Category: Net

connectivity and networking posts – both fixed and mobile, fast and slow

Categories
Business engineering

IT Housekeeping Over The Christmas Break

If you happen to be working over the Christmas Holiday period, as am I, it is a fairly quiet time. Not many phones ringing. It might be stating the blatantly obvious but there are a few housekeeping type jobs you can get on with.

  1. Tidy up your directory structures – all the rubbish that has been accumulating on your desktop – bin it or file it. You might even want to change your PC’s wallpaper 🙂 .
  2. Following on from that, if you haven’t got one get your backup strategy sorted out and do some backing up.
  3. Get your firmware upgrades done – any Microsoft security patches, if they aren’t done automatically & rolling firmware upgrades on your Cisco routers.
  4. Finish off all the biscuits and chocolates left around the office from before Christmas.
  5. Renew your gym membership.

The last point is optional and the one before that inevitable, I know. Also I wouldn’t bother with any New Year Resolutions. They have never worked for me.

Categories
Business internet security

Ed Balls Starts UKCCIS Rolling

The first UKCCIS Executive Board meeting took place in December chaired by Ed Balls, DCSF Secretary of State and Alan Campbell, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for crime reduction at the Home Office. The fact that this Board is being chaired by such high profile politicians is an indication of the seriousness with which the Government is taking the safety of children when using the internet.

Set up to implement the recommendations of the Byron Report, the committee has initially prioritised a number of areas of concern and is in the process of setting up working groups to move the activity on.

The first four working groups will focus on the following areas: 

Industry Standards (title subject to change)
Aim: To develop clearer common standards (in the form of codes of practice or other guidelines) that are adopted, monitored and consistent with EU partners and are widely recognised as good practice. This should cover the areas identified in the Byron report but, over time, should also look at new issues that arise as technology and user habits move on.

Better Education
Aim: To ensure that children, families and the childrens workforce have access to consistent and comprehensive support and information that improves their knowledge, skills and understanding of internet safety.

Public Information and Awareness
Aim: To develop a comprehensive and joined-up public awareness campaign on internet safety for children and families based on consistent messages that form the basis of the one stop shop for all aspects of internet safety.

Video Games
Aim: To ensure that children and young people have a safer gaming experience and parents are aware of the issues and support mechanisms around gaming.

With the continually changing nature of the internet this is always going to be a work in process but at least a start is being made.

Categories
Business engineering

Royal Treatement For Netops Team

The Timico Network Operations Team is up at HQ today in preparation for the big Christmas Party. We apply the same principles for them as we do for the Royal Family. They aren’t all allowed to come up in the same car (apart from the fact that it would have been a tight squeeze).

We did it in shifts which meant that the NOC was manned at all times. I do believe that these guys deserve special treatment in any case. We are talking serious commitment to the job. They are online every waking hour of the day and one of them, I’m told, religiously develops code on his laptop in bed on a Sunday morning. It does take a special type of nutcase to want to do this but the job satisfaction is very high and I certainly appreciate the efforts they put in. If they didn’t know that before they do now.

My thanks also go out to Chris Nicholls who is manfully on call tonight and will miss the show.

Categories
Business internet

Network Cables Cut

We have been notified by o ne of our network partners that there has been a major break in an undersea cable that carries internet and telephony traffic to Asia and the Middle East. I understand the break is off Egypt.

The nature of the internet is that the traffic that would have used this link will be rerouted elsewhere but it may result in some web pages being slow to download.

If I get any more news in I’ll update the post.

Categories
Business engineering

Redundancies at Cable & Wireless / Thus

Sources inside Cable & Wireless/Thus say the company is wielding the axe before Christmas. It is a sad truth that many large companies do this at Christmas to clear the decks for their new financial year in April.

In actual fact this must have been only a matter of time following C&W’s recent acquisition of Thus. I don’t know how many individuals are affected but I daresay it will be in the press sooner rather than later. There is certainly no mention of it yet in the FT or The Register.

BT also seems to be making substantial cuts in headcount. These days being made redundant is not necessarily a reflection on the abilities of an individual. Large organisations often close down complete divisions.

It is said that during the dot com bubble burst in the early 2000s around a million people left the telecoms industry. I don’t believe we are in for the same wholesale exit this time round but only time will tell.

Categories
Business engineering

Redundancies at Cable & Wireless / Thus

Sources inside Cable & Wireless/Thus say the company is wielding the axe before Christmas. It is a sad truth that many large companies do this at Christmas to clear the decks for their new financial year in April.

In actual fact this must have been only a matter of time following C&W’s recent acquisition of Thus. I don’t know how many individuals are affected but I daresay it will be in the press sooner rather than later. There is certainly no mention of it yet in the FT or The Register.

BT also seems to be making substantial cuts in headcount. These days being made redundant is not necessarily a reflection on the abilities of an individual. Large organisations often close down complete divisions.

It is said that during the dot com bubble burst in the early 2000s around a million people left the telecoms industry. I don’t believe we are in for the same wholesale exit this time round but only time will tell.

Categories
Business internet

Animoto

Animoto is a company that takes your digital photos and turns them into a slideshow whilst adding music as a backdrop. Their platform employs an algorithm that analyses the content/colours in a photo and applies what it deems to be a suitable soundtrack. 

The product looks pretty cool. I understand that their principal claim to fame is that when Animoto was launched on Facebook the demand was such that their use of virtual machines went from around 30 to 4,000 within 48 hours.

If true, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, this illustrates the power of Web2.0. Most Facebook applications of course disappear into obscurity but this type of success story is what keeps people developing.

It’s also what makes me keep playing golf. One good shot…

 

Categories
Business internet

Movie rights

We live in interesting times. UK Film and TV producers today called for the Government to take action to tackle potential online copyright infringement.

 

I fully support rights holders’ right to enforce their intellectual property rights. In fact this has been the subject of discussion in the industry since the publication of the Gowers’ Review in December 2006.

 

The ISP Association, of which I am a council member,  has previously stated its preference for an industry-led system based on the agreement of providers from across the Internet industry and stands ready to facilitate the involvement of a greater number of ISPs in discussions. This remains the ISPA’s view despite what appears to be an attempt to make government provide additional legislation in this area.

 

In other words ISPA is saying don’t go making unnecessary regulations. You might think that this is a good cause to regulate but in fact there are many areas where regulation is being considered and if we are not careful we will end up being regulated into a straight-jacket and the internet will lose the ability to be the incredible environment that it is now.

 

I fully believe that the ISP industry’s efforts in advocating a positive and proactive cooperation between the Internet and rights holder industries is the correct one. In fact the UK Government noted in its July consultation document that enforcement is one tool and that consumer education and the availability of legal remedies are also essential factors in combating online copyright infringement.

 

The Internet provides tremendous opportunities to make more music and video available in legal and efficient ways. Music, film and software industry rights holders should continue to embrace the Internet and the opportunities it offers to disseminate their materials efficiently, legally and profitably.

 

You can read the statement online here.

 

Categories
Business internet security

Internet Explorer Security Flaw

In the news today is a very high profile security flaw in Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer. Hackers have been hijacking websites and inserting code that enables them to steal username and password information of persons browsing using IE.

Microsoft made the situation public at the end of last week by which time they had calculated that 0.2% of internet users would have been exposed to a website that had been the subject of this hacking. 

Apparently other browers are not affected at this time so users of Safari, Firefox, Opera et al should be safe at this time. This isn’t to say that web users should never use IE. Microsoft is working on a fix and most software of this type is likely to be subject to different vulnerabilities at different times.

A browser is a very personal thing. Different people like different browsers. Because it what I have always used IE that is typically what I stick with. However the Microsoft browser is known amongst tecchies as being imperfect and serious geeks won’t touch it with a bargepole. That isn’t to say it is no good. You just have to understand how the minds of most engineers work.

There are in fact times when I have to resort to other browsers to make a certain web functions work. For example when I am writing posts for this blog if I need to upload photos then as often as not I can’t do it using IE and have to resort to an alternative.

 

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
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
End User internet

Time spent online

I’m not a sad person, I like to believe, but I do seem to spend an awful lot of my time on the PC. I don’t play computer games. Typically I work, though the type of work that I do in the evening is different to what I do durng the day in the office. I like my job.

Tonight I have spent reading market research briefs and checking out some fixed mobile solutions on the internet. I also note that Facebook is trying to buy Twitter. I use Twitter to update my facebook status via sms. In checking out my facebook homepage I note that 12 out of 108 of my friends are online too.

I’m not a maniacal collecter of friends. Ten percent, if extrapolated across the whole population, is a huge number of people online. My son Tom has 381 friends and he claims to know them all in person. Without prying this would suggest that around 40 of them were online at any time. I’d like to bet that the number in his generation Y case is a lot higher.

I’m also watching Manchester United play against Villareal on the TV. Of the 6 people in our house five have a PC. The youngest is 8 and he is the lone unfortunate without one. On the arm of the chair next to me is my Nokia E Series mobile phone which also has email. The phone also has wifi and I use it to browse the internet when my laptop is switched off.

My electricity bill is huge. I am glad to say that they don’t allow mobile phones at Lincoln Golf Club.

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
End User internet

Loreal IT Manager Sings At The Millenium Stadium

On Friday night the IT Manager of Loreal’s cosmetics factory in Wales played to the biggest audience of her life. She belongs to a choir that sang before the game at the Wales versus Canada rugby match at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff.

It isn’t often someone gets to do something that is so magical that it is one of those life changing experiences. Her choir sang two songs at each of the four corners of the ground and then lined up behind the teams in the centre to sing the National Anthems.

If you have ever been to the Millenium Stadium for an International rugby match you will know what a fantastic experience the singing of the anthem is. They say it is worth a 6 points head start to Wales. In this case, lined up behind the Welsh team and singing along with 62,000 voices in the crowd, it was an utterly priceless and incredibly emotional experience.

I am proud to tell the world that that IT manager is my sister Sue Davies who also plays first violin for the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra.

PS I realise that the above post has very tenuous links to IT and Communications. That’s just editorial privilege I guess. In mitigation I should tell you I got her the domain name suedavies.net. Why not get your own personal domain? Click here to check if it available 🙂

PPS Wales won of course and didn’t need a head start.

Categories
End User internet spam

Another Spam Good News Story

The Washington Post has reported that USA colo provider McColo has had it’s internet connectivity cut off by its ISPs because it had been playing host for some time to Spammers. It’s very much worth reading the article.

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 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
Engineer internet

Ubuntu – The Intrepid Ibex

Ubuntu, for those of you who don’t class yourselves as anoraks, is a community developed, Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need – a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more. The Ubuntu website’s own words.

Basically a free alternative to Microsoft. Now because I am not actually an anorak (my own words – you may chose to disagree 🙂 ) I am not a huge Linux fan. We do use Linux all the time in running the Timico network. ISPs are basically built on it. However my stance has always been that business needs solid software that costs money to develop.

I could be persuaded otherwise. Ubuntu version 8.10, known as the “Intrepid Ibex” has hit the Timico street and is getting rave reviews from the support teams. Ubuntu 8.10 is designed to make it easier to access the internet from anywhere.

This was demonstrated to be by someone taking a new USB Modem out of a box and plugging it in. The Operating system recognised it straight away and the internet access was up and running in seconds.

This compares very favourably with my own experience with a variety of USB devices that needed drivers loading and non-straightforward set-up processes. I can think of printers as an immediate example.

As it happens Timico specialises in helping customers with setting up applications and devices on PCs and laptops. Ubuntu does, however, represent the shape of things to come although it is still a long way from usurping Microsoft. It’s also a great name!

PS there is a prize for anyone who can tell me what Ubuntu stands for – Timico employees may not apply. Leave the answer as a comment.

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
End User internet

Berkeley University Lecture Downloads

The University of California, Berkeley too the step a couple of years ago to make some of its lectures available for download via podcast. A year or so ago it started making these lectures available as video on YouTube.

Yesterday I was told that the number of lecture downloads has now exceeded 1 million. Pretty amazing.