Hands up those who have seen the BT Total Broadband advert, you know, the one with the guy who used to play Nick in 'My Family'. Basically it talks about this new kind of broadband service from BT - one using a thing called the home hub that allows video phone, wireless, TV and a few other things. Now seeing the advert even the hardened web expert for one moment thinks 'hmm, that looks quite good' and not being one to miss something that actually is good I had a look at the website. Sadly my initial thoughts that maybe this thing isn't all it seems were confirmed within minutes. So let's go through each of their boasting points and prove that whilst true, it's not really anything special.

The first point they choose to throw around is speed. SPEED! Apparently it's up to 8Mb/s - that's 16x faster than my current provider. Then I enter my number. Oh. Only 1.5Mb/s and even that is just a guess. Seems that despite it being Total, the speed is still slow due to our crappy telephone line infrastructure.

A concern for people on the net today is security, and BT are keen to get at that kind of person - one who knows all they know about the dangers of the net from the scooby-doo hide behind the couch media. Regardless, let's have a look at what BT are offering.

• BT Yahoo! Mail Protection with E mail anti-virus, Anti-Phishing, AddressGuard & SpamGuard Plus - This means they scan emails for viruses (kind of them), tell you that messages are phishing (Google Toolbar and Firefox 2 do that), don't sell your email address (how generous), and block spam (except advertising from Yahoo partners). Considering that BT's web mail is basically just Yahoo's after BT have violated, and that Yahoo Mail is pretty poor anyway I think I'd pass.
• BT Yahoo! Parental controls - until your kid's actually do something you never did and learn to use a proper browser you'll be able to prevent them looking at porn.
• BT Yahoo! Anti-Spy - you have to use their bundled browser which is based on the IE engine with all the security holes pertaining to that model. A ton of extra code that doubles memory consumption and requires 200 background processes tries to block the bad stuff. Or you could sod em and use Firefox.
• BT Yahoo! Pop-Up Blocker - Firefox or the Google Toolbar would sort this.
• BT Yahoo! Online Protection with Norton Personal Firewall & Antivirus - I'm not going to bad mouth Norton because Symantec bought Sygate and I'm hoping they use that in the Norton firewall. But beware if it does a Mcafee and installs about 10 processes and services.
• BT Identity Support - If you forget who you are, they'll tell you

So that's all well and good and as not only are you paying for it (ostensibly) but you are also going to be forced to download some crappy BT browser in much the same way as AOL's that will not only run stupid start up things and lie to you about how simple and proper net connections can actually be, but it will initially distract you from the idea of using a proper browser such as Firefox. Even IE6 would be better.Wireless is the third barrel of their cannon. Yeah, because we haven't seen wireless before. Assuming you ditched the crappy USB modem that your ISP gave you when you first got broadband you'll have a router already. If it is a wireless one then congratulations, you've just gotten rid of another need for BT Total. If it isn't then you can purchase a Wireless Access Point to plug into it from ebuyer, Scan or any other trustworthy retailer (don't go to PC World if you value your money) and have it as well, again for less than a switch to BT.

Halfway through now and I'll bet the BT crowd are starting to sweat. Sadly for them they next decide to pimp online gaming. As if every single broadband and even dial-up connection in the world wasn't already capable of playing them. Apparently you can join 7,000,000 gamers. This shows that they've done no research as 6 million alone play World of Warcraft and I'm guessing that adding the numbers of gamers who play every other game would send the figure way over the 7 million mark. Oh, and to make matters worse they show a PlayStation controller, proving that they're trying to sell to fools who haven't realised that if they got a router for their existing connection they'd be able to game as well.

The fifth point is remote updating. What this means is that they haven't done a beta test but don't worry because we can patch it whenever we want. Or get round to it.

The final ace up the sleeve (as there have been six we've inadvertently also proved that BT cheat at cards) is the free calls!* Oh. What's that star. Ah, apparently the free calls are using the BT Softphone. Which is just a chat program like Skype, but only for BT people. People who use Skype (or Google Talk, MSN 8, Yahoo etc) can already talk to others on their service and you don't even need a phone - just a headset will do. Basically they're giving you a phone that can be used to dial a land line or to call IM over the net. But only the BT one. To be honest I'm quite happy with my headset (which can be used for any IM and for listening to anything else on the PC) and a phone on the next next to me. Video phones are also in the offing, but as they cost a stupid £150 and both parties need to have one it's quite ridiculous - I can get a web cam and talk to someone on Skype who doesn't have one and it's that simple. So there's another gimmick made useless by the power of stuff that's been available for years.

There was one final thing - it's something that isn't offered now but that will happen in the future and that's TV through your broadband. Now this one sounded more interesting but once again I was let down. Firstly you still own a TV, still pay a TV Licence as always. Secondly you only get the Freeview channels anyway. Thirdly you'll need a set top box from BT - and you can already buy a Freeview set top box for prices nearing peanuts. They say it records and can pause and rewind live TV. Not only was Sky+ the first to do that ages ago but my existing Freeview box does this anyway. The one thing I like about it is this - because the box connects through wireless to your hub it can be remotely operated, so you can record programs from anywhere you are. I would hope that you could stream programs from it to a PC networked (wires or otherwise) to the hub but there's no information on this at the moment.

So all that and the only thing that's really interesting isn't out yet and isn't a massive feature anyway. Total Broadband, but Totally unremarkable.

• Link to BT Total Broadband