When I was a kid my dad asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I of course said I wanted to be the CTO of a fast growing ISP with prospects Dad was somewhat confused with this and told me not to be a silly boy because the internet hadn’t been invented yet and I should learn to be a doctor or a judge or pursue some similarly respectable form of employment.

Some days it feels as if dad will end up having his own way and I will end up as a judge. In the news this morning is yet another report suggesting that ISPs should put together a code of practice in respect of taking down websites that do something we aren’t supposed to like.

There is a lot of this going on. If it isn’t the movie and music industry rightsholders wanting us to block sites promoting copyright infringement it’s Nominet in cahoots with the police trying to suspend domains allegedly supporting criminal activity.  Today its a Home Affairs Committee reporting on radicalisation suggesting that ISPs need a voluntary code of practice that supports the  taking down of websites containing violent extremist material.

Glancing through the report the committee did cover the issues surrounding radicalisation and the internet with reasonable thoroughness. For example it was recognised that there were existing legal mechanisms that allowed the take down of websites if they were breaking the law.

Now hands up if you think it is a good thing to kill people because they don’t have similar religious views as your own (leave a comment)? Okaay now hands up if you think this is a bad thing – “Like”, “tweet”  or “+1″ if this is you.

Now next question how many of you think it is a good thing for you to take decisions that have up until now been thought as the role of a high court judge – ie difficult ones that have serious implications if you get it wrong.

Because the whole world has moved or is moving onto the internet laymen (OED – a category of person often comprised almost exclusively of politicians) latch on to the idea of controlling that new world and stopping people accessing bits of it. In isolation some of these desires may not seen unreasonable. In reality when you take the whole picture into consideration the sum of these “not unreasonable” parts amounts to wholesale censorship.

If we are not careful the internet will turn into a police state. I’m not scaremongering here¹. There will be some roads waves you can’t walk surf because of fear of being seen by some authority somewhere to be associating with a website or concept even that displeases someone in authority.

Keep the internet open. Keep politicians away from the internet. We don’t need internet specific laws – we just need someone to make existing ones work. Layering codes of practice on codes of practice is not the way to do it.

¹ well I might be but I voice what should be a real concern to people

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Many of you will perhaps not have heard of the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association. It is one of hundreds of industry trade associations serving their stakeholders in the UK. ITSPA was formed about 6 years ago at the “dawn of the hosted VoIP industry in this country”.

In its early days ITSPA was involved in the formation of codes of practice – working with Ofcom to define how an internet telephony provider should behave/operate. Things then went quiet for a while though the organisation has top notch networking events where executives get the opportunities to meet other people in the game to catch up on issues (and gossip).

Over the past 12 months industry affecting issues have started to come out of the woodwork. As the industry is still very much evolving/maturing these issues are often hangovers from the old telephony world that are stifling the growth and innovation prospects of the new world¹.

For example the porting of telephone numbers uses manual processes reminiscent of the stone age. There is a real reluctance by those responsible to change – you know who you are – get with it – bear skins went out of fashion thousands of years ago. It can take months to port a number. This is not right.

Ditto the fact that you can’t move your phone number to VoIP if the line also carries your broadband. If you try your underlying analogue phone line will get cut off and you then need to reprovision a new phone line which takes time and during which time you won’t have broadband.

NetNeturality also features in the ITSPA world far more so than for ISPs generally. This is because some mobile operators block VoIP. Arguments over capacity don’t wear as far as I’m concerned.

VoIP security is another issue. The same issues affect VoIP systems as used to affect good old fashioned PBXs. Crooks hacking in to your system to make their own phone calls charged to your account for example. ITSPA has a working group that jumps on new VoIP security issues and regularly distributes information/data to members.

These re all issues that affect the development and growth of a new industry. If you are an ITSP and not a member of ITSPA you should think about getting involved. Ditto vendors of VoIP kit. If all you get out of it is the opportunity to meet service providers that in itself makes it all worthwhile.

Right, back to the meeting. You heard it first on trefor.net…

¹ bit flowery I know

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“Bloggers subject to same rules as traditional journalists.” Seems a bit obvious doesn’t it? In writing a blog one should respect the laws of the land and not defame, lie, slander, slur, libel, slight, disparage or apply any other similar verb to the html page.

I suspect if you are sure of your ground vilification, disparagement and other general character assassination is ok but the risk is yours to take.

At this point I’m sure some of you are wondering where all this is going. I’ve been catching up on my parliamentary news and noted this morning that Speaking in front of the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions recently, Dominic Grieve QC MP,  the Attorney General, said that bloggers are subject to the same rules as traditional journalists and that they needed to comply with privacy injunctions. However, he conceded that many bloggers were not aware often of the full terms of specific injunctions, and that this was a problem.

Of course most newspaper editors’ details will be on a list held somewhere that allows them to be contacted by the powers that be in case of need, be it for the purposes of wartime propaganda (the fiendish *****¹) or slapping privacy injunctions on the general press. It is unlikely that I, Trefor Davies – occasional blogger, or others of my creed would be on this list and therefore not directly contactable for such purposes.

Moreover whilst my contact details are widely available, I suspect this is not normally the case with a blog. So when a judge slaps an injunction preventing the media from publishing details of the indiscretions of footballers, actors or anyone else rich enough to be able to pay to cover up their own follies it is unlikely that that I will find out about it.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t want to go about breaking super-injunctions, I have a family to feed and I need my job.  The debate last year covered the fact that people were chatting on Facebook and Twitter about who was cheating on who, despite the presence of such rulings. The blogging angle looks like another example. A year ago it was estimated there were 152 million blogs on the www. It is impractical to have to contact every blog every time there is a super-injunction, if for no other reason that that act of doing so will effectively be telling the whole world in any case².

Its a fact that we, the people, are having to adjust to new ways of living working on the internet. I, for example, am not totally comfortable with revealing my location information. Despite the fact that I realise it is almost certainly out there for all to see  I still withhold it if given a choice by an application. This is almost certainly a generational thing because I’m sure that kids think nothing of it.

It is also a fact that laws in general have yet to catch up with the internet age. It may be that internet evolves so quickly it will be a very long time before the law does catch up – assuming that it will do so eventually – perhaps I am wrong.

All I can say is that in the meantime I will mostly be avoiding the subject of celebrities on this blog “just in case”. I say mostly – I’m not averse to the odd name drop – it will all be in a positive context though:) “That girl I saw you with last night was a cracker but don’t worry *&@%$ – your secret is safe with me.”

¹ insert own enemy – I’m friends with everyone especially those who might take umbrage and “come and get me” later.

² I have visions of everyone on the planet having a blog just to avoid being left out on the gossip

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The Stop Online Piracy Act SOPA bill is being considered by legislators in the USA as a means of combating online copyright infringement.  “The bill is so over broad and badly written that it is going to impact all kinds of things that don’t have anything to do with stopping piracy” –  Jimmy Wales, founder, Wikipedia.

In the UK we are constantly under threat by Governments that latch on to the idea that they can solve specific problems by “controlling” the internet. Witness the Digital Economy Act plus a number of subsequent calls for the blocking of access to websites by a range of different stakeholders.

This is not to say that this blog supports the use of the internet for unlawful activities. It is however important to recognise that the phenomenal growth of the internet and, by definition, of the world wide web, has only been possible because of its openness. SOPA seeks to control this openness and will kill it.

Follow the discussion on Twitter using #SOPA

I had intended to switch off the blog tomorrow,  Wednesday 18^th January 2012 in support of the Wikipedia protest¹.

Unfortunately this clashes with the Grand Opening of the new Timico Datacentre in Newark. Timico has invested around 15% of its turnover in this project. For us it is a serious bet too important an event to have any distractions on the day.

I will be posting photos of the day on the blog as soon as the speeches are over and the champagne has stopped flowing. I’m the shy guy hovering in the background guy looking uncomfortable in a suit.

You will also be able to follow the day on Twitter using #TimicoDC – the stream appears in the sidebar of the blog if you prefer to stay here  Oh and by the way, as of tomorrow the datacentre is officially open – you know where to come if you need colo, dedicated servers or VMs. Drop me a line at hosting@trefor.net if you want to know more.

I am also offering personal guided tours to readers of the blog (fwiw ) – drop me a line if you want to come and see the facility including our brand new state of the art Network Operations Centre.

Finally comments on this blog are Twitter enabled – sign in with Twitter and a tweet will be sent with a link to your comment and quoting the #TimicoDC hashtag. If you want to help spread the news please comment using this facility.

¹ Wikipedia is being switched off for the day to illustrate what it would be like if it was blocked.

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I note that further to the court order presented to BT to block file sharing promoter Newsbin2 Sky is now also doing so. I have covered this a fair bit of late here here and here .

It is anticipated that all major consumer ISPs will get the same court order. It would be useful to measure the effectiveness of this activity. It will also be interesting to see whether Newsbin2 clones/mirrors will surface as  was the case with Wikileaks and Pirate Bay although to my knowledge Newsbin2 is only being blocked in the UK (happy to be corrected here). Furthermore it will be useful to see how much growth there is in encrypted traffic out of the UK following these court orders.

Newsbin2 is itself a phoenixed version of Newsbin.

Coincidentally in the House of Commons on Tuesday there was an adjournment debate on the illegal downloading of music.  Tabled by David Norris, Tory MP for Morecambe and Lonsdale, the debate was used to highlight the continued work in tackling online copyright.

Given that Mr Norris was once part of Rick Astley’s backing band on the 1980s the debate was fairly balanced. He called for a combined approach of new content services, enforcement and education. Interestingly, he highlighted the important role of free content and accepted that due process had to be followed.

Other contributors included Martin Horwood, who attacked BPI for being heavy-handed in their approach; David Amess, firmly on the side of rights holders, who welcomed government’s efforts to broker a solution; Mike Weatherly spoke of the economic harm online copyright infringement can cause; and finally, Kerry McCarthy called on Government to look at the economics behind legal services to ensure that artists were being fairly rewarded.

In response for the Government, Ed Vaizey said “we will never eradicate online piracy—such a goal would be foolish—but we can reduce it significantly“.  Whilst praising the economic and social benefits of the internet, he cautioned that it had made infringement too easy. He updated on the status of the DEA (Initial Obligations Code should happen in 2012) and the Hargreaves Review (ichard Hooper has been appointed to take forward the digital copyright exchange).

On search engine ranking and advertising the government is keen to find a voluntary solution:

“We are also working with internet advertisers to try to reduce the amount of advertising that appears on infringing sites. This can often be inadvertent, given the wide spread of internet advertising, but the Internet Advertising Bureau has made significant progress in reducing the amount of advertising that appears on illegal sites, and it continues to work on the issue.”

During his speech Ed Vaizey also demonstrated considerable knowledge of “popular music” quoting Chumbawumba, Michael Jackson ¹, Jarvis Cocker and Adele.  I’ll keep quiet – he knows more than me on this subject.

My thanks to the ISPA secretariat for drawing my attention to the debate which is a good read and can be seen in full here. Sorry about the shameless hashtagging today. Felt a bit rebelious

¹ deceased

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It’s always exciting when Ofcom brings out a new report. No, no I really mean that:) There is so much going on in the communications world and fair play to it Ofcom has the resources to produce some really interesting stats.

This time it’s the International Communications Market Report 2011. I’ve only just noticed that its out so haven’t had time to distill its 363 tightly packed pages into five paragraphs as is my usual wont. Don’t worry – that’ll be something to do another day.

In the interest of taking a break from work before going home I do, however, herewith provide you with a few choice morsels to keep you going until those five paragraphs are crafted.

Firstly I note that the UK is way down in the Pay-TV take-up league. Highest in this table are the Netherlands (98%) and Sweden (93%), alongside India (82%), the US (88%) and Canada (91%). The UK comes in at 52% which I’m sure must be a real source of frustration to Sky et al (well mostly just Sky I’m probably though I have no idea really what the relative market shares are).

I’m sure that you all spotted the same systematic error in the Ofcom research here. The UK likely ranks so low for pay TV because of the BBC. Well if you consider that we all actually pay for the BBC then we would probably come in at 100% and top the table.

Not sure I care either way though I have noticed I’ve started to watch some moreTV – just to spend time with the rest of the family who I might otherwise not come across that often¹

Over a quarter (27%) of UK internet users claim to access TV content over the web (using any device) every week, up 3% in twelve months, driven by the popularity of online catch-up services such as BBC iPlayer and 4OD. This was the highest claimed usage among the six countries included in the Ofcom research, with take-up second highest in the US (23%), followed by Australia and France (both 17%).

In my small sample of one household I’d say that this was more like 100%. iPlayer and 4OD are homepages for some of the kids.

In 2010, the value of B2C e-commerce was almost £1000 per person in the UK. Four in five (79%) of UK internet users claimed to have purchased online, higher than in any other country in Europe. In January 2011, UK consumers spent an average of 84 minutes on retail sites, which reached 89% of all internet users.

I can tell you that in the Davies household these numbers are almost certainly dwarfed. All six of us buy online – that’s another 100% not four in five. In fact my 11 year old is hoping to provide the entire family with Christmas presents sourced from “free” giveaways from online retail sites. Apparently I’m getting a toaster.

What I end up with is neither here or there really but this year the family has bought online:

Airfares, Bags, Ballet shoes, Books, CDs, Christmas hampers, Clothes, drinks, Ebay stuff – bought and sold, Festival tickets – Latitude and Hop Farm, Flowers, Hotel stays, Laptops, Microsoft software, Music downloads, Olympics tickets, Photo album, Posters, Shoes, T shirts, Tennis bag, Tesco food orders, Tickets for Paul McCartney & others, train tickets, wine by the case.

Makes me nervous just looking at it. I think I need to go home and see what they are all up to on those computers!

PS I’ve just noticed this post is more than 5 paragraphs. Will have to work on my technique for tomorrow.

¹ except of course when they are after money!

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You will of course all have been following the progress of the EU Telecommunications Council on the subject of Net Neutrality. In case you missed  it the EUTC ¹ published its conclusions yesterday.

In the interest of ensuring you have enough spare time this afternoon to go about your day job (it’s a full time occupation for a team of people to follow this stuff) I have summarised a few of the key messages here.

• The Council notes that some stakeholders are worried about transparency, discriminatory forms of traffic management and network congestion. It likes the idea of net neutrality but it also highlights the need to safeguard ISPs’ business models and to allow innovative business models to serve the needs of the market.
• The Council also highlights the importance of addressing the issues of transparency, discrimination and degradation of service through effective implementation of existing legislation, among others the Universal Service Directive (2002/22/EC), the Framework Directive (2002/21/EC) and the Access Directive (2002/19/EC) (okaaay).

The Council suggests the European Commission should:

• keep an eye on network operators to make sure that are not implementing traffic management practices that affect Net Neutrality
• continue analysing the sharing of costs of traffic and financial flows between players of the Internet value chain (uh?)
• continue studying any aspects of Net Neutrality where significant and persistent problems are substantiated, including charges and conditions that mobile operators impose on VoIP users
• further assess the discrepancy between advertised and actual delivery speeds occurring in Member States and report on the situation thereof by 2012.

I agree with most of this though I suspect they need to get a wiggle on re the mobile operator bit. I hear that the only two mobile companies not blocking VoIP are O2 and 3. Whilst I’m not sure why anyone would want to use the 3G network to transport VoIP (it’s a rubbish technology when used for that purpose) I don’t think operators should be allowed to block the traffic. Certainly not without being totally transparent that that is what they are doing.

Also I’m not sure what the Council proposes to do re cost sharing unless they are going to propose that the content providers start paying for some of the bandwidth used by their customers.

¹ I may have made that acronym up – you heard it first etc…

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Over my toast this morning I was flicking through last week’s Hansard, as you do. Yaaawn I hear you say. Come now say I. Buried deep in this mountain of sleep inducing text can be found valuable nuggets of information worthy of dissemination to the wider audience. I am here to serve.

On 5th December the House of Lords held a short debate, introduced by Baroness Greenfield, on the impact of digital technologies on the mind. Beginning with the factoid that a recent survey in the USA found that over half of teenagers aged 13 to 17 spend more than 30 hours a week, outside school, using computers and other web-connected devices the Baroness asked three questions:

1. What is the impact of social networking sites on interpersonal skills and personal identity? The psychologist Sherry Turkle, from MIT, has argued persuasively in her recent book Alone Together that the more continuously connected people are in cyberspace, paradoxically the more isolated they actually feel.
2. Are video games harmful? Neuropsychological studies suggest that frequent and continued playing might lead to enhanced recklessness, reduced attention spans and even possible addiction. A survey of 136 reports using 381 independent tests and conducted on more than 130,000 participants concluded that video games led to significant increases in desensitisation, physiological arousal, aggression and a decrease in prosocial behaviour.
3. Can the internet actually improve cognitive skills and learning, as has been argued? Or as Google Chairman Eric Schmidt says “I worry that the level of interrupt, the sort of overwhelming rapidity of information-and especially of stressful information-is in fact affecting cognition. It is in fact affecting deeper thinking. I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something. And I worry that we’re losing that”.

There is so much change happening right now that try as it might it is not practical for any government to manage. It is perhaps worth trying to understand the effects of this change and Baroness Greenfield is proposing that we do this. Whether we could do anything useful with this understanding is another issue.

There has always been change. Lord Hill of Oareford reminded us of Socrates, who was worried about the invention of writing because he was afraid that people would “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful”. Should we have heeded the Greek philosopher’s caution and abandoned the written form?

The problem really is that this change is happening so quickly and on such a large scale that all we can really do is brace ourselves – find the right sized surfboard and catch that wave.

In keeping with the attention span of its subject matter demographic the Hansard record of this short debate is correspondingly brief and makes an interesting quick read. You might even be impressed by the knowledge of some of its participants who appear to have gathered much of the material for the debate by reading books as opposed to flitting across the world wide web.

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Fibre networking company Geo today withdrew from BDUK’s Broadband Framework and from future NGA procurements. Rather than simply regurgitating Geo’s Press Release on the subject you can read it yourselves here. In summary though Geo is saying that BT has this market stitched up.

I have to say I feel sorry for UK citizens living in “the final third”. You can’t blame BT – they are just looking after the interests of their shareholders. I think you can blame the Government which is taking the easy route. Admittedly foremost in the mind of the Government will be cash, or lack of it and the need to be seen to be spending it wisely.  BT appears to have done a good lobbying¹  job in persuading the establishment that sticking with BT is in everyone best interest.

It will be worth seeing how other players hoping for a slice of this market progress. This seems a good time to revisit the idea of splitting Openreach away from BT and turning it into a mutual, owned by the ISP industry.

That’s all.

¹  This is in stark contrast to some situations such as the Digital Economy Act where BT did a very poor lobbying job and is now paying the price.

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Everyone Everywhere (pun intended) will have heard of Ofcom’s decision to re-enter consultation over the LTE or 4G mobile spectrum allocation. Issued late on Friday afternoon the statement regarding the delay caused by reopening the consultation has already attracted comments re “hiding bad news over the weekend”.

There were 64 responses that included the  A to W of stakeholders in the UK (nothing from  X, Y or Z). The  Association of Train Operating Companies was mainly concerned to ensure that good coverage at high, sustained download speeds is ensured along the whole of the GB mainline rail network. At the other end of the alphabet both the Welsh government and Wiltshire Council wanted better coverage in rural areas with the latter quoting a target figure of 99% of the population.

Straightforward right? At least it sounds like a good idea. The government appears to agree with this because last week HM Treasury announced it would be making available up to £150 million to improve mobile coverage in the UK.  “This investment will improve the coverage and quality of mobile services for the 5 to 10 per cent of consumers and businesses that live and work in areas of the UK where existing mobile coverage is poor or non-existent.  The Government will aim to extend mobile service coverage to 99 per cent of the UK population.”

Back to the consultation response it is worth examining some of the different camps. It is by looking at the responses that you really begin to see the political and strategic manoeuvring in play.

BT by and large supports Ofcom’s proposals though the company does express concern over the specification and coverage obligations of the proposed 800MHz licence.  “We believe that this is an area where Ofcom needs to amend its proposals and to re-examine the options in the context of BDUK activities”. I’m sure there will be cynics out there who will say this is BT trying to protect its monopoly over the provision of broadband services to rural areas.

The Vodafone response, at 90 pages came in at over twice the length of BT (43 pages though I doubt Ofcom measures the weight of a response in terms of the number of pages:) ). VF claims that Ofcom’s proposals are based on four fundamental but unsubstantiated and incorrect assertions:

1               that competition and consumers would be harmed if only three ‘national wholesalers’ were to provide higher quality data services in the future. (Read into this “we would be quite happy if the players were restricted to three – probably the existing largest operators – TD)

2               that  Vodafone  currently  has a near-term route to providing  an  LTE network (of unrivalled quality) by using its existing holding of sub-1GHz spectrum;

3                that, knowing this, Vodafone could and  would bid ‘strategically’ in the upcoming auction to exclude its rivals; and

4               that Everything Everywhere, as an 1800MHz operator, must acquire sub-1GHz spectrum in order that it too can provide a competitive LTE network.

According to VF none of these assertions are borne out by the facts and they therefore suggest the case for the proposed spectrum floors is fatally undermined and should not be pursued further.

VF also maintains that it would not be able to free up its 900MHz spectrum in time for early use for 4G and that EE is in a position to go to market far more quickly with its existing spectrum.

Funnily enough the EE response (a short novella of around 150 pages) says the opposite. EE suggest that the current plans would result in Vodafone and O2 being able to grow their mobile data market shares because their existing  UMTS900 deployments together with improvements in HSPDA would allow them to sell at closer to LTE speeds before the LTE network was actually available.

EE wants a the sub 1GHz spectrum to be more evenly distributed – because of existing VF and O2 holdings under the current plans they could well end up with the greater portion of sub1GHz spectrum.

Under the bonnet the subject is complicated or at least is being made to look so but at its heart the issues are simple. It is all about money. As an investor in this market I am in the game to make money too.  In this case though Ofcom and HMG need to make sure the balance is right for UK PLC.

It sounds like they are starting to get some of this right with the desire to extended coverage. They do however need to remember that in more than one sense speed is of the essence here. Ofcom maintains that the current delay to the auction will not affect the start date for the LTE rollout.  I accept that this is a very important decision to get right but we really can’t afford to lose any more time on this one. It’s taken Ofcom 4 months to decide on this delay.

PS I’m with the Association of Train Operating Companies – I travel up and down to London quite a bit and the mobile coverage along the route is rubbish.

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