3, by introducing a fresh cheap broadband-laptop offer has definitely treaded ahead to revamp its mobile broadband contracts. The new offer that also includes a mobile broadband dongle extends the launch of fresh month long rolling contracts. A generous usage limit is also amongst the offers.

A monthly payment of GBP 22.50 over twenty four months will be the commitment awaiting the consumers signing up to the fresh broadband laptop deal of 3. By this deal, the consumers are provided with an Acer 6920G-583 laptop, mobile broadband usage of 15GB and a dongle.

The Acer laptop that is part of the deal is priced GBP510 in the general laptop market of the United Kingdom. It features an LCD of Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels) and 16 inch diagonal size. It is also a widescreen display. Other highlights of the laptop are; a 1.3MP built-in webcam, Bluetooth and 3GB RAM.

According to the calculations of 3,  the usage allowance of 15GB is more than enough to engage in 15,000 emails, 480 x 4 minute music tracks, half hour video downloads x 10 and web surfing of 150 hours. Additionally, a free bundle of 75 text messages a month is also given by 3 as value added service.

Another significant aspect of the fresh introduction by 3 is its broadband product array of month long rolling contracts (30 day contracts). The contracts, priced at GBP 15 a month entitle the consumers to use 5GB as allowance, apart from being at liberty to terminate the deal at their wish.

According to the reports, a UK broadband Website, Samknows had worked out inroads into the problem as it not only aided the BBC in the survey, but also have been successful in issuing a map that shows the homes that are below the line of expectation of the government’s Digital Britain concept. The map can also be used by the government to reach out to these homes to provide them faster broadband connections.

The Samknows map was materialized by the comparison of information on the database of the services offered by the providers in the 85,000 telephone exchanges across Britain, with a UK postcodes sample. The website then worked out the distance of the properties from a specified exchange to come up with a picture of services’ speed. This method very much relies on the fact that line length remains a critical factor in determining the defacto operation speeds of the services.

It is also fair to reckon the promise of the UK government, in the circumstances, of providing every household in the country with a broadband connection of at least 2Mbps speed by 2012. It is also worth pondering over another intriguing fact that a home needed to be located, in a radius lesser than 4 kilometers from an exchange to get the speeds of anything up to or above 2Mbps.

Incidentally, BillMonitor price comparison website becomes the first one of its kind to have their price comparison machine accredited by the regulator of telecoms. The operational mode of the service is all about the analysis of historical patterns to bode future usage. It keeps the users updated on various updated money saving policies, in accordance to the changing price plans of the networks.

Meanwhile, a research undertaken by Ofcom revealed that about 57 percent of the people were highly prone to go shopping, provided reliable information on calculating the cheapest deals as well as identifying the most economic store. Beside, 50 percent of the users were more likely to rely on a price comparison website that was accredited by Ofcom, according to the survey.

Alongside, a fresh price accreditation scheme logo also has been unveiled by Ofcom that could be used by all accredited services to display the reliability and transparency of their calculators of price comparison. The regulator had also accredited a broadband and digital TV price comparison website, apart from an exclusive broadband price comparison site, previously.

At present the internet service providers can take a time span of twelve weeks to resolve the problems brought to them by the consumers. If the matter remains unsolved even after that, the home owners could take up the problem to a regulator such as Otelo to finalise them. The telecoms watchdog of the UK, Ofcom is all set to reduce this time span to eight weeks from the previous 12 from the autumn, hence exerting increased pressure on the broadband ISPs to solve the problems of their customers quickly.

The chief executive of Ofcom, Ed Richards said that the fresh decision stood for the customers who were not happy with their broadband providers to get a faster resolution, even though in the present scene, the majority of the customers were content with their telecoms services. He added that those issues such as queries on the speed of the connection and general service elements like VoIP solutions, are not taken into consideration by the ISPs even after a time span of eight weeks were very much likely to remain unsolved for a longer time.

A couple of surveys conducted recently, stated that higher levels of customer satisfaction can be rendered by call centres. This especially comes into significance at the time of a sign up to the service of a new broadband service provider.

Meanwhile, a study carried out by Broadband Genie, a broadband comparison website had revealed that Sky and BT were the fixed broadband service providers of the UK that offered the best customer service, as Orange and TalkTalk fared at the bottom of their list.

A range of parameters were set by the price comparison site to rate the customer service that includes broadband supplier websites, call centre destination, support hours, costs of support calls, and the accuracy in conveying this information to the contacting customers.

The comparison website, assuming the role of a new customer called up the six largest broadband suppliers of the UK, apart from scouring through the company websites. The website claims that it was most impressed by the 24/7 free back up by helpful call centre staff of Sky and BT.

Meanwhile, the price comparison site also found out in their survey that no 24/7 support was offered by TalkTalk, as the operator of Orange Broadband UK responded with the expression that if information on the base location of the call centre was required by the customer, he had to put forth his query on a case by case basis.

As a matter of fact, the customer service menace is more and more alienating customers from the loyalty towards their broadband ISP. In this occasion, the results of another survey carried out by yet another broadband price comparison site called Think Broadband, are worth mentioning. It found out that out of the eleven largest ISPs of the UK, only four came up to score above 50 percent in terms of customer satisfaction.