Month: December 2008

Categories
broadband Business ofcom

Ofcom Broadband Code of Practice

Ofcom’s new code of practice in respect of how consumer ISPs sell broadband comes into force tomorrow. It has been brought about because up to 25% of consumers consider that they don’t get the speeds they expect from a broadband connection.

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding how ISPs sell broadband, specifically in the consumer space as they have been desperately trying to outdo each other with tales of superior performance, unlimited downloads, bigger, faster, better etc.

Whilst the code does not apply to business services it is a good code. Timico has always operated in a transparent way in respect to selling ADSL. For example our 21CN ADSL2+ service in theory will provide download speeds of up to 24Mbps. In reality users are unlikely to get this. I will be publishing the results of our trials after Christmas showing what speeds the trialists have been getting.

The ISPA is issuing a press release today supporting this Ofcom code of practice.

Categories
Business internet

Project Kangaroo Kyboshed

The Competition Commission has put the sword to Project Kangaroo. This was a proposed joint venture by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 for a single online vehicle that would provide each channel’s TV content over the internet. Content was going to be paid for by advertising.

Basically the Commission believes that the venture would reduce competition in the online video market in the uk. The JV may be allowed if it shares its content with other providers and appears to have until 24th December to appeal, presumably informing the Commission of how it would do this.

Personally I can’t understand why people watch the TV anyway. Notwithstanding that, this does point towards a change in business models, in particular for the BBC. It isn’t difficult to envisage a scenario where more people will eventually watch the TV online than they do on their traditional box in the living room. At this point, because of the paid for by advertising element, there would surely have to be a question mark over the future of the TV license fee.

Internet users are already beginning to be charged more for the increased usage that video online is stimulating. So effectively they are already paying twice though obviously these usage revenues don’t go to the BBC.

Categories
Business fun stuff

A day in the life

Life is rich. If yours isn’t you should seriously think about doing something about it. I was wondering what to write about today out of the many things that are going on. In the end I thought I’d just rattle off a list of things I was involved in during the day because I believe it illustrates the point of those opening three words.

Got in and made a cup of tea. Then spent time discussing a contract we are about to sign with BT. Checked up on progress of our 21CN trial orders. Sat with tech support discussing a Virtual Machine project we are looking at. Discussions with our new Business Development Director who starts in January (more on him in due course I’m sure). Meeting with Cisco to discuss marketing plans for the Cisco Small Business portfolio for 2009. Lunch with Cisco. Meeting with Nortel to discuss hosted VoIP propositions. Drop Nortel off at station. Arrange tech meeting to discuss SPAM strategy for 2009. Conference call with VoIP Operations Manager to discuss specific customer technical issue. Home to take kids to cubs. Catch up chat with CEO. Go to school prize giving evening (son Tom won prize for English  and yes of course I am proud of him). Chat with headmaster congratulating him on chosing son as prizewinner. Home. Kiss wife. Do emails and write blog post.

Tomorrow is another day, another blog post. Friday is a day off to take the kids to the Lincoln Christmas Market. Check it out here. They get hundreds of thousands of visitors each year (or so I’m told). We live slap bang in the middle of the action so it is difficult to ignore. One of the kids’ school shuts down for the duration because access to it is impossible. The parents run a cafe which raises around £10,000 each year for the school PTA funds. Thats one heck of a lot of teas and coffees at a pound each. 

Categories
chromebook End User

New laptop

You may or may not have noticed but there was a short gap of 3 days between the last two blog entries. This is partly because my laptop was shot. It’s funny to realise how dependant you become on the computer.

I’m sure that I am not alone in saying that my handwriting skills have deteriorated over the last few years. My handwriting was never particularly good – people used to tell me that I should have been a doctor. Not having to use a pen other than to sign cheques in the office means that when I try writing anything substantial my hand really hurts.

It has been years since I have taken handwritten notes at meetings. I enter them straight into my PC. They then get routinely backed up and the record is always there and easily retrievable. Every time I get a new PC my old data moves onto the new one which means that I probably have stuff on the laptop dating back 10 years.  10 years ago what I have now would not have fitted on to my hard drive.

It is taking me time to adjust to the new keyboard. It is smaller thatn the old one and hte keys arent inthe same place so I keep jitthing the worjnr ones – see what I mean.

Categories
broadband Business

Grown Up Networks

I’ve started the process of cancelling some of our smaller connections to the BT ADSL network. We have newer bigger better pipes on order (in the pipeline 🙂 ). This is on top of the resilient Gigabit hostlinks we have into the BT 21CN network.

This really does feel as if Timico is growing up. When we started, in 2004, we had a single 34Mbps connection. By the middle of next year we should have resilient 2,000Mbps capacity. That’s a big change. Big growth. By the end of 2009 and beyond we should be into the realms of 20,000+Mbps. That’s 2 x 10Gbps. I left it expressed as Mbps for effective comparison. Quite dramatic I think.

At the same time the size of project we are handling is getting bigger and bigger. Although the majority of network customers are small with perhaps 2 or 3 sites, networks with hundreds of connections are becoming much more common and this year we have started talking to customers about projects involving thousands of sites.

Thats when life starts to get really interesting.