We’ve been awarded Recommended Provider for Broadband Services by Which?

Which? Magazine has named us as a Recommended Provider for Broadband Services again. To win this award we had to score well for customer service, ease of set up, connection speed, reliability and technical support and receive an overall score of 70% in their consumer survey. We’d like to thank you guys for the awesome support and for helping us win this award, again. 

Customer update on network packet loss

Over the course of the last week, there have been a number of problems across the BE network, resulting in significant packet loss for a large number of customers and preventing certain web sites from being accessed.

We apologise for the inconvenience and difficulty this caused.  Although we undertook extensive investigations to identify the root cause of the problem, a number of conflicting test results made it difficult to pin point the problem as quickly as we would normally expect.

We can now report that the issues, principally hardware faults, have now been resolved and service across the network has returned to normal levels.

Over the coming days, we’ll be working to better understand how these problems occurred and any lessons we can learn for the future.

---
UPDATE

We have since received information from the BBC who have confirmed they are in the middle of network migration and as a result there could be packet loss. We understand this may be frustrating for our members who use BBC services, but unfortunately this is out of our control and all we can do is wait for the BBC to complete their migration, which is due to be completed on 22 February.  

We appreciate your patience with this and will continue to update this blog post with any more information we receive.

THANKS FOR THE BLOGS – CAN WE HAVE SOME MORE?

Last week we asked  you to send us links to your blogs so that we can feature them in a brand new blogroll we’ll soon be putting live.

We’ve seen an awesome response so far, so thank you to everyone who has submitted their blog.  They’ve been added to our Google Reader for now, so if you want to take a look at what we’ve got so far just click here.

The list includes sites about tech, design, Zen thoughts and even a blog post about couch surfing. But we’d still like to keep adding more.

So, if you have an interesting personal blog and wouldn’t mind it being added to the public list, then post a link in the comments below. 

Ask the MD

Would you like to chat to Chris, the MD of BE? He’ll be jumping into the forum next Monday at 6pm – 7.30pm for the latest ‘Ask the MD’ session. So if you have any burning questions – we’re pretty sure you do – then save the date and bookmark the link.

To join the session, all you have to do is head over to the forum here: http://bit.ly/thebeforum and login with your BE username and password. Look out for the thread named ‘Ask the MD’ and then do what it says on the tin.

See you there.

Moar blogs please

The majority of people read the morning newspaper, but at BE house we are literally plugged into the Matrix the internet, so blogs are more our cup of tea.

But the blog fix isn’t enough, we need more. So we’re asking you to share your blogs with us (post a link in the comments below) so that we can check out what you’re into, and maybe even add you to the blogroll we’ll be ‘rolling’ out soon.

So whatever you’re into – web design, coding, gaming or even knitting – let us know about it. Share a link to your blog and a description of what you write about in the comments below.

We’re looking forward to the new reads.

THE BEST OF CES 2012

Image source: TechRepublic

CES (the International Consumer Electronics Show) was the hottest place for tech fanatics to be last week - and not just because it is held in Vegas.

If your tech company has a new product to launch, CES is the place to do it. Each year the hottest gadgets are announced and 2012 did not disappoint.

Take a look at the tech we’ve been most excited about from this year’s show.

Big, smart and beautiful TVs

Television may have been around for nearly a century, but they’ve never been as smart as they are now. TVs improved over the years of course; first colour, then widescreen, flat screen, high definition – but now they’ve hit their peak... until CES 2013 of that is. Now we can access the internet of TV and use apps to view content in different ways. Better yet, we no longer need to sit in front of a measly 37” screen; big and beautiful TVs were a major attraction this year, with OLED screens taking high definition to a new level.

A key highlight on the TV front has to be the Sharp 85-inch display with 7680x4320. Check out more about the TVs announced at CES 2012 in PC World’s blog post here.

Ultrabooks

As expected, Ultrabooks are taking over the industry in 2012. Netbooks are not powerful enough, yet most laptops are large and heavy so they don’t make good travel companions. The ultrabook on the other hand, is lightweight, portable and extremely fast. Credit must go to Apple for kickstarting the trend with the Air, but looking at the latest ultrabooks from CES - they’ll have a fight on their hands.

We’re itching to get our hands on the Acer Aspire S5 (world’s thinnest laptop) and the super small Dell XPS with its edge to edge screen. Take a look at SlashGear’s in-depth post for each of these ultrabooks and others.

Intelligent cars

Cars at CES may seem somewhat out of place, but wait until you see the technology the automotive industry has been creating. Heads up display may be something you’re quite used to in video games; but it isn’t exactly a feature of the school run or drive to work. Judging from the cars at CES, this shan’t be true for long. Road range appears to be on the out too, after Kia announced they’ll soon be adding technology to detect the driver’s mood and will even hint that a break might be a good idea if it thinks you’re tired.

Have a read of this Huffington Post article for more analysis on what the latest announcements from car manufacturers mean for the automotive industry.

What do you think of the announcements at CES? Let us know in the comments below.

STREAMING OFF TO A GOOD START IN 2012

Last month we posted about the best ways to get internet TV content onto your living room screen (thanks for your comments too). Already this year there has been some big news that shows streaming of content from the internet is going to grow more popular in 2012.

Recently two major players in the movie and TV streaming market have been battling it out to become the UK’s number one service. Netflix has just launched in the UK, meaning you can now access hundreds of thousands of films and TV shows on various devices hooked up to the net. LoveFilm has responded by making sure it gets exclusive partners, including the BBC and ITV.

This means you’ll have a tricky choice on your hands if you were thinking of signing up to a streaming service – and it isn’t just LoveFilm or Netflix, read our previous post to see an even wider range of options. Then again, do you really have to sign up to one service that packages it altogether nicely?

Each terrestrial channel now offers a catch up TV service; BBC’s iPlayer, the ITV Player, 4OD and Demand 5. So if it is just TV you are after then maybe all you need is to hook your laptop up to a TV and enjoy these free services that are readily available to you.

Plenty of people are doing this already; over Christmas for example the BBC broke its peak usage levels with the new series of Sherlock reaching 4.3m on iPlayer the day after being aired. With such high usage, it seems the UK is taking streaming to a new level in 2012.