Peter Mandelson, will meet with banking chiefs this week, to urge them to do more to help struggling small businesses and homeowners. The country’s newly appointed business minister will discuss measures to protect small businesses, which according to a government source; will include an extension of the export credit guarantee scheme, in order to protect firms involved in deals overseas.

Broadband speed tests have been slammed by Virgin Media, who claim they rely on “dirty data” to get their results. A spokesman for Virgin media said that the tests, which claim to tell users how fast their internet connection is, were often inaccurate.  An increasing number of people are using to tests to find out how close their actual speed comes to that advertised by their provider...

BT Openreach has revealed which sites will pilot the two trials of its “Fibre to the Cabinet” broadband, which will potentially offer 40Mbps speeds to 30,000 customers. The exchanges in Muswell Hill in North London and Whitchurch in South Glamoran will serve as locations for the tests, where up to 15,000 properties in each area will be connected.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has sent results of a snap poll to the bank of England, which demonstrates the devastating impact of the credit crunch on small businesses.  The poll revealed that a majority of respondents (80%) had seen an increase in operating costs in the last year, and 40% had seen decrease in trade.

BT has been reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Authority over a recent campaign advert, which claimed that the provider had the “best performing broadband”. The advert claimed that “for the second year in a row, an independent survey has named BT Total Broadband as the best performing ADSL provider."