Category: media

internetty media stuff

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Apps Business media video

Google+ Hangout live stream broadcasts – wowsers

You will have been staying with your auntie on another planet if you are a regular visitor to this blog and not have noticed that I’m having a book launch on May8th (see here for details). I’ve been spamming my social media channels about it (sorry to those followers that remain 🙂 ) and I’m expecting a packed house.

Recognising that most people in the world won’t be able to come as all flights and hotels will be full (etc) together with the fact that the Morning Star will only take 100 people at a push I thought I’d stream the gig live online.

Up until recently I had intended to do this using babuser.com, that being the only streaming facility I’ve used. However I was pointed in the direction of Google+ Hangout Live Stream broadcasts and boy oh boy is that a cool service.

Your Google+ account is linked to your YouTube account and at the click of a button your hangout is streamed live both in your Google+ stream and YouTube. What’s more you can embed the stream in your own website and Google records the broadcast for reuse afterwards. You can thereafter chose to make it public or private.

The beauty of this is the level of engagement you can achieve on the various social media sites – comments/discussions and shares can abound. I looked at it for my book launch but clearly this is something that businesses can use that takes a Webex style presentation session to a more powerful and public level.

You can watch my efforts in the video embedded below. It is only me playing about and the fact that I had two laptops open side by side means lots of echoey feedback. The lighting isn’t great either so the audio and the quality of the video is something you need to work on.

The nice thing about the Google setup is that you can invite several friends to participate using their phones and at anytime select their video feed to be the main one in the broadcast. You have the basic setup for a professional studio or outside broadcast, albeit a simple one. The only shame is that the Android app doesn’t have the buttons for setting up the broadcast from a handset. You seem to need to use the desktop version.

I’m going to need a volunteer or two for next Wednesday and will be testing this on site over the Bank Holiday weekend. Lemme know if you want to hook up in a hangout. I’m [email protected]. Ciao baby.

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End User media

@BBCRadioLincs tech predictions for 2013 – @mrwilliam talks with Trefor Davies

Trefor DaviesFor the those of you who didn’t surface until after lunchtime on New Year’s day here are some links to my chat with William Wright on BBC Radio Lincolnshire yesterday.

In the first we talk about NGA/superfast broadband and 4G.

The second is about the snoopers charter and what’s happening in mobiles in 2013.

They are both around 15 minutes long but I’m told well worth listening to the whole lot 🙂

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End User media

Predictions for 2013 & BBC Radio Lincolnshire appearance on New Year’s Day

Trefor DaviesI stopped doing predictions for the new year some time ago. Wet your finger and hold it up in the air. That said I always predict that Wales will win the rugby 6 Nations. Why would I bet on any other outcome?

This year though I am going to be live on BBC Radio Lincolnshire on New Year’s Day talking about technology that is going to impact us in 2013. Some of it is going to be Lincolnshire specific – where, for example, is the superfast broadband rollout in the county? when will we be getting 4G?

Most of it is going to be a general chat about techy stuff – Apple, Android, et al.

Tune if you fancy. They have asked me to arrive at 11am so I guess I’ll be on at around 11.15 ish. Link is here.

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Business media virtualisation

The last post!? Hell no:)

Trefor DaviesIt’s Friday, the last day of term. Maybe the last day ever as we await our fate and for the Mayan prediction of apocalypse to kick in. I sit here contemplating this fate, reflecting on a life that has passed by at blurred speeds governed by a constant of Einsteinian proportions.

I have a cup of tea on my desk, a comfort as I gaze at the horizon wondering whether the clouds I see are the innocent tip of a stormier gathering. My twitter stream is filled with observations, concerns and contemptuous noises of disaster.

But hey, it is indeed as I said, the last day of term and Christmas holidays have finally arrived yay. I turn my thoughts to more joyous considerations. Another year gone, and although it has been a tough one, another year of growth.

There has been plenty to talk about business-wise. At the start of the year we opened a new data centre to much fanfare together with a wonderful new Network Operations Centre facility. We spent a lot of money on a core network upgrade and now have a spanking new Juniper core that is going to allow us to provide a multitude of new services in the future.

Virtualisation has played a big part in our year. 75% of our infrastructure is now virtualised using VMWare and we now have our first Private Cloud customers. We also introduced our eVault hosted/centralised server backup solution and have been very busy both training existing staff and adding new experts to the team – I’m talking more VCP5 CCNP and MCITP for those that understand acronyms. On the network front we also extended our carrier relationships with links into Talk Talk and O2 Wholesale.

Awards and prizes have come our way. Winners of Best Unified Comms Solutions at the ITSPA Awards and Winner of Excellence in Innovation at the Nottinghamshire Best Business Awards. We also made it as  finalists in loads of awards including Business of the Year at the Nottinghamshire Best Business Awards.

On a customer industry front we hosted the COMIT (Construction Opportunities In Mobile IT) meeting in September. We have a lot of customers in the construction industry – it’s an area of the business that is building nicely:).

In February we acquired Redwood Telecommunications Limited who have not only added some great people to the team but a fantastic capability and knowledge in the burgeoning Unified Comms market.

Timico has been in the news a lot in 2013 being covered in at least ten articles in the mainstream press including the Telegraph, Guardian and the BBC. On a personal note I have also appeared a number of times on BBC Radio including The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4, on 5 Live Breakfast with Nicky Campbell and numerous local BBC radio stations. I also gave evidence to the Joint Select Committee for the Draft Communications Data Bill. The nature of this Bill is now being reconsidered following inputs from many stakeholders opposed to its original form.

Readership of trefor.net has also risen this year. In the January world record attempt it received 9,449 visitors leaving 5,455 comments in 24 hours. The blog has nearly 50,000 visitors that have returned more than once during the year and around 20,000 unique regular readers.

All in all it’s been a good year and I’m sure that everyone is now looking forward to a well earned break. Have a great Christmas and I look forward to engaging with you in 2013:)

Tref

PS I was thinking of signing off with “Goodbye and thanks for all the fish”  but there is still no sign of the apocalypse. Must have made a mistake in their calcs somewhere!

C ya…

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End User media

BBC Radio Lincolnshire New Year’s Day – tech trends for 2013

Trefor DaviesHi folks. Thought you might like to know I’m appearing on BBC Radio Lincolnshire just after 11am on New Year’s Day1. Chatting with William Wright about what to look out for technology wise in 2013 (bigger faster better ?!!).

Worth getting up for I’d say, ahem. Will be on air for 30 minutes or so. whaddaya think I should be talking about?

Assuming you have surfaced by then and eagerly want to tune in the link will be here.

1 for the avoidance of doubt that’s the first of January. For our American friends that’s 1/1/2013 as opposed to 1/1/2013 – note day/month reversal.

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broadband Business media

I could have leant upon that coppice gate – Thomas Hardy and homeworking

broadband for working from home avoids long commute

early morning sun in December in LincolnshireBroadband for working from home avoids long commute.

Took me an hour and ten minutes to get in to work this morning. That’s twice as long as usual – broken down tanker on the A46. Walking in to the office I felt a bit like the Reggie Perrin of old – “20 minutes late, frozen points at Clapham Junction”.

I went on a very long diversion through the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire countryside. The stark winter beauty reminded me of the Thomas Hardy poem “The Darkling Thush” :

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.

It’s one of my all time favourites.  Anyway driving in on this extended albeit pleasant detour made me think about the whole subject of commuting and broadband for working from home. The number of times I have the radio on driving home on a Friday night to hear the UK wide traffic reports – quite often its gridlock on all the major routes around the country.

Makes you wonder how much time and money we really waste travelling to work. Granted there are some jobs where the person absolutely needs to be in the office but equally there are many where a little bit of mix and match (home versus office) would be perfectly acceptable. Phone system vendors often try to model the financial benefits of homeworking as part of their pitch to customers. I don’t think you really need to work out the payback in terms of pounds shillings and pence. It’s bloomin’ obvious.

Quite a number of our customers see this. We have a portal that some of them use to manage estates of hundreds, if not thousands of home worker broadband connections. The portal is integrated with the customer’s HR system and when an employee moves house and change their address the portal automatically informs us to migrate their broadband to another location. For some large organisations this can save a considerable workload on the IT department – managing what is really a tedious and time consuming process that really benefits from automation. Bung in a VoIP account and hey presto, you have a home office just like in the office.

To conclude, my other favourite Thomas Hardy work is “Under The Greenwood Tree”. I don’t get on with most of his novels, they are depressing, but this one  is a nice novel and signals the end of an era in a similar way to the Darkling Thrush. It is also very seasonal and I am now most definitely feeling Christmassy.

That’s all folks…

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Engineer media

The art of producing music soundtracks for online games

I have a friend called Ervin Nagy who is a Hungarian concert pianist. I also have 3 sons who all like playing online games. Ervin has branched out into composing music for online games. It’s interesting how trades that have been around for centuries are now being applied in the era or the world wide web.

Ervin comes from Budapest and has a story to tell about how he got into the business. This is a longer than usual blog post but I thought the story worth telling. You can scroll down quickly if you just want to hear the music development mp3s.

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End User media

@TomAndThat presents – conservation appeal on behalf of the liberal democrats & zane lowe interview

Because I have complete editorial control over this blog I can publish anything I like. I take responsibility for the content. On this occasion I am doing the proud dad thing and offer a couple of vids published by the Davies heir. Enjoy…

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broadband End User media

Why We Will All Need 1Gbps FTTP – 20/20 Vision – Conversations with Nat Morris

gigabit broadband conversation with Nat Morris

Nat Morris in conversation with Trefor Davies (pic taken by Umar Bajwa)

Gigabit broadband is the way forward.

Met with Nat Morris (Google him) last week. We discussed life, networks and Ultra High Definition TV. Ultra High Definition TV will dispel any doubts you ever had about why broadband networks need to get faster and faster. Gigabit broadband is the future.

Developed by Japanese national broadcaster NHK in conjunction with the BBC, Super Hi Vision has sixteen times as many pixels as HDTV. Frames have 7680 pixels across by 4320 pixels down – roughly the equivalent of a 32Mpixel photo.

It’s going to be a while before this becomes mainstream. There are only three cameras in the world capable of filming in this format (known as 8k) and the footage has to be shown on a 145-inch (3.7 metre) prototype display co-developed with Panasonic.

TV makers are currently focusing efforts on launching 4K enabled devices offering a quarter of the resolution. This is the format currently used by most digital cinema cameras. LG recently unveiled the biggest 4K television set to date  – an 84 inch screen costing more than $22,000 (I won’t be buying one). Manufacturers are likely to want to offer 8K screens by 2020 when NHK aims to begin its first experimental broadcasts in the standard.

Now this is all very well and good but what will it mean for us men in the street? Well the amount of digital bandwidth needed to stream 8k video is around 350Mbps. If we assume that households will want to have multiple streams so that people can watch Big Brother, Coronation Street, Eastenders and the footy simultaneously in different rooms whilst sharing the experience with their friends via Telepresence it isn’t difficult to imagine a world where several Gigabits per second is required to the home.

Much more info together with pics can be found at the links below. V interesting stuff that is not only going to drive broadband speeds but also memory sizes and processor power.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/researchanddevelopment/2012/08/the-olympics-in-super-hi-visio.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/07/super_hi_vision_ultra_hd.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19370582

Follow Nat at @natmorris .

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Engineer media olympics

Technological Olympic conversations and what’s so special about Finsbury Park?

We all had a great time watching the Olympics, be it physically going to the games, on the telly or online (or all three). I’m sure we all agree that the BBC did a great job. There were comments regarding the quality of the NBC coverage in the USA but a) I live in the UK so don’t care and b) NBC apparently had 9.9 million users visiting their website so they just may have been getting their dose of Olympics from that source.

In the long run up to the games I wrote a great deal about the technology and capacity being put in place for the Olympics. The BBC in particular had geared its iPlayer servers up to expect 1Terabit per second of streaming. In the end the service peaked at around 700Gbps. The BBCs answer to hitting its capacity ceiling would have been to reduce the bandwidth available per stream rather than stop new users accessing the service or suffering service degradation so this worked out well.

Interestingly the Beeb says that it’s Olympic peak number of viewers expressed as the number of streams was during the Tennis singles finals at 820,000 requests.  Bradley Wiggins’ time trial  was similar to that of the Jubilee weekend at 729,000 streams. The peak daily volume was 2.8PetaBytes! 33% of all streams were to mobile devices.

Virgin Media, who had provisioned a huge 240Gbps of additional internet access bandwidth only ended up using a third of it. Good news from the customer experience perspective and the additional bandwidth now in place will soon be used up so it wasn’t wasted effort. Virgin’s peak was during Usain Bolt’s 100m final win.

Virgin also had a great story to tell with its WiFi on the London Underground. With hotspots in 62 stations Virgin had started the Olympics fortnight with 277,000 users registering 275,000 email addresses so some people must use multiple devices (presumably unless I’ve got it wrong). By the end of the games the number of users had grown 166,000 to 443,000. The number of sessions peaked at 20.7M on August 13th, the day after the closing ceremony with Finsbury Park being the busiest station!! What’s so special about Finsbury Park? Virgin’s Underground WiFi traffic grew by 34% over the Olympics period.

Evidence suggests that network traffic generally peaked the day after the closing ceremony which we can only ascribe to people catching up on all the Eastenders episodes they missed whilst watching the Olympics (losers!).

BT reported similar peaks at similar times to Virgin though its most popular times were for different events which just might reflect a different customer demographic. Also on the BT network the Andy Murray doubles finals game had more traffic than his singles which is different to what the Beeb was saying. Both could be true as BTs customers weren’t necessarily watching the live stream online. They might have been watching the games on TV and using the internet to fill in with other content.

BT also said that the saw a specific increase during Mr Bean’s stint at the Opening ceremony – folks sharing their excitement online or watching the video a second time – it was fantastic, fair play.

The London Internet Exchange traffic peaked at just over 1.2Tbps. Compared with its pre-games level of 1.1Tbps this might not sound like a big rise but we should remember that traffic normally drops in August because I go on holiday1 and taking this into account the actual growth is probably more like 170Gbps. Note LINX traffic in August 2011 was 800Gbps. This is not a like for like comparison as LINX now has more members using its network.

Btw if anyone can explain why Finsbury Park I’m sure all readers of this blog would be grateful.

1 only joking but you know what I mean – I tend not to use the internet when on holiday but I hammered it this time.

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Cloud Engineer media

Videos to delight and entertain

Couple of videos here for your delectation and delight. We had a Dell film crew come and visit a few weeks ago. They were very professional, all three of them, and had flown over from gay Paree the night before. Their one mistake was flying into Manchester where they stayed the night and then took a 2 1/2 hour taxi ride to Newark the next day. Next time they come they said they will try East Midlands airport – less than an hour away. Very sensible I’d say.

Anyway here are the vids:

http://www.dellinnovation.com/en/timico-trefor-davies-2/

http://www.dellinnovation.com/en/timico-trefor-davies-3/

There were three of them. I don’t know what happened to the first. I must have said something.

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End User media

I read the news today oh boy – a day in the life

I read the news today oh boy - photo taken whilst filming in my conservatoryIt’s been another busy day in the internet game. It’s a modern day great game really, full of intrigue, suspicion and plot. Cat and mouse, combatants fighting it out for world domination etc etc you know what I mean.

In the days of the actual great game it would take a long time, weeks maybe for news to filter back from the frontier. These days it is mostly virtual and we hear about it in real time, or mostly so. The battle field is also virtual though people can still get hurt.

I spent much of the day talking about the modern great game, had I but realised. This is

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End User media

The editor’s decision is final goonpigs Tom Davies on the @scott_mills show #BBC #Radio1 @TomAndThat

Seeing as it’s Friday afternoon and I’ve had a hard day’s filming (which for the first time ever included makeup btw) and it’s my blog so I can write what I like I thought I’d share this link with you. It’s my son Tom who is at Warwick University1  appearing on the Scott Mills Show on Radio 1. Apparently goonpigs is a bit of a catchphrase of Scott Mills – I’ll leave the rest for you to listen to. It won’t take long. Have a good weekend and lets hope Wales win the grand slam eh?

1 Doing History and Politics – I know I know but I couldn’t persuade him to do sciences. You can bookmark his own website here

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Business media

Experience preferred but not essential – the art of movie making

the Dell film crew gathers round to start shooting at the Timico data centre in NewarkJust had yet another film crew in. You know what it’s like. photo of me looking serious (and eloquent) taken by Dell film crewEarly start,  breakfast provided by the outside catering company. Shoot a few scenes followed  by bacon sandwich. Bit more then 3 course sit down lunch – it’s hungry work this location based filming1.

This one was from Dell. They had flown into Manchester from Paris and took a 2 1/2 hour taxi ride from the airport. Should have flown into

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Cloud End User media social networking

The evolution of TV – Sky and Zeebox

I note that Sky has taken a 10% stake in Zeebox, a service that integrates TV watching with social media presence. This is the future. In fact this, to my wife’s annoyance is also the here and now.

How often do you see the twitter stream fill up with comments about a TV programme that is on at the time? It is usually stuff like Xfactor or The Apprentice, neither of which I can stomach. Yesterday it was the Manchester City v Manchester United FA Cup tie.

This is a pretty astute investment by Sky who scrapped their monthly Sky Magazine in print format last autumn despite it being profitable and one of the highest circulation monthly mags in the UK. Zeebox will add to Sky’s already powerful interactive online presence with Sky+,  an interactive planner on iPhone/iPad app and  SkyGO their app to watch TV on the move.

My wife may not like it but it is also the way forward in every aspect of life. She already shops online. It won’t be long before she is coordinating shopping trips using Twitter, Facebook or some other as yet unheard of facility. We have to embrace the new technology and the new way of living.

The size of the Sky investment has not been disclosed but my bet is it will be great for both parties and shows that there is still plenty of opportunity for the canny entrepreneur to make things happen even in this economic climate.

More TV related stuff:

Sony 4K Ultra HD TV

TV detector vans – the truth

Boring TV & better things to do.

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broadband Business internet media video

Netflix UK Launch Planned for 9th January, 2012 – Another Injection of Broadband Internet Growth

2012 is expected to be a big year for growth in broadband Internet use in the UK. We have the Olympics, para Olympics, the Queens Diamond Jubilee, Wimbledon and the West Indies, Aussies and South Africa over on cricket tour (if I was them I’d be avoiding this country next summer but hey…). Oh and let’s not forget the European football championships from 8th June til 1st July. England qualified I believe?! 🙂

There is more sport but by far the biggest Internet traffic news item for 2012 is that Netflix is coming to the UK. For the uninitiated, Netflix is a movie screening service in the USA that accounts for something like a quarter of all Internet traffic in that country.

At LINX75 today the launch was a particular subject of discussion

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Apps Engineer media olympics

2012 – Summer of Sports on Steroids – BBC estimates more than 2x Football World Cup traffic levels

growth in BBC iPlayer coverage of Olympics2012 or as the BBC puts it “Summer of Sports on Steroids” 1 is going to be another milestone year for the ISP industry with the UK playing host to the Olympic games and another record anticipated for internet traffic levels. On Wednesday at the ISPA conference we had Jane Weedon, Controller of Business Development at the BBC talking about their preparations for the games.

The coverage in 2012 is going to be comprehensive with pretty much 100% of the sport available to watch as it happens – up to 27 simultaneous channels at the peak towards the end of the second week. This will have grown from perhaps 15-20% of coverage at the Sydney games 35% in Athens and 65% in Beijing (click on the header photo for graphic illustration).

The peak traffic during the South Africa Football World Cup hit 450Gbps with everyone going online to watch the EnglandiPlayer traffic levels during Football World Cup v Slovenia match. For perspective this year so far iPlayer traffic has peaked atiplayer traffic levels in 2011 220Gbps.

So look out ISPs.

The forecasting of traffic levels for these games is in reality going to be very difficult. On the higher demand side the games are on home territory and will appeal to a wider demographic than the Football World Cup. To counter this device proliferation may lead to the streaming being distributed over a wider range of media – 3G mobiles and tablets, public WiFi zones, offices providing big TV screens and the fact that many folk may well take the two weeks of the games off on holiday.

Medals success for Team GB is also going to be an influencing factor.

The Beeb has gone into significant detail in estimating demand on a session by session basis and has come up with a forecast of  10 x the traffic levels for London as they saw in Beijing. That’s 1Terabits a second 2  at the peak in streams averaging 1Mbps.

That’s enough Olympic bits for the moment but there is so much interest in this subject looking ahead I’m going  to be looking out for more Olympic stories to share.

1 Steroids is perhaps an unfortunate word to use in this context

2  Nobody is going to hold them to this forecast but it certainly gives us all an indication of what to expect

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Engineer media

The thirst for information – Colonel Gadaffi and semantic metadata

illustration of semantic metadata in use by BBC with articles regarding Colonel GadaffiSomeone told me in the office that “they had killed Gadaffi”. Unusual to not hear it first on Twitter but I wasn’t looking, I’m too busy.

Back at my desk I looked at the Telegraph website. Then I went to the Guardian, Sky News and as if I hadn’t seen enough of the same stuff, the BBC news website. We thirst for information these days.

The BBC website, like all of them, had the item as its main news.  Colonel Gadaffi “killed”: Latest updates. Below this were links to “Gadaffi’s Quixotic and brutal rule, The Muammar Gadaffi story and His Life in pictures.

It was only then that I realised I was looking at “semantic metadata” in action.

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Business internet media

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Business Cloud media

Flashback to Christmas Eve 2010, Skype outage and Talk Talk traffic surge forecast on Xmas Day

BBC Radio 5 Live interview on Christmas Eve 2010 talking about the expected surge of internet usage on Christmas Day when people started using their new gadgets.  Also discussed the Skype outage.

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End User media mobile connectivity

#Glastonbury – people at the back were watching online on mobiles #glasto

I’m told that some people at Glastonbury found it easier to watch the event streaming video to their mobile phones even though they were at the gig itself.

If you were stood at the back apparently the picture on your mobile phone was bigger than the live view of the stage. I remember once going to a Bruce Springsteen gig in Roundhay Park in Leeds (some time ago now I should add). If I held up my little finger horizontally at arms length Bruce was about half the height of the fingernail.

I’d be surprised if there was much bandwidth available to stream to a mobile at Glastonbury though I suppose with the

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Business internet media

UK is 21.3% of Global internet traffic during England v Slovenia #worldcup match says Akamai

Global content delivery network Akamai is showing its UK traffic today as 21.3% of the global internet traffic.  Whilst it isn’t true to extrapolate this to say that the UK represents 21.3% of all global internet traffic today it is a reasonable indicator as to the UK share of overall usage.

This is certainly being seen at Timico where our streaming traffic is up 357% which is even higher than yesterday’s reported budget watching traffic.  This was itself a record 309% increase. Twitter is struggling this afternoon and the live football stream from the BBC on my 100Mbps connection is not great so – now you know why.

Photo below is a screenshot showing global network hotspots.

Global Akamai network hotspot map during the world cup match between England and Slovenia
Global Akamai network hotspot map during the world cup match between England and Slovenia
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Business internet media

#Budget eclipses #worldcup #wimbledon #cricket for online video streaming

Wimbledon doesn’t appear to be starting online until 14.40hrs. The budget speech is online, the England v Australia 1 day cricket match is online, there is no World Cup football until 15.00hrs. So what eh?

So video streaming has hit another high. It is up 309% on the norm. The World Cup has seen a 171% increase so many more people are interested in the budget than in the world cup. 

All the recent major political events have seen large spikes in internet traffic online. This goes back to Obama’s inauguration, the last budget speech under the Labour government and the day after Polling Day in the recent general election, which was in itself a local maximum, to use my A Level maths.

Fortunately for ISPs the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cronies are a fairly static lot.  In other words the only bit of moving is the occasional waving of an order paper (or whatever they call them in Parliament – “The Dandy” probably). This means that the bandwidth usage hasn’t gone up in proportion to the number of users online in the way that it does for the sport. Movement means change which means lots of bandwidth usage when it comes to video streaming.

Tomorrow is the biggie.  The last England Group match and one that they have to win.  It’s all there: passion, excitement, intrigue, dissent, highs, lows, vuvuzelas,  tears and tattoos but no romance – the WAGS have stayed away.

Read all about it on trefor.net.  Order, order! No hang on the budget speech has finished. Everyone has started doing some work again.

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Apps Engineer internet media

Sport streaming on the internet this afternoon #worldcup #wimbledon

At work I have a 100Mbps of uncontended bandwidth to play with.  It does me. I thought I’d watch some sport this afternoon, in between stuff. This was partly because I drew Chile in the office sweepstake – they are playing Switzerland as I write – and partly because I’m taking one of my lads to Wimbledon on Thursday – centre court – keep an eye out for me in the crowd.

Both sports are being covered on BBC  iPlayer this afternoon. I can of course watch both at the same time – and that’s despite being a bloke (or is it because of it?) –

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End User internet media piracy Regs

Music Industry piling on the punches in final round of DEB big fight #digitalbritain

In the press today is a report that says “The growth of illegal file-sharing could cost European countries 1.2m jobs and 240bn euros (£215bn) by 2015”.

“the UK’s creative industries experienced losses of 1.4bn euros in 2008 because of piracy.”

Really, so where did that 1.4bn go? It certainly didn’t go into bank accounts (otherwise the ratios would be really healthy), it hasn’t been spent in the shops (or they wouldn’t be suffering) and its not been invested in anything (because that amount of investment would have been noticed?).

The basic maths works something like this:

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broadband Engineer internet media piracy Regs video

Cisco Drives Nail in Music Industry Coffin with CRS-3?

Most people won’t have given much thought as to how their email gets from A to B or how that video arrives from YouTube.  It just comes down the broadband connection which is plugged into the router next to the phone (or somewhere like that). Right?

Well today the worlds biggest router manufacturer, Cisco, announced their latest and greatest product.  It isn’t something that you will want to plug into your phone line though because it would take up most of the living room and there wouldn’t be enough room left for the sofa.

It would also be a bit of an overkill because this router, the CRS-3, is powerful enough to handle up to 322 Terabits1 per second, which  is roughly a hundred million times faster than the average UK broadband connection speed!

Continue reading “Cisco Drives Nail in Music Industry Coffin with CRS-3?”
Categories
Business media

MP3 of the BBC interview re VONGA, fibre rates and the Digital Dales Colloquium

Trefor_Davies-Timico-BBC_Radio_Lincolnshire-1_March_09

Click on the above to hear the interview with William Wright on the BBC Lincolnshire Tech Spot on Monday March 1st.  Talk covers VONGA and the Digital Dales Colloquium including the problem of fibre rateable values.

Alternatively James Linton of Vegastream has uploaded it to YouTube which streams and might be easier for you.

Categories
End User media

have you paid your TV license?

I pay mine on direct debit

click here

Just a bit of fun between Christmas and New Year. Thanks to Ian P. Christian for the link.

Categories
Business internet media video

BBC piles the pressure on ISPs with internet TV

Channel 4 and Talk Talk have joined Project  Canvas, the BBC’s set top box standardisation effort that already includes the BBC, ITV, BT, Five.

The end goal is to connect the internet to your TV and allow programmes to be streamed over your broadband connection.  The BBC press announcement doesn’t go into schedules but it does talk about offering services that include:

Linear TV (eg Freeview, Freesat) with HD and storage (pause, rewind, record)
Video-on-demand services (eg BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 40D)
Other internet-based content or services (eg Flickr, Amazon, NHS Direct)

My only point in regurgitating this BBC news is that the time is not so very far away when consumers will have to start factoring the cost of all this downloading.  What is perceived to be a free TV programme is effectively going to become Pay As You Go and the cost of an hour’s watching will be something known to all. I can see kids being given an allocation by their parents just in the same way that they have pre paid mobile phones.

As a footnote my kids have been trying to persuade me to buy them a new 42″ flatscreen LCD TV for the “den”.  I’ve beaten off the assault by saying that we don’t actually have a source of HD video other than their own laptops and PCs.  Even this line of defence looks as if it will only be shortlived.

More TV related stuff:

Sony 4K Ultra HD TV

TV detector vans – the truth

Boring TV & better things to do.

Categories
Business media

BBC interview regarding rural broadband

Click twice on the word tref below to hear an interview with Rod Whiting on the BBC Radio Lincolnshire breakfast show on the subject of rural broadband and the Digital Divide.  Rod broadcast his breakfast show from different towns around the county last week and was surprised to find out how difficult it was to find internet connectivity to upload material back to base in Lincoln.

tref

PS sorry about the intro bits – adds a bit of colour anyway:-)