Category: Business

Business

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Archived Business

It’s a Partnership Approach

Businesses cannot succeed with an “us and them” attitude. We live in such a complex environment that in order to be successful you have to have friends who are pulling your way.

At Timico we work with through both a direct sales orgainsations and through business partners. At the end of the year we have a bit of a celebration. This year our best selling partners were treated to a conference and lunch at Timico Towers.

The conference was informative and entertaining and the lunch was top notch. The photo below shows some of the individuals involved.

Categories
Archived Business

It's a Partnership Approach

Businesses cannot succeed with an “us and them” attitude. We live in such a complex environment that in order to be successful you have to have friends who are pulling your way.

At Timico we work with through both a direct sales orgainsations and through business partners. At the end of the year we have a bit of a celebration. This year our best selling partners were treated to a conference and lunch at Timico Towers.

The conference was informative and entertaining and the lunch was top notch. The photo below shows some of the individuals involved.

Categories
Business internet

IWF Wikipedia Update

The IWF has reversed its position on the wikipedia article reported yesterday. Its statement can be found here. It’s best you read the statement than I replicate it here.

Categories
broadband Business

Broadband Technology: Bonded ADSL Solutions — Shareband

broadband churn Broadband Technology Pipe

Over the last couple of years we have been testing Shareband, a broadband technology solution for bonding ADSL lines together. In theory, if you use 4 ADSLs you can get 4 times the speed of a single connection.

Of course this type of broadband solution has been available for years using Cisco equipment and multi-link technology. In practice, however, the installation costs have been expensive because it relies on high end 1800 and 2800 series Cisco equipment.

Where Shareband is different is that it uses low cost routers. It is also possible to use ADSL connections from multiple broadband technology providers, which offers a resilience story that isn’t necessarily available with the traditional multilink solution.

Whilst in practice it is unlikely that installations get the full theoretical aggregate speed performance, the results are still pretty good. Certainly much better than a single ADSL. This is important for users that are a long way from their local exchange, as Shareband may be their only solution for an adequate broadband technology service.

The Shareband service is now considered to be a production service having been tested at around 40 customers. It has been rolled out by Timico subsidiary KeConnect.

Categories
Business internet

IWF Blocking Access To Wikipedia Article

There’s been a lot in the news over the weekend regarding IWF blocking access to an article  Wikipedia. I recently covered the IWF in this blog. Now it has hit the heights of the news this morning on BBC Radio 4.

The IWF provides blacklists to ISPs of www links that they consider to have child pornography content and this is what it has done in this case with Wikipedia (link to Wikipedia article here).

Consumer ISPs block these links by using proxy servers as filters. However in doing so they are channelling all traffic to Wikipedia through a small number of IP addresses. This in turn causes problems for users of Wikipedia because the website occasionally blocks the ip addresses of abusive users to prevent them from editing articles. Because all users are seen as coming from the same IP addresses Wikipedia can’t distinguish between good and bad and this has the knock on effect of blocking many genuine editors.  Around 25% of all English language articles are said to be edited by UK based users.

According to Alexa.com Wikipedia ranks as world’s the 8th most visited website. The IWF statement on the issue can be found here. There isn’t an easy answer to this problem which is very much part of an ongoing debate regarding censorship on the internet.

 

Categories
Business internet Regs

Data Protection

The European Court of Human Rights today ruled that South Yorkshire Police should not have retained the DNA of two men who had been convicted of no offence. Check the BBC report here.

This is an interesting one because in March 09 the Data Retention Act comes into play whereby ISPs will be required to store email habits of their customers. For “DNA” in this respect read “Data”… Is the European Court of Human rights going to rule on the Data Retention Act downstream?

I have a meeting with the Home Office at Timico in January so it will be interesting to report back on this issue.

Categories
broadband Business ofcom

Ofcom Broadband Code of Practice

Ofcom’s new code of practice in respect of how consumer ISPs sell broadband comes into force tomorrow. It has been brought about because up to 25% of consumers consider that they don’t get the speeds they expect from a broadband connection.

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding how ISPs sell broadband, specifically in the consumer space as they have been desperately trying to outdo each other with tales of superior performance, unlimited downloads, bigger, faster, better etc.

Whilst the code does not apply to business services it is a good code. Timico has always operated in a transparent way in respect to selling ADSL. For example our 21CN ADSL2+ service in theory will provide download speeds of up to 24Mbps. In reality users are unlikely to get this. I will be publishing the results of our trials after Christmas showing what speeds the trialists have been getting.

The ISPA is issuing a press release today supporting this Ofcom code of practice.

Categories
Business internet

Project Kangaroo Kyboshed

The Competition Commission has put the sword to Project Kangaroo. This was a proposed joint venture by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 for a single online vehicle that would provide each channel’s TV content over the internet. Content was going to be paid for by advertising.

Basically the Commission believes that the venture would reduce competition in the online video market in the uk. The JV may be allowed if it shares its content with other providers and appears to have until 24th December to appeal, presumably informing the Commission of how it would do this.

Personally I can’t understand why people watch the TV anyway. Notwithstanding that, this does point towards a change in business models, in particular for the BBC. It isn’t difficult to envisage a scenario where more people will eventually watch the TV online than they do on their traditional box in the living room. At this point, because of the paid for by advertising element, there would surely have to be a question mark over the future of the TV license fee.

Internet users are already beginning to be charged more for the increased usage that video online is stimulating. So effectively they are already paying twice though obviously these usage revenues don’t go to the BBC.

Categories
Business fun stuff

A day in the life

Life is rich. If yours isn’t you should seriously think about doing something about it. I was wondering what to write about today out of the many things that are going on. In the end I thought I’d just rattle off a list of things I was involved in during the day because I believe it illustrates the point of those opening three words.

Got in and made a cup of tea. Then spent time discussing a contract we are about to sign with BT. Checked up on progress of our 21CN trial orders. Sat with tech support discussing a Virtual Machine project we are looking at. Discussions with our new Business Development Director who starts in January (more on him in due course I’m sure). Meeting with Cisco to discuss marketing plans for the Cisco Small Business portfolio for 2009. Lunch with Cisco. Meeting with Nortel to discuss hosted VoIP propositions. Drop Nortel off at station. Arrange tech meeting to discuss SPAM strategy for 2009. Conference call with VoIP Operations Manager to discuss specific customer technical issue. Home to take kids to cubs. Catch up chat with CEO. Go to school prize giving evening (son Tom won prize for English  and yes of course I am proud of him). Chat with headmaster congratulating him on chosing son as prizewinner. Home. Kiss wife. Do emails and write blog post.

Tomorrow is another day, another blog post. Friday is a day off to take the kids to the Lincoln Christmas Market. Check it out here. They get hundreds of thousands of visitors each year (or so I’m told). We live slap bang in the middle of the action so it is difficult to ignore. One of the kids’ school shuts down for the duration because access to it is impossible. The parents run a cafe which raises around £10,000 each year for the school PTA funds. Thats one heck of a lot of teas and coffees at a pound each. 

Categories
broadband Business

Grown Up Networks

I’ve started the process of cancelling some of our smaller connections to the BT ADSL network. We have newer bigger better pipes on order (in the pipeline 🙂 ). This is on top of the resilient Gigabit hostlinks we have into the BT 21CN network.

This really does feel as if Timico is growing up. When we started, in 2004, we had a single 34Mbps connection. By the middle of next year we should have resilient 2,000Mbps capacity. That’s a big change. Big growth. By the end of 2009 and beyond we should be into the realms of 20,000+Mbps. That’s 2 x 10Gbps. I left it expressed as Mbps for effective comparison. Quite dramatic I think.

At the same time the size of project we are handling is getting bigger and bigger. Although the majority of network customers are small with perhaps 2 or 3 sites, networks with hundreds of connections are becoming much more common and this year we have started talking to customers about projects involving thousands of sites.

Thats when life starts to get really interesting.

Categories
Business internet

2008 Pre-Budget Report

Being a well read individual I took note of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s pre budget report this week. Some of it, in particular the bit about raising the tax rate of those earning over £150k, doesn’t apply to me (yet).

Some of it was however relevant to our industry. He endorsed the findings of the Caio Report on Next Generation Broadband Access. These findings of course said that Government should leave this investment to the free market. I can’t help but wonder when the free market will be able to spend the money. There again I don’t want my taxes raising to pay for it either.

The other relevant bit was that the Digital Britain Report is going to play a significant role in underpinning Britain’s future economic activity. I don’t think I have commented on this report before. Lord Stephen Carter, the UK’s first ever Minister for Communications Technology and Broadcasting (they just mix up the names in the title so that each new minister gets to be the first one!), is running the show. The aim is to gear the UK for leadership in the world digital economy. It’s a massive task spread across a huge range of disciplines but we have to wish him well with the job.

Categories
Business internet security

Internet Watch Foundation

The IWF is a not for profit organisation dedicated to minimising the availability of UK internet content that is

  • racially abusive or
  • criminally obscene or
  • contains images of child sexual abuse anywhere in the world.

Their website is somewhere people can go to report such content found on the internet. Since the beginning of the year their hotline has dealt with an average of 866 reports a week!

The number of commercial sites being reported has dropped slightly from 70% to 68% of all sites but it is still a high number. It is physically sickening to think that people like to make money out of this material and that people are willing to pay.

Unfortunately it is a constant battle because what tends to happen is that once a site has been closed down it just moves to a server in another country such as Russia where there is less scrutiny.

Interestingly in the UK in 2008 there have been few sites reported as being dedicated to racial hatred. However there were 77 reports referring to criminally obscene content, 51 or which were sites hosted on one server which has since been dealt with. These 51 sites I understand have just moved overseas.

Until the whole world has a consistent approach to the handling of this problem it is always going to be a problem.

Categories
broadband Business

21CN Broadband Testing Task

Just sitting in on a BT webinar on 21CN testing. According to BT they are spending £150m on testing 21CN broadband related devices and networks.

The scope is a lot bigger than I had thought before I sat in on the call. The ADSL related bits, which is my main interest, looks as if it will largely be unproblematic. However when you think about it there is a huge list of equipment out there that has been plugged into the BT network over decades. There is bound to be a problem somewhere.

Initial feedback is that some security related services might have a problem that needs attention. Also one very old PBX whose name escapes me (it’s that old).

A couple of PBXs would appear to have been successfully tested from manufacturers Aastra and Alcatel Lucent. Clearly there is a long way to go because most of the big guys are not in this list. BT does have a proactive programme to contact the top ten manufacturers.

I don’t have a specific list of manufacturers that are being contacted. However if you think that your’s might be from a small vendor who might not appear on the list let me know and I will happily effect the introduction with BT.

One might ask why anyone would buy a PBX from a vendor you have never heard of but hey…

Categories
Business fun stuff

The customer is king

Every now and again the business throws a bone at the Engineering team as a reward for being good boys. Yesterday it was my turn and I got to go to Gordon Ramsay’s Restaurant at Claridges Hotel in London.

Of course there is more to it than that. This was a lunch with some of our most important IP networking customers to say thank you for their business. Doing business isn’t just about selling a customer a product or service. It is about building long term mutually beneficial relationships and this is what I was doing at Claridges.

Meeting up for a convivial lunch provided the right setting to promote a constructive dialogue. It gave the customers the opportunity to provide Timico with feedback regarding how we are performing and to open up new potential avenues of business. I also like to make friends with our customers. So much of your life is spent at work that you have to enjoy it. The Timico attitude is not “us and them”. It is simply “us”.

It isn’t logistically or financially possible to take every customer to Claridges. However this doesn’t mean to say that we can’t treat all customers as kings in the service we provide them.

As a bonus Gordon himself turned up resplendent in his chef’s gear and a great time was had by all. And don’t worry. I know how much people enjoy reading about others having a good time so I will be sure to keep you updated if I do anything like this again 🙂 .

Categories
broadband Business

What Makes SMBs Churn Their Broadband Suppliers?

A recent survey by Ipsos MORI found that 31% of Small and Medium Sized businesses cited that the reason for churning their broadband suppliers was poor customer service. 15% of them said it was the cost of calling their ISP for support.

This represents a huge opportunity for companies like Timico whose whole raison d’etre is to provide good quality support for business. Before Timico (BT! – now that’s an interesting thought!) my business had a hosting account with a large name brand ISP. Their people were good enough but I would often be sat in a queue for half an hour trying to get through to them at 10 pence a minute which I hugely resented.

This is why our customer support teams have to answer the phone within three rings, and we measure it. It is also the reason that out of a staff count of around 130, 38 of them are technically qualified. The support teams do not use voicemail – they have to answer the phone.

That last statement might sound a little dictatorial but believe me it isn’t and none of the staff feel it is. Theirs is a work hard play hard envirnment where effort is rewarded, as it can be in a fast growing business. Right that’s enough of the broadcast 🙂

Categories
Business internet

21CN Line Speed Expectations

A busy time at the end of this week with ISPA Council meeting followed by lunch, a trip to the CRN Awards dinner (more food!) and today lunch with a supplier (aaargh!!). The Christmas run in seems to start earlier each year!

 

Timico is about to start its 21CN ADSL2+ trial in earnest. Initial line tests on the trialists suggest an average expected performance of around 8Mbps. Interestingly talking to others in the industry at the CRN Awards their experience, limited as it may be at what is still a relatively early stage of the 21CN rollout, the average speeds are turning out to be nearer 12Mbps.

 

This does suggest that BT is being very conservative in setting expectations of 21CN performance. I can’t really blame them. The technology is in theory capable of reaching 24Mbps but in practice very few people will actually get this speed.  

 

I will certainly report back on the real world performance as the data comes in.

Categories
Business voip

BT’s Policy Regarding Number Porting – Cease And Reprovide

When, as is increasingly the case, a customer wants to move his telephone number to a VoIP service the underlying analogue line is ceased. ie it stops working.

If that customer wants to use the (VoIP) number over his broadband connection then he has a problem because the broadband connection stops working because the line has been ceased. He has to wait for a new underlying number to be provided which ain’t a quick process. This is a very anticompetitive scenario because it makes it hard for an end user to reuse a number if it is their only line.

A year ago the industry asked BT to change their process so that the line could immediately have a new number to keep the broadband working. Nothing seems to have happened here so the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association is taking up the cause and will be lobbying BT.

I’ll keep readers posted here because this does seem to me to be an issue that is preventing a free market from working.

Categories
Business voip

BT's Policy Regarding Number Porting – Cease And Reprovide

When, as is increasingly the case, a customer wants to move his telephone number to a VoIP service the underlying analogue line is ceased. ie it stops working.

If that customer wants to use the (VoIP) number over his broadband connection then he has a problem because the broadband connection stops working because the line has been ceased. He has to wait for a new underlying number to be provided which ain’t a quick process. This is a very anticompetitive scenario because it makes it hard for an end user to reuse a number if it is their only line.

A year ago the industry asked BT to change their process so that the line could immediately have a new number to keep the broadband working. Nothing seems to have happened here so the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association is taking up the cause and will be lobbying BT.

I’ll keep readers posted here because this does seem to me to be an issue that is preventing a free market from working.

Categories
Business internet

Cisco SMB Marketing Day

I went to a Cisco Business Solutions Workshop today. It was aimed at the Small and Medium sized Business market and Cisco were expecting around 400 resellers to be in attendance. Considering the event was held at the Vauxhall Vehicle test track in Millbrook with test drives on offer I think the turnout was quite high.

Cisco certainly know their stuff when it comes to marketing. Much of the event was marketing oriented. The equipment vendor is going after the SMB market in a big way. 2009 is what they call a transition year where they will be getting their product mix right. In 2010 and 2011 they then expect a big push to gain market share.

You have to look at the market numbers to understand why they are doing this. The Cisco share in the Service Provider and Enterprise markets is quite high. However in the SMB space it is a different story

Business size              Global TAM            Cisco Share

<250 pers                   $15.9Bn                 <$300m

<100 pers                   $9.9Bn                   <$100m

The source is Cisco and although the numbers might be broad brush it is easy to see why the company sees the SMB market as a huge opportunity. Next year they are planning to spend $100m on marketing specific to this sector.

This market opportunity also has upsides with sales of additional services such as Webex and video conferencing thrown into the mix.

In fact it seems to me the biggest challenge for many in this industry is how to migrate to a services oriented business model. As a Communications Service Provider Timico is already doing it. However if you earn your living selling and installing hardware your mix is going to have to change.

The cost of hardware solutions is plummeting and it won’t be long before it is thrown in free everytime someone signs up for an installation and ongoing maintenance programme. We were told that the world GDP is in the region of £12Trillion and over the next 5 years 25% of this is going to be based on managed services (Cisco’s numbers not mine).

As the world enters an economic downturn it is worth noting that during past such periods SMBs have been the first to recover and start spending again. I certainly wouldn’t bet against Cisco succeeding in this market.

Categories
Business fun stuff

In the land of technology the well trained man is king

During the first seriously exciting 4 years of Timico’s being the biggest lesson I have learnt is the importance of training.

A big part of the value that Timico provides to its customers is the knowledge of its employees. Engineers are constantly going on technical courses. Indeed Timico runs its own courses for business partners wanting to climb a learning curve and manage their own installations for their customers.

One area where training is not as straightforward to apply is in the area of front line sales. There are no sales training courses that teach people how to sell the mix of technologies that Timico offers (mobile, fixed line, internet, VoIP, IT services, PBX etc etc etc in case you didn’t already know).

So we have to do it ourselves. This semester the salesforce has been participating in what we called the “Multi-Site Campaign”. Multi-site because Timico specialises in selling solutions to organisations with people spread over many locations.

As well as taking part in a competition to see who could sell the most multi-site business the sales teams have been getting involved in mentoring sessions with your truly and others. I am pleased to announce that the winner is Jo Smith. Jo gets a trip for two to New York to go Christmas shopping.

I guess the point, for any customers reading this post, is that this doesn’t mean that a Timico sales person is now going to be selling to them more aggressively and on more fronts. It means that you are going to waste less time talking about things that are not relevant to your business.

The time that you do spend with Timico, and I am grateful to you for that, is going to be more productive and I trust that the professionalism of our staff will make you feel that it is time well spent.

Timico CEO Chris Tombs congratulates Jo Smith upon winning the multi-site competition. In the land of technology the well trained woman is in fact queen.

Categories
Business internet ofcom voip

999 Call Traceability

Had a very interesting discussion with Chris Rowsell, Ofcom Project Director, who clarified what obligations the ISP community were likely to have regarding the traceability of calls to the Emergency Services.

Location information requirements for Internet Telephony Service Providers have been covered in a previous post. Ofcom, together with the emergency services establishment, and for obvious reasons, is trying to understand how real time information regarding the location of a caller might be provided.

The only information available that might help pinpoint a location is the IP address from which the call is being made. There are, however, many problems to be over come, and I’m sorry about the technical nature of some of these points for those who just read this blog for the occasional light entertainment. 

  • The IP address might be behind a NAT
  • There might be multiple Internet Service Providers involved
  • The call might be made from a wifi mesh network
  • Many ITSPs are not ISPs  and cannot easily relate IP addresses to locations.

It is physically possible to imaging the process by which this tracing could be done. Timico, for example, has records of where calls are made to and from. These are kept for billing purposes and contain IP address information. Timico can also link the address of a broadband customer to the IP address of that connection.

The act of hooking up both sets of data is far from being real time and  the cost of developing a system to do so would be huge and disproportional to the value. Certainly it would be unlikely to get past a cost benefit analysis. Interestingly the establishment values a human life at £1.4 million for the purposes of these CBAs.

CR accepted that there was currently no practical way of quickly linking the two sets of data. He did intimate that Ofcom would be initiating a project sometime next year to discuss a way ahead. I suspect that this will be a long and arduous process.

Categories
broadband Business internet

AT&T Trials Usage Based Charging and BT Hikes Bandwidth Costs

AT&T has announced a trial in the USA for usage based broadband charging for its customers in Reno, Nevada.  This follows on from a similar trial in June by Time Warner Cable and also a 250GB cap on usage placed by Comcast on its customers. The move towards metered charging is I believe inexorable. We are in for interesting times here in the UK. BT has just hiked it’s ADSL bandwidth costs to service providers. This will make ADSL more expensive in the UK. Whether this price rise gets passed on to end users remains to be seen. It certainly makes life more difficult for service providers who were already likely to move to usage based charging. Of course BT increasingly has more competition in the guise of companies installing their own kit in BT exchanges – what’s known as Local Loop Unbundling. This competition is largely in the consumer space with broadband sometimes being packaged as a “free” element of a deal that might include line rental, minutes and, in some cases, TV. The level of service that this “free” broadband brings is unlikely to cut the mustard with most businesses. So what does this mean?

  • In the first instance a quality broadband connection is likely to get more expensive. Most LLU players don’t have a wholesale offering that B2B service providers could resell.
  • Secondly broadband customers in rural areas are likely going to have to pay more for their connectivity because the LLU operators don’t provide broadband in these “uneconomic” areas. This will exacerbate the so called “digital divide”, already a hot topic in the light of the high anticipated cost of rolling out Next Generation Access to rural areas.

BT recently removed the installation costs associated with (some) new connections to their ADSL network. On the face of it this latest move looks like they have simply shifted these costs onto the line rental. The country would certainly benefit from more competition in the wholesale space.

Categories
broadband Business internet

AT&T Trials Usage-Based Charging and BT Hikes Bandwidth Costs

AT&T has announced a trial in the USA for usage based broadband charging for its customers in Reno, Nevada.  This follows on from a similar trial in June by Time Warner Cable and also a 250GB cap on usage placed by Comcast on its customers. The move towards metered charging is I believe inexorable.

We are in for interesting times here in the UK. BT has just hiked it’s ADSL bandwidth costs to service providers. This will make ADSL more expensive in the UK. Whether this price rise gets passed on to end users remains to be seen. It certainly makes life more difficult for service providers who were already likely to move to usage based charging.

Of course BT increasingly has more competition in the guise of companies installing their own kit in BT exchanges – what’s known as Local Loop Unbundling. This competition is largely in the consumer space with broadband sometimes being packaged as a “free” element of a deal that might include line rental, minutes and, in some cases, TV. The level of service that this “free” broadband brings is unlikely to cut the mustard with most businesses.

So what does this mean?

  • In the first instance a quality broadband connection is likely to get more expensive. Most LLU players don’t have a wholesale offering that B2B service providers could resell.
  • Secondly broadband customers in rural areas are likely going to have to pay more for their connectivity because the LLU operators don’t provide broadband in these “uneconomic” areas. This will exacerbate the so called “digital divide”, already a hot topic in the light of the high anticipated cost of rolling out Next Generation Access to rural areas.

BT recently removed the installation costs associated with (some) new connections to their ADSL network. On the face of it this latest move looks like they have simply shifted these costs onto the line rental. The country would certainly benefit from more competition in the wholesale space.

 

Categories
Business internet

ISP Conference Notes – Illegal P2P Music Downloads

As heralded I spoke at the Annual ISP Conference in London yesterday. An amazing mix of organisations were represented including ISPs, content providers, mobile operators, security companies, NGOs, charities, government departments and universities. I’m sure I’ll have missed out some group :-).

My session was with Fergal Sharkey, erstwhile lead singer of the Undertones but now CEO of UK Music and representative of the music industry in the UK. In a nutshell the ISP industry has not hitherto concerned itself with what is going on with illegal P2P music downloading, other than in some highly publicised and much criticised cases of throttling the ADSL connections of heavy users.

The mood is changing with both music industry and ISPs getting together to try and come up with a solution that suits both parties. This is the scoop:

  • It costs money for ISPs to police illegal downloads.
  • Legal music downloading removes some of the distribution costs that used to exist in the record industry
  • There must be a way of recompensing ISPs for their work in assisting the music industry.

This process began recently with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the largest six ISPs and UK Music. The “big six” represent a high proportion of UK broadband consumers. The concern amongst the other ISPs that actually represent the majority of the service providers, if not the largest subscriber base, is that the big six will opt for a solution that is good for them but not actually sensible for smaller organisations.

An example would be if they decided to implement technical approaches that suit larger organisations but may be impractical in smaller ones.

The upshot is that Timico was invited to participate in the debate along with the Internet Service Providers’ Association to represent the smaller stakeholders. More as it happens…

Categories
Business internet ofcom

ISPA Conference

Another busy week in prospect starting on Monday with the ISPA conference in the City of London. This is an annual event where the industry gets together to debate “commercial and regulatory issues of today and tomorrow”.

I’m on at 14.00 on a panel that discusses how ISPs can work in harmony with content providers. Other panelists are Feargal Sharkey of UK Music, Jeremy Olivier of Ofcom and Steve Purdham of We7, a music download business that was co-founded by Peter Gabriel.

This is a pretty hot topic at the moment, not only because of how piracy is hurting the music industry but also because of the pressure that legal download sources such as BBC iPlayer is placing on both ISP networks and margins.

Categories
Business internet

Storage Costs

There’s a great deal in the online media this morning regarding Facebook’s need to raise more cash. The site is apparently uploading between 2 and 3 Terrabytes of photos a day.

That’s roughly 3 million one MegaByte pictures. Users are also downloading the photos at a rate of 300,000 pictures a second!!

In order to host this growing online album Facebook is looking to buy 50,000 servers this coming year. It’s not just the cost of the servers. 50,000 of them will probably use up 1,250 or so racks and consume in the region of 2.5Megawatts of power.

That’s a big rent bill as well as the cost of power and cooling – currently retailing at 18 pence per KiloWattHour in London Docklands. All this has to be paid for by online advertising in what must at the moment be a declining market.

I’m not saying that Facebook is shaky. In fact in my view the application is a serious winner. This is though a warning to all IT managers out there about the rising cost of storage. I don’t think Moore’s Law is keeping up with rise in data.

It is also a warning to make sure that you are dealing with a partner that is on solid financial footing. If you are looking for offsite storage solutions, and most are these days, choose a partner that is not as vulnerable to the fluctuations in the stock market, has plenty of cash in the bank and low or no debt.

Categories
Business fun stuff

Credit Crunch

Categories
Business ofcom voip

USA FCC Forces Mobile VoIP Providers To Support 911 (ie 999)

In the USA the Government in the guise of the Federal Communications Commission has ordered VoIP providers who allow access through mobile devices to provide their customers with support for calling Emergency Services.

It is perfectly possible for providers to do this. What isn’t possible is the identification of caller location information. In the UK Ofcom has recognised this and specifically exempts users of mobile voip services from having to provide address details. The 999 system recognises a mobile VoIP number as such.

A mobile VoIP user doesn’t of course have to use a mobile handset for this to be the case. A laptop with a softphone is a more likely scenario with users travelling between different office locations.

VoIP providers in the USA are going to have a difficult time of it methinks. They don’t appear to have the same leeway as in the UK and the FCC isn’t telling them how to go about providing the location information.

Categories
Business internet security

Transposition of Directive 2006/24/EC

We do live in a marvellous world don’t we? If anyone was to ask you what the title of this post was all about you’d almost certainly give them a blank stare.

This is all about what is better known as “The Data Retention Act” which was stipulated by the EC some time ago. This Act has been implemented to assist in the fight against terrorism. Every Communications Provider has to keep logs of phone calls made and received.

I don’t mind this. We do it anyway otherwise we wouldn’t be able to bill our customers and I certainly will help fight the good fight if I can do so (safely).

The first phase was rolled out in 2007 for fixed and mobile telephony. The Internet community was given a further 18 months to implement the same measures for VoIP and emails. The VoIP service provider community is also OK with this for the same reasons given above.

When it comes to emails it is a slightly different story. ISPs have had no reason to keep records of emails sent and received. The service is flat rate (or free) and does not therefore require the information for billing purposes. So implementing the directive is likely to cost money for an ISP.

This Act is now in its consultation phase which is causing some consternation and confusion in the ISP industry. The Regulations state that costs associated with this ‘may’ be recoverable. No guarantees. A recent briefing by the Home Office also stated that because of these costs they were currently looking at a scenario whereby only the ‘big 6’ ISPs would have to keep the data and that smaller ISPs would only be asked to do so based on “intelligence led approach”. Ie you have to keep the information if they suspect one of your customers of being a terrorist.

The suggestion here is that if you are a small ISP you are more likely to have a terrorist as a customer than a big ISP. The baddies will know that they are less likely to be monitored.

This approach also presents other problems. The ISP having to do the monitoring is at a competitive disadvantage to the one not having to do so because of the additional overhead involved.

What’s more the technical logic is somewhat flawed in respect of email data retention and a savvy terrorist is  easily going to bypass the system. Web based email networks normally allow you to save a draft of an email for sending later. It just takes two terrorists to know the log on details of a google mail account. One writes the email and saves it as  draft. The second then logs in to the gmail account and reads the draft.

The Act is scheduled to become law on 15th March 2009 and it seems that there is a lot of work to be done before it can be sensibly implemented. Timico is playing a leading role here with its involvement in the ISP Association and you can be sure that readersof this blog will be updated on progress.

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Business internet

Web 2.0 In Action

I’ve mentioned my son’s radio show before. Wake Up To The Weekend with Tom Davies is a programme that goes out on SirenFM, Lincoln’s local community radio station.

Despite being a local radio station the internet makes it a global online entity. Listeners communicate with the show by calling in, sending emails, SMS text messages, MSN and Facebook.

Noone rings in. The listeners are mostly teenagers and young adults (I include myself in that category 🙂 ) so they probably don’t want to pay for the call. They do however send Instant Messages and post requests on the Facebook Group.

The shape of things to come…