Eclipse unveils flexible, boostable broadband

On-demand acceleration

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 1st June 2004 11:32 GMT

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Eclipse Internet has unveiled a boostable broadband service that lets punters increase the speed of their broadband connection whenever they want.

Its new "Flex" broadband range - which has no restrictions or hidden charges on download capacity - means that punters can decide to up the speed of their connection on demand without having to go through the rigmarole of upgrading their service.

For example, punters on Eclipse's Flex Home 250 pay £17.99 a month for the 250k service. Increasing the speed to 500k costs from 5p an hour, while winding it up to 1Mb costs 14p an hour. Similar flexible services are also available on other busiess and consumer packages.

Said Eclipse co-founder, Jomie Carmichael: "Recent months have seen a plethora of new services launched from competitors in an effort to drive down the cost and increase take-up of broadband. Disappointingly, this has resulted in a worrying trend towards restrictive services that penalise end-users for high usage."

Instead, the flexibility of Eclipse's new broadband service means that punters can "tune" their connection speed to suit individual tasks, the company said in a statement.

In March, BT announced that it was trialling similar technology that would enable its users to boost the speed of their service. Separately, Telewest Broadband has cut the cost of its entry-level 256k broadband service to £12.99 a month for new punters signing up to its Talk Unlimited telephone package throughout June. ®