BT Total Broadband

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BT Total Broadband^[1] is a British Internet Service Provider which is part of BT Group plc. It was formerly known as BT Yahoo! Broadband, BT Openworld and simply BT Broadband.

1 Yahoo! Partnership
2 BT Home Hub
3 Traffic shaping and port throttling
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Yahoo! Partnership

BT Total Broadband operates a partnership with Yahoo!. Customers of the service get free access to BT branded Yahoo! services often with more content often only available to premium Yahoo! subscribers. As part of this partnership customers also have a choice to use a BT internet browser, an Internet Explorer frontend with easy access to Yahoo! services. This software is aimed at more novice computer users, it is installed as part of the BT Home Hub software disk. Criticisms towards this software is a large amount of resources it uses and its bulky interface. BT will not be making the BT Yahoo! Browser compatible with Windows Vista because Internet Explorer 7 with the BT Yahoo! toolbar offers all the features of the browser and more.

[edit] BT Home Hub

Main article: BT Home Hub

The BT Home Hub is a wireless Internet router from BT. It is based on the IEEE 802.11g (WiFi) standard and also supports IEEE 802.11b devices. It is significant as it marks BTs departure away from traditional telecommunications services and towards Internet and media products. It supports VoIP Internet calls and is compatible with existing DECT handsets. It works with the existing BT Fusion service and works with the BT Vision video on demand service^[2]. The device connects to the Internet using a standard ADSL connection. It will be able to support the WBC products using ADSL2+ (up to 24Mb) when BT Wholesale launches them in April 2008. BT launched a new look Home Hub in October 2007 with an enhanced wireless footprint^[clarify].

[edit] Traffic shaping and port throttling

During April and May 2007, users of several UK ADSL forums reported that BT was restricting HTTP Port 80 speeds during peak hours (16.00 – 23.00)^[3]. These users complained that HTTP speeds were restricted to 0.5 Mbit/s during peak hours, and other ports were restricted to as low as 6.5 kbit/s. Additionally, users claimed that non-HTTP traffic was being ‘throttled’ during peak hours, affecting traffic on P2P applications including the eDonkey network and BitTorrent. According to press reports, BT has been throttling P2P traffic since 2001.^[4]^[5]

On 13th June 2007, BT Retail issued a statement addressing these claims:

Broadband usage in the UK has been one of the great consumer technology success stories and we are aware that this accelerating demand has meant that a few exchanges can be congested at very busy times. The broadband team at BT Retail is working with our BT Wholesale colleagues to resolve this issue as soon as possible.^[6]

In BT Retail we are currently conducting a programme that is already introducing extra bandwidth availability and we are also working with technology that further improves the way that broadband traffic is managed at peak times. Both of these initiatives will improve your experience and if you are amongst the small number of broadband users that have been experiencing slower speeds through congestion you should be noticing improvements shortly, if you're not doing so already.''^{[citation needed]}