Month: October 2009

Categories
Business voip

SNOM out of the box plug and play

SNOM is a German manufacturer of SIP  telephony handsets and iPBXs. They were an early entrant into the SIP phone market. SNOM software was always good but in the early days their plastic let them down.

I met with the Sales team from SNOM today to take a look at their phones. I am looking at new ranges for the Small and Medium sized Business market.

What I saw was very impressive. The phone was plugged into the Power over Ethernet socket in one of our meeting rooms. I connected to it’s IP address using my laptop, plugged in my SIP credentials and I was making calls.  OK it took me two goes to get the format of the credentials right so that the phone would register but the onboard logs showed me where I had been going wrong and a simple tweak made it work.

I then set up my voicemail alert (the light that comes up on the phone when I have a voicemail) and a busy lamp field for one of the engineers. It took seconds. In those seconds I basically provisioned something that a SMB would regard as a useful telephone key system.

Gone are the days when setting up a phone would have been a complicated affair. Actually our customers don’t need to set up their IP phones – they come preconfigured.    My point is that this was a totally strange phone to that I got working in no time whatsoever without it being preconfigured.  This is a long way from where it was in the early days of the technology and of SNOM.

This is a serious case study of the power of open standards, in this case SIP.  Well done to SNOM.

Categories
Business social networking

#eComm Amsterdam

I am somewhat envious of my friends who made it to eComm in Amsterdam. It looks like a marvelous networking event and akin to the early days of the pulver.com VON conferences.

VON was, before VoIP became mainstream, a great place to network with people involved in emerging technology. eComm looks to have taken over its mantle.  You can check out the website here and catch up with the Twitter stream at #eComm.

In fact I think I’ll stick one in the blog.

Categories
dns Engineer internet ipv6

IPv6 DNS progress

IPv6 is on my mind and we have been busy in the background getting ready for the big day. You will have noticed the countdown timer on the bottom right of this blog. Time is marching on.

This last week we have been working on our IPv6 DNS capability. DNS is one of the first steps on the road to IPv6 deployment. It’s all very well having all your routers enabled but if noone can surf to a website, or send emails (to that fridge) then it’s no good is it?

For those of you that know these things:

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;cachev6.dns.as8607.net. IN AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
cachev6.dns.as8607.net. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:40a0:5:53::10

PS if you really need to ask about the fridge then leave a comment or email me at tref at trefor dot net :-). Don’t be embarassed now.  I could just have easily have said light bulb 🙂

Categories
Business internet

Geocities closes today

It’s the end of an era today as Geocities officially shuts down.  Geocities was a leader in it’s time – an advertising supported free website builder. 

Compared with the sophistication of modern websites Geocities sites now look comical. In fact online geek comic xkcd has turned itself into a Geocities styled site in honour of the occasion. Take a walk down memory lane and click on the link.

I wouldn’t shed any tears though. It’s time to move on.

Categories
Business piracy

TalkTalk pr campaign against Mandelson Digital Britain stance

Carphone Warehouse’s consumer ISP TalkTalk seems to have stolen a march on its rivals with a PR campaign against the Government’s stance on Music Piracy.  This is where Lord Mandelson wants to disconnect persistent illegal downloaders from the internet.

TalkTalk has done a great job with the campaign website, also available via the domain name dontdisconnect.us.

It must be said that this is a sterling effort on their part to even up the balance on the huge lobbying campaign conducted by the music industry on this subject.

Categories
Business internet security

Government confirms it won't mandate IWF list

Further to my post of a couple of weeks ago it has been confirmed that legislation is unlikely to be introduced to mandate support for the IWF blocking list.

Alan Campbell, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Home Office, said that it remains the hope of Government that the target of 100 per cent of consumer-facing ISPs operating a blocking list will be achieved on a voluntary basis in answer to a Parliamentary question by James Brokenshire MP this week.

Mr Campbell said that the Government recognised the work of the internet industry in reaching the figure of 98.6 per cent of consumer broadband lines being covered by blocking of sites identified by the IWF. It remains the Government’s hope, he added, that the target of 100 per cent of consumer-facing ISPs operating a blocking list will be achieved on a voluntary basis.

The ISPA met with Alun Michael MP on Monday to discuss this issue and it was agreed that ISPA was commited to the eradication of child abuse images in the UK and that it will continue to work with the IWF and Government to achieve this target.

The Parliamentary question can be found here.  Again thanks to Nick Lansman and his ISPA team for both this input and the excellent work they have been doing in the background on this issue.

Categories
Business internet security

Government confirms it won’t mandate IWF list

Further to my post of a couple of weeks ago it has been confirmed that legislation is unlikely to be introduced to mandate support for the IWF blocking list.

Alan Campbell, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Home Office, said that it remains the hope of Government that the target of 100 per cent of consumer-facing ISPs operating a blocking list will be achieved on a voluntary basis in answer to a Parliamentary question by James Brokenshire MP this week.

Mr Campbell said that the Government recognised the work of the internet industry in reaching the figure of 98.6 per cent of consumer broadband lines being covered by blocking of sites identified by the IWF. It remains the Government’s hope, he added, that the target of 100 per cent of consumer-facing ISPs operating a blocking list will be achieved on a voluntary basis.

The ISPA met with Alun Michael MP on Monday to discuss this issue and it was agreed that ISPA was commited to the eradication of child abuse images in the UK and that it will continue to work with the IWF and Government to achieve this target.

The Parliamentary question can be found here.  Again thanks to Nick Lansman and his ISPA team for both this input and the excellent work they have been doing in the background on this issue.

Categories
Business internet piracy

ISPs meet with Lord Mandelson to discuss P2P

Representatives of the big five consumer ISPs together with Nicholas Lansman of the Internet Services Providers Association met with Lord Mandelson on Wednesday to discuss P2P legislation.  I will have more details of the meeting next week.

There is quite a bit going on here and this week speaking before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee under persistent questioning from former Minister Tom Watson MP, Secretary of State Ben Bradshaw confirmed that rightsholders would have to seek a court order before restricting or suspending users’ connections and also explained that users would have the right to appeal before any sanction was enforced. The evidence session in full is available on video here (relevant section starts at 20:35). This appears to be  a postive move from the ISP industry’s perspective.

Also an Early Day Motion tabled by Tom Watson last week has now been signed by 36 MPs, including representatives from all three main political parties. The EDM and signatories can be viewed here.

I would like to thank ISPA for this input. This level of Parliament watching requires some diligence and in the ISPA trade association the industry has a faithful servant.

Categories
Engineer internet

Hyperconnectivity – modern monitor stands

As we strive to implement best practice for the Network Operations Centre the first major initiative has been kicked off.  Since Fast Ethernet became a commodity it is becoming increasingly cost effective to provide unlimited bandwidth to an engineer’s desk.

At the bleeding edge of technology today at Timico in Newark we made it happen again with the 94 port switched desktop.  Ironically networking equipment is becoming so cost effective that it is now cheaper to double up this kit as monitor stands rather than buy expensive purpose built metalwork that you source from your local office supply company.

Ok I know that the cynical amongst you will decry this as a falsehood.  Of course monitor stands are cheaper but when was the last time you saw a monitor stand doubling up as a network switch.

My only real problem in signing off this minor capital expenditure was the prospect that the two fibre links we have coming into the building will soon be inadequate to support all the extra work that the team says it will be able to get on with now that they have the desktop connectivity.

I am also worried that I won’t be able to give them work fast enough to keep them busy for the whole of their usual 18 hour day. It’s a nice problem to have, as we say in business 🙂

The 96 port switched desktop monitor stand
The 96 port switched desktop monitor stand
Categories
Archived Business

Deloitte Technology Fast 50 top ten spot for Timico

Today’s hot topic is that Timico came in the top ten of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50.  Hooray 🙂

Deloitte Technology Fast 50, one of the UK’s foremost technology award programmes, is a ranking of the country’s 50 fastest-growing technology companies based on percentage growth over five years. It’s our first year in this list because we have only been going five years.

I’m not sure I have anything else to say on this one really. It’s an exciting ride, if exhausting at times.  What I can say is that we are just in the middle of planning next year’s network upgrades and I can tell you that 2010 is going to be even more exciting.

…and don’t go thinking I’m the sort of person who gets easily excited 🙂

Categories
Archived Business

Timico conference wrap up

I’d just like to thank all who came to the Timico conference at Stapleford Park in Leicestershire on Wednesday.  This is an annual event that we hold to get closer to our customers and to brief them on up and coming technologies and products.

We crammed 120 or so guests into the Grand Hall at the hotel and had a mix of both internal and external speakers.  I would particularly like to thank Dennis Turner, Chief Economist at HSBC bank,  Nigel Scott, Director of Customer Engagement at BT and  David Hiscock, Director of Product Management of the Nortel Carrier business for their valuable contribution and insights on the day.

Dennis Turner in particular made a bold prediction that he recession would end and lo and behold I woke up this morning to the BBC news telling me it had done so!  What  foresight!  I’m thinking I might even change banks to HSBC – provided they can agree to my suitably large overdraft requirements  🙂

Stapleford Park, luxury country house hotel and scene of the Timico 2009 customer conference
Stapleford Park, luxury country house hotel and scene of the Timico 2009 customer conference

Footnote: Friday’s news regarding the recession is somewhat more sombre – in fact the economy shrank by 0.4% over the last quarter.  Perhaps I’ll stick with my existing bank!

Categories
Engineer internet

Netsumo NOC helter skelter

Paid a visit to Netsumo’s Network Operations Centre today with Ben, our Head of Network Operations. We are looking around at best practice in NOC design and it is always a pleasure to spend time with Netsumo CTO Andy Davidson.

Andy is one of life’s genuinely nice guys and very knowledgeable in the Internet Networking space. Netsumo is based at state of the art office facilities at Electric Works in Sheffield and operates over 30 networks on behalf of is customers. The company represents the epitome of best practice for network operations in the UK.

Like all good technical businesses Netsumo looks after its engineers and the working environment is second to none. At centre stage of this is a four storey helter skelter that transports staff to the ground floor in seconds.

Of course we had to try it out – see photos below.

Andy tells us that the helter skelter has two functions. Firstly it is used for rapid deployment of engineers when on an urgent call out. Secondly it is used for rapid deployment of engineers when off to the pub after work. Both are laudible objectives I’m sure most will agree.

netsumo3netsumo1Pics are a little small – I uploaded them to Facebook from my mobile and that is how they turned out!netsumo2

Categories
Business internet

Timico conference twitter feed live from Stapleford Park

I’ve removed the live feed because the conference is over and I can only have one twitter stream – I need it for other uses.

You can check out what was in it by searching twitter for #Timico.

Categories
Business security

House of Lords inquiry into cyber security

Sub-Committee F (Home Affairs) of the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union is conducting an inquiry into EU policy on protecting Europe from large scale cyber-attacks.

That opening sentence is, in my mind, a great example of beaurocracy in action. I will say however that actually this is a good subject for their venerable Lordships to be considering.

The European Union is very much concerened about “Protecting Europe from large scale cyber-attacks and disruptions: enhancing preparedness, security and resilience” and in March 09 issued a 400 page Communication on this subject. I’m not about to read the 400 pages but an international approach to cyber security makes sense.

In fact we really need a global approach to many interent related issues: child abuse, fraud, online copyright to name but a few.  The House of Lords inquiry is in the “Call for Evidence” phase which lasts until 13th November.

The original doc is here >  Cyberattacks call for evidence 16 10 09.

Categories
Business internet net neutrality ofcom

UK All Party Comms Group publishes inquiry results

The All Party Parliamentary Communications Group (apComms) is an independent group of MPs and Lords, from all political parties, which seeks to encourage debate on a range of communications issues.

During the summer the group conducted an inquiry into a wide range of internet related issues and made the results public yesterday during the Parliament and Internet Conference.

In my mind this is a significant document which actually proposes to go against Government policy in some areas. I’ve condensed its 43 pages into a few bullet points here.

  1. A recommendation that here should be a green paper on internet privacy. Good.
  2. The Government should not continue with the illegal file sharing idea in Digital Britain but wait for the EU to finish its long awaited  Telecoms Package and fit in with that. Likely to cause a stir but sensible!
  3. Behavioural Advertising – Where are the rights of the citizen? – recommend that on behavioural advertising there should be a far more explicit way for people to understand what they are signing up for. Quite right too.
  4. Internet safety should become a core curriculum topic at ks1 and ks4. Good.
  5. IWF should extend notice and take down to the rest of the world. Gov’t should not legislate to enforce iwf blocking
  6. Keep network neutrality under review
  7. Ofcom regulates to require ISPs to advertise min guaranteed speeds for broadband.   This is currently done under a voluntary code of practice. OK.
  8. ISPs have to take proactive steps to detect and remove illegal content from their servers.  Hmmm.

I don’t think I captured all the points here but certainly the main ones. We will also need to digest what is in the report  and whilst I’m sure not everyone will agree with its content it is certainly a good stimulation for debate. 

The report can be viewed in its entirety here.

Categories
Business internet ofcom

Martha Lane Fox, Queen of the Digitally Excluded

The Government’s Digital Inclusion Champion and my newest Facebook friend, Martha Lane Fox, gave a speech at yesterday’s Parliament and Internet Conference in Westminster.

There is a group of 4 million people, including the elderly and families living on the breadline, who do not have access to the internet and who run the risk of losing out in the digital economy. Moreover the children (20% of families don’t have internet access) face being left behind their education as other children forge ahead with modern life skills.

Aside from her inspirational case studies a few points interesting points arose:

Research suggest that if internet was provided to all families currently without then it would add £10Bn to the economy.

Cost was seen to be the significant barrier to internet access amongst the poor. We were told that these same families would be able to save £300 a year by accessing cheaper products online – if they were able to do so – a tangible incentive.

Earlier in the day Carphone Warehouse strategist Andrew Heaney, in discussing the 50 pence Digital Britain tax on analogue lines, said that CW had estimated that they could lose 100,000 customers as a result.

I put this point to Martha and she agreed that there were conflicting government goals here. On the one hand wanting to reach the digitally excluded whilst on the other hand raising the barriers by increasing prices.

Note I take Andrew Heaney’s comments with a pinch of salt. The former Ofcom executive has very firmly established himself in the anti-regulation camp here – gamekeeper turned poacher!

In walking the corridors of Westminster there is definitely a feeling of the last days of empire. However MLF has a two year remit which seems likely to span different flavours of Government. Her appointment appears non political with support from both sides of the House of Commons and so her role will hopefullybe safe under the Conservatives (should they win the election 🙂 ).

MLF will have to use all her powers of influence and persuasion to make her mark here and we all wish her every success.

To conclude, MP and Communications Group co-chair Derek Wyatt came up with the idea of getting industry to help educate the digitally excluded by providing help with training. This met with the universal approval of the meeting and is an initiative that is well worth everyone’s support.

Categories
Business ofcom Regs

Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms reaffirms that 2Mbps USO remains on the table

In his speech at the Parliament and Internet Conference in Westminster today Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms reaffirmed that 2Mbps Universal Service Obligation remains the goal of the Government’s legislation.

Having spent the morning in a workshop with Andrew Heaney of Talk Talk and Andy Carter from the Department of Business Innovation and Skills I had grown disappointed with the progress of the USO concept introduced by Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report.

People had been telling me that USO was now USC – C for commitment. This was confirmed today. What’s more there was no guarantee of 2Mbps on the table they said. In fact there didn’t appear to be a minimum speed guarantee at all! I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the whole thing was a political con.

Then, talk about a roller coaster conference, Stephen Timms in his speech told us that no, 2Mbps remained the minimum speed people should be getting, and indeed it was an “Obligation”. He confirmed this when I asked the question from the floor.

This is a clear steer from Government here and is in fact an example of the clarity being sought by Ofcom CEO Ed Richards in his own speech earlier in the day.

So there you go you doubters everywhere! Unless the Government changes its mind, 2Mbps is what rural dwellers and the digitally deprived townies will be getting.

Of course the real debate is whether 2Mbps is enough. MP Derek Wyatt suspects it isn’t. We are about to see 3D video games and TV channels which will run over broadband connections.

Categories
broadband Business internet voip

Digital Britain FTTC Broadband – The Truth

I spent this afternoon at the Muswell Hill telephone exchange! I’d not been into one before and it must be said it felt like walking into an old high school. A pre-war building that echoed to my footsteps…The most noticeable thing walking in was a constant clicking sound. TDM switching still alive and kicking!! Eerie.

The purpose of my visit was to test the FTTC broadband line. I had a gaggle of BT engineers in tow to watch. I don’t think I was the first in but I was certainly an early adopter.

The results were exciting. We used a number of speed test engines and saw between 22Mbps and 42Mbps download speed. There was also a 172Mbps which was clearly an aberration. I’ll not name the website that gave us that one! The BT Wholesale line checker suggested that we should be able to get a speed of 38.5Mbps.

The uplink was a consistent 1.8Mbps or so – we were clearly not running off the 5Meg version.

I performed a number of tests including video streaming and Voice over IP. Both were stunningly successful. I didn’t expect any problems – the VoIP had plenty of bandwidth and was clear as a bell.

For the video I ran a couple of iPlayer sessions in parallel. The full screen performance was great. With hindsight I should have seen how many I could run to determine the maximum – a consumer household simulation.

The photos below show two video streams running plus a full screen shot of a BBC wildlife programme. Excuse the caption – I had some photos of me making VoIP calls over FTTC but they mucked up the formatting of the post so I deleted them.

Few points in finishing off:
The current BT Openreach strategy is to provide the VDSL2 modem for the Communications Provider to hook up to with an Ethernet Router. This should ensure better interoperability with the MSAN – an issue with different routers in the regular ADSL game.

Speeds will get better during the course of the 10 day training period. BT has seen 30 – 35Meg reasonably consistently after this period though there is not enough trial data to yet be able to quote a “typical” speed. It will be dependent on average distance from the exchange.

Note our range of 22 – 42 Mbps was based on being 4 feet from the cabinet – so there is definitely some bedding down to do there.

I make no apologies for the size of the images – they were just screenprints – I resized them but left them unoptimised for the web so if some of them take a little time to load that’s why.

Note also that whilst FTTC broadband is still a trial apparently the local BT shop in Muswell Hill is selling connections as if there was no tomorrow.  Hopefully they are making their customers aware that it is a trial 🙂

two video streams running off BBC iPlayer over FTTC
two video streams running off BBC iPlayer over FTTC

insect screenprint off BBC iPlayer over FTTC

Categories
End User scams security

New phishing attempt doing the rounds under guise of HMRC

It amuses me more than anything to see phishing attempts hit my inbox though it does worry me that I will one day have this uncontrollable urge to click on the link provided.

Today’s, looking as if it had come in from Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenue, was mildly believable.  It is after all coming up to that time of year where we have to think about tax returns.

The message read:
Taxpayer ID: trefd-00000159883557UK
Tax Type: INCOME TAX
Issue: Unreported/Underreported Income (Fraud Application)

Please review your tax statement on HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) website (click on the link below):

We caught this spam but it did attempt to get delivered to many Timico employees. For the safety of the reader I haven’t reproduced the link but I’d be mildly interested in a straw poll to see how many people got the email. And how many actually responded to it!

That’s not my taxpayer ID by the way 🙂

Categories
Business internet ofcom Regs

Digital Britain high on the agenda at Parliament and Internet Conference

Another busy week in prospect. Tomorrow I’m off to Muswell Hill to test some routers we are considering using for the FTTC trials. Wednesday I’m doing a Hosted VoIP demo at the Convergence Summit South in Sandown Park and finally on Thursday it’s the Parliament and Internet Conference at Portcullis House in Westminster.

You should take note of the latter.  Posts on Parliamentary meetings seem to attract a lot of interest/blog visits long after the event itself has finished. In a sense there is a market for blogging non-stop on this subject. In my book it would make writing the blog a bit boring though.  Order, order!

Anyway this year’s conference has ’em all: Stephen Timms (Minister for Digital Britain and erstwhile commenter on trefor.net),  Ed Richards (Ofcom) and Martha Lane Fox (the Government’s Digital Inclusion Champion). Lesley Cowley of Nominet is also speaking.

I’m genuinely excited about this year’s event.  With Digital Britain high on everybody’s agenda the conference includes a workshop suggested by yours truly on whether 2Mbps is an adequate target for USO.

If you haven’t already got your name down you are probably too late.  All seats have gone.  If you are going I look forward to seeing you – tap me on the shoulder and say hello. 

Footnote:  “Blazing the Digital Britain Trail from Muswell Hill to Westminster “.   A  pioneering new adventure based somewhere on the wild wild web.  Read all about it on trefor.net.

Categories
Business internet Regs

Mandatory IWF support law dropped

I understand that the Government is likely to drop plans to force ISPs to support the Internet Watch Foundation’s child abuse website filter.

This is something that most consumer ISPs support our of their own choice. It is reckoned that 99% of all consumer broadband connections are prevented from accessing sites that promote child abuse/pornography. Someone had decided that mandating this was a vote winner. It is of course but the amount of effort that has to be put into making a new law is, in this case disproportionate to the benefit. ie making sure that that final 1% of broadbands get covered.

The technical solutions used to perform this filtering do not ensure 100% cover and a determined sicko could quite quickly work out how to circumvent the system.

Another storm weathered.  Regulation = increased cost. Try selling that to the customer. Previous post comment here.

Categories
Business internet piracy

Stephen Timms Digital Britain Minister

I met with Stephen Timms, Communications Minister today. His official title is Minister for Digital Britain.

I have met Government Ministers before in a long career spent lobbying Parliamentarians on behalf of various trade associations. This was my first meeting in what might be termed a formal environment. I was there with some of the ISP Association Council members to discuss topical issues pertinent to the ISP industry.

I was quite impressed with the process. We assembled in reception at 1 Victoria Street in plenty of time. At some stage an aide met us, whizzed us up to the top floor of the Department of Business Innovation and Skills. It was a round elevator – very impressive – funny what sort of things you notice.

Arriving at the 8th floor we were ushered into a holding room before moving in to see Steve himself. At the appointed time a different aide moved us into ST’s office where we said our hellos and got down to the business of the day.

I was quite impressed with Stephen Timms. Being in the Dept of BIS his remit is to look after industry and he seemed genuinely interested in doing so.

In 45 minutes there is only a limited amount we could cover. We discussed the P2P aspects of the Digital Britain report. I’ve written plenty about this. Key points put across today were that in considering the legislation the Government should ensure that a fair way of apportioning the costs was implemented and that a review of the licensing framework should be conducted.

The current proposals hinge more around sticks than carrots. If illegal music downloaders are to be pursued then a legal alternative should be offered. This is not easy at the moment because of the complexities of licensing the Intellectual Properties of the various rights holders. I’ll detail this in a separate blog post.

We also discussed “prospective effect” and, briefly, more of the Digital Britain report. I doubt many of you have heard of prospective effect – again I will need to write a separate post on this. If I said “mere conduit” perhaps that gives you a clue.

I have to apologise to those of you who wanted me to bring up the subject of broadband 2Meg Universal Service Obligation. We ran out of time on this occasion but now contact has been established there will be other opportunities. 45 minutes, though it seems short, is quite a lot of time to be given by a Government Minister. His diary is chock a block and the next lot were already waiting in the holding room as we were leaving.

As a footnote the clock in his office had stopped – funny what you notice!…

Categories
datacentre Engineer

GigE replaces old ATM infrastructure at Timico Docklands datacentre

I’ve been rolling my sleeves up at our Docklands Datacentres today. Having decommissioned all our old 155 Mbps STM1 pipes and replaced them with 622Mbps STM4’s we are now gearing up to replacing the 622’s with resilient Gigabit Ethernet connectivity to the BT21CN network.

The picture below shows part of the rack containing our first ever 155Mbps connection.  For those interested this was an STM4 partitioned into 4STM1’s.

For those not interested the real point is that this complete rack that was originally pretty much dedicated to hosting our central pipe connectivity to the BT ADSL network can now be replaced by a single port in a 3U chassis. You can get around 13 of these switches in a rack, each with potentially up to 15  GigE connections. In theory that’s up to 195 connections instead of just 4 with 313 x the bandwidth.

That’s progress folks.

STM4 Mux

Old STM4 chassis. Couldn’t get the whole rack in view. This is only half of it.

3U chassis supporting up to 15 GigE connections
3U chassis supporting up to 15 GigE connections

What replaced it!

Categories
Business UC video voip

Unified Communications and how it made my day

I’ve just had one of those life enriching experiences. I’m currently looking at back-up and storage options to enhance our own SAAS capabilities. i365, “a Seagate company”, looked as if it would fit the bill so I called them.

As I was calling I realised it was one of the numbers provided by Timico on our VoIP platform and indeed when the Michelle receptionist answered the phone her name appeared on my screen. She transferred me to Sean O’Reilly and his name also came up.

The video then kicked in and we had a video call. Sean was using our own PC Client software and we began exchanging Instant Messages.  Sean is an intensive user of the PC Client because it allows him to keep his hands free to type. His praise of the service was fullsome and it made my day.

This really is the way forward. It was a totally adhoc video call with someone I didn’t know, had never spoken to before but that will be the norm in times to come.

Categories
broadband Business

Broadband Stakeholder Group Not Very Helpful

Broadband Stakeholder Group

Established in 2001 as a cross-sector government advisory group, the Broadband Stakeholder Group has only disappointed.

Catching up on my reading this morning I note that the Broadband Stakeholder Group sees the Government’s Next Generation Fund (ie the 50p tax on analogue lines) as a “Forward looking, innovative and proportionate proposal that will benefit all”.

I also note in the Extended Play version of it’s press release on the subject that “The BSG was established as a cross-sector government advisory group in 2001 to help the UK lead the G7 in broadband penetration and connectivity.”For reference this is what the G7 broadband leadership league table looks like today according to the Oxford University Said Business School report. The numbers are the position in the broadband leadership league table,

japan 2
usa 15
Canada 17
france 18
uk 25
germany 27
italy 38

Whilst I think we need such an organisation as the Broadband Stakeholder Group I guess the question I am asking is whether it is really doing UK PLC any favours. By it’s own measures of success it is not succeeding. The BSG needs to be more forthright in its advice to Government.

Categories
Business voip

Hosted VoIP shootout at Convergence Summit South

I’m off shooting next week. At least I’m off to a hosted VoIP shootout at Comms Business Magazine’s Hosted Telephony Shootout.  Held at Sandown Park Racecourse on Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th this promises to be quite an exciting event.

When I originally said yes to the invite I thought it was just a VoIP demo like every other VoIP demo, of which I have done hundreds. Having just read the spiel (well in advance I hasten to add – you have to go into these things well prepared) I realise now that I am actually demoing the whole set up and provisioning process.

I haven’t really had to do that for a good four years – since we grew big enough to have a team dedicated to this type of thing. However fear not!  It is actually so easy to provision an user on our VoIP platform that I could almost do it blindfold.  Note I am not offering to do that as part of the Shootout.  Dramatic effects are one thing but blindfolds are usually only worn when you are facing a firing squad.

Anyway if you are at the Convergence Summit South next week come and see me set up a couple of VoIP phones and also demoing our online customer portal.

Categories
broadband Business internet mobile connectivity

O2Be and the Ever-Growing Complexity of the Broadband Service Landscape

Met with O2/Be last week to discuss their LLU broadband play. O2 has been winning awards for their consumer broadband service. They have an ADSL2+ solution that already supports Annex M.

For the uninitiated Annex M allows a service provider to trade some downloading speed on a broadband service in exchange for a faster (up to 2.5Mpbs!?) upload.

O2/Be have unbundled around 1,240 exchanges and so have one of the largest LLU footprints in the UK. They also claim to have 500,000 customers so in understanding the options for the provision of broadband service in the UK they are one of the companies that need looking at.

A complex web is being woven in the UK broadband landscape. Clearly O2 is serious. When they bought Be the LLU estate numbered no more than 30 or so exchanges. A lot of cash has been expended to turn it into the figure it is today.

O2 is telling the world it wants a seat at the table and is willing to put up a stake. It does have a different approach to Carphone Warehouse, the leading LLU player in terms of size, in that it only offers the broadband connectivity. Currently O2 relies on Openreach for the underlying analogue line.

Having looked at the economics of LLU myself it makes a lot more sense if you are taking the voice path as well as the ADSL. There are other benefits with LLU in that an ISP can tailor its own services and thus offer a differentiation in a crowded market. It still needs subscriber numbers to make it pay and at the consumer end it is unlikely that the service provider will want to offer too many variants – simplicity of broadband service means lower costs to sell, provision and support.

This brings me on to another point and that is that BT is now introducing FTTC which at 40Mbps down and 5Mbps up blows all the LLU operators ADSL2+ offerings out of the water, at least in terms of speed. There are then only two players in the game – BT and Virgin with their cable proposition. Other players will have to line up behind one of these two as a wholesale customer and note that Virgin does not yet have a wholesale proposition.

Now FTTC is in its early days of rollout but the footprint is likely to be the same Market 3 footprint as the unbundled exchanges, ie the densely populated parts of the country that make business sense.

So I think for the moment that LLU players have a market window that is probably no more than two years for their unbundled services. Two years will scream past, if the past five at Timico are anything to go by.

Coming back to O2/Be their play thus far has been very much into the consumer market. They look to be a solid player and I have heard good things about them from peers in the ISP community. Their sortie into the business market is through an L2TP play with relative newcomer Fluidata. I have nothing to say against Fluidata, not having worked with them but they are small and O2, if it is serious at the wholesale, game will want to do it in-house.

What their long term strategy is though is a difficult one to call. Owned by Telefonica they should have the deep pockets to play. Play what though? When there are likely to be only two players and one of them is BT then you either have to be satisfied with being a reseller of BT or Virgin or you buy one of them. I can’t see the regulator letting O2 buy BT, it would be ironic if they did.

They might let them buy Virgin though.  And then where does that leave Vodafone, a business that is only dabbling in broadband at the moment…

The UK communications industry has never been as exciting a place to be as it is now. Any informed comment/feedback to this post will be read with interest.

Categories
Business internet

Digital Brital Digital Divide US Style

Digita Britain’s digital divide also exists in the USA. Regsister article dicsusses here. I need add no more.

Categories
End User social networking

Ryan Seacrest unfollow

I’m doing a bit of tidying up on twitter. In the early days of twitter I thought it would be a good idea to follow as many people as possible. What a mistake that was! I now get so much rubbish that it makes twitter unusable as a browsing machine.

So now I’m sat on tweetdeck “unfollowing” people with whom I feel I have nothing in common. It’s amazing who I find I am following. I’ve just deleted someone called Ryan Seacrest who has 2,411,465 followers despite only following 124 people himself. I obviously live sheltered life because I have never heard of him! 2,411,464 people clearly have!

Categories
Business internet

Digital Britain meeting with Stephen Timms Communications Minister

I have a meeting with Stephen Timms, Communications Minister at his office next Thursday. The topic of discussion is largely going to be Digital Britain.

If anyone has a specific internet related issue they want to pitch to me to bring up then please drop me a line through the usual channels.