BE Broadband Offers £25 Amazon Voucher With Student Packages

We've launched a £25 Amazon.co.uk gift voucher offer for our 9 month broadband packages.

The voucher offer, available on either the BE Pro or BE Unlimited packages, is part of an intiative by BE to better cater for students. The launch of the new 9 month broadband packages was the first step, and it is hoped that the voucher promotion will appeal to students needing to by books and other study materials as they start the new academic year.

To take advantage of the offer, students should enter the voucher code ‘AMAZON’ when prompted on the BE website. Both BE Pro and BE Unlimited offer broadband speeds up to 24Mbps using ADSL 2+ technology, with prices start from £17.50 a month. The packages also include a free wireless router and 24/7 customer support.

Oli White, Head of Marketing at BE Broadband, said:

“BE Broadband is already a fantastic choice for students as it is perfect for a households on a shared network and for those looking for reliable speeds when online. We’ve found that students particularly value this, for example when they are submitting essays at the last minute and need their connection to be reliable. The voucher is an added incentive on top of the 9 month contracts, meaning students can save money when they are not using their broadband over summer.”

The Amazon voucher offer is available until 18th October on all Be Pro and BE Unlimited packages, including 9 month contracts.

Manchester and London – thank you for coming along to the BE Social

In case you hadn’t heard, we’ve been running a series of events called BE Social, where we invited BE members to meet the team, share ideas, give feedback on the services and generally get to know each other a little better.

The first BE Social was held in Manchester on 10th September and the second was held in London close to the BE offices last night (23rd September). Both events were brimming with ideas and discussion, as you can tell by the photos we took at the events:



We want to say a big thank you to everyone who made it down, and we look forward to putting your ideas into action.

If you missed these last two events, we’re planning more BE Socials around the country and a web-based version, so stay tuned and watch the member forums for future announcements.

Look forward to seeing you at the next BE Social.

Changes to the BE Website

You may have noticed that we’ve made some changes to the BE home page. The changes have been made based upon member feedback we have received over the past few weeks.

The most noticeable change is that the colours have been toned down so that they’re easier on the eyes. As one member commented, you should now be able to take your sunglasses off!

We’ve now set up a design group consisting of BE members and other qualified individuals to help figure out how we move forward. If you want to be part of the Design Group please email designgroup@bethere.co.uk.

As we’ve mentioned before, we think it’s fantastic that our members are passionate enough to tell us how they feel when we make changes like this and we continue to make progress in strengthening our member community. The BE Socials that have been taking place recently are examples of this - the next one is on Wednesday 23rd September if you want to meet the BE team and give us your feedback. Further details and RSVP are here.

We’ll be listening for further feedback in the member forums, on Twitter, Facebook and on this blog and your comments are always welcome.

BE Launches Twitter Stream for Outages

We've launched a Twitter profile that keeps our members updated of any network outages, planned or unplanned. You can find it at http://twitter.com/BEStatus

While we do try to email our members ahead of any outages, the stream will be used to update members daily on upcoming planned network outages at their exchange, so that they won’t be surprised at any changes to their service. The Twitter profile will also be able to alert members to any short notice or unplanned outages.

Oli White, Head of Marketing at BE Broadband, on the new service:

“We’re constantly looking for innovative new ways of communicating with our members using tools that are currently available. Twitter is perfect for sending out short messages to people that want to subscribe to them, so it was a natural fit for us to offer this service to customers. Hopefully it should add to the numerous other channels we use to communicate with our members and should help to prevent any surprise from outages.”

The news comes as BE Broadband has recently been praised for their customer service, receiving a ‘Recommended’ accolade in the PC Advisor Awards and were shortlisted for ‘Fasted Rated Broadband’ and ‘Best Rated Home Broadband’ at the Top 10 Broadband Awards. BE were also nominated for ‘Best Consumer Customer Service’ at the 2009 ISPA Awards.

BE Broadband comes highly recommended!

We're delighted to say that we've received a ‘Recommended’ accolade in the PC Advisor Awards. What's more, BE Broadband came out on top of both the Average Download and Average Upload speeds, beating stiff competition from the likes of Virgin Media and Zen.

BE were described as having "The greatest concentration of 20Mbps+ connections" and "if you want really fast broadband and can't get cable, BE is worth looking into."

You can see the full results of the tests in the table below (click to enlarge):


BE came out on top in the PC Advisor Reader's Choice last year's awards, taking home the Best Broadband Only Deal.

BE were also shortlisted for ‘Fasted Rated Broadband’ and ‘Best Rated Home Broadband’ at the Top 10 Broadband Awards, but unfortunately didn't bring any awards home on the night. We were nominated for ‘Best Consumer Customer Service’ and 'Best Consumer Fixed Broadband' at the 2009 ISPA Awards earlier this year.

You can find out about othe awards we have won here. As you can see, our trophy cabinet is well and truly glistening!

Venue Confirmed for BE Social London - UPDATED

The venue has now been confirmed for the next BE Social, an informal meetup to involve BE members in our plans for the next 12 months, to get feedback on current service and have some fun meeting new people.

The event will take place from 6-8pm on Thursday 17th September Wednesday 23 September at The Mitre (Nearest stations: Paddington / Lancaster Gate).

You can find all the details and reserve your place here: http://besociallondon.eventbrite.com/

Looking forward to seeing you there!

BE Social - UPDATED

On Thursday 10th September we held the first BE Social at The Bank in Manchester.

It was an informal meetup to involve BE members in our plans for the next 12 months, to get feedback on current service and have some fun meeting new people.

The event was so successful that we’re going do it again, this time in London! The event will take place from 6-8pm on Thursday 17th September Wednesday 23 September.

This event is all about you, the members. With this in mind, we’d love to hear from you about any suitable places you’d like the London event to be held at.

Here’s some suggestions from us to get you going:

• Coach and Horses, Soho (Nearest tube = Leicester Square)
• The Princess, High Holborn (Nearest Tube = Tottenham Court Road)

Feel free to make any suggestions in the comment section below or on the member forums, but bear in mind that it needs to have capacity for around 30 people, be in Central London and be near suitable transport links.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions!

BE Social

We're pleased to announce the first ever BE Social, a series of meetups for BE Broadband customers

The first one will be held on Thursday 10th September at The Bank in Manchester. [10.9.09: Note the venue change]

It's going to be an informal meetup to involve you in our plans for the next 12 months, to get feedback on current service and have some fun meeting new people.

Full details are available in the BE member forum but register for a ticket here to be eligible for entry.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Router Security Issue

Hi Members -

We want to let you know that we’ve recently been informed of a security problem that could affect the BE Box, among other routers.

Essentially, the problem could allow somebody to change your router settings, and nobody wants that.

For you tech savvies, we’ve included more details at the bottom of this email.

Here’s what we’re doing:

We want everyone to be protected – even the people who don’t read this. So we’ve decided to automatically update the password for everyone.

It will be unique to each user: we are running a script to change the password to the individual serial number on your BE Box (found on the bottom of the router). If you want to change it after that, click here for a guide.

Just to be clear, we aren’t changing the wireless key – it’s the password to the administrator web interface. That’s the only change we will…or would…make.

We will be starting to run this script first thing Monday 7th September, if you don’t want us to do it (although we do recommend it), you can stop us by either:

a) Downloading and running the tool here.

b) Following the manual guide here.

All the best -

Everyone @BE


The Techie Stuff

The BE Box is vulnerable to an XSS (cross-site scripting) combined with a CRSF (cross-site request forgery) that allows a remote attacker to perform actions on the Web UI (user interface), via the use of JavaScript – and without the user’s knowledge or consent.

In the short term, in order to stop this from occurring we are going to set the password on everyone’s BE Box.

After we’ve done this, if someone tries to attack your router, you will be prompted to enter your Administrator Password. Don’t do it, otherwise the attack will be successful. … (We’d like to think that most people wouldn’t enter their username and password for a random unexpected login prompt)

In the long run we’re working with Thomson to improve the firmware’s resilience to such attacks.

BE Broadband Partners To Provide On-Site IT Support

We've partnered with Geeks-on-Wheels, which provides on-site IT support to homes and small businesses, to provide for BE members that want professional IT support at home. The service can be used to solve IT problems from clearing PCs of viruses or spyware, data recovery for hard disk crashes, to hardware and software configuration.

The support will be completed on location and comes at a discounted price for BE members from the normal Geeks-on-Wheels rate. With the 15% reduction in price exclusively for BE members, Geeks-on-Wheels Home User Call-out Rates in London will be £63.75 for the first hour and then £31.88 per thirty minutes thereafter. For Sussex, Surrey and Kent Home rates, support will costs £55.25 for the first hour and then £25.50 per thirty minutes thereafter.

"We’re delighted to team up with Geeks-on-Wheels to give our members the best value when they need professional IT support at home. This partnership allows us to continue to provide the excellent service that BE members expect.”

Oli White, Head of Marketing at BE Broadband

“This is the perfect partnership for Geeks-on-Wheels. BE Broadband are widely recognised within the IT community as providing the best broadband services out there in a very competitive market. With Geeks-on-Wheels now providing on-site support to BE customers, the service really is second to none.”

Jamie Shaw, Managing Director of Geeks-on-Wheels

To launch the service, BE are also offering an exclusive deal for Geeks-on-Wheels’ new customers to BE, with 2 months free broadband and no connection fee on all 12 month contacts. New customers can take advantage of the promotion, which lasts until the end of October, by entering the code ‘GEEKS’ when prompted on the BE sign up page.