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She said: I find it completely paradoxical and ironic that this is the sector where were promoting and advertising the notion of free broadband access.

Its creating an impression in our consumers minds, in businesses and government that broadband should be free.

Broadband is an essential foundation to growing the economy in the UK. It requires investment and sustained commitment. Upgrades are not easy and they are not cheap.

Virgin Medias owner, the European cable group Liberty Global, is aiming to invest in the network with more speed upgrades and limited expansion to cover new areas. But its strategy of making broadband the selling point of the network rather than pay-TV has come under pressure as BT and Sky have competed fiercely to attract subscribers.

Virgin Media is expanding its network in East London

Gavin Patterson, BTs chief executive, has accused Sky of literally buying customers with its free broadband offer. BT charges 8 per month for its cheapest broadband package. Sky went to war over broadband pricing in retaliation for BTs decision to give BT Sport away to broadband subscribers, however.

Virgin Medias call for broadband prices to increase risks provoking the regulator, Ofcom, which touts the intense rivalry in the broadband market and reduction in prices in recent years as one its major successes. According to Ofcom figures, the average price of a broadband package was cut by nearly half between 2004 and 2012, partly as a result of regulatory intervention such as forcing BT to allow rivals to control its lines into homes and businesses.

While broadband is free or cheap, all providers have effectively raised the price of an internet connection by raising line rental rates. BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media increased line rental by more than inflation at the end of last year and by as much as 6.5pc.

TalkTalk has examined the possibility of ditching line rental to introduce a simpler single prices for broadband and phone services that would make such "stealth" price rises more visible. It concluded that because of the way price comparison websites and other marketing channels work the move would hurt sales.

Virgin Media now uses faster broadband as its main selling point

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Virgin Media urges Sky to raise broadband prices

In a first-of-its-kind workshop for the government's media managers, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) will work on providing 'authentic' information through different media platforms. At a workshop organised by the PIB, top officials in various ministries with years of experience in dealing with the media offered interesting suggestions ranging from feeding media to curb them from "imagining news" to preventing civil servants from serving anyone's agenda.

The workshop - Streamlining Government Communication - was organised by the PIB under the aegis of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting at the National Media Centre. It was chaired by minister of information and broadcasting (I&B) Arun Jaitley and attended by minister of state Rajyavardhan Rathore, I&B secretary Bimal Julka, public relations officer in the Prime Minister's Office Jagdish Thakker and Prasar Bharati chairman A Surya Prakash.

The seven-hour long meeting also saw participation from senior officials of various ministries and private secretaries to the ministers along with senior officers of I&B, heads of noted media groups, and veteran journalists.

Jaitley, known as a skilled media manager, said in his address to the PIB officers to package data, facts and information by keeping in mind the current trends and media requirements. Jaitley made it clear its the minister who has to be the face of the ministry. He said civil servants, who have a large amount of government-centric information, should not carry out any propaganda but only put it in public domain," said a senior official who attended the meeting. Echoing the same opinion, Rathore said there should be social media engagement to ensure transparency in the government.

Business Standard had reported in November that the PIB was undergoing a massive overhaul trying to be a newsmaker. This included its online functioning via wide social media presence, refurbished interactive website, instant mass communication and real-time updates.

In an interesting presentation on the changing media scenario, Prasar Bharati's Prakash said that in the Twitter era, the time to respond to an adverse story was 12 seconds. In his presentation, Prakash mentioned that news should first break on Doordarshan and All India Radio, then on private channels, said a person who attended the discussion.

According to sources, Hasmukh Adhia, secretary in the finance ministry, said one should keep feeding the media with positive news, else the press would "create their own news". Thakker supported the view and stated there should be a single window interface with the media.

Julka said there should not be any vacuum in the news flow from the ministry to the PIB officials concerned. Anil Swarup, coal secretary and former Project Monitoring Group chief, said one should be clear about what, when, how, why and whom to say to the media.

Business Standard had reported in November 2014 that the PIB was undergoing a massive overhaul trying to be a newsmaker. This included its online functioning via wide social media presence, refurbished interactive website, instant mass communication and real-time updates.

See original here:
PIB's first step towards overhaul: Control news flow

When Mitt Romney announced on Friday that he would not seek the Republican presidential nomination for a third time, he cited the desire to "give other leaders in the party" a chance to win the White House. He did not mention the public mugging he had received from Rupert Murdoch, the media titan who had called him "a terrible candidate" and whose Wall Street Journal had suggested that his run in 2012 had been "a calamity."

There are a lot of reasons that the third time did not prove to be a charm for Romney's presidential ambitions, but Murdoch's public rebuke sure didn't help.

Having tried and failed to get his hands on Time Warner, Murdoch is back to king-making. As the man who controls both the Fox News Channel and The Journal, he doesn't exactly have to attend a precinct caucus to exercise political influence.

He's clearly enjoying life as a mogul and newspaper titan, enough to invite others to the party.

(New York magazine had earlier reported, based on not very much, that Bloomberg might try to buy the newspaper.)

Only two people in the world could have this conversation, whether in public or private: both are New York media owners, both with more money than many sovereign republics and both huge fans of the news and the organisations that trade in it.

Murdoch has a big national newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, and though Michael Bloomberg does not, they are otherwise similarly situated overlords. And so Murdoch's entreaty to his friend Bloomberg: C'mon in, the water is fine.

I don't think The New York Times is for sale, but it is a telling sentiment, a conversation among kings about what possessions are truly precious to the man, or men, with everything.

Even if The Times were for sale, how would it benefit Murdoch to have a rival paper in the hands of an equally moneyed media baron? It wouldn't, but it is in Murdoch's nature to stir the pot and create mischief.

He's mostly just having his version of fun, all the while tweaking a competitor, which is another hobby.

Read the original:
David Carr: Media titans Murdoch, Bloomberg at play in politics and news

The report concluded that British companies lag significantly behind their American peers, with Britains top performing company ranking just fourth on the global index, BP scraping into the top 10 and a total of four London-listed companies making the top 20.

Cisco presides at the top of the ranking with a score of 85.82, followed by Hewlett Packard and Citrix.

Technology companies account for eight of the top 10, with the London-listed energy giants Shell and BP the sole exceptions.

The UK is improving: the number of FTSE 100 companies that link from their websites to corporate social media accounts has more than doubled in the last three years, from 35pc to 72pc, although this is still some way behind the S&P 100s 89pc.

Just 5 companies in Londons biggest index, and none in the S&P 500, have no social media account for corporate communications at all.

But owning the Facebook pages and Twitter handles is not enough, the report found.

Companies that reply to Facebook posts have more than 16 times the number of likes than those that do not engage with Facebook users -- 52,544 compared to 3,317 -- while Twitter account that tweet more than 30 times a month have an average of 20,800 followers, eight times higher than the 2,546 followers of accounts that tweet less than once a day.

Businesses are no longer able safely to ignore social media as a means of communicating with their corporate and wider audience, the report said, mentioning moves from regulators such as the SEC in the United States and the FCA in the United Kingdom to rehaul their publishing guidance.

Numerous, high-profile incidents have demonstrated that when a company is not in control of its social media presence, the company is at risk: for some companies, the effect has been calamitous, the report said.

Last year, an official TfL Twitter account was forced to apologise after replying to a disgruntled commuter with the remark, "Leave early you will not be late next time", US Airways accidentally tweeted a link to a pornographic image, while a number of companies, from McDonald's to Mastercard, have had their marketing hashtags hijacked by Twitter users unwilling to play by the rules.

Read more:
Shell: the best British company at social media

Be social media friendly

The upsurge in the number of social networks is not an excuse to throw caution to the wind. Here are ways to behave on social media:

Target a specific audience/network

Groups of people on a particular social media platform could come together to form a particular network. Target a particular network which would be beneficial to you and stick to it. Do not join a network you hope to gain nothing from. Messages and status updates should also be meant for the consumption of people in your network.

Avoid offensive content

Not all content are acceptable to everyone. While some people may derive pleasure in pornography and obscene pictures or vulgar languages, others might find them really offensive. Bear in mind that not only you and your ilk are on the said platform. If you have to post comments, let them be generally acceptable and devoid of offensive content.

Check frequency

You may control how frequent you post comments on your social media wall or profile, but if you are on a group network where you have to send broadcast messages, you have to check the frequency of such posts. For people who have activated notifications on the computers or phones, having the devices beep with each delivery of a message can be distracting. Only send messages when they are really important and cannot be postponed.

Check grammatical errors

Social media is meant for communication and this has to be effective. Not everyone loves to abbreviate words, so make sure you communicate in proper English to be better understood. Sentences should be well constructed and free of errors.

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Be social media friendly