Category: Business

Business

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broadband Business internet piracy

Digital Economy Bill is a Lesson in Politics

It’s out, after the first reading in the Lords yesterday!  The Digital Britain bill that is, now known as the Digital Economy Bill.

After months of debate, lobbying and speculation the proposed detail has been published and at first sight it appears to have bits missing. Of interest to ISPs is that there is a lot of content pertaining to Copyright of online digital content – ie illegal P2P filesharing but nothing regarding the Universal Service Obligation for broadband.

There is clearly some political manouvering going on here.  The 50pence tax is already supposedly going to be in the Finance Bill.  Word is that the Government doesn’t think that the USO specifically needs to be in any legislation as it will either be covered by the Finance Bill or the money is already there from the Digital Surplus – the fund set aside to help with Digital TV switchover.

By doing this the Government is trying to increase the likelihood of some of  the Digital Britain Review becoming law by splitting it up into smaller bits. It is also quite possibly using this to brush under the table that they are going to struggle with the implementation of an USO.  They just can’t get their brains round the problem. It is very unfortunate for the millions of Digitally Excluded unfortunates around the UK in suburbs and rural communities alike.  I might be wrong about this but I don’t think so.

Also of interest are proposed powers that will allow the Goverment to take over management of Domain Name Registry Nominet if it doesn’t like how it is being run. Nominet has seen some board room action this year with a couple of Directors making a lot of noise over governance.   The issue is fairly compicated but I believe that one of the issues was the amount of surplus cash being generated by the not for profit organisation.

Details of the Bill can be found here.  Separate post on copyright comes next.

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broadband Business internet

How to Win Votes at a General Election: Promise Next Gen Broadband!

Spanish Minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade Miguel Sebastian has just announced that 1Mbps broadband will be a legal right in Spain by January 1st 2011. Apparently 4 million people in Spain cannot get 1Mbps today.

What’s more they are putting up 400M Euros to help with this.  Whether this is enough is in my mind neither here nor there. Also I don’t know how solid this is – the UK Government also made bold statements with Digital Britain that have become more confused and wishy washy as more people get involved.

Here in the UK we now await tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech to tell us exactly what we will be in for. It already seems that the 50 pence broadband tax is not going to be part of it or at least this is deferred to a Finance Bill that is unlikely to see the light of the Royal Seal.

Years ago when I worked for Mitel there was a story that a politician running for election as Prime Minister of Ontario ran on a manifesto of getting rid of speed cameras.  Apparently he won with a large majority.

Here’s a tip for those running in the next UK General Election. Promise Next Gen broadband for all by 2012. It a guaranteed election winner and the cost is also neither here nor there.

PS the link is to a Spanish online service – I used Google Translate to read it – it is brilliant.

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Business internet Regs

Government stuff and the cost to ISPs

I try and keep the content of this blog varied. One of the nice things about my job is that I am able to do this.

One of the recurring themes though relates to regulation.  As a board member of the ISP Association I get a lot of visibility of things going on here.  In fact a huge amount of the value that ISPA provides to the industry lies in the fact that the it does so much work in this area – thus removing the need for all ISPs to be expert. 

It is undeniable however that the regulatory pressure on ISPs is increasing and at some point this is going to start having a serious effect.  This week alone the subjects being discussed in Parliament include the Intercept Modernisation Programme (Big Brother is watching you), Music Piracy, website filtering under the Terrorism Act and Safety Online. I am afraid that in the medium to long term the cost of all this regulation (or proposed regulation) is going to mean that only larger ISPs can cope with it. 

The industry is already struggling with the network upgrade costs associated with increased use of the internet (iPlayer,SkyPlayer, interactive gaming etc etc).  A small ISP with perhaps only two or three thousand customers – and there are many of these – can’t afford the capital expense associated with this. Timico has already made three acquisitions of such ISPs.

Not everybody is fortunate to have the same private equity support and ambition as Timico and I predict that within the next five years the number of UK ISPs will shrink significantly, perhaps to fewer than 50 (from maybe 300 today). I see this as a real business opportunity because in actual fact the market is going to grow. It is just that the barrier to entry will get higher.

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Business piracy

Peer 2 Peer Piracy – good lord no!

Had a meeting with BIS this morning as the final opportunity to influence the forthcoming Digital Britain bill. Nothing was said really that hasn’t already been published somewhere. We will know the precise content in a couple of weeks.

There is an awful lot of detail that will have to be worked out and with only around 5 months or so until the notional date of the General Election there is, apart from the increasingly vociferous opposition from the ISP industry,  a concern that the time available is not enough to properly consider the bill.

Notwithstanding all that ISPs will have to start working very hard to make sure that all MPs fully understand the issues being debated/proposed here.

This includes Members of the House of Lords which of course introduces a whole new set of issues. What will their Lordships think of a Bill with a major tenet being Peer to Peer Piracy? It is just not the done thing old chap. The Upper House works on a strong basis of trust 🙂 . Seriously though the bill will have to go through the Lords and their Lordships are likely to be closely examining the privacy / consumer rights aspects of the legislation

Notwithstanding that bit of fun I thought it worth adding a few educational points to the debate at this late stage.

Firstly serious P2P illegal downloaders will just move to on to private encrypted networks/Newsgroups that hide your underlying network address and so make it hard to track you down. These do charge which might make it unattractive for Music Pirates wanting freebies. These sites are also unfortunately apparently often attract child pornographers and other lowlife.

If you don’t know anything about them check out the links below:

wikipedia NewsRazor UseNeXT

There is also a continued stream of information suggesting that those that do indulge in Music Piracy also spend more money than those that don’t. Check out the latest market research here.

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Business voip

Job vacancy for VoIP network operations engineer – please retweet

I’m looking for a VoIP network engineer to join our expanding VoIP team.  The job entails assisting with the running of our Nortel A2E SIP platform, the development of new services, interoperability testing with vendors and other service providers, 3rd line support and, I’m sure, a plethora of other interesting and challenging tasks as we think of them.

VoIP is an important string to the communications bow these days. Timico is a VoIP operator rather than a White Label service provider reselling soneone else’s proposition. We probably don’t lead with VoIP in a large percentage of deals but the ability to provide VoIP services is becoming an important part of winning corporate Wide Area Network business.

For example it is fairly typical for a company to outsource the management of a few hundred sites’ connectivity to us.  They will then take advantage of the fact that  they now have an MPLS network and run VoIP between sites and to all their homeworkers.

If you want to join a company that is going placesdrop me a line with your CV or take a look at the Timico website.

PS it is always a risk posting a job ad on the blog – I get inundated with calls and emails from recruitment organisations! It is the cheapest way to advertise though.  Please retweet 🙂

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Business Cloud google

Some Clouds are Better than Others

I’ve been thinking about clouds. It’s a very trendy thing to do at the moment. It’s something you notice about trade shows. A trade show will evolve its name in line with what the organisers think will bring in the punters.

For example in the UK “VoIP for Business” became “VoIP for Business incorporating Unified Communications” which then became “Unified Communications”. I fully expect Unified Communications to morph into “Unified Communications with cloudy bits”. It will probably be the same underlying list of exhibitors.

Anyway the popularity of the cloud buzzword is of course because the world is moving into the cloud. The cloud is still for most an ethereal place that is difficult to get the grey matter around. It appears on the advertising copy of so many vendors how do you decide how to take advantage of it. This is the case whether you are an end user, a business or a potential provider of cloud services.

Consumers will use a few branded services such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc. Business however needs something different, even it is just a better service level. So at the moment I think the business world is manoeuvring to understand how the bits of the fluffy jigsaw fit together.

They will end up dealing with specialist cloud integrators. This will provide the differentiation and some clouds will definitely stand out as being better than others.

As it stands you need to be able to keep your feet on the ground and head just above the clouds so that you can look around and see where these better clouds are starting to form 🙂

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Business social networking

#140conf London discount offer

Anyone interested in going to this conf (see previous post) can get a discount via this link.

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broadband Business internet

Talk with TalkTalk Technology Chairman Neil McArthur

TalkTalk fibre Broadband Technology

Very enjoyable chat with Neil McArthur, Chairman of Talk Talk Technology Group. Neil was one of the original team at Opal before they were bought by Carphone Warehouse and is the architect of the CPW Next Gen network.

I was very impressed with their broadband technology network, a dual 400Gig ring that comes with all the MPLS bells and whistles. I have to say that having seen it they have the potential to be a real force to be reckoned with.

They have come from a long way behind the incumbent and have made great strides from the days of the launch of the CPW LLU play, six months or so before it was actually ready.

They could potentially, given a level playing field with BT Openreach, become a real competitor to BT Wholesale. My position up until now has been that the only game in town is going to be BT with potentially a broadband technology competitor made up of Virgin and ANO.

It makes me think that the complete spin off of BT Openreach from the parent Group is essential to ensure this level playing field. The regulator could concentrate on ensuring fair play the local loop and let the battle happen at the wholesale network level, in the business market at least. It does make me suspicious of BT’s efforts to keep Openreach in house.

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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.

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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
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
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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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Categories
Business voip

SNOM out of the box plug and play

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Business social networking

#eComm Amsterdam

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

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

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

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Business internet

Geocities closes today

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

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

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

Categories
Business piracy

TalkTalk pr campaign against Mandelson Digital Britain stance

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

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

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

Categories
Business internet security

Government confirms it won’t mandate IWF list

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Business internet security

Government confirms it won't mandate IWF list

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Business internet piracy

ISPs meet with Lord Mandelson to discuss P2P

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

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

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

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

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Archived Business

Deloitte Technology Fast 50 top ten spot for Timico

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

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

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

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

Categories
Archived Business

Timico conference wrap up

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Business internet

Timico conference twitter feed live from Stapleford Park

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

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

Categories
Business security

House of Lords inquiry into cyber security

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Business internet net neutrality ofcom

UK All Party Comms Group publishes inquiry results

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

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

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

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

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

The report can be viewed in its entirety here.

Categories
Business internet ofcom

Martha Lane Fox, Queen of the Digitally Excluded

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Business ofcom Regs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
broadband Business internet voip

Digital Britain FTTC Broadband – The Truth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

insect screenprint off BBC iPlayer over FTTC

Categories
Business internet ofcom Regs

Digital Britain high on the agenda at Parliament and Internet Conference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Business internet Regs

Mandatory IWF support law dropped

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

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

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

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

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Business internet piracy

Stephen Timms Digital Britain Minister

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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