Category: Business

Business

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broadband Business

Who Wants to Trial the 80Meg FTTC Broadband? #digitalbritain

BT is looking for a few good people to trial their 80/20 FTTC broadband product. Interested?

The title says it all. BT has announced the schedule for the 80Meg down 20Meg up Fibre To The Cabinet product and we will be looking for trialists.

The first stage of the process involves a change to the DSLAM profile.  This activity is already underway and should be completed by January. The new frequencies that allow FTTC broadband to run faster will also be programmed in to the Openreach OSS system by January to allow the line checker to work at the higher speed.

In early January there will be a limited technical trial with up to 150 existing customers followed by a wider trial with no restriction on numbers between Jan 28th and the end of March 2012. The only caveat here, apart from the usual guarantees that there are no guarantees, is that users participating in the trials must be able to get a minimum downstream speed of 15Mbit/s and a minimum upstream speed of 5Mbit/s on their existing FTTC.

Note the availability checker will only be able to show product variants of up to 40Mbps until the formal launch later in 2012.  It’s certainly an exciting week for FTTC news.

Note also it is quite possible that we are entering the domain of inadequate wifi performance on individual routers. Whether yours can handle 80Megs is something to consider.

Anyway if you are interested in testing the 80/20 FTTC broadband product drop me a line on [email protected] (obviously your cabinet has to be FTTC enabled!) and I will get back to you as soon as we have more info.

If you want to find out more about FTTC check out the resources here  . Commercials here.

Categories
broadband Business

BT FTTC Schedule Updates

Seeing as we had all the news about BT pulling forward the FTTC exchange rollout dates this morning I thought I’d provide updated copies of the schedule. Not as much as some would like for the future ones but the info will come

Anyway here we have:

Exchanges Accepting orders now

Exchanges Coming soon and

Future Exchanges

The files download separately as XL spreadsheets. Mine goes live in March next year.

Thought you would also be interested to see a note I got from BT Wholesale last week:

We are pleased to announce that we will soon be inviting all Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) customers to a trial of the upcoming WBC FTTC 80Mbit/s downstream 20Mbit/s upstream product option.

Faster FTTC is on its way.

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Business video voip voip hardware

I have seen the light, opened the door and been let in by ProTalk

Protalk SIP based door entry systemI love it when our engineers come up to me and say “want to see something interesting?”. Today one of our top VoIP engineers showed me the ProTalk IP (SIP) antivandal door entry unit.  This is a rock solid door entry system controlled by SIP video phone.

Pressing the button initiates a sip call to the number / call group of your choice, sets up a video call upon being answeredProTalk SIP door entry system from ProVu and allows the operator to open the door remotely by keying in a prearranged number.  The system will in theory work with any SIP video phone – we have tested it with the SNOM 8xx series and a number of soft clients.

It should even work on mobile SIP clients – any SIP phone that can generate a DTMF tone. At Timico it is being tested as part of the security for the new data centre but it is easy to imagine it being used in many application areas.

I could even envisage using it at home – kids forget their key and you not in the house? They push the button and you answer on your smart phone and let them in.

ProTalk is a product of ProVu communications in Huddersfield.  They are good lads and worth taking a look at.

Isn’t technology marvelous!

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Business Regs surveillance & privacy

Newsbin2 court ruling means BT has to ask permission to perform maintenance on network

The High Court this morning ruled that BT would have to block Newzbin2 within 14 days and pay its own costs.  The ruling can be read here.

It’s an interesting read and seems to run roughshod over BT – there seem to be no guarantees that the same order would be made against other ISPs which puts BT at a competitive disadvantage.

Seems crazy, but BT also now needs to seek authorisation from the movie studios when it wants to perform maintenance on their Cleanfeed filtering system, if the studios don’t reply quickly, then BT can apply to the courts to be allowed to do this – extract from the ruling below:

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Business internet

UK drops to 25th in league table of internet connection speeds, 15th in Europe – Akamai @edvaizey

Flicking, as one does, through the Akamai State of the Internet Report for Q2 2011 I note that the average internet connection speed for the UK in the second quarter was 5Mbps1.

The good news is that this is up 9% from the previous quarter and 28% year on year.

Unfortunately the bad news is that the UK is not keeping pace with its competitors. I last looked at these stats in January 2011. In Q3 2010 the UK was placed 17th globally for average internet connection speed with 11 European countries ahead of us.

In Q2’11 we are down to 25th globally with 15 other European countries ahead of us. 14 European countries had a higher year on year growth than the UK.

Now I’m sure someone from DCMS2 will come out of the woodwork with some other indicators that show how the UK is going  to have the best  superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015. I don’t think we really need to spend time arguing this one. Perhaps someone could just explain to me how we are going to do it. The Akamai stats suggest that we are going backwards not forwards.

1 I know I’m a couple of weeks late with this one but I was all at sea when the report came out and I’ve only just read it. Also I’m not sure how many commentators have really looked at the relative progress within Europe – from what I can see they have mainly chosen to comment on the gap between advertised speeds and reality.

2 Department of Culture Media and Sports – responsible for “the internet” within government.

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Business mobile connectivity Net phones

Roll up, roll up, get yer acronyms here #MAM #MDM #CoIT #BYOD #MPLS #VoIP

Being a progressive high technology company we have a department that is dedicated to coming up with new acronyms. Ok that’s not an entirely fair description of the marketing department – engineering also does it 🙂

We have been upping the ante on mobile products in the last year or so.  The mobile world is rapidly moving on from merely the selling of phones, minutes and handsets (plus BlackBerry of course which has been an added value sell for years).

Unless you have been in a cocoon for the last six months (and you might)

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Archived Business

If you know anyone that might fit the bill please put them in touch #telesales #jobs in Newark please retweet

If you live within striking distance of Newark – Lincoln, Nottingham, Mansfield Grantham etc and are looking for a job in telesales then I have the job for you!

We are hiring. This is a new team.  In fact this is the first of many teams in a growing area of the business and so could represent a great career opportunity for ambitious individuals. There will be money making opportunities.

There will also be promotion opportunities. This is a classical way in to a future in account management, business development, marketing, operations, in fact you could be a future Managing Director. Everyone has to start somewhere.

If you know anyone that might fit the bill please put them in touch – details on the website here.

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Business mobile connectivity Net

Communications links for IT Directors all at sea

communications aboard Aurora uses Maritime Telecommunications NetworkI didn’t felt at all claustrophobic during my time on board the Aurora for the IT Directors Forum. This is partly because there is plenty of space but also because the schedule was so packed it didn’t give you time to think about such things.

I did manage to squeeze in a chat with the guy that ran the internet cafe. There is WiFi all over the ship but it isn’t something you would want to use for casual internet access because a) at around £100 an hour  it is expensive and b) there is only 750kbps to service the whole ship – that’s 2,100 passengers when full.

In order to preserve some quality of customer experience the Aurora limits the number of simultaneous users to 32.  At the time of writing I can’t get on so

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Business events social networking

trefor.net xmas tweetup 2011

The premier internet industry Christmas tweetup is back bigger and better than ever.

Last year we were in the Platform Bar of the Betjeman Arms.  In 2011 we are staying with a railway station theme but are moving inside to the Booking Office Bar of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.  This is a seriously cool watering hole and a far more sensible use of the space than the selling of train tickets.

This is no ordinary tweetup. Dress code is in keeping with the 5 star hotel surroundings and the drinks are sophisticated. If past performance is anything to go by the trefor.net tweetup is the party to be at this Christmas.

Try your hand at a cocktail mixed by Nick Strangeway – Master Mixologist. The former World Mixologist of the Year as voted for by experts at Tales of the Cocktail industry event & famous for his work with leading establishments Hix and Hawksmoor, Nick is London’s leading cocktail expert.

The 2012 tweetup is sponsored by a set of extremely generous friends including Timico, Newnet, Powernet, RTP Solutions, Sangoma, Fortinet, Provu , BT and Genband.

If you haven’t been the Booking Office Bar is situated just across the platform from last year’s bash. The St Pancras Renaissance Hotel was voted the Number One Hotel in the UK in The Sunday Times Magazine’s 2011 Top 100 Hotels in the World.

I look forward to catching up with you on the night. Numbers are limited so click here to sign up. You will need the password @trefbash to register. Hope you can make it. The date is Thursday 8th December from 5pm onwards.  Get there early.

photos courtesy of St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

Categories
4g Business mobile connectivity ofcom Regs

Ofcom delay in holding 4G spectrum auction will cost UK £100s millions report says

More pressure has been piled on Ofcom and the government by the publication of a report by the Open Digital Policy organisation suggesting that delays to the UK 4 G license auctions will cost the country dear. The delay to the auction has been caused by apparent threat of legal action by a number of carriers including O2.

ODP looked at the speed, capacity and coverage improvements next generation mobile broadband (known as 4G or LTE) is likely to bring, and estimated that over 37 million business hours per year could be saved from faster mobile data downloads if 4G mobile technology was to be deployed sooner than is currently planned.

Earlier this year I chaired a debate on mobile spectrum allocation at Portcullis House in Westminster. The issue of 4G spectrum allocation is a hot potato. The three largest mobile carriers O2, Vodafone and Everything Manyplaces, have existing voice bandwidth that they are being allowed to reuse for data. 3 does not so this delay will not only cost UK business but will likely have a deleterious effect on the number 4 operator (this is clearly a numbers game).

Ofcom, the UK regulatory authority tasked with

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Business Cloud datacentre

Timico data centre update

UPS batteries in the new Timico data centreNot long to go before we start kitting the new data centre out as a data centre so I’ve chosen some a local artisan finishes off the decorative touches of the interior design of the second floor of the new Timico building in Newarkartistic and tasteful photos for your delight. Of course they might not be to everyone’s taste but there is beauty in the modern day industrial infrastructure of the country – just as we now admire the steam the view from the fire escape of the new Timico data centre in Newarkengines and rows of red brick mills that were once associated with satanic darkness.

This time around the jobs created will be highly skilled and professional at a  time when we could do with some good news in the local economy.

We are in the process of hiring for the extended shifts that will be necessitated by the 24×7 operational nature of the  expanded Network Operations Centre.

Last week we ok’d the purchase of a wall of monitor screens for electrical switch gear in one of the new data halls at the Timico data centre in Newarkthe operations room itself. I’m quite excited about this as it will have a high visibility impact on the place –  all controlled by an iPad or similar (I asked what they would be using for a remote control for all those TVs – more on this in due course).  As I said not long now.

part of the fire suppression system for the new Timico data centre in Newark

part of the cooling system - only expected to be used 4 months of hte year due to free air cooling that adds to the green credentials of the Timico newark data centre

view of Timico HQ building across the car park of the data centre It will also be worth talking about our expanded sales structure as we move in to 2012 and I will do this as some important new hires come on board.

Bye for now.

Categories
Business Cloud datacentre

We Want #ITIL Service…And We Want It Now!

New Timico helpdesk ServiceNowMany years ago I worked at Marconi Electronic Devices in Lincoln. The purchasing manager there, a canny Scotsman,  had a certain approach when it came to the acquisition of software. His opening bid in a negotiation would be the cost of the physical tape required to carry the software to our premises.

These days software doesn’t come on a tape. In fact it often doesn’t come at all but resides somewhere remote and fluffy in “the cloud”. What’s more it can’t even be described as software – more a set of APIs and capabilities. When it comes to estimating a value for such an entity it has to be in terms of the benefit to your business.

It wasn’t so long ago that Timico was a small ISP. The company has been growing quickly to the point that

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broadband Business Regs

Superfast Broadband for All – UKNetCo

The UK is in the middle of the annual round of booze ups known as the autumn Party Conference Season. High in the mindset of our political leaders will be the UK’s internet economy particularly as we await the next Communications Bill Green Paper. Stakeholders at the conference socials are I’m sure already lobbying, positioning and generally trying to get their message across.

The Eds and Daves of this world whilst being wooed by corporates with vested interests would do well to focus on basics that very much include decent and ubiquitous internet connectivity for the whole of the UK.

We are already seeing cracks in the government’s resolve to have “the best superfast broadband network in Europe by the end of this parliament” (2015). Actually it isn’t fair to call them “cracks in the resolve”. The resolve is there but the execution isn’t  and anyone who thinks that we would get anywhere near this goal without a radical change in the UK’s approach to internet connectivity is kidding themselves.

The only way we are going to achieve this is if UK plc, ie the taxpayer, invests in a full fibre infrastructure for “the final third”. This is not to say give money to BT. The only sensible approach

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broadband Business

Gigaclear Set to Show UK How to Build FTTP Broadband Network at Hambleton, Rutland

Matthew Hare of gigaclear feeds fibre into the UK network infrastructure in HambletonThe sleepy village of Hambleton lies in the heart of the old county of Rutland. In the winter Hambleton, surrounded by Rutland water, can feel quite a remote place. The wind whistles eerily across the choppy white topped waters of the lake and the snow can drift deep on the single road that leads into the peninsula. It it not unknown for the village to be cut off from the outside world and this has indeed happened during the harsh winters of recent times.

Fortunately when this does happen the foolish, unwary and now stranded individuals are able to seek refuge by the warmth of the log fire and bask in the friendly welcome that is characteristic of Hambleton Hall. The Hall, “One of England’s finest country house hotels” has luxury overnight accommodation (a snip at between £245 and £360 a room) and their Michelin starred chef will assuage the needs of the hungriest. To round off the perfect enforced stay the Hall has free wifi for all guests.

Of course how fast an internet access guests will get from this wifi is another thing – Hambleton really is in the middle of internet nowhere.

This is all about to change

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Business piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

@EdVaizey opens up web blocking talks to wider stakeholder community #deact

There has been widespread criticism of discussions being held between the ISP industry and RightsHolders over the latter’s desire to effect blocking of websites being seen to promote copyright infringement. It is natural. An activity conducted behind closed doors is bound to arouse suspicion.

The latest of these meetings happened yesterday but today communications minister Ed Vaizey chaired a session that allowed alternative voices to be heard.

Present at the meeting were representatives of the Taxpayers Alliance, Open Rights Group,Pirate Party,COADEC, Open Digital Policy.org, Featured Artists Coalition,LINX and of course me.

I think Ed Vaizey found the level of debate far more constructive than he had been expecting. The gist was

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Business voip

SIP Trunks go mainstream

I went to my first VoIP meeting in (as far as I can remember) the summer of 1999. It was a pulver.com “Executive Retreat” located at the ETSI HQ in Sophia-Antipolis near Cannes in the South of France. It’s a tough life but someone has to live it.

Since then we have been through a couple of recessions and a long hard climb for VoIP technology to become accepted. I knew the day would come but VoIP is now so mainstream that businesses think nothing of installing “VoIP only” voice solutions with no legacy ISDN or analogue lines as backup.

They are doing this because of two things:

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Business Cloud mobile connectivity security

Mobile Working Report — CoIT and BYOD Trends

mobile,working,report,CoIT,Consumersiation,IT,BYOD,Bring,Your,Own,Device,TimicoThe mobile communications market has for years been characterised as a commodity space. Selling mobile services was largely a matter of who offers the best price.  The rise of the smart phone and the pursuant growth in mobile data is changing this.

Price is still important but these devices are so expensive that the amount of hard cash people (consumers) are willing to spend on their mobile contract has grown considerably. I know this from first hand experience having a 19 year old student son who spends not an insubstantial amount of his monthly budget on an iPhone4 contract.

This in turn is a source of angst for businesses who have not traditionally provided the bulk of their staff with top of the range handsets. Unless you have been in a media vacuum over the last six months you will know that this has led to a phenomenon known as Consumerisation of IT and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) revolution.

I have written about this before. As a provider of mobile services

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Business Cloud datacentre

The Cloud — Now is the Time to Invest

cloud,investment,datacenter,Timico,NewarkI attended a “Cloud Computing – security, market development and prospects for the G Cloud” forum in Whitehall yesterday morning. It’s a big topic and there were lots of messages to take away.

The G Cloud programme is the government’s effort to move away from an expensive and silo’d server centric estate that in 2009 comprised 90,000 components in central government alone. We, the UK, are after cost savings and an agility that will allow us the flexibility to take advantage of market and technological developments whilst creating a secure platform that will facilitate new and productive uses of data held by our masters on our behalf. Bit of a mouthful. My words really but also my interpretation of what I’m sure is an elongated brief.

Transport for London’s API that allows train locations to be published on Google maps is a good example of the use of public data made available through an API.

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Archived Business

Timico named by Telegraph as one of Britain’s Brightest Businesses

Timico,Telegraph,Britain's,Brightest,BusinessesTimico, as the post title says, has been named by The Telegraph as one of Britain’s Brightest Businesses. That is good to hear.

The research was compiled with the help of NESTA and Dunn & Bradstreet together with inputs from more than a dozen membership organisations and is intended to highlight medium sized companies that the Telegraph thinks will be the backbone of economic recovery in the UK.

Timico has in recent years regularly featured in league tables such as the Deloitte Technology 50 and the Sunday Times/Microsoft Techtrack100 fastest growing private technology companies.  These tables don’t necessarily mean much but as far as I am concerned every bit of positive promotion helps when it comes to growing the business.  It’s a tough old world out there.

It’s also worth noting another article in the Telegraph that says “Impatient entrepreneurs are not the answer“. You should read the article but a well written headline gives away the plot and in this case it’s all about growing at a pace that ensures ultimate success.

Having been been part of a start up in 2004 one always wants things to happen faster. However at Timico we have always taken the long view. We want a business that provides value to our customers and we work hard on that in the belief that this is ultimately what will create value for our investors (me included).

Watch this space 🙂

Categories
Business Cloud gadgets

PC Market Gartner slashes PC market forecast – my wife would agree

Research firm gartner has cut its PC Market forecast citing a move away from traditional computing towards tablets. I think we are not far off the tipping point. My 11 year old son’s laptop may well be the last PC we buy for the family.

My wife, whose PC is about 8 years old, keeps asking to borrow my iPad. She uses it primarily to look up recipes for family meals and sometimes has it propped up in the kitchen when she is cooking.

Her only other uses for a PC are email, banking and sites such as eBay where she is an avid participant. If the browser was reliable enough, which it isn’t on the iPad without support for flash, a tablet with keypad would be all she needed.

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Business internet

ONS report on internet usage shows huge growth in mobile use

I assume everyone has already read The Office for National Statistics published data on internet access in the UK issued last week :). The survey found that there have been significant changes in the way people connect to and use the Internet in recent years. No surprise there then.

There are a few “no surprises” such as the fact that the younger you are the more likely you are to use social networking and that LinkedIn is used more by men than women (with the associated equality in business issues I’m sure, like it or not).

Also over half of us (66 per cent of all adults) purchased goods or services over the Internet. Even my aged parents buy stuff online. Interestingly 31 per cent of us 2010 sold goods or services online (up from 21 per cent in a year).

The biggest wow factor was the number of people using their mobile phone to connect to the Internet. This rose by 6 million between 2010 and 2011  (fastest among those aged 16 to 24) and now amounts to 45 per cent of total Internet users. The time will come when there are more mobile internet users than fixed – my input.

What is slightly disappointing is the fact that the most recent data for business internet use is based on 2009 data in a report published on 26th November 2010 (actually entitled E-commerce and ICT activity 2009).

Perhaps the business community does work a little more slowly than consumers these days but this is such a fast moving world that data that is almost 2 years old seems positively stone aged.

On a side note my son is about to enter his second year at University and his first year in private accommodation. The communications needs of the five lads in his house are 1) fast broadband with unlimited data package and 2) an iPhone. No fixed line telephony thank you very much.

Categories
Apps Business Cloud social networking

Customer Service Twitter Style

albelli customer serviceLast night my wife was trying to upload some photos to albelli.co.uk to generate a hardcopy album. She  wanted to take advantage  an offer from the Daily Telegraph that ran out at midnight.

The uploading did take some time but I guess the albelli servers were busy because of the promo deadline. Fair  enough. Shortly after 11pm she tried to complete the order but the discount that came with the offer no longer seemed to apply. One unhappy wife pulled the plug on the deal.

I tweeted this and had a response from a follower who had the same problem. It looks as if the set up on the server had the offer timing out at 11pm instead of midnight. Not good but mistakes do happen.

This morning I got a response from @albelli_UK with apologies for the problem and asking for more details.  By 9.40am they had sorted it out and my wife is now very happy with their service.

This is a great example of how Twitter can be used as a customer service tool.  Albelli has turned the situation from having negative PR to positive one and won over a customer. Note they will still have to offer a competitively priced service – my wife can very easily find out what the competition is up to on the wild wild web 🙂

PS yes this is the same telegraph that was hit by a DNS hack last night – as far as I can see the problem is still there at 11am on Monday morning.

Categories
Archived Business

All those who want a job get in line #Timico

I note that we have a lot of job vacancies at the moment –  Sales Director (Partners),  eBusiness Manager, Biz Dev Manager – mobile services, Telephone Sales Manager – SME Telesales and finally 3rd Line Technical Operations – IP Telephony.

Its a very exciting time to be around this industry and certainly a great time to be joining Timico.  We have been prominent for the last few year as one of the UK’s fastest growing tech companies and we plan for this to continue.

Timico is spending a lot of cash  to promote future growth.  This is not just in sales. We are talking systems, core network, a new data centre,  quality, everywhere really. The business is moving into a new phase.

If you want to know more check out or website.

Categories
broadband Business Cloud virtualisation

EFM Growing at 53% Year-on-Year Driven By Need to Access Cloud

Rhossili beach far away in time

These days I back up all my family photos on both an external hard drive and online on Google+ (it’s free and so far I haven’t hit a limit).

In August I had two holidays. From surfing on the Gower I brought back 2GBytes of photos (not including those I took on the Galaxy S2 which automatically upload when in range of a wifi and most of which had done so before I got home).  Wild camping on the Isle of Mull generated 2.4Gigs of media including video.

That’s not only a lot of storage for one month’s activity but it is also a lot of bandwidth used to upload the photos to Google+. Assuming my home ADSL does 1Mbps upload speed, which it doesn’t, and assuming no packet headers, which there will be, it would take me around 10 hours to upload that lot.

In the office I have a 100Mbps connection and the whole of August can be uploaded in the the background in a fairly short time. The bottleneck is probably the Google+ server at the other end though I am not familiar with Google’s i/o speeds for a given account if they have any.

With cloud services the upload speed, long ignored as secondary by the ISP community, is becoming a critical factor. At Timico our ADSL sales into the business sector are still increasing but at nowhere near the rate of Ethernet. Although an Ethernet circuit is of much higher value than an ADSL (or FTTC) line the number of lines is growing nicely.

The first 8 months of this year have seen an increase in Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) activity levels of 53% over the same period in 2010.

This is happening for a number of reasons. Firstly EFM is more reliable than ADSL and carries a Service Level Agreement. Secondly is the symmetrical performance – EFM can have up to 10Mbps upload as well as download. This combination is important because companies are increasingly using resources in the cloud as part of the day to day running of their business and many of these online resources, such as VoIP, are mission critical.

Large businesses have been using Ethernet for years – they were traditionally the only ones that could afford the cost. They also have the distributed systems and resources that requires the reliability and speed. Now SMBs are moving into the cloud – 48% of those in the UK according to VMware.

This means that there are going to be a lot more customers out there looking for higher upload speeds. At 10Mbps FTTC does bring faster upload but the FTTC footprint is still under construction. In the meantime there are over 2,000 EFM POPs out there (BT and TalkTalk) which probably cover a fairly high proportion of UK businesses.

Coming back to the photos the average size of jpg from my Canon Powershot is roughly 3MBytes – some more some less. This is for a 12Megapixel camera. Looking back 5 years I had a 4 Megapixel camera that produced 1MB jpgs. This suggests to me that in 2016 I will be taking 36Megapixel photos using 9 or 10MB of storage. My 4.4GB August family photo album would be more like 14GB which would still take 3 1/2 hours to upload even if I had a 10Mbps uplink speed.

It is easy to imagine that in 5 years time 10Mbps upload won’t be good enough for home use let alone business and that everyone will be looking for the next level up. It is also easy to imagine that people will find it hard to remember what the world was like before they lived in the cloud.

Categories
Apps Business Cloud virtualisation

UCAS should have a cloud based virtual system that can scale with demand

The A Level results were released just before I went on holiday. For me the noticeable bit was the fact that the UCAS system failed to cope with the demand for people wanting to see how they got on. Someone from UCAS came on BBC Radio to discuss this and mentioned the fact that due to next year’s University course fee hikes they had planned for a huge increase in visits but in the end the capacity was still inadequate.

This is clearly an example where a cloud based implementation would get by the problem. UCAS would have been able to increase the resources available just for the period of high demand which is of course only for a few days in a year. Lets hope they get their act together for next year when kid #2 goes through it all.

PS I’m back – didn’t have time to write this in the mad rush before going on holiday.

PPS It’s good to be back 🙂

Categories
broadband Business

Some BDUK money should be used to educate rural broadband champions #DEAPPG #DigitalBritain #finalthirdfirst

BDUK broadband cash didn't reach this farm cottage in time


BDUK broadband money needs partly to be spent  on education.

Much has been written on the subject of rural broadband and the digital divide and yesterday it all hit the news again as the Government published details of which areas will get how much money towards taking “broadband to all”.

This ranges between zero if you (are lucky enough to?) live in densely populated London to £31million if you live in Devon.

I’m not going to repeat stuff previously written on this other than to say I see the government is caught between a rock and a hard place – the few organisations able to deliver scale are unlikely to deliver what’s best and more over cost effective for the longer term prosperity of UK plc.  I don’t however see an alternative strongly waving a flag saying “this is how it should be done”.

There are islands of hope – for example B4RN.  However B4RN is lucky enough to have someone local called Barry Forde driving the project that really understands what he is talking about.

I listened to BF and a council official being interviewed on Radio 5 Live yesterday afternoon. Not only did the presenters not know what they were talking about but neither did the council official. How can we expect local authorities to create projects in their regions if they don’t understand the issues facing them? The outcome is that councils resort to accepting the friendly arm round the shoulder from a incumbent whose goal in life is not to help them but to take as much of their money as they can.

It would make sense to me for some of the BDUK broadband cash to be used to fund independently provided educational programmes for people wanting to champion local broadband network projects. At least then they would be able to make informed decisions about what to do with the money.

PS I realise it is a game but I do wish the Government would drop this PR spiel about having the “best superfast broadband network in Europe by the end of this parliament”. Who is kidding who?

Categories
Business phones

Google buys Motorola Mobility – will Microsoft follow suit with Nokia?

We do live in exciting times. The acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google turns the pressure on Nokia/Microsoft. Don’t have a crystal ball but it isn’t hard to imagine Microsoft acquiring Nokia leaving us, with Apple, a three horse race.

The interesting question is what happens to the other phone vendors? It becomes increasingly difficult to imaging RIM, HP and any other vendor with their own OS making any headway in this market and the pure hardware vendors (in this case) such as HTC and Samsung must be concerned despite the placatory noises coming out of Google. I guess if nothing else it will heighten their need to maintain competitiveness which is good.

Motorola brings huge benefits to Google: a large patent portfolio, hardware nouse and a resource of developers. I recently took a look at Motorola’s Xoom (online only – there is a limit to how many gadgets I can afford to buy and I’m not ready to buy another tablet yet) and it looked like a good first attempt.  I’m looking forward to seeing the products that come out of this acquisition and I would think that the staff at Motorola Mobile are on a high.

Categories
Business internet media

Internet bandwidth use by press corps at the Edgebaston Test Match #cricket

There is something comforting about the start of a new day in a cricket test match, especially when your side is doing well. We don’t want any excitement, just the occasional run and maybe every now and again a boundary. There is plenty of time, no rush.

Test Match Special is on Radio 4 and cricinfo.com for a glance now and then at the statistics. It feels as if all is well in the Empire, and coming from a Welshman that is saying something. It’s all comfortable establishment stuff and far away from any trouble at t’ mill.

Which makes it somewhat bemusing when in the pre match commentary on cricinfo I read the following:

11.10am An entertaining diktat from ECB at Edgbaston. As reported by NG, “It has been detected that there has been inappropriate use of the bandwidth in the press box with people downloading music, movies, programmes, skyping etc. If you are found doing that today your computer would be blocked. Full Stop.”

This can be read in two ways. Either the occupants of the press box are upsetting the authorities by indulging in copyright infringing activites, which I’m sure they can’t be 😉 or one of our major test cricket venues has inadequate internet connectivity and doesn’t want to clog it up with streaming media.

Actually I would have thought that the press corps would be heavy users of streaming media – watching the game live and simultaneously online for example to catch repeat showing of runs scored, wickets taken etc.

If someone from the ECB wants to get in touch I will happily sort them out with some more bandwidth 🙂

PS the header photo is of the pavillion at Owmby Cricket Club in Lincolnshire. Owmby is one of those beautiful little rural grounds that make it a pleasure to follow village cricket.

Categories
broadband Business

B4RN JFDI FTTH – this is real community at work – not Big Society FTTP

B4RN rural broadband virgin media expansion

I note with excitement the B4RN website has gone live today. BARN do I hear you say? It stands for Broadband For the Rural North and is a community initiative set up by a team including Barry Forde, Chris Conder and Lindsey Annison to provide Fibre to the Home for country dwellers currently either completely unable to get broadband or the connection is so slow it is hardly worth the effort.

B4RN is not a Big Society, BDUK, Government funded project. It is reliant on the community itself investing in its own future. Its founders have become totally disillusioned with attempts to formalise “superfast broadband” projects under government initiatives.

To lay fibre cables to all 1322 properties across the 8 parish areas proposed for the first phase rollout will cost £1.86M. Each property taking service will get 1Gbs symmetrical broadband at a monthly charge currently set at £30 (£25+VAT).

The fibre terminating equipment in the customers property will have a one hour battery back up installed. This will allow those who want to use VoIP telephony services exclusively, to cease their landlines saving the £13.90 monthly line rental charge. Existing telephone numbers can be moved over to the service.

Members of the community can subscribe for shares in B4RN from a minimum amount of £100 up to the maximum permitted under FSA rules of £20,000.

As well as offering shares in exchange for cash investments B4RN are looking to the community to subscribe with payment of labour and/or materials. Of the £1.86M cost of building the network over £500K is due to labour; so there is considerable scope for members to contribute their labour rather than cash. There are many who could dig the trenches, install duct and make good afterwards and their contribution to the project would be invaluable. Similarly there are administrative, clerical and technical support roles to be filled and these skills and time can be offered in kind to purchase shares.

£1.86 million sounds like a lot but it isn’t. It’s around £1,400 per property. It’s a fraction of the what it would cost the likes of BT because their overheads are so much higher and B4RN is benefitting from easement waivers from the local landowners in the interest of the wider community – something that they would be unlikely to do for a for profit organisation such as BT.

What’s more this investment is hugely future proofed as the initial service will offer each property 1Gbps symmetrical connectivity, upgradeable at some point because it is fibre all the way.

I visited the B4RNlocale a couple of weeks or so ago and it is very rural. You can see the detailed business plan with a very transparent presentation of the costs of the project on the B4RN website here. It really does put BDUK to shame.

We all need to give this project our support because it seriously does represent the future of broadband in rural Britain. Also, at 1Gbps if we could but see it B4RN also represents the future of what all our broadband services should look like.

Categories
broadband Business

Wholesale Broadband Connect (ADSL2+): Latest BT Rollout Plans

The latest most up-to-the-moment skinny on BT’s plans for rolling out Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC), the company’s ADSL2+ product.

Just had an email from BT Wholesale announcing the intention to “significantly extend the availability of Wholesale Broadband Connect – copper to around 90 per cent of UK premises during Spring 2013. This means an additional 2.5 million premises will have access to up to 20Mb/s broadband (ADSL2+). The expansion of the rollout plan is set to bring the total number of UK homes and businesses with such access to roughly 22.5 million. “

The current WBC enabled exchanges serve more than 17.6 million premises. The up to 90% rollout plan is set to include more than 400 additional ‘rural’ exchanges, serving more than 900,000 ‘rural’ premises.

“As BT Wholesale expands the footprint for advanced copper broadband, as previously advised, it will gradually withdraw its legacy broadband products. For example, IPstream, which offers speeds of up to 8Mb/s will be retired within the advanced copper broadband footprint by Spring 2014, as more and more customers are migrated onto more advanced services.”

I’ve cut and pasted some more detail below in the form of questions.  BT has of course a business to run and the process of extending ADSL2+ to more exchanges is part of this. We shouldn’t forget that the ultimate goal should be to get fibre to every premises in the UK which in the short term does not necessarily stack up with the BT commercial proposition.

Q. Is your legacy broadband retirement plan connected to this ~90% rollout intention?

A.  They are not directly linked but do complement each other.  We are looking to withdraw legacy broadband services in line with falling demand whereas our next generation broadband services will roll out wherever it is commercially viable.  This extension to the rollout plan means that many more end users should be able to get next generation broadband services as traditional broadband services are retired.

Q.So what’s the latest position on BT Wholesale’s WBC advanced copper rollout plan? 

A. This table outlines our current plans*:

  Exchanges in WBC footprint Homes & businesses served from WBC- enabled  exchanges UKpenetration 
Enabled today (July 2011) 1,336 17.6m ~70%
“Up to 80%” announcement 1,804 20m ~80%
“Up to 90%” announcement 2,604 22.5m ~90%

* May be subject to change

 

 

 

 

Q. How many Market 1 exchanges have been enabled to date and how many lines do they serve?

A. This table outlines the Market 1 position*:

  Exchanges in Market 1 footprint  Homes & businesses served from WBC- enabled exchanges Market 1 penetration(nb Market 1 comprises 11.7% of UK lines)
Enabled today (July 11) 11 54.5k 1.88%
 “Up to 80%” 137 380k 12.82%
“Up to 90%” 539 1.32m 44.44%

* May be subject to change