BE Broadband

BE Social Scotland

2010-03-18T09:12:00.002Z

It’s that time again: BE Socials are hitting the road!

Following the success of the Golden Fleece in London, where you all got to grill the first Member to bond those lines, BE are heading north of the border... to Edinburgh!

If you’re in the area, make sure you join us for a pint because we’ve got two special guests joining us: Tom Williams, recently named MD of BE Broadband, and Alex Gowar, our new Head of Marketing. It’s a good opportunity to throw a few questions their way about what's in store at BE in the coming months!

So, from 6:30-8:30pm on Tuesday 30th March in Edinburgh at The Malt Shovel (Google Map), come and have a pint or two - the tab is, as usual, on us.

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

We look forward to seeing you there!

- Everyone @ BE

Interview with the first line bonding member at BE broadband

2010-03-16T12:09:00.001Z

Tom Williams, MD of BE Broadband, caught up with Richard Thompson at the last BE Social to discuss line bonding, house hunting near exchanges, and what it's like to get speeds of up to 46Mbs download and 5.2Mbs upload!

Tom: We’ve just launched line bonding as a product and it’s in its early stages. We’ve contacted a number of customers to take up the service and one of the first is Richard. Richard’s from Bristol and he’s come all the way down to tonight’s meetup in London. So how long have you been connected now?

Richard: Since my exchange very first got enabled, about May 2007.

T: Ah-ha, OK. But line bonding, you ordered it last week?

R: I can remember when the trial was very first announced on the forums, and I can remember trying to sign up to that but it was just for people in London, so I gave up on that. I'd harassed BE team members on the forums about Line Bonding and as soon as there was an announcement about it being available outside of London that I registered my interest and waited to hear back.

T: Well you are the first one on line bonding after the launch. We met you in Bristol a month or two ago, and you went live last week?

R: Yeah, I got an email from Alinna, at about 5:07pm on Thursday night, so I replied to it and they were telling me to phone the line bonding team and I gave them a call about 5:30pm They set me off on the initial process: the modem was shipped out on Friday, the modem was with me on Monday and then I got a phone call about 2 o’clock at work telling me it was ready to go live. So I was like, okay, at 6 o’clock I have to go back!

T: Ah, you were at work?

R: Exactly, because I was at work and I had the modem delivered to work as well and I actually got a call from the courier company as I was driving into work and I wanted to collect it then drive straight back as soon as I got to work to get it home.

It was great, and literally that night I was playing with it online, changing settings etc. Then the next day at work I was connected to my computer and changing settings, phoning up support and they’re like, “Can you reboot?”.I’m like, “Yeah I’ve clicked reboot.” Then they asked "What lights are flashing?" and I replied "Don’t know, I’m at work", which was quite fun.

T: So tell us about the sorts of speeds you’ve been getting.

R: Well before I already had two lines because as soon as line bonding was mentioned I bought the second one. One line was BE Pro, one line was BE unlimited, so I had 24Mbson both lines downstream, and the Pro line had 2.8Mbs up.

T: You must live close to an exchange then?

R: Yeah, I'm sad enough that I chose where to live based on where the exchanges were. When I was looking for flats I found out where the exchanges were, googled that postcode and that's where I was looking. I can actually see the exchange from my balcony.

T: Nice! And then you had 2.8 up?

R: Yeah I had 2.8 on a single line, and that was really, really fast.

T: That's amazing.

R: With bonding what I've found, as is known, there's a chip set limitation on the main line so that you get 20 down, but the other line I find that if I turn on Annex A, I actually get more than 24 meg down – I get up to about 26 meg down, so if I turn on Annex A on the second line rather than Annex M I can get about 46 meg down and about 3.8 up.

But I figure that, well, you’ve got over 40meg, who cares, so I tend to leave the second one on Annex M and have about 44 down and 5.2 up.

People look at Virgin 50 meg, and yes it might have a slightly higher headline speed, but you’ve got about 1 meg upload.

T: That’s amazing, you’re starting to kind of get into the world of next-generation access with the things you can do via that massive bandwidth.

R: It’s only a couple of years back where you got 5 meg downstream, and now I’ve got that upstream. Businesses will pay a grand a month for a 2 meg SDSL line and I’ve got that twice and more.

T: So how do you feel about the amount of money it costs?

R: Well, obviously I’m paying BT for two lines which I’d rather not – I don’t make voice calls, but in total I pay £52 to BE and BT lines are about £12 each, so about £25. So yeah, I’m paying about £75, but at the same time, for me to get any other equivalent service I’d be paying a lot more.

I guess for most people, paying £5 a month for broadband is enough and I think that’s what BE Value is there for. But for me I don’t care. I think value-for-money wise, compared with the BT business account we have at work, using stuff on there is painful. While you may have a 5meg sync, in reality you’ll never get 5 meg at peak times, as the drsox video showed. For a 10Mbs leased line, you’d be paying about 20 grand a year, so £52 a month is absolutely fine.

T: And what do you think about the modem?

R: It gets warm! It’s fine – to me, the point of the modem is literally to give me the connection to the internet, and it does that very well. I use it with a Netgear router internally for my network.

BE are the only ISP to offer line bonding In the UK and worldwide it’s only handful, so it’s a very niche product. At the level you’re doing it at I wouldn’t say we’re quite at the mass market level where I’d give it to my gran, but we’re getting a lot closer. We’re getting away from fiddling with the router settings to get extra speeds, which is good to hear.

T: Great, it’s good to hear. Richard, thanks for being a customer and thanks for being the first one to use our line bonding product!

Loving BE Social London!

2010-02-25T17:29:00.007Z

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!

2010-02-16T15:07:00.001Z

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

2010-02-11T18:07:00.005Z

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!

2010-01-29T09:52:00.005Z

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

2010-01-15T16:32:00.002Z

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

2010-01-12T09:43:00.003Z

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!

2010-01-08T14:33:00.002Z

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

2010-01-04T13:12:00.008Z

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

2010-01-01T10:53:00.001Z

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.

The BE Team's Top 10 of 2010

2009-12-23T11:05:00.001Z

Here's a list of things that have been getting the office excited this year. We'd like to hear about yours too, so please leave a comment below if you've got something to add.

1. Ninite
Matthew our resident master of the machines uses Ninite, a clever little automated installer, to significantly cut down the amount of time he spends rebuilding PCs.

2. Spotify
Check out some of the tracks that have been gracing the BE house sound system with our BE 2009 playlist.

3. Shameless plug: BE Usergroup
There is some seriously useful technical guidance on here. Big love to the Usergroup for hosting the technical wiki, the IRC, F8lure and all the other things they do to help BE, It wouldn't be the same without you.

4. Steam
Valve digital distrubution platform, used to buy and download games, these guys have pretty much nailed it, simple, easy and quicker than waiting for the postman.

5. iPhone Apps
Louise’s favourite thing is the iPhone cinema app. It allows her to forget to plan.

6. Livedrive
We all really love Livedrive and not just because they’re our partner, offering our members 35% off. Log into your member centre to see details and the promotion code.

7. pfSense
Makes a nice powerfull firewall/router that even your nan (well, maybe Matt’s nan) can use and then making it free.

8. Fry and Laurie
Elizabeth has been watching old Fry and Laurie clips on YouTube for some reason. Here’s her fave: ‘Marjory is dead!’

9. Feedly
We get a load of our broadband related news from Feedly, a firefox plugin that takes RSS feeds and presents them in an easy-to-read format. It rocks.

10. Bike Snob
Mark recently bought a single speed bike and now reads this obligatory and hilarous blog. Although set in NYC, Mark swears it mirrors the Shoreditch ‘fixie’ scene.

11. uTest.com*

Beta test new products and releases coming out from tech companies daring enough to crowdsource their QA. Muck around and make some money if you happen to be good at pointing out bugs (which we know you are).

* I know we said Top 10, but we’re always trying to find ways of giving you more.

What is your Top 10 of 2010? Leave a comment below!

BE’s Cracking Christmas Social

2009-12-21T15:07:00.003Z

Last Wednesday saw the fourth BE Social of 2009 and what a Christmas Cracker it turned out to be!

An eager crowd turned up at The Mitre for some Christmas cheer, looking back at what BE had been up to over the past year and giving the members that came along a sneak preview of upcoming activity in 2010.

We even managed to hold a light-hearted Christmas quiz devoted to all things broadband, with the BE Team facing off against BE Members over pints and mince pies. It was a tense affair, with the scores equal after the main questions and forcing the quiz down to the deciding ‘lolcat’ caption competition.

As you can see from the photo below, both entries were hilarious but there could be only one winner…

So congratulations to the BE Members for their win over the BE Team!

It’s been a lot of fun running the BE Socials this year, so we’re going to continue running them, with the first social in 2010 to be held in January at a location decided by the members. So keep your eyes on the member forum for news of the next BE Social and we’ll see you in the new year!

BE Broadband Supports WiFi Rollout to Local Community Projects

2009-12-17T12:23:00.003Z

BE has announced that they will be supplying Freerunner, a free public WiFi service, with free broadband for local communities that are currently without existing connections.

46 communities have been selected across the UK to receive free WiFi for a minimum of three years regardless of the current connectivity in the area. The communities were selected as part of a competition launched by in September 2009 by Freerunner.

"We’re proud to be part of the Freerunner missions and agree that WiFi should be more widely available,” says Tom Williams, Head of Operations at BE Broadband. "Freerunner’s attitude reminds me of what BE did for broadband when we created the first UK ADSL 2+ network. Our members are more likely to hang out in independent shops and cafes, so we’re proud to hook up Freerunner communities with fast and unlimited broadband. "

Owen Geddes, CEO of Freerunner, added: “We are very excited to have BE on board as our first corporate partner. BE will be providing a broadband connection to those that don’t have any connection at all, completely free of charge as part of this project. It is incredible to think that a small piece of relatively low cost technology is going to fundamentally change nearly 50 communities across the UK.”

Freerunner is using BE Broadband alongside other technologies to connect underserved or remote communities that desperately need access to the internet.

For a full list of all the Freerunner competition winners, please visit www.freerunr.com/community

Sign up for the BE Christmas Social!

2009-12-04T13:03:00.002Z

You’ve seen the blog posts. You’ve attended the Socials. Now it’s time for you lovely members to pit your wits against the knowledgeable BE team in our festive Geek Off!

Following on from our previous successful socials, this will be a light-hearted Christmas quiz devoted to all things broadband, with the BE Team facing off against BE members over pints and mince pies.

We’ll be holding it at from 6-8pm on Wednesday 16^th December at The Mitre (Nearest tube stations: Paddington / Lancaster Gate).

You can reservce your place at http://besocialchristmas.eventbrite.com/

If you haven’t yet signed up to one of our BE Socials, have a look at our previous events here and here, and come along for some festive fun.

And here's a few photos of what took place last year:

Looking forward to seeing you there!

- Everyone @ BE

BE Broadband Encourages Peer-to-Peer Networks with Member Rewards

2009-11-27T11:00:00.005Z

We've launched a site to reward our members when they recommend the service to their network of friends.

The 'Spread the Love' initiative gives BE members the chance to earn £30 credit for every new member they get to sign up to BE. Members will receive an extra £30 (a total of £210) if six friends join on their recommendation, equivalent to a free year on the BE Unlimited package!

Members have until 31 December 2009 to get their 6 friends to register. The Spread the Love initiative will be available on a new section of the BE site: https://spreadthelove.bethere.co.uk/

“Peer-to-peer relationships are built into the way the online world works . We hear word-of-mouth recommendations by our members almost every day, so we wanted to say thanks. Hopefully our members will get all of their friends to sign up, and everyone will have a very merry Christmas with BE.”

Tom Williams, Head of Operations at BE Broadband

We're asking our members to share the details of the initiative with their friends, so that they understand how the rewards work. New members can also recommend friends themselves and be eligible for the £30 reward.

So what are you waiting for? Spread the Love!

"Three strikes" and the impact on BE and our customers

2009-11-20T13:08:00.006Z

With the publication of the digital economy bill on Friday, we have taken a look at the recent proposals from a broadband perspective and spoken to our members.

When Lord Mandelson originally announced the intention to progress a three strikes plan to work against file-sharing in the UK, it understandably sparked a lot of debate.

The main concern we've heard is that it's open to errors, with the risk that innocent customers could be penalised. Broadband routers can be hacked, shared houses are impossible to manage, and businesses that offer internet (cafes, for example) would find the time or cost burden unworkable. We've not heard many facts about the appeal process, so can only guess at the impact this would have on customers, businesses and our customer service team.

There's also a wider question about what constitutes file sharing. The act of sharing a file can be done via so many methods, so which of these would be included and which wouldn't? Email, FTP, newsgroups, BitTorrent, instant messaging and online digital storage (Mandelson’s ‘cyberlockers’) are the most well-known but more will emerge. There seems to be a lack of technical understanding about what file sharing actually is, because most of these systems couldn't be monitored.

We prefer a future that benefits from technology advances rather than trying to shut it down. We think the smart people in modern creative industries are the ones that are adapting to the new world. Rather than building big, expensive software that people can't afford, more people are making apps that cost little but offer great value and offer updates that illegal software can't. There are examples in other industries too, like music with legal downloads and streaming, or legal movie rental services through PCs and games consoles.

Our members have never asked us to police their service, and sadly don't have enough information to believe this system can work.

Congestion Announcement

2009-11-19T15:17:00.000Z

Hi guys,

This weekend from 8am on Saturday 21st November to 8am on Sunday 22nd November you may experience some congestion on your broadband service due to major trackside maintenance work happening on our core fibre links.

We’re really sorry for the inconvenience this will cause and will do our best to keep the disruption to a minimum. This is network wide so may affect all our members, we’re really sorry!

Kind regards,

- Everyone @ BE

BE Social Birmingham

2009-11-06T17:27:00.001Z

You may have heard about the first BE Socials that recently ran in Manchester and London. These were informal meetups 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 events were so successful that we’re keen to keep them going and we've asked BE members where the next one should be. The overwhelming response was that we should hold the next BE Social in Birmingham.

The event will take place from 6-8pm on Wednesday 18th November at the The Wellington pub in Birmingham.

You can sign up and reservce your place here: http://besocialbirmingham.eventbrite.com/

We look forward to seeing you there!

- Everyone @ BE

BE Partners Up To Offer Unlimited Mobile Storage

2009-10-12T11:33:00.003+01:00

BE is really excited to announce that they have just gone into partnership with Livedrive, which offers truly unlimited online storage, and to top it off BE members get a massive 35% discount!

Livedrive enables BE's customers to share their files between all of their computers, and securely access them online from anywhere.

Livedrive automatically adds a virtual drive to the PC into which users can drag and drop files. These files are then accessible, not only from the PC, but from any browser using a unique and secure web address allocated at sign up. Users can view files, play music, watch videos and, with built in web applications, edit photos and Microsoft Office documents on the move. To add to the mobility, Livedrive is also accessible from mobile devices. Additional functionality includes a back up function which allows users to protect any folder on their PC with just one click.

To find out more about how to get your discount (if you’re a BE member) please either login to your member centre or the member forum.

Win a ticket to Barcamp London!

2009-10-07T15:06:00.002+01:00

BE is proud to be sponsoring BarCamp London 7, a free-to-attend weekend unconference for designers, developers and geeks of all types.

The event takes place at IBM’s Central London building on the Southbank 24th-25th October 2009, so mark your calendars for a weekend of presentations, networking and fun!

We’ve got one ticket to give away to one lucky person and as BarCamp tickets are strictly limited and notoriously difficult to get hold of, so we thought we’d do something a little different to find the winner…

You can be in for a chance of winning the BarCamp London 7 ticket just by commenting on the BE Facebook fan page and telling us what you most like about BE Broadband.

The competition will close 5pm in Thursday 8th October and we’ll Facebook message the winner to let them know.

BE Social – Ideas, Inspiration and Action!

2009-10-05T13:24:00.005+01:00

As many of you know, 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 on 23rd September) and from the feedback we’ve got from those that attended they’ve been a big success.

But for those who couldn’t make it, the things that we discussed are below, so you can see that any subject is fair game:

The website
Customer support
Routers
Opening the member forum
Keep doing interesting stuff and innovating

Once again, we want to say a big thank you to everyone who made it down, and we look forward to putting your ideas into action. You can follow discussions on each of these subjects in the member forums.

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.

See you at the next BE social.

BE Broadband Offers £25 Amazon Voucher With Student Packages

2009-09-29T10:56:00.003+01:00

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

2009-09-24T11:59:00.004+01:00

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

2009-09-22T12:04:00.002+01:00

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.