Mayor of London Boris Johnson has promised full WiFi coverage of London in time for the 2012 Olympic games. It would be ironic if the Olympic Games WiFi coverage was shut down because someone had been caught indulging in online copyright infringement. As Mayor will he be the one having to turn up in court?
Category: Business
Business
ISPA Secretariat met with Campbell Cowie and Chris Rowsell from Ofcom this afternoon to discuss the ongoing work surrounding the DE Act.
Ofcom explained that the Code will look at four areas: process – how a Copyright Infringement Report (CIR) is generated and sent and the notification process; appeals for consumers; dispute resolution between ISPs and RHs; and costs, which BIS will be focusing on.
The Code is due to be published within the next ‘couple of weeks’, though no date has been set. As Ofcom did not anticipate industry to come together and produce an effective code as per the DE Bill/Act, it had been planning what a Code may look like for some time and had not relied on one side of the debate to influence the content.
Due to the short timescales Ofcom has been working to, the Code will be instructional rather than setting out line-by-line what is required. For example, instead of dictating a standard approach for a CIR, those affected will have to tell Ofcom how they will go about it and Ofcom will then approve it or recommend changes.
The Code will initially be limited to ISPs with around 400,000 subscribers – currently 7 ISPs – and not including mobile broadband, but the long-term ambition is to target those ISPs with copyright infringing consumers. So downloaders who migrate to an ISP not included in the soft launch of the Code will eventually be covered as Ofcom follows the traffic. Ofcom has also been tasked with analysing the level of copyright infringement and barriers to innovative and emerging business models and report back to the Secretary of State, and would be actively seeking views on this.
My thanks to the ISPA Secretariat for this feedback.
ISPA Secretariat met with Campbell Cowie and Chris Rowsell from Ofcom this afternoon to discuss the ongoing work surrounding the DE Act.
Ofcom explained that the Code will look at four areas: process – how a Copyright Infringement Report (CIR) is generated and sent and the notification process; appeals for consumers; dispute resolution between ISPs and RHs; and costs, which BIS will be focusing on.
The Code is due to be published within the next ‘couple of weeks’, though no date has been set. As Ofcom did not anticipate industry to come together and produce an effective code as per the DE Bill/Act, it had been planning what a Code may look like for some time and had not relied on one side of the debate to influence the content.
Due to the short timescales Ofcom has been working to, the Code will be instructional rather than setting out line-by-line what is required. For example, instead of dictating a standard approach for a CIR, those affected will have to tell Ofcom how they will go about it and Ofcom will then approve it or recommend changes.
The Code will initially be limited to ISPs with around 400,000 subscribers – currently 7 ISPs – and not including mobile broadband, but the long-term ambition is to target those ISPs with copyright infringing consumers. So downloaders who migrate to an ISP not included in the soft launch of the Code will eventually be covered as Ofcom follows the traffic. Ofcom has also been tasked with analysing the level of copyright infringement and barriers to innovative and emerging business models and report back to the Secretary of State, and would be actively seeking views on this.
My thanks to the ISPA Secretariat for this feedback.
Ofcom seems to have gone very quiet since the initial flurry of consultation meetings following the passing of the Digital Economy Act. This is somewhat concerning in my mind. Ofcom has to produce a draft Code of Practice by the end of May.
The DEAct is such a contentious subject that the last thing we want is to find that this CoP is not objective and is bisassed towards one set of stakeholders over another. It is a lot easier to get changes made before the initial draft than afterwards.
It is also hugely important for Ofcom to remain transparent here and it would make sense to me for the regulator to be asked to identify how many contacts and inputs have been had with each set of stakeholders during the compilation of the draft CoP.
Ofcom responsibilites in respect of the DEAct can be found here. There is one meeting planned for 20th May to present these duties. Doesn’t seem to be to do with the CoP subject matter.
Former Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms was stabbed today whilst conducting a surgery in his constituency in East Ham. It is sad that this risk must be a by product of public service for MPs.
Whilst I didn’t support what Stephen Timms did with the Digital Economy Act I did recognise that I was dealing with a good and honest man, regardless of whether we agreed with each other on what he was doing.
I’m sure that we all wish him a speedy recovery.
PS I’m sure he would appreciate it if anyone has a CD or two to lend him whilst he is in hospital. Hospital radio must get a bit repetitive. No home made compilations please. Let’s be sensitive now.
Not to mention the mince…
As part of our process of continuous improvement the Timico Network Operations team has adopted BS6008 as an internal standard. In the absence of 100% accurate measurement tools we are currently having to use best efforts (ie a teaspoon) which does prevent us from gaining official certification.
However I am looking at the business case for investing in new kit (scales) for next year which might qualify us for formal certification, or at least self certification if we don’t believe the additional investment in the certification test is merited. We will just have to wait and see what is left in the tea kitty.
I realise that everyone will be intimately familiar with the details of BS6008 but just in case you aren’t I have reproduced the key bits of the standard below and also provided a link for the full document.
BS6008:1980 – ISO title: Tea — Preparation of liquor for use in sensory tests
Fill the pot containing the tea with freshly boiling water to within 4 to 6 mm of the brim (i.e. corresponding approximately to 285 ml in the case of the large pot and 140 ml in the case of the small pot described in the Annex) and put on the lid. Allow the tea to brew for 6 min, and then, holding the lid in place so that the infused leaf is held back, pour the liquid through the serrations into the bowl (5.2) corresponding to the pot selected.
Whether you like it black or with milk is up to you but at least the base drink will be top notch. Long live PG Tips. Also you might want to invest in a water filter – I don’t care but the girls in the office swear by it.
The number in brackets corresponds to an illustration in the actual standard.
Orange and TMobile unveiled their UK joint venture today. I was quite impressed with the slickness of the delivery of their online press pack, not that I often download press packs. It isn’t often I comment on purely mobile news. I’m into IP.
On this occasion however it is such a big announcement that it has attracted my attention. Such a large scale business has to figure out how to keep it’s messaging simple whilst communicating what is presumably a hugely complex change to the business. This I believe it has made a reasonable stab at:
- Everything everywhere
- Best for customers
- Biggest network
- Benefits begin this year with x-network roaming
- Boost for sales
- Brilliant service
- Acceleration into the business market
Whilst in principle a bigger and better network should server customers better there are a number of things to watch out for here.
- Bigger and better often means slower to respond.
- Bigger and better often means poorer customer service
- The business market is a completely different kettle of fish from that Orange and TMobile are used to
- It isn’t clear to me how the jointly larger high street footprint will result in a boost for sales unless they are jointly going to spend more money picking up customers than they used to and this has it’s downsides in terms of operating margins. They have to keep the brands separate or the likely result is a lower overall sales level (which might of course be accompanied by lower operating costs)
I should mention that as an O2 and Vodafone service provider I have an interest to declare but I’m not really letting that colour my opinions. The success of this venture is going to depend on how well they can make the complex business of running a mobile service simple. Only time will tell.
PS I’d love to have their marketing budget.
PPS It wasn’t immediately obvious to me that the name of the JV appears to be “Everything Eveywhere”. Marketing money well spent?
Internet traffic is up significantly this morning as bleary eyed election-watchers come into the office and pick up where they left off last night.
Noon-time traffic on Timico’s ADSL network is up approx 25% on the same time yesterday. This percentage seems to be reasonably constant for all major online events. Similar burst have been seen in the past for the Olympics, the Ashes Cricket, US President Obama’s inauguration and the last budget speech. Video streaming almost exclusively acocunts for the increase today.
This does suggest that there is a community of people in the work place that regularly accesses online video for the big events. One wonders whether this is with the knowledge and consent of their employers. Most of Timico’s customers are businesses. I doubt that they have TVs in the office so this may be to a certain extent a B2B ISP issue.
2 hours later – traffic growth is now up by 33%. In my experience this is a record for an event.
Continuing with our season of guest guitarists I present for your entertainment and delight Mr Hugh Hyndman, Solution Architect at change consultancy Smart421. Hugh was in today as part of a team brought in to assist with a major new project upon which we have embarked.
Timico has grown from very small beginnings with four of us in a room at the stables at Langford Hall to a company with around 140 (ish) staff scattered around two main locations – Newark and Fareham, the home of NewNet.
Having bought 4 ISPs en route we find that the processes that sustained us as a small company, ie blood sweat and tears, are no longer good enough to take us to the next level. That isn’t to say we don’t have processes but if we are to double or treble in size over the next few years we need to have the infrastructure to support the growth.
Having been through a couple of business change processes in the past I find this one reassuringly familiar and probably far more exciting, having a personal stake in the outcome and also having seen before the effect of such a project on a business.
Hugh, I am very pleased to say, is one of the more competent guest guitarists we have had in. He gave us a very recognizable rendition of Hotel California. Note the perfect Bm chord (4 strings only).
I note that Timico has launched Fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) under the “Fibre Broadband” brand. Pricing starts at £39 a month. More details here. Next up will be Annexe M followed by FTTP.
FTTC rollout plan here.
Enquiries to [email protected]
Next up in the guest stitched up to play the guitar in front of a totally uncritical audience is Jason Dackins of GenBand. Up until a few months ago I had never heard of Genband. Now they are about to become one of my most important strategic partners as they acquire the Nortel carrier division, CVAS.
GenBand is being financed by One Equity Partners (JP Morgan) and is putting together what I believe will be a major force in the carrier VoIP market. Other assets in the stable include the Session Border Controller NexTone.
I was happy to entertain them and little did they know that they would be entertaining us. Jason is playing Yviva Espana (I think).
Louise Lancaster is a communications lawyer specialising in interconnect, regulation and public affairs. Having qualified as a solicitor in 1994, Louise held a variety of legal, regulatory and public policy roles in the telecoms industry before forming Ayres End Consulting in 2003. She now provides commercial, strategic and compliance advice to communications providers and trade associations. Her website is at http://www.ayres-end.com/.
It is widely accepted that the routing of calls to ported numbers in the UK is based on an antiquated process. Calls to ported numbers are required to route via the original Range Holder, and then onward to the current service provider (rather than being directly routed to the current SP). To achieve this, the Range Holder and the new service provider must engage in drawn out negotiations to agree conveyance charges and routing plans. These typically take six months to a year, but can take longer.
If I wish to change my service provider I will not want the move to be delayed by an inability to port my number. But
The difficulty of implementing current copyright legislation has been highlighted during this election campaign. In the first place both Labour and Conservatives appeared to use a copyrighted image in their campaign without permission – reported in the Telegraph.
Secondly BPI spokesman Adam Liversage was allegedly caught advising his wife via twitter on how to infinge someone’s copyrighted images.
Thirdly today twitter is chirruping away like crazy about how the French Hadopi organisation is having to rebrand because its logo uses copyrighted font. The Hadopi Law, if you are not familiar with the name is the French three strikes equivalent of the Digital Economy Act.
I’m not an expert on copyright but it seems to me that if the organisations and individuals mentioned above find it hard to not break the rules then what hope everyone else.
We could do with a repository to collect similar stories to build up a body of knowledge in respect of this.
Ofcom held a DEAct definitions meeting with ISPs yesterday afternoon. Although I couldn’t make this one I have discussed the progress made with some of the attendees.
My view is that Ofcom has been given a task, the generation of the draft Digital Economy Act Code of Practice, that is impossible to fulfil to everyone’s satisfaction in the three weeks that the regulator has left to complete it.
The meeting did not nail the major issues in terms of definition of who is and isn’t an ISP or Subscriber. Some of the definitions are highly complex and subject to different interpretations. The natural order of these things, believe it or not, is to brush the problem areas under the carpet and assume that this will be ok.
However in this case using the “carpet technique” potentially leaves huge holes in the legislation that will make it completely ineffective.
For example nobody believes that the intention of the Act is to kill off the WiFi hotspot market. Is a WiFi hostpot operator a subscriber or a Communications Provider? The latter potentially as it is selling/providing services to custmers. It is impossible in a many cases to be able to identify the subscriber on these hotspots so infringement notices go to who?
So whilst it isn’t Parliament’s intention to kill off WiFi hotspots if they don’t do so then these connections will become defacto standard targets for those wanting to continue to download copyrighted material.
Marry in haste and repent at leisure (or words to that effect).
Also good luck to the people at Ofcom because they are, in my experience, by and large intelligent and able folk. We only have to wait 3 weeks to see what they come up with.
I went to the Secure Computing Awards evening on Tuesday in London, coinciding with the infosec show. The comedian was good. The company was good. Apart from the almost unbearable heat of the the venue what I really noticed was the scam that is the awards system.
This is how it works. There must have been 24 award categories with 4 or 5 companies shortlisted for most! The vast majority of these companies will have taken a table so that they could be there to collect their Award. The vast majority of them of course did not win anything. A table for ten will have been at least £1k each (not to mention the travel and accommodation costs). So whilst awards are free to attend there is a hidden cost.
Of course the winners get a gold badge and bragging rights which is why we all still do it. Fortunately for me the timing was good as I was going to be staying in London anyway. My thanks to Omar Aguirre and his team at Optenet for their hospitality.
On Tuesday in London I chaired a technical workshop focussing on High Definition Voice. The event, run by the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (ITSPA), was generously sponsored by Cisco and Broadsoft and who also provided some working demos together with ITSPA member YeaLink.
Around 40 or so people from the industry held a very informative discussion. Clearly the vendor community is getting there with support for HD voice. The service provider world has yet to catch up really and in particular the connections to the PSTN are not by and large there yet.
I went along to the Digital Economy Act appeals meeting at Ofcom today. I did so partly out of concern that smaller ISPs were not being given a voice at this important stage of the post DEAct game.
The Ofcom Boardroom (R11.01) was hardly big enough for the 35 or so people there. Organisations represented included ISPA, Timico, Which, Consumer Focus, Ofcom, AAISP, DCMS, Alliance Against IP Theft, UK Music (Feargal), BPI, BT, Mobile Broadband Group, Sky, Premier League, Orange, HSBC, Post Office, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, T Mobile, Communications Consumer Panel, Open Rights Group, Nintendo.
The scope of the meeting was to discuss the Appeals Process for subscribers accused of unlawful copyright
Doing the rounds today is news of the removal of the RSLOG.net site. The italicised text is from their temporary holding page.
“RLSLOG.net was suspended by its German hosting company after removal request from law firm representing Universal Music, although we never hosted any files or copyrighted data on our server. Our site is strictly informative.
We found a new host and moved our site, but it wasn’t powerful enough to handle the site.
We should be back tomorrow on more powerful server.
Check our forums in the meantime: rlstalk.net.”
Now I’ve never been on RSLOG.net. A quick “Google” tells me this about it:
Links. RSS | IRC | Contact · New releases | posts · AuTo.RLSLOG.net · NewTorrents.info · NTi forums · Leecher’s Lair · PornLeecher · Rapidshare King …
It doesn’t look like my kind of site. I then did another quick Google on “NewTorrents.info” and it came up with about 1,950,000 results. That’s a lot of sites promoting free availability of copyrighted material (presumably).
The Government was naive in the extreme to think that filtering websites would go anyway towards solving the problem of unlawful copyring infringement. It is a complete waste of time, effort and money that also establishes a very dangerous precedent.
If this ludicrous law somehow sticks I’d like to see the Government take on Google, Bing (Microsoft) et al and trefor.net. We are all accessories to unlawful activity here.
A friend of mine works in Tech Support for BT. He gets a lot of consumer support calls for broadband. This brief transcript is of one of his calls recently:
Customer: I can’t get my wireless to work
Tech Support: Is your wireless light on the hub holding colour or not?
Customer:I don’t know it’s next door
Tech Support: Oh right could you go back home and check?
Customer: Oh no sorry its my neighbours hub and they are at work
Tech Support: Oh so do they know you use their internet connection?
Customer: No he told me his password once when he was drunk
Tech Support: Do you know that is illegal (long pause). Phone goes dead.
Lets hope that the “customer” hasn’t been using his neighbour’s broadband for unlawfully downloading copyrighted material. Who needs enemies eh?…
DEAct DEBill
This video is doing the rounds. It helps you understand why the web filtering aspect of the Digital Economy Act is a very bad thing.
Interesting to flit round the various online poll results for some of the newspapers, taken 15 minutes after the end of the debate:
Guardian Telegraph Times
Gordon Brown 28.5% 16% 15%
Nick Clegg 62.1% 38% 59.9%
David Cameron 9.4% 47% 25.1%
I think I will wait for an independent poll – the above are somewhat partisan.
Interesting to watch technology in action though. I followed the debate on line with SkyNews and with Twitter.
In a continuation of the farcial speed that the Digital Economy Bill was rushed through into Law I’m told that Ofcom has already conducted two meetings with the 5 largest ISPs to discuss the implementation of the Code of Practice with a third planned for next Wednesday.
I’m also told that Ofcom has also met with 9 Music Industry Rights Holders and 5 from the movie making industry. Perhaps Ofcom could elaborate on this? If this is the case it seems hugely disproportionate in terms of representation. Hugely unfair in fact and feels very familiar with the way the Law was rushed through in the first place.
Despite what seems on the face of it to be a substantial consultation with Rights Holders no attempt appears to have been made to involve any small ISPs, the ISP Association, ISPA, or the London Internet Exchange, LINX. In fact the majority of the organisations that stand to lose out under the Digital Economy Act.
A threshold is likely to be applied in respect of which ISPs must comply with the DEA. This however has not been set yet and without it seems reasonable that all ISPs likely to be affected by it get a chance to participate in the discussion.
Being a reasonable minded person I am able to look at it from Ofcom’s perspective and observe that they have very little time to put together a Code of Practice around a hugely complex and controversial subject. You might say Ofcom has been stitched up just as the ISPs have been. However in this case it just isn’t good enough. I think everyone concerned here should complain to Ofcom in the morning.
The Ofcom Switchboard number is 0300 123 3000 or 020 7981 3000. Ask for Ed Richards, Chief Executive.
Follow on note – check out these posts from Andrew Cormack, Chief Regulatory Adviser, JANET . He was at one of the meetings.
I am always happy to hoover up any market research data up for grabs and at yesterday’s ISP Forum BT analyst John Kiernan presented a summary of a study that BT had conducted into the ICT buying habits of 255 small and medium sized businesses.
The following factors were ranked in order of importance:
- price is the major factor – no surprise here
- SMBs then wanted to be able to buy services as part of a bundled package
- the ICT product or service that they bought needed to last/be future proof but SMBs are prepared to try something new
- SMBs need strong tech and after sales support
- being local is not a major consideration – only 22% of those questioned felt this was important
Most SMBs look to the internet and their own existing suppliers to keep up to date with products and services. They have little interest in buying as a result of sales calls.
The last couple of years have been tough for UK SMBs with GDP falling for 6 x quarters in a row. According to JK growth was slow or non existent for most SMBs in 2009 and only slightly better for larger business.
A few other sound bites that were interesting:
Only 60% of SMBs have a website.
Only 14% see competitive advantage from ICT – smaller biz recognises it best
Finally what keeps SMBs awake at night? Finding new customers, leaving the recession behind growing their business, profit and cashflow. I can’t see these factors being specific to SMBs however.
I’ve got the slides if anyone is interested – I’m sure that BT would be happy for me to let you have them.
PS that’s the 20 minute talk distilled into a 20 second read 🙂
ISPs have been asked again this year to cooperate with takedown requests by the Qualifications & Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), which is concerned about the risk of unlawful publication of test questions on the internet.
The QCDA wants ISPA Members to provide them with alternative contact information which would be used to notify an unlawful publication of test materials and to request an emergency take down during the exam period for National Curriculum Tests, which begins on 10th May.
As the father of a son taking his A Levels and daughter taking O Levels (I still can’t get around to calling them GCSEs sorry) I am very supportive of this and will be providing the QCDA with the contact details they need.
Good luck to Tom and Hannah. I now know how my mum and dad felt – it is far more nerve racking having your kids go through the exams than doing it yourself (I’m sure that the memory plays tricks with the passage of time 🙂 ).
A Digital Britain session at today’s BT ISP Forum at the BT Tower saw a vocal opposition to Broadband Enabling Technology (BET) as a prospective technology to meet the Government promise of a 2Mbps Universal Service Commitment by 2012. Bit of a mouthful that.
Firm pricing is not yet available, but we are potentially looking at an installation cost of £850 for a single line with 1Mbps capability, £1,050 for two lines with up to 2Mbps. Moreover, although the minimum demand per exchange has not yet been firmed up, it is likely to be 15 subscribers.
There was absolutely zero interest in this product from the 60 or so (guess) ISPs in the room. It is seen as too expensive, to the point where it is not dissimilar in price, if you need 15 users in an exchange to sign up, to the
Richard Baxter of Neos Networks bravely took up the challenge of playing the NetOps guitar when visiting the Timico office last week. Watched by colleague Gary Waterman he entertained the Tech Support teams with a virtuoso performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, or at least I think it was 🙂
This was such a successful event that I’m thinking of creating a new guest guitar spot on trefor.net. Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t mean that all suppliers have to entertain the team in the same way in order to get the business. But it might help…
Anyone else wanting to appear in front of a particularly uncritical audience should get in touch. Next time we will have the audio recording facilities lined up and post it on YouTube.
I’m off at the crack of dawn to London tomorrow for BT’s regular ISP Forum. These are great gigs, fair play to BT. Organised by BT Wholesale the Fora are opportunities for BT to communicate with their Communications Provider customers.
Although we are guests of BT they don’t always get it their own way – there is often a lively and critical debate from the floor. The information exchange is useful but the opportunity to network is even more useful – having most of the main UK ISPs there in ine spot. All ISPs buy from BT in one shape or form – LLU operators included.
Fortunately all I have to do tomorrow is to catch the train. Several friends and acquaintances have been tweeting and posting lamentable tales of flight unavailabilities for eComm, #140 NYC and FiberFete, all going on in the USA this week. At least they can follow it all online these days though man cannot live by internet alone, even though it pays the bills 🙂
The last month has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride for broadband users, ISPs and anyone interested in basic liberties in the UK.
On Friday 19th March The Digital Economy Bill passed from the House of Lords to the Commons. The three readings in the Lords took most of the three months since Christmas. The Commons only spent a few days “deliberating” the Bill. The General Election and “wash-up” process meant that the Bill was effectively nodded through by the Labour and Conservatives.
This is the only time I have ever watched parliament online. I don’t know how many people were viewing the
Check this Ofcom announcement. It basically covers their terms of reference for the Copyright Infringement piece of the Digital Economy Act (was Bill – feels kinda final).
There is going to be a lot written on this between now and the end of the year. There are no surprises at this stage though the statement does confirm that the process has to take no more than 8 months including 3 months for the Code of Practice to be approved by the European Commission.
The draft CoP also has to be in place no later than May. There is an option for stakeholders to jointly propose a draft within this timeframe but I can’t see it happening. I may be wrong.