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My cake making competitions have become very popular. The strange thing is that I get people I’ve never met before coming up to me saying that the posts I write about these competitions are amongst their favourites. Well one person did last week at the LINX meeting anyway.
I’m not sure what that says about my other posts but in answer to this huge demand I am happy to report the winner of the August competition – this time for the best cheesecake – is Paula Davies (no relation afaik).
A week is a long time in politics but politicians seem happy to take most of the summer off. I have just had a 2 week break where I avoided anything to do with work and even kept away from blogging. The latter involved a huge effort because there is so much going on internet-wise.
This emotional pull was made more stressful by the fact that news is disseminated and commented on so quickly these days that to write about something that is more than a day old is to be seen to be writing about a historical event and not a current hot topic.
Fortunately last week’s Google news has spilled over into this week and I am back in action. This news concerns Google and its supposed pact with Verizon regarding Net Neutrality – both companies support the idea of an open net for fixed line services but with loopholes for mobile traffic and for some specialized content.
Had a visit from CMC Partnership today. They are a fast growing provider of project management and consultancy services based in South Wales. They are also a customer – it is great to meet customers and in particular as they work in such a diverse range of industries – one of the nice things about being a Communications Provider.
Ann Hallett and Lee James from CMC proved to be a very talented duo and great sports by joining me in a rendition of La Bamba by Los Trios Paraguayos. Readers will also remember the B side of the 1966 hit : Llama En El Cuerpo. We didn’t play the B side.
The photo above is us (Los Trios Timicos) doing the reprise.
Superfast all IP networks are not just around the corner they are here already, at least if you are a business. The big growth area in business networking is in Ethernet data circuits that are rapidly replacing ADSL as the business connectivity of choice.
In fact businesses are keeping their old ADSL connections as a backup to their new Ethernet circuit so whilst the market for broadband is relatively flat the general business of internet connectivity is seeing a boom.
At Timico we will see almost twice as many Ethernet circuits installed in 2010 as we did in the first five years of our existence. Next year we expect the number to at least double again.
Last week the Valuation Office Agency put out revised guidelines for assessing rateable values for fibre connections.
There is no change at the high end so the likes of Virgin and BT will remain unaffected. However at the smaller network end of the scale there has been a massive price hike.
In 2005 if you were running a pair of fibres over 1km you would be stung with a rateable value of £280. In 2010 this has now shot up to £2000. This will not of course affect BT because they have a negotiated total rateable value for their network.
The upshot of this is that at a time when industry has been crying out for a level “rates” playing field the VOA has made it an even more unequal commercial battle in favour of the large incumbent operators.
Another great day out at the cricket at Trent Bridge. The second day of the Engand v Pakistan yielded some entertaining sport with some very good company.
The picture below is of me (centre) with guests Jeremy Dawkins of Next Event (left) and Mark Jaggers of Soll Leisure (right). You don’t do business with companies, you do business with people.
I think that’s the summer networking series coming to an end now and I’m signing off for two weeks R&R. I’ll be taking the kayaks and the snorkelling gear for a good old British summer holiday, whatever the weather. See you when I get back…
Big headliner from Ofcom this morning is that average broadband speeds in the UK have increased by over 25% in the past year. Research, conducted in partnership with broadband monitoring specialists SamKnows, has found that speeds have increased from 4.1Mbit/s to 5.2Mbit/s.
This is no surprise really as ISPs move their base from ADSLMax (“up to 8Meg”) over to ADSL2+ (“up to 24Meg”). It’s a shame that the average is not higher but that’s copper for you. The research showed that cable customers fare significantly better than ADSL.
The Ofcom data also reveals some very interesting stats about performance during peak times that don’t do some ISPs any favours.
One of our VoIP engineers Wayne Mills-Kiddals is setting off this week on a drive to Ulan Bator in Mongolia. It’s going to take him a month or so but it is in a good cause – he is raising cash for the Christina Noble Foundation. I will be providing periodic updates on his progress and in the meantime have created a temporary page on this blog so that we can track him via GPS.
It has been a huge organisational effort for Wayne. His passport is now much thicker as it has visas for Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and finally Mongolia.
Wish him luck – we want him back 🙂
The Child Exploitation and Protection Centre (CEOP) and Facebook announced an initiative that gives Facebook users direct access to CEOP’s advice and reporting centre from their Facebook homepage.
The initiative is not based on a standard panic button solution but on a CEOP Facebook App and a CEOP Facebook page. This means that only users who install the app will have direct access to CEOP.
I have met CEOP CEO Jim Gamble during the course of meetings between CEOP and the ISPA and understand the hugely difficult nature of their job. CEOP volunteer staff have to spend much of their time looking at horrendous photographic evidence of child abuse. It isn’t something that a person can do for too long due to the mental stresses involved.
The success of the whole Facebook initiative depends on whether or not the CEOP app becomes viral. To facilitate the distribution of the app, Facebook has agreed to support the initiative via an advertising campaign.
CEOP deserves your support.
Here is an article written by Trefor Davies and Louise Lancaster in the Institute of Telecoms Professionals’ Journal and published this month.
It covers a bit of the history of VoIP technology, where it has evolved to today and some current issues such as number porting and naked DSL.
For more information on the ITP you can visit their website at www.theitp.org/journal
I read in Jeremy Hunt’s speech at the Broadband Delivery UK industry day today that due to the lack of funds the government has moved the target date for implementation of its 2Meg Universal Service Commitment out to the “end of this parliament” or in other words 2015 (see my post in March on the feasibility of doing it by 2012).
It is about time everyone realised this is a waste of effort. Lets forget about 2Meg and go straight for Fibre To The Premises (FTTP). FTTP for the Final third by 2015 is a sensible objective.
Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) is today holding an “industry day aimed at companies and organisations that have skills, capabilities and assets that they believe could be used to help deliver the government’s Universal Service Commitment and superfast broadband market testing projects”.
The agenda for the day, which is being held within the BIS offices at 1 Victoria Street, London is as follows:
09:30 – 10:00 Registration & Coffee
10:00 – 10:10 Introduction and Welcome – Ed Vaizey
10:10 – 11:00 Setting the context – Jeremy Hunt
Attendees at the ITSPA Summer Forum sat on one side of an oval conference table that was mirrored on 4 large screens in front of us. A Polycom representative (sorry didn’t catch his name) did the spiel from the other room located in Slough.
It was as if he was in the same room and he could even hear the side conversations going on on our side of the table.
At the ITSPA Summer Forum, held yesterday at Polycom’s City offices there was a panel of VoIP wholesalers debating the health of the market. The panel consisted of representatives from BT, Gamma, X-Connect, Magrathea and Timico (ie moi).
The market it turns out is very healthy with everyone reporting growth in VoIP minutes over and above old fashioned TDM minutes. We also debated number porting – a large subject in its own right that has already featured on this blog but is going to be a lot more visible over the next few months.
Just stepped into the Polycom offices at 69 Old Broad Street in the City. I am here for the ITSPA council meeting, AGM and Summer Workshop.
The offices are super plush and impressively I didn’t have to sign in at reception. The receptionist pushed a button on a panel and a lift door opened to take me directly to the 16th floor. There were no buttons inside the lift to press other than “door open” and “alarm”.
I was whisked straight to the 16th floor and the lift door opened. The receptionist on the 16th floor said “welcome Mr Davies” and showed me to the coffee lounge.
Ofcom has set a deadline of April 2011 for mobile network operators to speed up the process for their customers to port their numbers to competitors. Customers will be able to change suppliers within 24 hours. Believe it or not as a Service Provider I like this idea because it is good for our customers. It means that we either do a good job of servicing customers or they leave (subject to contract of course J ).
Companies offering good service will prevail. Grauniad article here.
Here’s a list of winners from last night’s ISPAs. I have to declare some involvement in that I voted for both “successful” Hero and Villain and that NewNet, winner of the Best Dedicated Hosting category, is a Timico Group business – well done lads. I’m proud of you 🙂
Best Shared Hosting winner is: Namesco
The judges were impressed with Namesco’s high level of customer satisfaction, with good use of security and technical support complemented by a clear pricing structure.
Best Dedicated Hosting winner is: NewNet
In an extremely competitive category, the judges decided that NewNet’s wide product range, provision of 24/7 technical support and a dedicated account manager set them apart from their competitors.
Much in the news yesterday was the request from BT and TalkTalk for a judicial review into the Digital Economy Act. Nobody I spoke to from the ISP industry had any further details of this other than to say that Sky and Virgin were notably absent from the story line.
This is likely to be because the latter two are far more closely aligned to the content provision industry with BT and TalkTalk being really just (or largely in the case of BT) connectivity providers.
People should not get too excited at the prospect of a Judicial Review. This is just a process of checking to see that the legal process was followed. Did it receive the required number of readings in Parliament? etc.etc
At tonight’s Internet Services Providers Association (ISPA) Awards Labour MP for West BromwichTom Watson was announced as the Internet Hero for 2010. This is just a bit of fun at the one time in the year that the ISP industry lets its hair down, but it does have its serious side.
The work that Tom Watson did in opposing parts of the Digital Economy Bill was highly creditable. He stood up for human rights and fairness. It shows that Members of Parliament do have a conscience and are willing to speak out when that conscience troubles them.
FTTC broadband continues to be a popular subject on this blog. It gets linked to from all sorts of non-telecom forums. There is clearly a hunger for information on faster broadband.
In the interest of adding to the body of information out there I’ve added some more info in this post. Firstly pictures of both the FTTC broadband local architecture and the FTTP broadband local architecture, and a link to the BT Openreach FTTC / FTTP product page. Note the larger cabinet for FTTC.
Met with O2 and BE today for a general chat about the BE broadband network. They are pushing a wholesale offering and are now one of only four Tier 1 broadband wholesalers in the UK – BT, TalkTalk and Cable and Wireless being the others. Reality is I don’t see C&W doing much so probably there are only really three of them.
Telefonica has been backing BE and making not insignificant investments in their network. Their current ADSL2+ offering is competitive. The longer term question for them is really the same as for TalkTalk and that is how to leverage a new (ish) high capacity backbone once ADSL2+ becomes old hat and the world has moved on to greater and faster connectivity.
My monthly guest blog post is up at broadbandgenie.co.uk. World cup stuff.
Two weeks ago I got excited that you can now plot the progress of trains on the London Underground. Unfortunatley so popular was this service that the Transport for London server providing the data has ground to a halt. I’d like to think it was because of the publicity it they received from trefor.net but I doubt that was the case.
This morning twitter is slow as a tortoise, at least from platforms such as tweetdeck that rely on using the twitter API. This is just as organisations are learning how to use the service to their advantage. For example I retweeted a National Rail tweet this morning in the hope of winning £90 worth of Oyster Card top up.
Two weeks ago I got excited that you can now plot the progress of trains on the London Underground. Unfortunatley so popular was this service that the Transport for London server providing the data has ground to a halt. I’d like to think it was because of the publicity it they received from trefor.net but I doubt that was the case.
This morning twitter is slow as a tortoise, at least from platforms such as tweetdeck that rely on using the twitter API. This is just as organisations are learning how to use the service to their advantage. For example I retweeted a National Rail tweet this morning in the hope of winning £90 worth of Oyster Card top up.
If you want to port your existing telephone number to a VoIP provider (Internet Telephony Service Provider/ITSP) you can do, by and large. If this number is the number of the analogue phone line that carries the broadband connection that the VoIP service runs over you are knackered because the minute the number is ported the analogue line is ceased and therefore the broadband will stop working.
Of course you can’t run VoIP on a broadband connection that isn’t a broadband connection because it isn’t working. How good is that?
If consumers want to move away from an incumbent telco (for incumbent read slow moving, lacking innovation
Sebastien Lahtinen is probably most well known for being behind the independent broadband advice website thinkbroadband.com which helps broadband users to get the most out of their broadband connection. He has also been involved in the policy development and governance processes of Nominet, and is a candidate in the current elections for a seat on the Nominet board.
What are the key challenges for Nominet in the next four years?
The next few years will be a critical time for Nominet as it looks to respond to the need for change. Nominet will face challenges both internally within its own organisation as well as externally.
It’s only two weeks to the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association (ITSPA) Summer Forum due to take place on Tuesday 13th July at the Polycom offices, Old Broad Street, London.
These events, chaired by yours truly, have become “must attend” occasions for ITSPs in the UK. On this occasion we have a Keynote Speech from Microsoft, an update from BT Openreach on their NGN VoIP plans, a talk from Polycom and a panel discussion on “Wholesale “VoIP. There is also an update from Matt Townend from Illume on the “State of the Union” in the VoIP market.
The wholesale panel has representation from the leading wholesalers in this space: Gamma, Magrathea, BT IP Exchange and X-Connect.
If you want to come there are still some places left though these things usually sell out nearer to the day so you need to be quick. Email [email protected] for more info.
On 25th May Julian Huppert MP tabled an Early Day Motion calling for the repeal the Digital Economy Act 2010. To date only 34 MPs have supported it!
It is hard to see what we can do to raise the profile of this issue, other than by continually banging on about it. We may have to wait for some high profile failures of the process, by which time of course the ISP industry will have spent a fortune implementing the systems required under the Act.
In the words of the EDM “large repercussions for consumers, civil liberties, freedom of information and access to the internet”
The suffragettes used to chain themselves to railings and throw themselves under horses. This is not worth losing a life for but there must be a way.
I’m pleased to announce (somewhat belatedly but I was mega busy last week) that Timico was runner up in the Federation of Communication Services Communications Provider of the Year 2010 Award.
I did think about this before writing this post. Runner up doesn’t sound as good as Winner. Having thought about it though the FCS has knocking on 300 members so second out of that many isn’t so bad. We aren’t even members so nobody can say it was a stitch-up.
Next up ISPAs 8th July.
It was startling to read in the Daily Telegraph that UK Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said he would be scrapping three quarters of the Government’s 820 websites. You can read the article for yourselves but it is amazing how much some of these sites cost per visit.
The most expensive websites were uktradeinvest.gov.uk which costs £11.78 per visit and businesslink.gov.uk which costs £2.15 per visit.
I did a quick search and the Telegraph seems to the the only site carrying this story. In searching I did find the following A-Z of central government websites. Perhaps we can have some suggestions as to which ones should be first for the chop.
I bumped into a pal a couple of weeks ago who spent some time doing some contract work for a government department. He was incredulous as to the level of ignorance in respect of technology. There were he said projects happening that were a complete waste of time and money. You get the impression of things being done for the sake of being seen to be doing something.
I guess this is a real problem generally for UK plc as is witnessed by the mistakes made in the Digital Economy Act – rushed through in ignorance without proper due diligence.