I tried using a broadband dongle down in Cornwall for a week without much success due the location of the house really, but now I’m back on the dongles because I’m on the move – not physically myself, but between landline broadband suppliers. I’ve done a lot of research again and decided that if you are lucky enough to be in an area covered by the BE Broadband up to 24Mb service then this is by far the best broadband deal available. I can’t apply for the new BE Broadband until my phone line has been taken over by BT so there are at least two delays built in to the transition. With a T-Mobile 3G pay-as-you-go broadband dongle I can activate it for one month and get up to 3 gigabits of transfer, and then a bit more. There’s no contract, so as soon as the home broadband is up and running again I can stop using the dongle, and keep it handy for future travels, simply activating it for any month it becomes necessary or even for one day at a time on day trips to work away from home perhaps.
Good news for the industry as well as the customers:
Code agreed on broadband ads | Technology | The Guardian
More than 30 broadband providers including BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk have signed up to a voluntary code of conduct designed to prevent consumers being mis-sold high-speed internet access packages.Broadband advertising has become increasingly controversial because internet service providers ISPs often promote the theoretical maximum speeds achievable on their networks rather than the speed most customers can actually get.
A recent survey by the comparison website Broadband Expert found that actual speeds were often less than half those advertised, leading Ofcom to warn that it was prepared to enforce regulation if the industry did not fall into line. Just this week a further study found that there are also big discrepancies between speeds in large cities and rural areas.
Under the code, ISPs will have to give customers an accurate measure of the speed of their broadband service, offer a lower-speed package if those estimates are inaccurate and help resolve any technical issues slowing down connections. They will also need to give clear information about the limits of services and tell customers if they breach those limits.
Ofcom is also planning a comprehensive survey of broadband speeds as part of an attempt to determine the accuracy of advertising.
The chairwoman of Ofcoms consumer panel, Anna Bradley, welcomed the code, adding that the panel would scrutinise the results of the Ofcom study. “If they show that ISPs are not in compliance, it will clearly be time to call for a mandatory code of practice,” she said.
National Work from Home Day is this Thursday, 15th May.
So what do the people who already work from home do to celebrate such a day? Go out and evangelise about the benefits of homeworking perhaps. Or get together for a social event like the Social Media Cafe in London.
Stay at home and make use of the broadband wifi by sitting in the garden and answering the occasional email.
Taking part in National Work From Home Day
Many people can easily do their jobs from home. Apart from enhancing work-life balance for staff, with added health and leisure benefits, and reducing the need to travel, working from home significantly improves productivity, enabling businesses to be more competitive.
Many smarter working practices are very simple to implement, and it is these that organisations are being encouraged to try during Work Wise Week:
* Allowing staff to come in either an hour later or an hour earlier, with a reciprocal hour shift at the end of the day. This would enable staff to avoid the busiest travel times, effectively staggering the rush hour and making the journey far more tolerable for everyone.
* Allowing staff to take a half hour lunch break each day, and then let them leave at 3.00pm on the last day.
* Allowing staff to work from home on Thursday May 15, National Work from Home Day. Even a small reduction in the number of people travelling on the roads or by public transport on that day will have a significant effect on congestion and overcrowding.
* During Work Wise Week, ask staff to cancel all external face-to-face staff meetings, and instead hold them by conference call, either video or telephone. This would save time and resources, and reduce congestion and pollution.
* Where appropriate, allow staff to roster their own shifts during the week.
Best cheap broadband internet and TV deals
I’m looking around for the best broadband deals for daily internet access in London and I’m seriously considering SKY TV. Now SKY may not be the first company you would think of as an Internet Service Provider but I figured once they decide to add a service to their core satellite TV business they are going to make sure it becomes totally reliable and fast enough for dependable use. That’s how they’ve maintained their dominant position in the subscription TV business for decades. The trouble with smaller companies is that they can get bought out by larger ones and then you can end up stuck with a legacy service that is expensive and of poorer quality. That’s happened to me twice already, which is why I’m looking at SKY TV with broadband as a possibility, in particular the SKY MID product which should give speeds of up to 8Mb with a 40Gb monthly bandwidth cap for only £5 a month. For the amount of youTube, TED and BBC iPlayer content I watch online that should be plenty, I spend most of the day working with text and graphics (email, web and RSS tools) which hardly use any bandwidth at all by today’s criteria.
In fact I could probably get away with the free SKY BASE broadband, which is definitely the best broadband deal you can get, but for professional purposes a little bit of overkill is not a waste of money.
SKY plus
I’m going to order the SKY+ ( Sky plus ) box for a one-off charge of £99 so that I can play with the linked series recording, and take advantage of pause and rewind of live TV, which is something I used to enjoy in the old Homechoice days. I won’t bother with the HD though, because my old TV and eyesight aren’t up to it. You’d need one of those new widescreen plasma TVs to get the full advantage, and five point one speakers surrounding the living room for the dolby digital lol.
No, I’m turning the offer round and regarding the SKY TV service as coming free with the fast reliable broadband, rather than the other way around as advertised, but they amount to the same thing really, probably the best broadband deals for the UK currently.