Month: November 2009

Categories
Business internet

Economic stimulation would be a result of universal NGN investment

I’ve been pushing for a more ambitious approach to the roll out of Next Gen Networks in the UK as an essential part of the investment in the future of UK plc.

Thinking about it the Government should also be encouraging investment in key areas of technology development to stimulate the development of services to run on this network. I realise that there is a token effort on the go in the guise of The Technology Strategy Board but we need someting a little more forward thinking.

If we could promote investment in Universities into the development of courses and research around web based technologies then the country would ultimately see the spawning of ideas and businesses in this space.  The combination of the two approaches would be very powerful and once a critical mass was achieved would be self sustaining.

Categories
broadband Business internet

Parliament TV Digital Britain Stitch Up

Representatives of BT, Vtesse, The TalkTalk Group, and Avanti Communications appeared before an AdHoc Committee of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills yesterday.

The guests appeared to support the 2Mbps target for Broadband Universal Service and moreover kept repeating the phrase Universal Service “Commitment” as opposed to Universal Service “Obligation”. As readers will be aware Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms has already reaffirmed that USO is where the Government is at. The panelists may have had their own agenda here or not keeping up with the times.

I also hear “we don’t need faster broadband today”, “we should let the free market decide”, “it is very difficult to say what people will do with higher speeds”, “it wouldn’t be public money well spent”.

In my mind there is a significant level of “heads in the sand” here. Yesterday I was looking at HD TV streaming speed requirements and 17Mbps seemed to be the requirement for the BBC’s output. Multiply that by the number of family members wanting to watch in their own rooms…  There are no doubt codecs (MPEG4) that support good quality at lower speeds.  However the point is that 2Mpbs doesn’t cut it.

UK plc needs to get more aggressive in the global internet game.  The video evidence is available here.  I didn’t watch all 2 hours so there could, I guess, be some revelations after the 40 minutes mark that you might like to hear for yourselves.

Categories
End User internet social networking

Google Wave invite has arrived

Can’t say I’m not excited!

More when I do have something to say:-)

Categories
Business internet Regs

1995 flashback

Timico Head of Network Operations Ben has just moved house.  Fourteen years of accumulated “stuff” moved with him including a cutting from the Daily Express he found from 1995.  He was just setting out to seek his fortune in the big wide world and thought he would get into this up and coming thing called the internet.

The 33 ISPs around at that time were offering dial up internet to around 500,000 customers in the and Trade and Industry Select committee chairman Richard Caborn was warning the House of Commons that “many people could be denied access to the information superhighway because much of Britain is not covered by the necessary technology.  Even if the cable companies met their obligations in full it would still leave more than one third of the country without access to a fixed cable network”  he said.

The article could, with a few name changes, be applied to the debate regarding Digital Inclusion going on in UK plc today.

What also struck me was that the pricing has changed very little since then with a range of options not dissimilar to what you can get today.  Speeds have changed of course :-).

Daily Express Guide to the Internet from 1995
Daily Express Guide to the Internet from 1995
Categories
Business social networking

#140conf London

Just got my ticket to Jeff Pulver’s #140 Characters Conference in London on 17th November.  This was a difficult one because it clashes with LINX67 which is the 15th anniversary meeting of the London Internet Exchange.

The #140 Character Conference has evolved very quickly from being a “twitter” event to what in my mind represents groundbreaking thought leadership in the area of real time internet communications. Having known Jeff for over 10 years I think this is a not to be missed event. Jeff tells me that London is the world capital for thought leadership in this space.

There is an interesting mix of  high profile speakers including Jeffrey Hayzlett (@JeffreyHayzlett) CMO of Kodak, Babs Rangaiah (@babs26) – Vice President, Global Comms Planning, Unilever and Stephen Fry (@stephenfry), celebrity actor and writer.

Check out the website here.

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