Simplifydigital’s latest research of 2,000 households in November 2008, shows that many households are not switching digital TV, broadband or home phone services, despite recognizing that it is in their interests to do so in order to make big savings.

When consulted, 55% of households were “unsure if they were on the best deal” or indeed “pretty sure that if they checked they would find a better deal”.  What’s more 60% admitted to feeling under more pressure to look for savings as a result of the credit crunch.

Nevertheless only one third of respondents had bothered to research the digital TV and broadband  market to look for better deals within the last 3 months, and 38% admitted to having not got round to comparing the market for better deals within the last year.

As a result, 79% of respondents claimed not to have switched digital TV, broadband or home phone services in the last 12 months.  The three most commonly cited barriers to switching were:

·         too many conflicting digital TV and broadband deals making choosing an alternative very confusing

·         a lack of impartial advice available to help find a better value alternative broadband or digital TV service

·         a worry about the excessive time and effort required to switch digital services.

Against this background only 26% of respondents felt that comparison sites offered genuinely impartial advice.  52% of respondents were unsure if comparison sites are genuinely impartial and 22% were sure that comparison sites do not offer a genuinely impartial comparison of digital TV, broadband and home phone services.

This is a very poor reflection on comparison site industry which founded itself on a “consumer champion” positioning of the provision of transparent and impartial advice. 

And indeed it is this negative customer perception of the comparison site sector as a whole that has led Simplifydigital to become the first and only digital TV, broadband and home phone comparison service to receive the UK Regulator Ofcom’s PAS (Price Assurance Scheme) accreditation for transparency, accuracy and impartiality. 

Written by chris

It has been widely reported this week that Sky has backed out of exclusive sales negotiations for Tiscali’s UK broadband business. This follows Carphone Warehouse’s apparent exit from the auction process a few weeks back on the basis of price and the challenges associated with integrating Tiscali’s disparate customer operations. 

The report in the Guardian this week notes that Sky and Tiscali’s Italian parent were unable to agree on price, with Tiscali looking for a price of around £600m and Sky looking to pay closer to £450m. 

The deal would immediately have made Sky Britain’s third-largest broadband provider as Sky currently have over 1.8m customers, and Tiscali have 1.77m UK customers.

Crucially, despite very attractive pricing and heavy promotion, Tiscali are losing customers in the UK.  Their high customer churn has meant that their subscriber numbers actually declined in the last quarter by nearly 40,000 subscribers.   This coupled with the deteriorating economic climate and slumping company valuations, makes Sky’s decision to apparently back out of the negotiations understandable.

But despite these issues, if Sky believe that there is strategic logic in the deal, they may well be playing a longer game.  With a notable absence of competing buyers, Sky may well be walking away, to let Tiscali stew in its own juice for a few further weeks, before returning to negotiations next year. 

One thing that seems clear is that the longer a potential buyer waits, the better terms they are likely to dictate. So don’t count Sky out of the hunt for Tiscali just yet.

Written by chris

Sky TV says 3D television could be just around the corner for British viewers.

The satellite broadcaster has said that it has successfully tested the delivery to a normal household television via their high definition set-top box.

Over the past few months Sky has been filming events using 3D camera technology including a Six Nations rugby union international that was broadcast in 3D to an audience at a theatre in London.

Sky have gone a step further by showing that 3D could be delivered into homes, through its Sky+HD set-top box, without much difficulty at all.

Lawrence Bleach of Simplifydigital says.

“Whilst 3DTV remains, for some, the subject of science fiction films from the 70s, the news from Sky would suggest the reality isn’t far away.  The great news is that it would seem this latest evolution in TV won’t require a new set top box, instead Sky are saying an existing Sky+HD box will do the job.  With other broadcasters yet to make any announcements, it may be another reason to pick Sky as your preferred digital TV provider.  Add the fact that they also have a strong broadband (up to 16Mb) and home phone offering, and Sky continues to be one of the digital service providers pushing the innovations. 

Only 3 years ago Sky launched HD digital TV, and that is fast becoming mainstream with over 600,000 subscribers to the Sky service and other broadcasters and digital TV platforms now also offering high definition services.  You wouldn’t bet against Sky being the first to the UK market with 3D and setting the pace again”

Some things to note about 3DTV is that you will need a 3D ready television set, not yet available in UK stores, and you would need to wear 3D polarising glasses but, 3DTV could be on British shores sooner rather than later - Some channels in Japan are already been broadcast in 3D whilst major TV manufacturers are currently looking at building 3DTV prototypes without the need to wear 3D glasses whilst viewing.

Written by chris

Some of the team at Simplifydigital were lucky enough to test the ultra-fast 50Mb broadband service yesterday and our observations are as follows:

• Overall the service looks impressive
• The service is demonstrably faster than anything else available on the UK market today with web pages loading almost instantaneously
• Watching iPlayer in “high quality” format and in full screen is far less grainy and stilted than on a standard broadband connection
• Downloading content is much quicker with a whole movie downloaded in under 4 minutes

On first test therefore it does look like the service will be attractive to web-centric families with multiple family members spending a lot of time online and deriving a lot of enjoyment from watching content. For gamers, playing games over fibre optic broadband connection improves reaction times (latency) making games more responsive and allowing gamers to get into the action even faster than before. It will also clearly have attractions for home workers assuming that the reliability of the service proves robust.

That being said, the service is clearly a premium product, targeted at high web use families who are willing to pay nearly £50 per month (plus a £50 set-up fee) for the privilege of faster web access. In addition there are clearly questions to address as regards:

• the actual speed that families will receive (though our assumption is that even notwithstanding some degradation of speed due to contention, it still should offer web access far faster than anything else available on the market)
• the usage limit that will be applied to the service. Our understanding having spoken to Virgin Media is that there will be genuinely uncapped usage for early customers, but at some point in the future, “fair usage caps” will be introduced. These caps will need to be very large for families to get the real benefit of the service, as faster speed and use by multiple family members will greatly increase the demand on data use.

Want to find out if you can sign up to the new Virgin Media ultra fast broadband product? Simply give our experts a call on 0800 988 8148

Written by lee

Today Virgin Media announced a new super-fast (XXL) broadband and our CEO Charlie Ponsonby was on BBC Breakfast first thing (see above) sharing his thoughts on it. Here’s a quick summary of his comments along with some background information from us:

“ Seeing really will be believing and we predict the difference will be remarkable. Even standard web surfing will seem a very different experience – with pages loading instantaneously - but the real difference will jump out when you try more data intensive online activities such as streaming high definition TV content, and of course online gaming.”

Virgin Media formally announced the launch of their revolutionary up to 50Mb/s ultra fast broadband service today. The service is over double the speed of the next fastest high speed broadband service available in the UK from Be Broadband and nearly 20 times faster than the average broadband speed achieved by UK households!

Virgin Media have been preparing for the launch for many months having successfully trialed the service in Kent earlier this year. The service uses the existing Virgin Media cable infrastructure (with some modifications) and requires the install of an upgraded broadband modem in the customer’s home.

The launch of the 50 Mb/s service in the UK, follows the trend elsewhere in the world, where fibre-optic cable broadband providers are starting to put clear blue water between themselves and their DSL competitors (who rely on the copper phone line network), by providing broadband speeds that the DSL competitors struggle to match without huge investment in the copper wire network infrastructure.

Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable operator is a great example – they use a sophisticated fibre-optic cable infrastructure and have successfully tested speeds of over 200 Mb/s. They have taken a conscious decision to aggressively market ultra fast broadband packages offering greater speeds than their DSL competitors, such as a 32 Mb/s service with phone for about £20 per month.

It seems that Virgin Media are adopting a similar strategy in the UK – that of shifting households’ expectations, such that any broadband speed under 20 or 30 Mb/s start to seem second rate. When you consider how quickly users’ expectations are already shifting as regards acceptable broadband speed, this seems a very plausible strategy. Remember that it is not all that long ago when households were perfectly happy with a 56 Kbit/s connection (which is 45 times slower than the average broadband speed now achieved in the UK).

Virgin Media do not have a completely free run at the world of ultra fast broadband in the UK. BT are still formally committed to their delayed “21CN upgrade” and continue to pilot its own fibre optic network – so called “fibre to the cabinet” which can deliver speeds of up to 40Mb/s; and the far more capital intensive “fibre to the home” which can deliver speeds of up to 100Mb/s and beyond. But BT’s plans are a long way from fruition and arguments are still raging as to how their investment will be paid for by on-sale to third party broadband providers.

“2009 will be a very interesting year for the UK broadband market, the launch of ultra fast broadband will really start to change people’s perceptions as to what is an acceptable broadband speed.”

“Indeed as we see an increasing blur between the TV set and the PC, with on-demand content flowing seamlessly between the two, people’s appetite for broadband speed will head rapidly upwards and today’s average of about 2 Mb/s will soon seem as inadequate as a 56 Kbit/s dialup connection already seems to the great majority of web users.”

“The market may well start to diverge in 2009 – with premium ultra fast broadband services commanding higher prices and margins for those able to deliver them, and the opposite end of the broadband market becoming yet more commoditised, with further downward pressure on prices”

When can you get the 50 Mb/s service?

To receive Virgin Media’s fibre optic broadband service you need to live in a Virgin Media cable area. Currently Virgin Media covers approx 12 million UK homes. But the new ultra fast broadband service will not initially be available to all Virgin media customers – indeed it will roll out region by region over the coming months, with Warrington in Cheshire the first up. Warrington was chosen to go first due to the very high proportion of existing Virgin Media high speed broadband customers.

Following the Warrington rollout, the “XXL” Virgin Broadband package will be gradually added to the firm’s 2Mb/s (”M”), 10Mb/s (”L”) and 20Mb/s (”XL”) offerings across the whole cable network.

Remember you can head on over to the Simplifydigital site to find the best broadband package and further information on the Virgin XXL broadband, using our Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Jonathan

We’re getting lots of questions about the best broadband for gaming right now, so we thought we’d share our top tips on selecting the best broadband package to make sure your gaming experience is a Christmas cracker and not an over-cooked Turkey. (boo-da-boom, tish!).  

And remember, if you want any straight talking advice on the phone then call us on 0800 988 8148 or head on over to our broadband comparison tool here. 

What sort of speed do you need?

The speed of the service is obviously one of the most important things to consider when looking at broadband for online gaming.This can make all the difference as the overall game performance is largely dependent upon the speed of your connection.  The faster your connection, the lower your latency/ping (connection to the game server), allowing your movement to be fast enough to interact with those of other players. And to stop you feeling all sad and slow. 

To check the speed that you should be able to achieve at your postcode, just enter your details into our broadband comparison tool (or give us a call on 0800 988 8148) and look at the ‘full availability results’ found at the top of the results page. If your predicted speed is less than 2mb,  it’s questionable whether you will be able to achieve the desired connection to the game server to play properly. Ideally speeds of 4mb and above will be ideal for online gaming, especially if you’re using one of the newer high powered consoles such as a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. If services such as 02 Broadband, Be Broadband, Sky Broadband Max and Virgin Media Broadband are available in your area, you are much more likely to reach and exceed the desired speed requirements as these providers use new technology such as ADSL 2+ and fibre optic broadband which can often double your predicted speed.

What usage allowance do you need?

The other thing to make sure you have covered is your usage allowance. All broadband packages are sold with a usage/download allowance and when it comes to online gaming the higher the allowance, the better. Many games require regular updates which can sometimes be as big as 1GB or more. This alone can end up using a large part of your overall usage allowance, leaving you with an allowance amount that may not be sufficient enough to last your own or your family’s needs for the rest of the month (which could result in an additional fee from your ISP).  

When choosing a broadband provider aim for a package that offers at least 20+ GB per month usage, or even better something that offers “unlimited usage”.  However, it’s important to remember that “unlimited usage” broadband often do actually cap your usage with so called “fair usage policy”. It’s worth checking out the details of this before signing up. A notable exception to this is Sky Broadband.

Which console are you playing games on?

There are now many different gaming platforms that can be connected to a broadband connection for online gaming, the most popular being PC, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3. Most new broadband compatible games consoles and laptops come wireless enabled as standard. The Xbox 360 however does require a wireless adapter if you want to connect that way. For all types of online gaming, be it via a console, PC or laptop we’d always recommend hard wiring your connection (plugging directly into the broadband router) with an Ethernet cable if at all possible. This will help to ensure that you keep as strong a connection as possible to the internet and avoid losing signal strength across a wireless distance. This will also help reduce any in-game lag (causing the game to slow down and sometimes drop your connection to the game server altogether) and offer an overall smoother gaming experience.

Written by Jonathan

We recently put out a press release announcing our pick of the very best digital TV, broadband and home phone deals, just in time for Christmas. Here it is in its full blown glory, with our top tips up front and the tables at the end.  It’s packed full of stuff, so this time round we’ve decided to include the whole press release. 

And remember, we’re here to help. Just give us a call on 0800 988 8148 or head on over to the main Simplifydigital site and see what the best package is for you.

- - - 

Make the most of digital TV, broadband and home phone deals this Christmas with Santa’s Little Helper, Simplifydigital

With Christmas just around the corner, time is running out to find the best digital package for your family. There are over 15,000 different digital package deals on the market, catering for every conceivable taste. If you choose wisely, there are some great deals to be had on your digital services this festive season.

However, with last minute preparations, finding a new digital package is probably the last thing on your mind. That’s where Santa’s Little Helper, Simpifydigital, can help. It offers impartial advice via its UK-based experts over the phone (0800 1388 388) or online at http://www.simplifydigital.co.uk to help you find the best deal in minutes. Its specially designed website allows you to define your exact requirements and see the package options, which you can then order online, or let one of its experts place the order for you. It is the only retailer of digital TV, broadband and home phone services in the UK to be accredited by Ofcom as impartial.  The added advantage of Simplifydigital is that it has some exclusive deals and guarantee to be on hand to ensure that the installation goes smoothly.

Here are Simplifydigital’s top Christmas tips for digital TV, broadband and phone:

1.     Save by bundling your services. One of the best ways to take advantage of the great savings to be had is by buying your digital TV, broadband and home phone from one supplier. According to a recent T-poll survey, commissioned by Simplifydigital, an average family can save over £360 per year by bundling all three services.  So before subscribing to digital TV, it’s worth working out what you are paying for broadband and home phone services and whether you are in contract. Then when considering the different digital TV services, check out the deals offered to take all three services.

2.     Make the most of Christmas entertainment with a great movie package. There are many movie premieres such as Transformers, Shrek the Third and Stardust airing over the holidays so it’s a great time to invest in a movie package. Sky in particular has a great entertainment offering. Their movies package gives you more than 850 movies to choose from per month from Hollywood blockbusters to world-cinema gems. This will, however, add around £17 per month to your package but if you sign up before 25^th December, you’ll receive a £50 M&S voucher. If you don’t want to pay monthly for a movie package, both Sky and Virgin Media give you access to a huge range of Box Office movies for around £3.99 per film.

3.     Get cinema quality movies. If you are planning on having a movie-filled Christmas, you may also like to consider High Definition TV. HD TV gives you cinema quality movies in high definition and surround sound. For anyone who is serious about watching HD, Sky offers by far the largest selection of HD channels and programming in the UK, covering the whole spectrum of content – from all the premium sporting action, to a large range of movies and documentaries.  The Sky+HD box also has all the features of a Sky+ box so that you can pause and record live TV. It usually costs a bit extra though, and you’ll need to have an HD-ready set-top box and TV to watch it.

4.     Don’t miss those Christmas classics. If you don’t want to miss any festive TV, then a ‘PVR’ (personal video recorder) can be a great investment. This allows you to pause, record and rewind live TV and you can even record a whole series at the touch of a button. In the spirit of Christmas, there are also some great special offers available during the festive period. Via Simplifydigital, you can get a Sky+ box for £49 with free installation from Sky or a half-price V+ installation for £75 from Virgin Media. The V+ box also gives you access to BBC HD letting you view your favourite BBC programmes this Christmas in HD.

5.     Catch up with your friends and family for free. If you’re away from friends and family this Christmas and want to catch up on the phone, then certain providers will offer free calls to national and international telephone numbers. For example, depending on your package, TalkTalk offers free calls to 36 international destinations, Tiscali offer free calls to 10 international destinations and Sky to 20. Many packages also include free calls to mobile phones in the USA and Canada.

6.     If you’re buying games, make sure you’ve got the right broadband package. Make sure the kids (and adults) aren’t disappointed by ensuring that you’ve got the right broadband package to allow them to get stuck into a whole world of “online play” (multi-player) games. As a general guide, if you’re predicted speed is less than 2mb it is questionable whether you will be able to achieve the desired connection to the game server to play properly. Ideally speeds of 4mb and above will be ideal for online gaming, especially if you’re using one of the newer high powered consoles such as a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360.

Written by Jonathan

We’ve issued a press release today announcing the findings of our most recent piece of research - looking at people’s choice of home phone, broadband and digital TV providers, how long they’ve had them and some of the reasons behind people not benefiting from some of the best deals they could do.

We’re always looking for ways in which we can help people save money, so the reasons why people don’t switch and bundle their services are always really interesting to us. Here’s what we found out: 

> Cash strapped Britons are wasting £900 million by sticking to legacy deals on their digital TV, broadband and home phone services!

> Over half of you (59%) feel under pressure to save money on digital services due to the credit crunch.

> 1 in 3 people have not changed their home phone provider for over 5 years. 

> 1 in 4 of you are still buying all three services separately instead of saving £360 a year by bundling them together! That’s the equivalent of a return flight to New York or £30 a month to put back into the family budget. 

> Over 45% of consumers have not switched their broadband provider in the last 2 years and a third (33%) have not changed their home phone supplier for over five years.

> Nearly two out of three people (59%) feel under pressure to save money on digital services as a result of the credit crunch, and 63% have taken the trouble to research the market within the last 12 months, but only one in five (21%) have actually switched in the last year due to total confusion.

So why are people so confused and seemingly unable to switch and save?  Well just under 50% of people say that the reason that they have not switched is as a result of a combination of confusion as a result of too many conflicting deals available (19%), fear of the sheer time and effort required to switch (14%); and a lack of impartial advice as to where the best deals are to be found (13%).

As Charlie (our CEO) puts it, “This is where Simplifydigital can really help, it is the only company in the UK to be accredited by the regulator Ofcom to provide a completely free and impartial advisory service to help people save money on their digital TV, broadband and home phone services.”  

Enough said. Get in touch on 0800 988 8148 or head on over to the special triple-play section of our site here to find out how to help us help you make that £900 million figure smaller next time. 

PS: The full press release is available over here - we’d be interested to hear what you think of the results and the juicy bits that we’ve highlighted.

Written by Jonathan

Of com has just released its latest report on The International Communications Market 2008 and it’s packed with lots of interesting and (less than interesting) data on global trends in the use of all things digital, including TV, broadband, telephony and radio.

Here’s our take on what’s most interesting in the report, hope it’s useful. 

The digital world is converging fast!

> There are 26 broadband connections per 100 people in the UK, placing us third behind the Netherlands (35%) and Sweden (31%) and penetration is growing at about 5% per year.

> UK surfers are spending nearly 14 hours per week online, second only to US internet users who spend 15 hours online each week and this is growing at an average annual rate of 30% - so by our calculations, if this continues for another ten years web users will be online 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

> More and more people are viewing TV shows over the web and its growing in the UK at a rate of 69% per year. The US lead the world with 26 downloads per head per year, with UK second at 8 downloads per head per year.

> As a result 15% of UK web users claim to watch less broadcast TV as TV viewing retains its basic appeal (thanks to X Factor no doubt).

> Mobile broadband availability (via HSDPA) is highest in the UK covering 87% of households.

> The age of the CD is well and truly coming to an end - digital recorded music sales are growing at 20% per year and mobile music downloads now account for over half of all recorded digital music revenue in France, Italy and 29% in the UK. Whilst in Japan, mobile accounts for a staggering 90%+ of all digital music revenue!

> Use of social networking sites on mobile phones is growing but still very niche, but broadcasting TV on mobiles has had less success with various service closures around the globe over the last 18 months.

The UK is the world capital of digital television!

> The UK leads the way globally with the 86% of main TV sets connected to digital, followed by the US with 70%. Within digital TV, pay-TV thanks to successful marketing by Sky and Virgin Media continues to grow and is now in 47% of UK households.

> High definition (HD) TV remains niche with approximately 1m homes enjoying HD (out of a total of nearly 25m TV homes) in the UK.

> Nearly one third of UK households have a DVR (digital video recorder). This is the highest penetration in the world. This is largely due to the huge appeal and success of Sky+ which is now in over 4 million households.

> TV is still a major national pass time with viewers in the UK watching over 3.5 hours of television a day, 7 days per week! This is less though than the Americans who watch an hour a day more on average.

Telephony use and spend just keeps on growing!

> Telecoms companies keep on getting richer. In the UK alone their revenues continue to grow at 5% per year, driven by increased mobile use and broadband take-up whilst fixed line revenues fall slightly.

> Broadband take up continues apace in the UK, but as penetration increases it is slowing from 20% in 2006 to 14% in 2007.

> Texting keeps charging ahead with volume of texts sent growing by over 35% in the UK alone in 2007.

> The UK lags the world in the provision of state-of-the-art fibre-optic delivery technology. In Japan an amazing 85% of the population have access to a full fibre-to-your-door service, whilst in the UK this is only 1% of the population. This reflects Virgin Media’s approach of running fibre to the street, rather than your door.

Still want more? Then head on over to the BBC, Daily Telegraph or WebUser for further analysis.

Written by Jonathan

Some more great news on the digital TV front as we hear of a deal signed between ITV and BT to enable all your favourite ITV programmes like Coronation Street and the X Factor to be watched on the BT Vision platform.

That makes BT Vision the only platform in the UK carrying catch-up services for all four terrestrial broadcasters as ITV joins catch-up programming from the BBC, Channel 4 and Five already available. You’ll just need to subscribe to the BT Vision Replay package (£3 a month) to watch content from the ITV library.

So here’s the quick sales bit. For this and other right up to the minute packages that deliver more content to you, give us a call on 0800 988 8148 or head on over to the main Simplifydigital site and see what the best package is for you.

Written by Jonathan