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, Managing Director of 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.

BE comes Highly Recommended in Customer Service Awards

The votes have been cast, the results are in, and here at BE we have some good news for you to celebrate the new year: we’ve been awarded a shiny silver medal in the Think Broadband Customer Ratings Awards 2009!

BE duked it out in the Large ISPs category of the awards, which are based on the customer service ratings submitted by all Think Broadband users from the beginning of 2009 to mid-December. Our parent company O2 retained its top spot as it did in 2008, where BE also took the second spot.

Tom Williams, Head of Operations at BE Broadband, said: “We’re particularly delighted with the award as they are based on customer ratings. We’re continuing to work hard at improving our customer services, so to be recognised like this will encourage us to keep improving BE Broadband for the benefit of our members.”

Felix Geyr, Head of Home and Broadband at O2 (and ex-Managing Director at BE) added: " The fact that BE Broadband has come a close second to O2 again shows we are committed to our customers across both our businesses. We’re very proud that our customers are pleased with our broadband customer service and we will continue to focus on this in 2010."

The award was fantastic news for all of the team here at BE Broadband, so a huge thanks to all of those who voted for BE!

BE to offer sub-£8 service with no traffic shaping

We've announced today that BE has become the only UK provider to offer a sub-£8 broadband service with no traffic shaping!

Following popular demand for the half-price offer in 2009, we've responded with a permanent refresh to our BE Value product. The price has been reduced to £7.50 from £13.50, with the introduction of a 40GB usage allowance rather than an unlimited service. This allows us to continue to offer no traffic shaping on our products and treat all traffic equally, unlike most ISPs who slow certain activities for individual customers or at peak times.

To develop the service, we consulted with members over 6 months in our member forums and at BE Socials, which are our face-to-face meetups across the country. BE members overwhelmingly favoured a limited service instead of a traffic managed service (where the ISP limits certain users traffic or certain types of download).

Tom Williams, Head of Operations at BE, said: "The trends we’re seeing are for no traffic management allowing more freedom and of course lower prices. Our members demand the freedom to prioritise and think for themselves, not have their broadband provider do it for them. We believe there a lot of customers that will leap at the chance to get a service that doesn’t slow down based on the content of their downloads but don’t use the internet enough to justify an unlimited product."

BE members will be free to download 40GB each month without any traffic shaping applied. We plan to contact members if they use more than the allowance by email and post. It is explained during registration for the service that customers who consistently need more than the 40GB will be upgraded to an unlimited service.

For further information on the new BE Value, please see the BE products page.