The Broadband Stakeholders Group today released an “Open Internet Code of Practice”. This is a voluntary CoP promoting net neutrality.
Specifically:
users should be able to access all legal content
there should be no discrimination against content providers on the basis of commercial rivalry; and
traffic management policies should be clear and transparent
I’m not going to delve into the detail of the BSG announcement which is available here. What I am going to do is name the current signatories who are all in the main consumer service providers:
BE, BT, BskyB, KCOM, O2, Plusnet, TalkTalk, Tesco Mobile, Three
The significance of this list is in who is not on it, particularly the mobile operators. You can work out who they are yourselves. Some of them are already known to block the use of Over The Top VoIP services (eg Timico’s own VoIP, Skype et al) on their mobile networks which of course goes against the principles of the CoP being announced today.
Whatever their reasons for not signing these mobile networks will have to change their positioning as 4G gets rolled out. The bandwidth requirement for VoIP services will be relatively small compared with that required for general use on 4G networks so the “lack of capacity” argument should not work.
4G is a fairly major inflection point for mobile networks. I don’t have any forecasts but during the life of the 4G (LTE) technology we should see the mobile business model transition from being minutes driven to data driven.
I suspect that growth in “data bundle” income may not offset any reduction in voice minutes revenues so the mobile operators are going to have to work out how to find cash from elsewhere. This may come from advertising, financial micro payments, device and personal security and I’m sure many more that I haven’t thought of.
For the moment I’ll leave you to figure out for yourselves why the non-signatories have not stepped up to the plate. I can’t see how they can stay away for too long. It isn’t the actual signature but the principle of how they treat their customers who will end up voting with their feet.
The Digital Economy Act, which you may recall was rushed through by the last government with inadequate consultation in the desperate dying days of its tenure continues to create a stir. This time the joint committee on Statutory Instruments has strongly criticised the Draft Online Infringement (Initial Obligations) (Sharing of Costs) Order 2012 which Ofcom is also currently consulting on.
The Order has been brought by the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) no doubt trying to clear the decks before they all shoot off to watch theLondon 2012 perform official duties at the olympics. In its report the joint committee says:
“This instrument is drawn to the special attention of the House on the grounds that it gives rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House and it may imperfectly achieve its policy objective“
Criticisms include:
Concern that the Order had been laid in the House whilst consultation was still ongoing and is not based on full information
Lack of detail from rights holders or a commitment that they would actually use the notification system to its fullest (what’s that all about? why would they go to so much effort to get a law passed to support their private business interest and then not use its powers?)
Insufficient evidence is provided to judge whether £20 “appeal fee” is the appropriate amount given that significant parts of the structure of the scheme and the appeal mechanism are still undecided.
The whole sad, sorry story continues.
PS thanks to ISPA for being around to constantly monitor this stuff. Someone has to read through and interpret the detailed legal blurb that comes out of Parliament.
Home Secretary Theresa May launched the draft Communications Data Bill yesterday with an interview on the Radio 4 Today programme. She has also written a foreword to the Bill arguing why we need it.
I have already written arguments against why we should implement this act. All of my previous points remain and I will restate the two most important aspects here.
Firstly what is being proposed represents a serious threat to our privacy as a nation. The government wants to collect personal information about our private web browsing, phoning, email, tweeting, Facebook and all other internet related communications. They then want to store this information “securely” for one year so that it can be accessed buy anyone granted permission by senior police officers.
I refer you to last week’s LinkedIn password debacle where 6.5 million passwords being securely held on a server were stolen and published on a Russian website. The next time this could be details of websites you visit. It would happen if this Bill moved into law. Guaranteed.
Secondly the proposed measures will not catch those who the police et al are trying to catch. If you are hell bent on crime you will easily find ways of going undetected on the web.
Here I refer you to the recent court orders for ISPs to block access to Pirate Bay. One of my most visited blog posts this year and certainly high up on the list of search terms covers how to bypass these blocks. The same will be true with criminals looking for anonymity.
I’ve been thinking of whether there is a middle ground here where ISPs collect data on specified targets rather than everyone and subject to court orders. This could work though opponents will argue that once the capability has been put in place it will be abused. My second point above would also apply so the effort might be futile and money spent wasted (it would probably cost almost the same as if we were collecting all the data).
On balance we all need to oppose this Bill. Email your MP with a link to this post.
Having mentioned the comms bill in my last post I now find that the expected Green Paper is not now going to be published. Instead over the coming months five seminars will inform the communications review.
The seminars will look at:
The Consumer Perspective
Competition in the Content Market
Maximising the value of spectrum to support growth and innovation
Driving investment and growth in the UK’s TV content industries
Supporting growth in the radio (audio) sector
“The UK’s communications sector is one of the strongest in the world” said Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. “We must ensure the sector can grow by being at the forefront of new developments in the industry. It is essential that we set the right conditions for the industry to enable businesses to grasp the opportunities created by new technology.”
Communications Minister Ed Vaizey added “The communications industry is a key part of our economy. Through these seminars, we will look in detail at how best to drive investment and competition. We want to shape the Communications Bill so that we have the right framework to secure our place as Europe’s tech hub.”
Much of the blurb up until now is lifted straight from the DCMS website. I can’t argue with any of it though some of it seems to me to be very much born out of subject matter that government can get its brain around.
For example content providers, ie TV companies in the main, have been asking for a level playing field – the clues lie in the bullet points provided to us as a guide on what is likely to be discussed in the Seminar – how important is exclusivity in supporting investment and innovation, how much choice do consumers have and how open is the market to new entrants?
The bit about spectrum is also an easy one to grasp. Although there are legal minefields to tread at the end of the day it seems about making best use of the spectrum available.
This is all fair enough but I do find myself asking how much innovation and growth this is really promoting? It’s all about extensions to old business models.
I humbly suggest that what we really want is to create an environment that supports innovation in the new world we want to be encouraging the next Google or Microsoft to start up in the UK. We do see some signs of progress. The reintroduction of EIS Tax relief for entrepreneurial investors and the effort to create an emphasis on computer programming in schools spring to mind.
I think though that we need to think a lot bigger than we are doing. How about a 10 year moratorium on capital gains tax for new technology startup investment? I bet that would result in many Californian based VC companies moving to the UK. How about government loans or matched funding for high risk high tech projects. How about creating an immigration environment that would encourage talent to want to come to the UK instead of Silicon Valley?
Perhaps I’m being naïve in thinking that “communications” extends beyond programming content and next gen mobile. Everything I do these days involves communications in some form or other.
The government wants the private sector to haul in the slack created by cuts in the public sector. It needs to come up with creative and innovative solutions to stimulate this. It also needs a level of understanding in government of issues relating to technology and the internet. Many of the noises that we have been hearing are counter-innovative and have been about constraining how we can use technology and not the opposite. C’mon guys. Move it on.
The ISPA AGM is coming up on Thursday 12th July 2012 at 16:30pm at 1 Castle Lane, London, SW1E 6DR. If you or anyone you know is interested in standing for election on the Council this is your chance. Membership of the council is a really good way to meet people in the industry and to get to understand all the issues facing us.
The mix of organisations represented includes BT, O2, C&W, Timico, Zen Internet, LINX and Vispa. In my mind we have some gaps – maybe someone from Google or Facebook or both could get involved. We are talking internet services here – not just straight connectivity.
The rate of pace of change in our industry is growing fast. There are threats from over regulation that we need to keep on top of – the forthcoming Comms Bill for example. Being on the Council of ISPA puts you right at the centre of the debate and gives you a chance to influence decisions that could be very important to the future of your business.
Anyone interested in a Council role should contact [email protected] or phone Michaela Zemanova on 020 3397 3304. You can tell ’em I sent you if you like:)
I note from the Daily Telegraph that LinkedIn has had 6.5 million passwords stolen and published on a Russian website. When did you last sort out your passwords> Have you got a password policy? Worth getting one I’d say.
This is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t let the government collect data about us. It is going to be lost or stolen or accidentally published. It’s a racing certainty. More here.
It’s a funny old world. A judge orders ISPs to cut off access to Pirate Bay and visitor numbers to the site increase by 12 million. A government says it wants to increase the amount of regulation on the internet and the membership of the trade association shoots up.
The membership of ISPA normally hovers just under the 200 mark. The nature of our industry is that companies are bought out or merge with others to get scale. So in any given year the we get perhaps 10 or 15 new members but 10 or 15 disappear off the UK internet map and on the whole the number stays the same – ish.
Things are changing. The threat to the industry stemming from potentially onerous new regulations placed upon service providers, such as the upcoming Communications Bill Green Paper, has prompted six new service providers to join ISPA in the space of one month. This is a veritable tidal wave in the scheme of things.
How to bypass the Virgin Media web filter to access Pirate Bay
Before you start reading this post, and many thousands have, take a look at Broadbandrating – if you are looking to move ISP then the site will help you choose which one to go for.
Now the post:
Industry colleague Gary Hough left a comment on my blog post on Pirate Bay the other day. He has now written a guest post (tagged on to the end of this one) outlining how easy it is to bypass web filters to access “blocked” sites. I asked myself whether this was a responsible thing to publish. After all it flies in the face of the process of Law and Order and I am not in favour of promoting unlawful activity.
However the process described below is such common knowledge1 and there are so many sites out there providing proxy services used by millions of people that I feel that the story needs to be told in an environment/on a vehicle that promotes sensible discussion of the issue. We certainly need those in places of power to have the opportunity to read about and properly understand the problem.
The issue is not just Pirate Bay or any other site promoting the music downloads that have engendered such emotion within the Rights Holder industries. The issue is the fact that the same process can be used to bypass any web filter. This means that were we to enforce blocking of other types of website – pornography, for example, or sites promoting racial hatred or extreme political views the blocks would be ineffective.
UK Cookie legislation (DIRECTIVE 2009/136/EC) became law on May 25th 2011. This is the one where websites are meant to give you the opportunity to opt out of visiting them if they are using cookies. Cookies can be very “invasive of privacy” though in varying degrees and some potentially not at all. The law, whilst being passed with good intentions has had some unintended consequences, notably affecting some cookie functionality that is useful and likely unintrusive.
I imagine that most of us with a website use Google Analytics. We all like to look at our traffic levels – well I do anyway. There has been some confusion as to exactly what is being required of website owners – rumours for example that sites only using Google Analytics cookies would not be made to comply as GA was “beneficial and not intrusive”.
You may or may not know that I am on the Information Commissioner’s Office Technology Reference Panel. This is an expert body of representatives from stakeholder groups in information and technology related industry sectors.
The ICO, which is the industry regulator, has given the UK a year to implement the cookie directive. This year is up at the end of this month and naturally there has been press comment and a flurry of businesses making adjustments to their websites in an attempt at compliance.
One year on exactly what will the ICO do re enforcing the law
It seems a long time ago now, the passing of the Digital Economy Act. It’s easy to remember how long because it was rushed through just before the last general election and I’m sure that global historical events such as the re-emergence of a Liberal government (only joking) are amongst the list of dates you remember exactly what you were doing when “it” happened.
The assassination of JFK and 9/11 are the other two that spring to mind although others may well have other memorable dates – outbreak of WW2 etc. Note I don’t actually remember the JFK assassination, I was too young, but it is always one of the ones quoted.
Ofcom has updated ISPA and have said that the code of practice still has to go through various stages:
First notices are expected to be sent out Q1 2014 (At last year November’s ISPA conference, Ofcom said spring 2013)
Time was when MI5 (or whatever they are called) wanted to listen in on your conversation they sent someone round to the local telephone exchange with some wires and a couple of bulldog clips.
The breadth of things that could be monitored was actually fairly large. I remember once, many years ago, being shown satellite photographs of the lake at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the days running up the announcement that there was a problem with the reactor. The thermal imagery of the lake showed it warming up substantially over a few days. The information showing that there was a problem was being collected by our “security forces”.
The fact is whilst the data was there nobody saw it as it was buried in so much other information, photos etc, that you had to specifically been looking for it to see that something was wrong. The amount of personal information that they could gather about you was fairly limited and the number of people they could do this to was not huge. It was not a scalable system.
Just heard that apparently the government is considering pulling the “snooping” bit of the Queen’s speech. Been told it is on the Times website which I can’t access. I’ll pass on more as I get it but it will also be on all the major news sites. Others feel the need to verify but I think this one is worth taking a punt on.
BBC is currently trying to validate this but if it is true then it is a major victory for common sense.
If what I say is all boloney then I’ll delete this post – I have the power 🙂
19.00 hrs – latest news from the Beeb suggests they aren’t pulling it but taking the foot off the gas a bit. Prepare for political wheezle words.
The fuss in the media today regarding the government’s plan to make Internet Service Providers capture personal communications data is nothing new. It was brought up under the last Labour government as the “Intercept Modernisation Programme” and received heavy criticism from the Tory party in opposition.
Now with the responsibility of government the conservatives seem to have seen things differently and the word is that the forthcoming Queen’s speech will contain measures to enable the collection of personal information that includes who you have telephoned and emailed or have received emails from and which websites you have visited. The details of what is being sent in the emails isn’t being asked for at this time.
4G is like lightning, it’s an eye opener and seriously enhances the mobile data experience. This post talks about the truly exciting O2 4G trials in London and thinks about how the technology is going to change the mobile game.
Mobile data is already an important feature in the business communication landscape. As an ISP we see demand for it in the area of machine to machine, rapid site deployment, backup solutions for Disaster Recovery scenarios and of course straightforward internet browsing and email access from mobile devices.
The strategic importance of mobile data has even led Timico to invest in an Ethernet connection direct into the O2 network. We can now offer mobile MPLS solutions that sit within the same environment as existing fixed line MPLS networks – ideal for businesses that need security in both fixed and mobile networks.
Over the last year or two in the UK the focus in fixed line broadband has been on Fibre To The Cabinet, or in marketing jargon Fibre Broadband. With downlink speeds of “up to”40Mbps (to be upgraded to 80Mbps this coming April) the technology is revolutionising how people use their broadband connection. Add in the growth in high quality streaming video and gaming services and it is easy to see how the additional available bandwidth will be consumed.
Until very recently the mobile world, in the UK at least, has remained firmly in the domain of 3G – a technology that now seems relatively stone aged compared with Fibre Broadband. HSDPA makes the experience more bearable but it is still many Mega-bits apart from its fixed line counterpart.
The mobile companies are poised to change all this with LTE (Long Term Evolution) otherwise known as 4G. Trials are being conducted in a small number of locations in the UK. Timico is the first O2 Service Provider partner to be invited onto their London trials I am pleased to be able to report on my experiences.
This service is like lightning. It’s fast, speedy, call it what you like it’s a life changer. It’s been one of those projects that has been a pleasure to be involved in.
With only 25 masts around central London coverage is nowhere near what you would describe as ubiquitous but this is only a trial. When in a coverage area the speeds are great.
I started off in McDonalds at Kings Cross with a dongle fresh out of the box. After installation of the software, which was easy, the dongle performed an automatic firmware upgrade, also easy, using its own 4G connection.
At McDonalds I was getting over 13Mbps down and 540Kbps up which in my mind was a bit disappointing though I’m not sure it should have been. I have experimented with O2s 4G at their offices in Slough and seen much faster speeds both up and down than this. In fact this speed at McDonalds is faster than I get from my home ADSL2+ connection so I couldn’t grumble.
I knew I could do better than this. Roaming around town on the top deck of a number 25 bus I got 15.5Megs down and amazingly 25Megs up – near Wardour Street. The ping times for all these measurements were impressive.
In torrential rain I moved around on foot dipping into various places to check out the speeds and moving generally towards known good hotspots.
In the end I took shelter in a pub called the Devonshire Arms on Duke Street, just off Oxford Street. Sat in the window and sipping a cup of tea I hit the jackpot with 40Megs down and 23 Megs up. I did various tests including varying the browser – Chrome was much better than IE. I also did video calls with both Timico’s own VoIP service and Skype.
The screenshot on the right is of four iPlayer daytime TV streams. The things you have to do to get a blog post written!
The highest I have seen recorded is 97Megs in the O2 Arena itself. The 2,600 MHz LTE itself will go to 150Megs but the dongle tech doesn’t currently support this. We do have to remember this is very much a test rather than a production rollout so it isn’t going to be perfect but even considering this the experience has been great.
There were a few observations to be made out of this trial. The raw speed I saw with O2s 4G was terrific when in good coverage areas. The amount of data you can download in a very small amount of time is going to change the game. In upgrading the dongle firmware for example I used 50MB in around a minute. If you consider that until recently a typical “fair use” policy for an “unlimited” data package was 500MB then you can see that the model is going to have to change. The backhaul capacity that mobile operators are going to have to build in to their networks is going to have to see growth measured in orders of magnitude.
Spectrum allocation for 4G rollout is going to be very important. At 2,600MHz the bandwidth you can get is much higher than at 800MHz, say. However the in-building penetration at the higher speed is not as good so the overall network design represents an interesting (though not insurmountable I’m sure) challenge for engineers. This makes the forthcoming Ofcom spectrum auction important – there is a mix of spectra that is going to be optimum for commercial success.
As a side note it is going to be interesting to see how much the operators are prepared to pay for spectrum – they all think they overpaid for 3G but the demand has not been there for most of the time that 3G has been around. It is different this time and people are starting to get used to paying for the bandwidth they use.
From an end user perspective the ability to have genuinely fast internet access on your laptop, tablet or mobile phone is going to change their experience. Whilst WiFi is becoming more common, at least in pubs, coffee shops and other public places the need to authenticate is still a nuisance. Also not having to wait whilst a screen loads up on your mobile phone needs to become a human right!
It is certainly going to drive more business into the mobile environment. Timico, for example, gives all its salesforce an iPad so that they can demonstrate Timico applications and our customer portal on the fly at a customer’s premises. An iPad with 40Megs of bandwidth all of a sudden becomes a low cost endpoint for a telepresence HD conferencing system.
The gaming experience is going to be great1. Who knows what mobility combined with high speed internet will do for that industry, freed from the shackles of the lounge or the bedroom. City wide action games? Orienteering for the 21st century?
The use of mobile technology for backup purposes will also extend into many more areas of businesses. Typically 3G is used where only low bandwidth is required or where any bandwidth is better than no bandwidth. 4G becomes a viable solution for offices – even company HQs.
Of course with many more people on a production 4G network the average speeds available may well come down but LTE really is a game changer.
Footnote
It’s nice to to be in a position of being able to play with these new toys but there is a very serious business side to this. As those of you who have met me recently will probably know I’ve been testing the technology for a few weeks now – Timico is the first O2 service Provider partner to be given access to their 4G network. It forms part of the long term mobile data strategy of our business and follows nicely on from the direct connection into the O2 network I referred to at the start of the post.
I should finish off with a big thank you to O2 for including me in the trials. It’s good to be able to work with such a progressive partner.
1 I’m not a gamer but one of my kids would spend his entire live tethered to the Xbox. I have heard the tinny VoIP it emits.
We used to get junk phone calls, I’m talking years ago now. Double glazing, that sort of thing. My favourite was from people trying to call “Service Washing Machines”. These weren’t trying to sell me anything. The company had misprinted an advertisment with our number instead of theirs so we would get their calls. It did get a bit tedious after a while though.
Once (and you might not like me for this) I was at home during the day showing a builder around to get a quote. The phone rang and I said “watch this”
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
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.
“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.
A Ministerial Roundtable on Net Neutrality had been scheduled for 24th January (ie yesterday) with Internet Minister Ed Vaizey and the major fixed and mobile operators due to attend. EV is expecting industry to produce a voluntary code of practice in respect of Net Neutrality. In the run up to the meeting and following individual discussions with some of the intended participants the Minister has apparently been unhappy with progress. The Round Table has been postponed until 28th March to allow time for further industry discussion.
Net Neutrality is a very emotional subject. By and large in my view it is something that has been creating more noise than the issue has perhaps merited but I can understand people’s concerns. The issue of transparency is in particular an important one
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 18th 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 [email protected] 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.
The world record attempt started at 6am on Thursday 5th Feb and ended at 6am the following day. There are three stories to tell here. The first is the charity fundraising aspect that was covered on Friday.
Second is the social media story. This was an event largely promoted using the #comment24 hashtag on twitter but the story was also posted on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. The effort also caught the imagination of a good number of friendly journalists as the list of names in the table of top referrers for 5th Jan illustrates.
referring site
# visits
pages/visit
time on site
1
t.co (Twitter)
2,012
2.73
00:04:08
2
facebook.com
903
4.44
00:04:56
3
gizmodo.co.uk
310
2.38
00:02:19
4
thinkbroadband.com
291
4.38
00:04:36
5
forums.moneysavingexpert.com
265
3.24
00:02:58
6
m.facebook.com
240
2.2
00:01:53
7
guardian.co.uk
233
3.07
00:03:50
8
thenextweb.com
221
2.83
00:02:47
9
telegraph.co.uk
207
3.6
00:04:47
10
hootsuite.com
67
2.88
00:04:10
11
community.plus.net
63
2.84
00:02:43
12
plus.url.google.com
59
4.05
00:05:45
13
linkedin.com
57
4.84
00:07:03
14
thelincolnite.co.uk
51
2.25
00:02:07
15
celticquicknews.co.uk
50
1.36
00:00:23
In all according to Google Analytics there were 162 referring sites over the 5th and 6th January. A Google search for
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.
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.
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.
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:
Just when I thought I had my life in order someone from the far side of the planet has dropped a bombshell with the discovery of Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB). What’s more UFB sits between Superfast and Hyperfast.
You will remember it was only last Friday I confidently announced the broadband progression as being Superfast (24Meg+ 1), Hyperfast (1Gig) and then Uberfast (placeholder for an as yet undiscovered number).
Over the weekend a pigeon arrived from Telecom New Zealand telling me that UFB is defined as a fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) broadband service providing downlink speeds of at least 100 Mbps and uplink speeds of at least 50 Mbps.
The EU Court of Justice has ruled that it is illegal to block copyright infringing file downloading on the basis of the freedom to conduct business, the right to protection of personal data and the freedom to receive or impart information.
This concludes a long running (2007) Scarlet-SABAM court case in which Scarlet, a Belgian ISP was ordered by a national court to implement technical measures to block all P2P traffic that infringes rights held by the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (SABAM). The ruling also supplements a previous legal opinion on the subject by a EU High Court Judge that was not in itself binding in law.
This is a major milestone in the online Intellectual Property/Copyright saga and must surely bring into question the recent Newsbin2 judgement in which BT was required by a court to block access to the website that promotes the unlawful distribution of copyrighted material.
Proponents of internet blocking have already recently been acknowledging that in itself web-filtering is not a silver bullet. This is a softening of their previous hard line though it hasn’t stopped them seeking to implement filtering as “Newsbin2” shows. With today’s judgement from the European Court of Justice will this finally stop Rights Holders attempting to do this?
It will be interesting to see what happens next…
PS I am not against the ownership of Intellectual Property but this whole subject needs approaching in a fair and proportionate manner.
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.
My name is Scott Wakefield. I am a broadband enthusiast and I live in Brocton, Stafford. I have recently come along your website to understand that you have connections with BT, and potentially other companies. Brocton is somewhat a rural area and as you would expect, BT do not care for our community. After ruthless complaining and many letters, emails and phone calls, neither BT, Virgin Media, Stafford Borough Council, Staffordshire County Council, the ISPA or Ofcom will do anything about it.
My area receives on average between 0.05Mbps – 0.17Kbps (50Kbps – 170Kbps) which is staggeringly slow. When I called up Virgin Media (whom is my current ISP as I switched from BT since a BT engineer thought I was being capped), I was guaranteed that I would receive “the slowest would be of 0.5 and the maximum would be 2.4Mbps”
We, the world, are still finding our feet on the internet, or more accurately the world wide web. The www is a great place to be and at the same time full of pitfalls and nasties. Much like real, physical life really. I taught my kids not to take sweeties from strangers – that applies on or offline. In recent years I’ve added “don’t click on links you aren’t sure of” and probably a few other words of advice specific to tinterweb.
That’s a piece of wisdom relating to the www that had he but known it shows Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in action. Survival of the fittest and all that.
It isn’t just the consumer that is still trying to understand the landscape of the www. Government is, business is, as I said we all are.
The good folks at .uk registry Nominet are also trying to understand where they fit into all this. Nominet has come under scrutiny in recent years over its corporate governance.
itself. The 2,600 MHz LTE itself will go to 150Megs but the dongle tech doesn’t currently support this. We do have to remember this is very much a test rather than a production rollout so it isn’t going to be perfect but even considering this the experience has been great.
