Loving BE Social London!

Last night saw the sixth in our series of BE Socials at the Golden Fleece in London. It was one of the best ones yet, so a big thank you to all the BE members who made it down!

As well as sizeable group of BE members, Felix, Tom, Alinna, Mark, Matt, and Angeles from the BE team were all in attendance. Green Man Gaming were also there to talk to the BE members about their upcoming launch, but more to follow on that in the coming weeks…

Most people seemed to gravitate towards Richard, the first BE member on our new line bonding package, who is currently achieving speeds of 45Mbps download and 5Mbps upload! If you want to get in on the action, you can register your interest for line bonding here: http://bit.ly/linebonding

You can find more photos from our BE Socials on the BE Flickr profile and keep your eyes peeled for the announcement of the next BE Social, the location of which will be decided by BE members.

See you next time!

- Everyone @ BE

Google to Launch Fibre Network – Have Your Say!

You might have heard already, that the powers-that-be at Google are planning to launch a fiber-optic network of their own. With an intended initial roll out to at least 50,000 homes – and perhaps to as many as 500,000 – Google are aiming to deliver speeds of 1 gigabit-per-second; that’s over 20 times faster than residential fibre optic services currently offer in the US.

Here at BE Towers, we’ve been doing a little thinking about the impact of this announcement, and decided to share what it means to us.

Head of Operations, Tom Williams, thinks that “although it’s great to push boundaries and continue to demonstrate the value of high bandwidth services, monopolies are never good, and you’d have to question the true freedom of the web if one company became so dominant.”

Our Online Product Manager Alinna Chung, on the other hand, is unsure for different reasons. She says: “Faster broadband and challenging providers who have rested on their laurels for too long is awesome, but I don’t really like the idea that Google will know everything I do with my connection, even if I opt out of their normal services. If they have a point of disagreement with a specific governing institution, are they going to be able to completely cut me off from information if I depend on them for both my access and my source of information? I think Google means well, but ultimately, diversifying sources/dependencies means that people can maintain their freedom.”

That’s our opinion...but what do you think? We’re keen to hear from our members their opinions on topics like this that are shaping the future of broadband. So, what’s your view on the issue?

Are Google living up to their motto or not? Would you want Google to control not just their services, but the pipe they’re delivered through too? Is the speed the issue for you, or do you think there are more important things in this announcement?

Leave your comment below, and tell us your thoughts!

- Everyone @ BE

BE SOCIAL - LONDON

The BE Socials train continues, following the success of our last Bristol-based meeting, with a get-together in London!

We love our informal meetups; most of you know the drill already, but for those who don’t, our socials are here to involve BE members in our plans, to get their feedback, and to have some fun meeting new people. And, as they were so successful last year, we decided to keep them going in 2010!

So, from 6:00-9:00pm on Wednesday 24th February in London at The Golden Fleece (8 Queen Street, London, EC4N 1SP), come and join us for a pint or two - the tab’s on us.

You can sign up and reserve your place here: http://besocialfleece.eventbrite.com/

We look forward to seeing you there!

Everyone @ BE

BE Social Bristol was a Blast!

Last night saw the latest of our BE Socials, with lots of our Bristol-based members making their way to the Hope & Anchor for some #24megclub fun.

The ale was good, the banter even better, and all matter of broadband related things were discussed – including the benefits of moving house across the road from an exchange!

We tried to post a few twitpics last night, but there must have been some Apple launch event or something clogging up the interwebz...

So, for those of you who couldn’t make it, without further bad jokes ado, here are some pictures of the evening’s fun:




You can find more photos from our BE Socials on the BE Flickr profile.

Thanks to all those who made it down – it was great to see you and hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Keep checking back for details of the next BE Social, which will be held in London sometime in February.

BE Social Bristol

You may have heard about the various BE Socials that recently ran in 2009, including ones in Manchester, Birmingham and two in London. These were informal meetups that we put on to involve BE members in our plans for the year ahead, to get feedback on current service and have some fun meeting new people.

The events were so successful that we’re keen to keep them going through in 2010!

We’ve spoken to our members about where the next event should be, so the event will take place from 6:30-8:30pm on Wednesday 27th January in Bristol (Venue TBC).

[Update: we will be meeting at the Hope and Anchor (38 Jacobs Wells Road, BS8 1DR)]

You can sign up and reserve your place here: http://besocialbristol.eventbrite.com/

Come by and have a pint on us – we look forward to seeing you there!

- Everyone @ BE

BE Launches Line Bonding Service

This post is from Tom Williams, head of operations at BE Broadband.

Another new service is coming out of BE HQ. Line bonding (two broadband connections acting as a single faster connection) will be available from early February 2010! Since the trial last year, we’ve been working hard to get the service ready for our customers. However, at launch, the product comes with a bit of disclaimer: it’s significantly more complicated to get line bonding running compared to a single connection. That’s why we are going softly softly when we launch. The product is only going to be available to existing Pro members, but we will be including a nice discount for them and we’re only going to be able to handle a small number of orders to begin with, though the product will be available anywhere that the regular BE service is available – about 70% of BT lines.

On a 20Mb/s + line, you should be able to get 40Mb/s + download and 5 ish upload – that’s pretty impressive if you compare with the rest. It also means that if you are on a long line length you’ll be able to achieve around double your current speed – life changing for some!

Pricing is yet to be finalised, but it won’t be cheap – it’s taking quite a lot of overhead and resource to bring the product out which is reflected in the price. We think the connection fee will be around £85 and the discounted cost for existing members around £50-55 per month. At the moment, you’ll need to order a second BT line of course too…

You can get line bonding from other companies, but not for this sort of money and not as easy to set up and robust as the BE product will be. You’ll be able to maximise your gaming experience too turning on fastpath on your line and the experience should be seamless if one line drops for any reason.

If you are interested then please register your details at www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/linebonding

I hope you’ll sign up - you’ll be a true early adopter if you do.

We are always hearing members ask for more speed, so this is a really exciting milestone for us. Reminds me a bit of the early days of ADSL2+…

- Tom

BE Broadband – Home of the World’s Best Customer Service Agent!

In an entertaining gala awards dinner that took place in Las Vegas earlier this month, Sam Filipov, one of BE’s customer service agents based at the 60K International Contact Centre, was awarded Gold Medal for Best Customer Service Agent in the ContactCenterWorld.com Awards.

And if you want a taste of why Sam really is the best customer service agent in the world, then check out this video below:

Tom Williams, Head of Operations at BE Broadband, sad: “We’re committed to providing an unbeatable customer experience every time a BE employee interacts with our customers. We always receive positive feedback from our customers about how our Customer Service Agents bring dedication, passion and expert knowledge to their jobs. I’m thrilled to see one of team continue to get the recognition they deserve and hope that the rest of our customer service agents strive to achieve the level that Sam has.”

Sam Filipov added: “All my colleagues at BE and I take pride in what we are doing and this helps us deliver great customer service. We are all dedicated to our work and everyone knows that in order to make our customers happy we need to go the extra mile. This year I won the prize, but I didn't win it for myself, I won it for the whole BE team!”

You can read the full list of winners in this report on ContactCenterWorld.com.