Boxx Communications Ltd

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Connectivity

It’s time to Fix Britain’s Internet

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It's time to Fix Britain's Internet

What do almost all broadband providers in Britain have in common…?

They depend on Openreach.

And what’s wrong with that?

Well, Openreach is paid billions (through taxpayer money and part of your bill – whoever that may be with) to maintain the national telecoms network. But even the industry regulator – Ofcom, say it’s not delivering what it should.

How are Openreach not delivering…?

Openreach are part of the BT Group so their budget is set by BT. Sound a little biased….

You’re right!

And;

BT have kept Openreach reliant on copper rather than investing more in pure fibre, like other countries. So we are now lagging behind many other countries, including Lithuania & Kazakhstan.

Plus;

From next season, BT will spend £619m per year on the rights to show football matches, yet BT’s investment in Openreach has been flat since 2008.

So now for the good news;

Earlier this year, Ofcom announced that they wanted to see a better quality of service for providers and consumers alike. They cited the following in their proposal of how to achieve this long-term goal.

  • BT opening up its Openreach cable network to allow greater competition within the industry.

  • Separating Openreach from BT – with it’s own board.

  • Introducing tougher rules on faults, repairs and installations, plus compensation for consumers when things go wrong.

  • Improved broadband coverage for all households & businesses.

A ‘10-point plan for a better Openreach’ has since been published, which whilst supported by all across the industry, has raised concerns over how quickly we will see the benefits of reform.

So now for the better news;

The FCS (Federation of Communication Services) have come together with major players in the industry (including Talk Talk, Sky & Vodaphone) to form a coalition to Fix Britain’s Internet. And we are joining them!

Despite the consumer-y feel, the industry-led campaign is quickly gathering momentum with providers as well as end-users.

This is what they believe:

  • That putting a ‘Separate from BT’ sign on the Openreach logo isn’t enough to deliver the changes we all need to keep up with other countries around the world.

  • The frustrated providers and users of this country deserve to have their voices heard.

So what next…?

You have the power to make a difference;

Ofcom have launched a public consultation about the future of Openreach and whether they should remain part of BT. They want to know what YOU think and have given us all until 4th October 2016 to comment on their plans.

But;

To make a difference and drive real improvements, we need as much support as possible.

It’s easy to show your support; Just complete the simple form to tell Ofcom it’s time to Fix Britain’s Internet and help secure a better connectivity for us all!

The campaign is getting great press coverage – having been featured in The Times, The Independent, The Spectator, The Mirror and on Sky News – it’s got support from MP’s and in the first 4 weeks alone over 22,000 people wrote directly to Ofcom.

So what are you waiting for…?

Help give Britain the internet it deserves!

Pokémon Go and the 4G effect!

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Pokémon Go and the 4G effect!

The latest craze – Pokémon Go – has hit fever pitch. It’s literally everywhere and people of all ages and around the world can’t seem to get enough!

The retro game came back with a vengeance….. Adults are reliving their youth, kids – who let’s face it would usually rather take the car – suddenly want to walk everywhere and complete strangers are united in a common interest, which is a phenomenal outcome for a mere video game.

With retail stores promoting that ‘Pokémon are hiding in stores near you’ and ‘we’ll be releasing Pokémon lures in our stores’, it seems everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.

Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/silly_little_man/28293004446/

So what has hooked us all into the new geo-based game….? Well for starters, it’s completely free to play, unlike other games it blends real life with a virtual world and players can easily take to social media to share their Pokémon catching triumphs.

Here at Boxx Towers, we’re just as taken with the new game and a few members of the team, in particular, are racing against each other to complete the levels. So in a bid to embrace the excitement we organised an office Pokémon tournament.

What started out as a little time out from the day-to-day and a chance to win some ‘house points’ in our ongoing team games, quickly became very competitive.

For the 45 minutes each team was allowed out-of-office to catch Pokémon, some took to bicycles, others drove to a local and well known Pokémon ‘hot spot’ and some roped in an expert (aka 10-year-old son) to help!

Gaming aside, Pokémon Go demonstrates the reliance we these days have on data. 4G is now a necessity in all walks of life – and what 10-year-olds now want for themselves!

Whether your need for 4G data is low or high, we have a SIM only mobile package to fit your (and your Pokémon hunting) needs!

5G is coming – and faster than you think!

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5G is coming – and faster than you think!

The fifth generation of mobile networks is coming, offering speeds up to ten times faster than 4G, huge capacity and ultra-low latency.

With this new, much faster world will come a whole range of opportunities for businesses and connected devices, with Gartner forecasting that the number of connected things in use worldwide will reach 20.8 billion by 2020 as the long-promised Internet of Things (IoT) finally comes to fruition.

The IoT will see vast numbers of inanimate devices using the 5G network – driverless cars, for example, robot surgeons and full-scale smart cities.

With the massive capacity that 5G offers above its 4G predecessor, big data will finally come to the fore, and devices and apps that can gather, analyse and store huge amounts of data in real time will reap the benefits.

5G is expected to debut in 2018, with the first commercial networks available around 2020. Firms are already creating 5G ready devices and technologies.

Data is transmitted by radio waves, which are split into bands dedicated to different types of communications, and part of the excitement around 5G stems from the International Telecommunications Union restructuring of the radio network elements used to transmit data, which will solidify connection speeds and reliability.

The main upsides for both users and businesses will be; vastly improved speed and latency, and the combined effect of these on the user experience.

5G is significantly faster than previous generations – a full HD movie can be downloaded in under 10 seconds. Response times of 1 millisecond compared with around 50 for 4G also means that movies can be played before they have downloaded. For the user, these will combine to give the feeling of limitless bandwidth and a connection that is always available.

Any downsides? There will be challenges for developers, businesses and IT departments alike as they look to make the most of the opportunities 5G offers while being alive to the potential issues of dealing with the volume and storage of data that all of the connected devices will create.

Cost is also uncertain, as the technology is still under construction.

But what is certain is that harnessing the power of big data will be critical to making the most of 5G – so get ready!

Estate Agents: Keeping ahead of the Game

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Estate Agents: Keeping ahead of the Game

The online revolution has affected pretty much every type of business going and estate agents are no exception…..

Once a firmly face-to-face profession, many of the processes of house-buying now happen online, from the initial searching and viewing of house particulars to booking appointments and liaising as the sale progresses.

As viewings and enquiries can now happen around the clock, estate agents have had to evolve, both in how they work and how they make contact with clients and vendors – both of whom expect them to be available when needed, even when they are out and about.

Additionally, the whole end-to-end buying process is often much quicker and estate agents who can’t keep up to speed will soon find themselves overtaken by their peers.

So increasingly most have found that their standard office phones and company mobiles just don’t cut the mustard in this changing world, and have turned to companies such as ours for help and guidance to find out how their new contact and call needs can best be met.

As ever, technology has effective and competitive solutions that can help estate agents with their increased and changing needs, and Boxx Communications customers Deakin White, for example, chose one of our VoIP packages so that they can run their office seamlessly, even when they’re not actually in it.

As a fairly new start-up, with a small initial team but lots of local interest and big ambitions, it was critical to them to find a way to make all would-be buyers and sellers know they were important, even if staff couldn’t get to the phone immediately.

With our VoIP packages, office calls immediately divert to mobiles if required, they have a call queuing feature and the call monitoring helps them plan – and Deakin White, happy with their tech, are proof that estate agents now need reliable broadband and VoIP if they are to stay ahead of the game.

VoIP packages also feature the ability to put calls on hold, play marketing messages and move calls seamlessly between users and offices so that customers will get the best experience when calling any business, no matter how busy you are.

If you’re an estate agent, you literally can’t afford to be without it!

Internet History: From Dial-Up to Superfast Broadband

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Internet History: From Dial-Up to Superfast Broadband

The internet has been around a lot longer than most of us realise, with the first email sent in 1971, but it has only been in mass use since the 1990s.

It’s true to say that the internet then bore little resemblance to the all-singing, powerful and superfast connections that most of us enjoy today.

Back then you had to dial-in to your internet connection and not only was it painfully slow, but you couldn’t use the house phone at the same time – it was strictly either/or – a big deal when mobiles had yet to take off either.

Connection, as well as being noisy, was also slow – not surprising when the speed was just 56K! Frustration aside, it made downloading music or – if you were ambitious – films, a very time-consuming task, ranging from half an hour to, well, literally days!

It’s not surprising that the most popular video games at this time were things like PacMan and Worm – single player games using the arrow keys on a keyboard, as hooking up over the internet for the multi-player or interactive games that are in mass use today was just impossible.

These days, of course, we can play seamlessly against people we don’t know around the world, over superfast speeds and in games that are so realistic you have to look twice to know whether they are real life or animated. And which have download needs running in parallel with their sophistication – the download of X-Box game Halo: The Master Chief Collection, for example, requires over 60GB!

And our technical needs have evolved with increasing speeds too. Most households and businesses have multiple devices so that we can connect any place, at any time, seamlessly as we move through the day. Try telling a 1990s internet user that one day you would have fast broadband in a device you kept in your pocket – unthinkable!

Nowadays, broadband – where the line is split so both the internet and telephone work at the same time – is very much the norm across the UK, with a range of providers competing to provide ever-greater speeds.

Broadband has become so vital to how we live our everyday lives, that the government has revealed its intention to put broadband access on a similar footing to other basic services such as water and electricity.

By the end of this parliament, a broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO) should be in place with the ambition of giving people the legal right to request a connection to broadband with speeds of 10 Mbps, no matter where they live.

You can trust Boxx to keep you up to speed with the best connection options on the market – our advanced broadband packages include three levels of business fibre broadband to suit the demands of every company, as well as direct internet access, ideal for big teams, multiple users and cloud-based applications.

Ofcom demand greater competition in the industry

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Ofcom demand greater competition in the industry

Ofcom recently said that BT must open up its cable network and allow greater competition within the industry, as part of reforms to bring superfast broadband to all much sooner.

The communications watchdog’s ‘Strategic Review of Digital Communications’ stopped short of demanding that BT should be broken apart from the Openreach division (which maintains the UK’s largest phone and broadband network on behalf of competing providers), but did not rule it out.

They have told Openreach they must make it easier for competitors to access it’s network and provide comprehensive data on the nature / location of its ducts and poles. This will allow competing operators to invest, plan and lay advanced networks, giving people more choice over how they receive their phone and broadband services.

The evidence from Ofcom’s review showed Openreach, as part of BT Group, still has an incentive to make decisions in the interests of BT, rather than BT’s competitors, which can lead to competition problems.

For example, it found that Openreach’s governance lacks independence from BT Group. The wider company has retained control over Openreach’s decision-making and the budget that is spent on the network, and other telecoms companies have not been consulted sufficiently on investment plans that affect them.

So Ofcom has decided it is necessary to overhaul Openreach’s governance and strengthen its independence from BT, ensuring its takes its own decision on budget, investment and strategy, such as the deployment of new networks. Openreach management will be required to serve all wholesale customers equally, and consult them on its investment plans. There will also be greater transparency over how costs and assets are allocated between Openreach and the rest of BT, with detailed proposals on how these changes will be implemented due out later this year.

Ofcom also intends to introduce a range of measures designed to ensure that all phone and broadband companies provide the quality of service that customers expect.

1) Openreach will be subject to tougher, minimum requirements to repair faults and install new lines more quickly. These will build on measures set in 2014, but will set higher minimum standards and extend to other aspects of performance, such as how often faults occur.

2) Ofcom will also introduce performance tables on quality of service, identifying the best and worst operators on a range of performance measures so that customers can shop around with confidence.

3) Ofcom intends to introduce automatic compensation for consumers and businesses when things go wrong. Broadband, landline and mobile customers will no longer have to seek redress themselves, but will instead receive refunds automatically for any loss or reduction of service.

In the statement released by Ofcom announcing these finding and changes, Sharon White, Ofcom Chief Executive, said:

“People across the UK today need affordable, reliable phone and broadband services. Coverage and quality are improving, but not fast enough to meet the growing expectations of consumers and businesses. So we’ve announced fundamental reform of the telecoms market – more competition, a new structure for Openreach, tougher performance targets, and a range of measures to boost service quality. Together, this means a better deal for telecoms users, which will improve the services and networks that underpin how we live and work.”

We are excited about these announcements and changes and look forward to the future landscape that Ofcom envisage.

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