| Type | ISP |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet & Communications |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
| Key people | Carolyn Hewitt, Daniel Cunliffe, Louise Kirlew[1] |
| Products | Broadband |
| IPv6 support | No (Currently Testing) |
| Owner(s) | Telefónica Europe |
| Website | http://www.bethere.co.uk |
BE Un Limited is an Internet service provider in the United Kingdom with the trading names "Be There", BE Unlimited or simply BE. It is part of Spanish group Telefónica Europe, who also own O2.
BE offers ADSL2+ services through BT's telephone exchanges via Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), with advertised speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s downstream and 2.5 Mbit/s upstream (subject to line length and quality), which would make BE the fastest mainstream ADSL ISP in Britain. Although its services were initially only available in selected parts of London, Manchester and Birmingham, BE has undergone a program of rapid expansion across the UK, and is now available in 1,247 of the UK's telephone exchanges.[2]
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All three levels of non-bonded ADSL service come provided with a leased "BE Box" (a branded Thomson SpeedTouch router) and unlimited/uncapped bandwidth usage subject to compliance with a Fair Usage Policy. Uncapped services are currently quite unusual from UK-based ISPs. BE does not stipulate any such restrictions in their small print, however BE has taken action against one user for excessive usage . Their policy states they will take action against users whose usage is '...so excessive that other members are detrimentally affected'.[3]
One must have an active compatible telephone line to receive the service(either provided by either BE or BT or a reseller such as the Post Office). The majority of users who are 600 m or less from their local telephone exchange should achieve connection speeds close to the advertised maximum.
BE's service is delivered over ADSL2+ (ITU G.992.5), utilizing the Annex M extension to increase the upload speed anywhere up to 2.5 Mbit/s for BE Pro users. The end user's router transmits data to and from the telephone exchange using Ethernet over ATM (ETHoA, RFC 1483).
Unusually for a UK ISP, the company does not shape traffic in any way. Traffic is only limited by available bandwidth and by any congestion at the local exchange. BE block port 25 (SMTP) packets to and from external destinations for users with dynamic IP addresses in order to prevent their dynamic IP pool being blacklisted. The result is that users with a dynamic IP address can only use BE's SMTP server for sending email. In order to use a different SMTP server, users need to use ports 465 or 587, or to host an e-mail server on their own local network, users must subscribe to a service with a static IP address.
Parent company O2 launched their own broadband product on October 15, 2007. Connections on the O2 Broadband brand are also delivered over the BE network infrastructure, in effect resulting in two broadband companies delivering services over a platform on which previously only one company was operating. This, coupled with the fact that there are now officially over three times the number of subscribers using the platform since the launch of O2 Broadband,[4] has caused many BE users to voice concerns over the future performance, stability and contention of the service.[5]
In addition, from March 10, 2008, BE/O2 are now reselling wholesale access to their network to other providers.[6] The first of these companies is Vaioni,[7] who have launched an 'up to 20 Mbit/s business class ADSL2+ service' featuring up to 2.5 Mbit/s upstream and a guaranteed 10:1 contention ratio with prices starting from £140.99 per month. Vaioni's product, branded 'Ultra 20', is aimed at small- to medium-sized companies and schools.
In August 2009 the UK ISP Andrews & Arnold entered into an agreement to use BE's core and LLU networks to augment BT's legacy 20CN and 21CN infrastructure.[8]
On the 6th October 2011, BE announced an overhaul of their core network to increase their bandwidth, prepare for a transition to IPv6 and improve their network resiliency. During this time customers with static and dynamic IP addresses will be assigned new addresses. BE are taking the approach of rebuilding their entire network, and will therefore be migrating customers, thus the change of IP addresses and downtime. They will also be changing their methods of assigning static IP addresses, by selling netblocks of one, six and fourteen. Work will begin early next year and customers will be migrated six to seven months after.[9]
In late June 2011 Chris Stening, BE's managing director announced a fibre optic service that will directly compete with BT Infinity. This service will utilise FTTC technology - one of the new generation Fiber to the x technologies, with speeds and pricing yet to be determined. They are currently accepting pre-registration, and aim to launch the service later this year. [10] [11] BE updated customers on their progress in September 2011. They have received thousands of pre-registrations however they are yet to partner with a company that offers an existing fibre network. They aim to launch this service later this year, and are trialling it with their staff.[12]
On the 8th November 2011, BE customers who pre-registered for fibre received an email informing customers of a single-exchange trial. They will install their own equipment in BT's Barking exchange, as there are a number of BE users on this exchange and FTTC is readily available from BT Openreach. A shortlist of 25 people will be gathered, from which an initial 10 testers will be secured. They will submit regular feedback over a period of up to six months, sharing their experiences publicly via the BE blog. The new service will use BT Openreach GEA (Generic Ethernet Access) allowing data from BT to be transferred to BE's DSLAM equipment, instead of routing it to a PoP via BT's network.[13] [14]
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