by that you cannot take up because you’re locked into a torrid contract with very high early termination fees. That’s about to change, with Ofcom pressuring TalkTalk, BT and Virgin to slash the price of their contract termination fees.

What is a contract termination fee?

A contract termination fee is the amount of money one is still liable to pay for every month left on a contract they’ve recently cancelled. The termination fee is less than the monthly subscription fee, but is often still very high. Ofcom has pressured the major UK broadband providers to reduce this cost, so as to ‘reflect the costs that the providers save by no longer providing the service’ to you.

New pricing

Photo: TalkTalk

In some instances, TalkTalk, BT and Virgin would be reducing the cost of contract termination fees by as much as 85 per cent.

TalkTalk is first out the gate with termination fees revision, which previously ranged from £14.44 to £33.48, to between £3.00 and £8.00. The termination fee is relative to the package that you are on, and this pricing model kicked in on 1 June 2010.

Virgin Media and BT will follow suit from 1 October 2010. With respect to Virgin Media contract cancellations, while charges currently range from £11.99 to £25.99 they will be reduced to £4.00 to £9.00. BT’s contract termination fee sits at £11.54 to £16.53 for every month left on your contract. Come 1 October, that will range between £2.00 and £5.00.

Photo: Virgin

Ofcom has said that they will pressure (and potentially fine) smaller broadband providers to follow suit in slashing these fees.

You can read Ofcom’s full report and pricing revisions here, in case you’re currently trying to escape a contract you’re unhappy with.

Good on ya, Ofcom.

Photo: OnLive

Remember cloud computing gaming service OnLive, which aims to replace physical consoles and games with an entirely digital, Internet-based service? They have just signed a deal with BT, making the UK ISP the exclusive distributor of the service in the UK.

Distribution and equity

With this exclusive deal, BT also acquires a 2.6 per cent stake in OnLive. BT will offer the OnLive service to its customers as a part of bundle deals. Outside of that, BT promised to release more details about the service and the partnership later this year.

Entertainment the game

BT Retail CEO, Gavin Patterson, has said that entertainment would be ‘the heart’ of what the company offers its customers in future. Outside of cloud gaming and on-demand video content, it is difficult to assume what these entertainment features will be, but one step at a time, we suppose.

OnLive

Steve Perlman, who is OnLive’s CEO, thinks this partnership is a major boon for OnLive. ‘The UK market is extremely important to OnLive,’ for the service, he said.

Where to next

Photo: Infinity Ward

We’re still undecided about whether OnLive will work or not. The compromise of decent video quality for speed may be too much to give up in an age where many people’s sentiment is ‘HD or nothing’. On the flipside of that, in maintaining decent resolution, what of the inevitable latency the games will experience? The last major concern – and this is a big one – is the pricing. Though the basic service is priced reasonably, one still has to purchase the games – which you will never own outright since they sits on a server – as well as foot the bill for the data service.

These factors make the concept of a cloud gaming service seem a little too ahead of its time, even though it is where everything will eventually head. Perhaps BT and OnLive will prove us wrong. But we recommend against discarding your trusty PS3 and Xbox 360s too soon.

It is confirmed that Samsung Electronics is going to release the NC20 laptop in the UK today. The company’s NC20 model is very popular abroad and it based on Via Technologies’ Nano processor. It will officially hit the UK’s consumer markets on Monday, i.e. 9th Feb 2009. British Telecom has already started accepting pre-orders over the weekend for the new netbook.

NC20 will offer a 1.3GHz Nano processor, 12 inches of widescreen display, 1GB high speed RAM, one 120GB hard disk and will be running on Windows XP Home edition operating system. According to BT’s portal, the initial NC20 models will sport a white coloured case. For those who prefer black will have to wait till 9th March as the company will release the second version of NC20 that time, or simply content themselves with a black Samsung NC10. The Samsung NC netbook product line fits in between Intel Atom powered netbooks and some other more powerful systems. It brings the consumers a stellar combination of performance, style and productivity.

Via Nano has got an 800MHz front side bus and is embedded on the Via’s VX800 chipset. Via VX800 has got integrated hardware video decoders for high-definition video playback. This ensures great performance but still if you are aiming for more then the Intel Atom is the ideal one.

BT is preparing for the 2012 Olympics to be held in London. The company is aiming at making the whole city technologically sound by making a whole new and improved mobile computing strategy. The organisers of the Olympics are working closely with BT in this project. The overall aim is to allocate the resources in a better manner and implement mobile technology in a way that it enhances the consumer interaction during the event.

For this purpose the company is analyzing consumer trends and identifying the type of services that need to be included in the project. By 2012 many exciting mobile services will be implemented. This comes in addition to the numerous WiFi zones and hotspots already pervading the capital, allowing one to use their wireless laptop in most locations in the city. Some of the new planned mobile services include things like  live updates of sports events, and X-Factor-style polls, which will allow fans to vote for their favourite athlete, and much more.

According to Stuart Hill, vice president of BT’s London 2012 delivery program, “There are plans to give an emphasis to mobile technology to enhance consumer interaction at the games. We are in talks with Gerry (chief information officer at London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games or LOCOG) to see how we can deploy services to support mobility and improve the way people interface with the Games. London knows how to have a party, so there will be a lot of consumer activity in and around the event sites and therefore a good opportunity to introduce mobile services to the audience.”

Tags for this article: mobile, technology

Today internet is a necessary part of our life. It’s hard to imagine work, entertainment, multimedia and other facilities without the Internet. But one thing which bothers most of net surfers is the overpriced Internet service offered by the top ISPs (Internet Service Providers).

In order to solve this issue the telecom giant, British Telecommunications, popularly known as BT has launched a new service. The company has launched a new mobile broadbank USB stick which will make the mobile Internet an affordable service. The E170 mobile broadband USB stick will allow users to connect to the Internet on the move either via a Wi-Fi hotspot in a BT Openzone or through the mobile phone network. While some WiFi sticks like the Netgear WG 111 GR USB only connect to the internet via a wireless connection, the BT E170 makes use of mobile broadband as well. Under this service up to 1 GB of data transfer is offered per month. In case you are in the BT Openzone wireless hotspot you get an additional 2,000 BT Openzone minutes each month. This is good because the free Wi-Fi hotspots won’t eat up your minutes. The BT E170 datastick is very easy to use. It has a built in installation software and is recognised by any computer instantly. The network coverage is good as well and the data transfer rates are amazing. If you are in the high speed network area, then this USB stick can offer you data transfer rates up to 7.2Mbps which is more than enough to download gigabytes of data in no time.