Welcome to Manchester and UKNOF31. This is the thrice yearly gathering of the networking industry in the UK. Each meeting seems to be bigger and better than the last and today as people converge on the Manchester Central conference centre I have to tell you it’s shorts weather. No incriminating photos though.
You can check out the agenda here and the live blog starts below. The featured pic btw is the kitchen at Akbars where we had the pre UKNOF curry.
I’m looking for a moped to star in a video that is extremely time sensitive – has to go out before the general election. It could be a motorbike or scooter. Location London.
Will explain more if you want to get in touch.
Ta
Tref
Was sat on the terrace around the pool yesterday when the phone rang. It was a Birmingham number – 01213540949. I’m not sure I know anyone in brum and toyed with the idea of not answering. I was after all going to be paying for the international leg.
I clicked on the green bouton (for the pool twas in Marseille) and took the call.
‘Hello sir, can you please confirm your company name is “self”?’ I did a double take. Self??
Oh god. I asked who had sold them my mobile number. It is a new one. Then I realised it must have been EE. The b*&^%$£ds. The girl on the other end of the phone said she worked for some kind of yellow pages organisation. 118 something.
She repeated the question. ‘can you please confirm your company name is “self”?’ You can imagine the rest of the dialogue. There may be a company somewhere called self. Lots of people work for them as you often see the name in company receptions’ visitors books.
Unfortunately this is more likely to be incompetence on the part of EE rather than them selling my number. How can personal mobile phone details be given to a directory organisation for inclusion as a business number. The bigger the company the less competent their customer care becomes. This is likely to especially be the case with Ee who are probably still desperately trying to merge Orange and T-Mobile before being merged themselves into BT.
The girl promised not to put my name in the business directory. I’m not sure what advice to offer if you see an incoming call from 01213540949. It’s going to be spam but if you ignore it you might end up in a 118 directory somewhere as a company called self. Or shelf. Or shellfish. Or anything really.
01213540949 – you know it doesn’t make sense.
Lotsa posts on nuisance calls on this blog – check em out here.
OK kids it’s day 2 at Euro-IX and the conference is in full swing with a packed room at the Pullman Palm Beach in Marseille. Last night was the usual humdinger with dinner at La Nautique in the Old Harbour followed by a bit of community singing on the bus and then dancing to Abba back at the bar in the hotel. We know how to live in the IXP game.
Morning all. Trust we are bright and breezy on this fine Mediterranean morning. I am in Marseille for Euro-IX 26. These Euro-IX fora (not forums) happen every 6 months and are a great way for keeping up with what’s going on in the world of Internet Exchange Points (IXP). Keep this page open for updates as they happen at the conference together, of course with insightful comments.
Now on Franck Simon from our hosts France-IX.
Somewhat surprised that Twitter let this ad through. I’ve been pushed a promoted tweet by “fling” three times in the last few days. There’s nothing in the ad to tell you what fling is. Just looks like an odd way to push photos.
It’s only when you click to go to their website and are faced with a wall of nude photos that you realise what it is – an adult social network. For adult read porn. I find this quite distasteful of Twitter. I also find myself in the unusual situation of saying “Facebook would not have allowed that ad” although this is not based on any knowledge of fact.
You can see from the featured image in this post that the ad says “Send your snaps to 50 people around the world at random”. This must surely be something that the Advertising Standards Agency would want to take a look at. It’s something that kids might inadvertently click on. After all it suggests something like Instagram.
Fling must have some money to spend if they’ve pushed the ad to me three times. Unless I’m considered to be of a “certain demographic” which could be a bit worrying. Makes you wonder what data mining is being done by Twitter.
An individual is pretty helpless in this situation. We need the social networks as they have become part and parcel of our everyday lives but seem to have little control over what those networks might do with our data1. It feels to me that governments should start taking a much tougher stance with these guys.
Lots of posts on the subject of surveillance and privacy elsewhere on this blog. Check them out in the surveillance and privacy category here.
1 eg class action against Facebook for privacy breach & Facebook admits to tracking non-users
Joe and I were heading out to Carrefour in the Pigalle, as you do, to get some basics in for le weekend. Yanow, beurre, jus d’orange and so on. On the way we came across what seemed to be the biggest music shop we had ever seen. The interesting thing about the shop, apart from it being rammed with fantastic gear which, Joe being a musician was of instant interest, was that there were no prices on display. Only QR codes!
Only problem was that without mobile data connectivity we were unable to browse the prices. I use the EE £2 a day flat rate roaming for calls and texts back home but not their rip off mobile data service. Even the guy in the EE shop thought it was a rip off.
It didn’t really matter as we were saving our cents for croissants and vin rouge but the concept of not having any prices on display was novel in this day and age. Each item had more than one QR code so I suspect some of them were prices and some were info on the product.
This again is very progressive. You don’t spend cash on expensive musical instruments and kit without first doing your research. I remember once going into Currys to buy a TV. I know very little about TVs and deliberately keep it that way. So when it made sense to buy a flat one we could stick on the wall instead of using the dinosaur that took up half the room I figured it would be useful to ask an expert.
The expert to hand was fully trained in the art of reading and just read out the three line feature set that came with the pricing label on the display. Doh. A QR code would have been very handy on that occasion although in reality, like many other gadgets today, there is very little to choose between products.
It reminds me of the time we were setting up broadbandrating.com. We rang USwitch or some simlar site to talk to one of their experts. See what the pitch was. The guy was totally useless. All he could offer was the fact that Virgin had the fastest broadband.
QR Codes linked ot product information are clearly the way forward. Some shops might want to push the products that give them most margin but that isn’t the customer friendly thing to do.
Thassitfernow.
Ciao amigos.
This one caught my eye. A Samsung Galaxy S6 promo tweet. They are everywhere.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge are about to launch, can you guess what we have planned this week? #S6EdgeOfSpace pic.twitter.com/NoeID7TFtH
— Tesco Mobile (@tescomobile) April 6, 2015
I replied and got a reply back:
@tref Hey Tref, what do you think of the new S6?
— Tesco Mobile (@tescomobile) April 7, 2015
They obviously didn’t read my reply. I stopped getting excited about new gadgets some time ago. It is no longer about the possession of the latest and greatest (never really was for me) but about value for money and the right functionality.
My Oneplus One cost £269 and does everything the Samsung Galaxy S4 did for me and more. I didn’t feel it necessary to go the the S5 and now sit on the sidelines laughing at the hype associated with the S6. It’s getting to be the same as the cobblers that gets put out by Apple.
It’s going to come to the point where mobile phone advertising is going to be as challenging as selling cars. They all look the same and have very little to differentiate between them. It’s then all down to what image a brand can create for itself. Cars flying through the streets of the metropolis, stunning girls sitting at the wheel, hair flowing in the gentle breeze.
It will be the same with phones, if it isn’t already. Were it not for the fact that it feels stupid to look as if you re speaking into thin air the phone would already be an outdated concept. I don’t see why we can’t simply speak into the cup of our hands. It would afford a degree of privacy in the same way that speaking into a handset notionally does now.
I could even envisage a speaker phone being simply an outstretched open palm. Easy peasy. The intelligence would be hidden away with a ring or a watch performing the physical interface function. You could even let a friend listen to a message or music by holding your hand near their ear.
Check out other mobile reviews and posts here.
Easter is a coming and the Davies’ are off to Paris for a few days. I’m not taking a laptop. Just a notebook and pencil (yup) so no blog posts. Just eating and drinking and, well that’s it really. Probably a few sights if we happen to be passing.
I’ll be taking in my two favourite spots in Paris. Harry’s New York Bar is one I came across whilst at University. I hitch-hiked to Greece, via Paris and saw it advertised in the International Herald Tribune. It’s a brilliant American sports bar. Bit out of place you might think in Paris but it just seems to fit. The cocktails are fantastic and if you can stay the pace they have some great jazz. It features in the book “MASH Goes to Paris” fwiw.
The second spot is Au Bon Coin. This is a restaurant I found during the Paris International SIP Conference days. Going back a bit now but I still have fond memories of nights out there. V cheap as well. It was a haunt of some of the early pioneers of SIP.
It’ll be a 7.20 am train First Class to Kings Cross and then Eurostar over to Gare Du Nord. We have an apartment in Montmartre for the weekend. airbnb.
If I feel like it I’ll post some pics but otherwise the whole world is stopping anyway and I will substantially be offline.
Have a great Easter break wherever you are and whatever your beliefs. See you in a new tax year.
You see before you the words of a disappointed man. I have some trips coming up and thought I’d just pop on the Virgin East Coast website to check out the schedules and pricing.
To my annoyance I was unable to access it. Darn Ja.net I thought to myself. Then I tried from my mobile and also a few other sites – this one for example. No problemo so not ja.net after all (sorry Rob Evans).
There’s been a lot of wind today. My pal Rob was delayed because wind had blown some plastic sheeting onto the overhead electric cables somewhere near St Neots. The hazards of modern train travel eh? I thought maybe the website was similarly affected. Or maybe lots of people were trying to access the website to check if their train was running. Wouldn’t surprise me.
I knew what to do. I looked up the Virgin East Coast titter account. It goes by the handle @VirginTrains_EC. Amazingly the last tweet from this account was on February 28th:
https://twitter.com/VirginTrains_EC/status/571822158189617152
I insert a screenshot for your general information. Looks like they must have had a flurry of followers when they set up the account but they will all now be disappointed.
Seems a remarkable oversight on the part of @VirginTrains_EC. The old @eastcoastuk account seems to have had all it’s content removed.
I have nothing else to say really. I was motivated to write this post because I didn’t think it was a particularly well thought out social media plan on the part of Virgin East Coast.
Now that I’ve written all this the website is back up. Winds must have dropped. It’s too late though. Having gone to the effort I’m leaving the post as is. I await with interest to see what improvements Virgin have to offer. So far all they seem to have done is delay when breakfast is served on the 07.20. Instead of dishing it out as soon as we leave Lincoln I now have to wait until Newak. Also it was overcooked the last time I had it. Ah well.
I wonder if they will notice this post? It gets tweeted.
Hasta la vista baby.
Footnote. Hey…
@tref That isn't their official account. That's @Virgin_TrainsEC #VirginFamily ^CB
— Virgin Trains (@VirginTrains) March 31, 2015
Article 12 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home, or correspondence.’ This is the message driven home on the front page of human rights charity Privacy International who this year celebrate their 25th anniversary.
Executive Director Gus Hosein recently made an excellent contribution to our week of advice to the next government regarding internet related legislation. I thought because it’s their 25th birthday I’d tell you a bit more about them. In particular we have to remember that they are a charity and need everyone’s help in continuing their good work.
I first came across Gus and PI in the rush to defend against the Snoopers Charter. I spoke at an event he helped organise at The London School of Economics called called “The Race for Safety”. I was on a panel with Shami Chrakrabarti of Liberty and David Davis MP. Both seriously knowledgeable people.
Their achievements are best noted in the following bullet points:
The PI organisational statement is:
“Privacy International is committed to fighting for the right to privacy across the world.
We investigate the secret world of government surveillance and expose the companies enabling it. We litigate to ensure that surveillance is consistent with the rule of law. We advocate for strong national, regional, and international laws that protect privacy. We conduct research to catalyse policy change. We raise awareness about technologies and laws that place privacy at risk, to ensure that the public is informed and engaged.
To ensure that this right is universally respected, we strengthen the capacity of our partners in developing countries and work with international organisations to protect the most vulnerable.
Privacy International envisions a world in which the right to privacy is protected, respected, and fulfilled. Privacy is essential to the protection of autonomy and human dignity, serving as the foundation upon which other human rights are built. In order for individuals to fully participate in the modern world, developments in law and technologies must strengthen and not undermine the ability to freely enjoy this right.
Privacy International, a registered UK charity (No. 1147471), was founded in 1990 and was the first organisation to campaign at an international level on privacy issues.”
Please help Privacy International by donating what you can. Their fundraising page is here.
PS It will be interesting to see if any of the subjects raised in the political week on this blog get covered in the election campaigns of any party.
I have a hotmail account. I don’t use it much. It gets newsletters from the golf club and the occasional Eurostar communique. It was to check the timing of a forthcoming trip to gay Paree that I came across the Hotmail fraud detection test.
I like the idea of a fraud detection test. I’m sure all the large platforms have it. What I found funny was that a blue chip such as Eurostar might have failed it. You’d think it would have been noticed by their IT department, or at least someone would have brought it to their attention.
I looked at another email from Eurostar – thought a sample of one wasn’t quite enough. The second email didn’t have the fraud message but offered another nuance. It said “Email looking a bit odd? See it online“.
Odd I thought. Email looked fine. Also Hotmail is a cloud service – it’s already online. So I clicked on the link to see it online. Came up with this message.
At this point I gave up. I was getting myself into an infinite loop.
From my sample of two I’d say that the Hotmail fraud detection test is failed by emails confirming financial transactions associated with journey bookings and the infinite loop gets it’s knickers in a twist on adverts. Clearly these emails originate from different departments with different approaches to confusing customers:).
Personally I’ve never had a problem with Eurostar. The booking system is convenient, seats comfortable and you get a 4G connection whilst in the tunnel under the channel. I may however have to get myself a French SIM whilst in Paree as my EE 4G data roaming charges are a total ripoff. They totally fail the Trefor Davies fraud detection test.
Arriverderchi Royaume-Uni, bonjour Paris. Croissants, cafe, biere, steak frites, vin rouge Hotmail fraud detection test:)
The Ofcom Annual Plan 2015/16 is available at a glance here. Ofcom has a very wide ranging brief and one does wonder how they get anything done1 but I thought I’d pick out some bits for your attention.
Hopefully the strategic review will conclude that Fibre to the Premises is the only sensible long term goal. Unfortunately they will also say that they don’t know how to achieve this and they can’t see it happening on their watch.
Also I’m not sure how they will help SMEs. In particular very small businesses get ignored because they are too expensive to service/sell to and they don’t want to pay top dollar in taking the services.
Funnily enough the latter two points are dear to my heart. Check out the broadbandrating.com customer support graphs. Also the still warm post on scam calls here. As far as customer service monitoring goes I think that’s a commercial issue not a regulatory one. It should make commercial sense for Communications Providers to offer good customer service as this should provide them with a competitive advantage.
It’s all very well saying they want better coverage but unless the government mandates it, which they won’t because they won’t want to pay for it, it isn’t cost effective for the networks.
Quite interesting ones here. The international cooperation bit must surely be a very long term aspiration. I can’t see it succeeding. It’s too difficult. As regards improving trust in internet services this is somewhat at odds which what the government aspires to in removing your on-line rights to privacy. The critical services reference relates to 999 and Emergency Services access. It’s a complex bag of worms that really needs a total rethink but you will never find a government willing to do it. They don’t want to be held responsible for the “burning granny”.
I’m quite supportive of the last point. I see a lot of people complaining about long term absences of service whilst being tied in to contracts. It should be easier for people to say to a service provider “bye I’m off – you haven’t been doing a good enough job”. I can of course also see the service provider side of things especially with the difficulty of maintaining services running on this country’s ageing copper infrastructure but on this occasion I’m siding with the consumer.
There you have it. My quick shufty at the Ofcom Annual Plan for 2015/16. There is more to it but I wasn’t interested in the rest of it. Ciao amigos.
1 Now now I’m sure they must have got something done and that someone will list these achievements as a comment. There is a very interesting annual communications market report for one. They aren’t just there to take hospital passes aka the Digital Economy Act.
Just had a scam call. It’s not often I’m home early enough and they typically ring at tea time. You can immediately tell what sort of call it’s going to be because they use cheapo crap telephone services over the internet.
So I happened to be in a playful mood and thought I’d chat to the lad/laddette. Instead of speaking I sang the words down the line and eventually broke into a very tuneful version of Hello Dolly. At that point the scammer ended the call without having even introduced himself.
No stamina. I might have been interested in signing up for his virus repair services or whatever it was he was using to try and extract cash.
I’d be quite interested in hearing from anyone who knows someone who’s actually fallen for such a scam call. You can change the names etc to protect the innocent/unwary.
Also the most innovative scams. You don’t hear of any new ones. Maybe they think why change a winning recipe? Or maybe they aren’t imaginative enough? Probably a bit of both.
One wonders whether they have an employment category in India (or where ever else these calls originate) called “scam call operative”. It would be near surgeon and secretary on the list. Perhaps “solicitor” is what they put down. Geddit? What proportion of census entries would have the scam call operative down as occupation.
Maybe people do NVQs in such profession. It’s bound to help at the job interview. You would also want to be able to quote how much cash you had successfully extracted from people. Bump it up even. I doubt it would be verifiable. It’s the scammer’s equivalent of lying about your salary on a job application, or making up a fake doctorate you’d bought on the internet (not paid for it hopefully – the scammer has pride in his or her capability to do such things).
Anywaysenoughfernow.
Loads of scam call posts here btw. It’s some of the most visited stuff on this blog.
Everytime I find a new service that I think is great and realise it’s been around a while makes me realise how behind the times I am. All my LONAP expenses now go on to Expensify. It’s like my experiences with Uber and AirBnB. Just so easy to use.
I know that most of you will have been using the service for yonks so you’ll have to bear with me. I now scan in my receipts using the Expensify Android app and they appear in my account all broken down into VAT etc. Add a category from a drop down box and submit report. Magic.
It even has the facility to email receipts. So Uber taxi trips, where you get sent the receipt as soon as the trip is over, are just forwarded to [email protected] and they appear in my account. Oo. Other than restaurants and bars why would I ever ask for a paper receipt again? Hotels can usually email you a PDF receipt.
Sometimes you do have to wonder whether technology makes life harder than easier because it is prone to go wrong. I have to say though that this isn’t my experience with the aforementioned applications.
So now I do all my accounts online using Freeagent, pay my bills automatically (actually only HMRC payments are automatic – they don’t give you a choice 🙂 ) using Lloyds online banking, file my expenses online, book my road/train/planetravel online and upload the receipts via email. I also sell event tickets using the Eventbrite cloud service and I use Google Apps for business in which all my work is done online.
Like I said, sorry if none of this is new to you. I was so excited I had to get it off my chest:) Most of my working life I’ve had to submit expense receipts with forms filled in. There have been times when I’ve had six different currencies to account for. Six different forms. Not any more mwahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa.
Last time I looked at transit costs I was paying something like 60pence/Mbps, admittedly only for a 1Meg commit. My habit of sharing blog posts on Facebook seems to be attracting an eclectic bunch of ads and this morning I was pushed one from Hurricane Electric for transit pricing!
This pricing, which is being touted as a special offer at $3,700 a month for 10Gbps. That’s 37 cents a Meg or about 25 pence according to Google. Much cheaper than I was paying a couple or three years ago.
However nota benne the LONAP 10Gig port price which is currently £375 a month for the first with subsequent ports a rock bottom £300 a month. That’s less than four pence a Meg. Even cheaper if you have more than one port.
Now it makes sense to have a blend of transit and peering, particularly as you can’t access all routes via peering but you can see how it makes real sense from a cost perspective to bias your network towards the latter. And it’s not just pricing. Using a peering exchange such as LONAP also makes technical sense as you get better adjacency – fewer router hops on average between you and your destination. Lower latency connections.
The pricing in this post is relevant now but one thing is certain and that it has further to go down. We continue to be in boom times in the internet networking game and there is no sign of it letting up. 10Gig ports on the exchange have long since replaced 1Gig as the bread and butter and the world is only waiting for 100Gig to become cost effective before moving en masse.
Currently the main cost benefit in moving to 100Gig is that you need fewer wavelengths. ie fewer fibre strands which makes it more manageable physically. Otherwise 100Gig kit costs 10 x 10Gig kit. Second generation equipment should bring down both costs and footprints.
Note not all peering providers will have pricing as low as LONAP but they will almost certainly all be cheaper than transit. Also I only quote what HE pushed me. Experience tells that you can always get a better price by haggling – the internet market. Alright darlin’? Do you a fantastic price on 10Gig?!
Loadsa peering posts here.
Somewhat belated congratulations ot Philip Davies MP and ITSPA Council member Jon Beardmore on their winning of the ITSPA Champions category of the ITSPA Awards, held last Thursday at the Tate Modern.
Philip Davies won it for his support in tackling anti-competitive blocking of VoIP services by certain mobile providers. That’s him pictured centre with me on the left and AQL CEO Adam Beaumont on the right.
Likewise Jon Beardsmore, pictured with me below, was a winner for his work in leading ITSPAs efforts on the open internet over the last three years. The combined efforts of our two winners have been particularly successful. Philip Davies raised the profile in parliament and Jon has been putting pressure on all stakeholders.
The upshot is that all major network operators have openly committed to net neutrality – a position that was definitely not the case hitherto – something that has been hidden in the small print of ts and cs never read by customers.
Kudos to Jon’s employer BT for giving him free reign to to this work which has involved frequent travel to Brussels.
This leads me on the the ITSPA Awards Members’ Pick which is The Latvian Presiedncy of The European Union and was given “for their leadership in developing a workable council text on the Open Internet”. This might surprise you but Latvia has taken a lead in promoting net neutrality against a plethora of vested interests.
I quote ITSPA Chair Eli Katz: ‘We have been very active in this area over the last few years. We believe the Latvian Presidency’s Open Internet proposals strike the right balance between promoting competition whilst enabling innovation. They will put an end to abusive practices by a minority of ISPs who have tried to frustrate competition with their own services whilst at the same time allowing specialised services to be offered with enhanced levels of prioritisation. This is essential if the internet is to reach its full potential – for example by delivering TV services over broadband to free up valuable radio spectrum for mobiles.’
The featured image is of Guy Miller ITSPA Council Member presenting the award to Ildze Jansone, Coordinator of the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the EU at the Embassy of Latvia in the United Kingdom. She shot off before I could get one of her and me (no idea why!) so I’ve used this one courtesy of ITSPA.
So all in all a good day for net neutrality at the ITSPA Awards. Loads of posts on net neutrality on this site btw. Check them out here.
Internet traffic dip during eclipse – unusual behaviour for a big news eventWe saw an unusual internet traffic dip in traffic across the LONAP network this morning as presumably people downed their devices and went outside to watch the solar eclipse.
I only found out the eclipse was happening yesterday as the papers started to publish guides on how to watch it without looking directly into the sun.
The chart thumbnail on the left shows the traffic building normally for the day. Then as the scheduled time for the event draws nearer you can see the upward curve stops abruptly and then drops down again.
These solar eclipses are, we are told very rare events. The internet traffic pattern that resulted is also rare:)
I was having a late breakfast in London at the time of the eclipse. Between mouthfulls I kept popping outside to see if there was any sign of it. Not a single ray! In fact the sun was nowhere to be seen in London. V disappointing.
LONAP is a London based Internet Exchange Point and I have to say that I am privileged to be on their board. You can check out other peering posts here. As far as I can recall there are no other eclipse related posts:)
internet traffic dip during eclipse – exciting though the eclipse was a disappointment.
Just wanted to say thanks to all for their contribution to the technology politics week on trefor.net (ok one post slipped into this week but it was worth waiting for:)). The week was a great success – we had around 200 social media shares with just short of 3,000 visits. The readership is typically from the networking and voip industries so your post will have had a visibility by a technically aware and relevant audience.
A wide range of quite diverse subjects were covered:
James Firth on more use of startups for innovation advice rather than large businesses
Gus Hosein on reform of data protection and government surveillance laws
Paul Bernal suggests government should hire advisers versant in modern internet technology
Andrew Cormack asks for guidelines on safe use of cloud tech
Monica Horten on Why Magna Carta matters where privacy policy is concerned
Julian Huppert MP asks for a framework of principles around online rights
Peter Farmer on Ofcom, number portability reform and structural changes to the way BT works
Domnhall Dods on the Reform of the Electronics Communications Code and
James Blessing on investment in education, fibre infrastructure, IPv6 and Open Data
Had I written all the content myself I couldn’t possibly had come up with such a variety of interesting and important matters. Makes you realise how complex our online world has become and how difficult it is for a government to steer a right course.
The shame is that now that we are in full electioneering swing none of these subjects is likely to feature in in the hustings, except possibly privacy. Economic policy, Europe and the NHS are likely as usual to be the main bullet points thrust in our faces.
All important stuff of course but we as an industry should perhaps think hard about how we can influence the next government in the tech related matters described above and not find ourselves again in the position of having to fight rearguard actions against laws conceived with the right intentions but with very little informed direction.
Thanks again to all who took part. A beer/coffee (you choose) is on offer the next time we meet.
To see the full lineup of political week posts click on a link below:
James Firth on why government should stop looking to big corporates for tech innovation
Gus Hosein on Data Protection Reform and Surveillance
The Julian Huppert crowd funding campaign here
Paul Bernal suggests government should hire advisers who know what they are doing
Domhnall Dods on Electronic Communications Code reform
James Blessing Says “No matter who you vote for…”
Peter Farmer on Ofcom really isn’t an all powerful deity
Dr Monica Horten on Why the Magna Carta applies to technology policy
Dr Julian Huppert MP proposes online rights framework to protect our privacy
Dave Levy talks digital policy from the perspective of a Labour Party Member and Open Rights Group subscriber.
See all our regulatory posts here.
In this broad ranging article, Labour Party member Dave Levy talks digital policy and includes repeal of the Digital Economy Act as one of his reforms for the next parliament.The issues raised by the digitisation and virtualisation of society by the internet can be seen as broken into two classes of issue, citizenship in the digital age and the digital economy.
It’s not going to be easy to predict Labour’s policies until the manifesto has been published but as a Labour Party Member and a subscriber to the Open Rights Group I am hopeful that on citizenship Labour’s promises will be better than expected by the LibDem led civil liberty lobby. Labour has also thought hard about its digital policy and published the Digital Government Review.
On citizenship the pressure group @LabourDigital has called for Labour to support the EDRI charter of Digital Rights and a number of Labour’s MEP candidates signed up for the charter’s voting exchange. The charter has 10 points addressing the issues of democratic participation, privacy, equality before the law, and asserting citizens’ rights in intellectual property law. I proposed its adoption on www.yourbritain.com here, if you can go there and vote it up, that’d be great.
When considering Labour historic record, it must be recognised that it was a Labour Government that passed the Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information acts, key statutory rights for the defenders of civil rights and liberties. Labour has come under attack by a number of civil libertarians, not all of it fair in my opinion since their preferred champions, usually Liberal Democrats have an unenviable record to justify over the term of this parliament, the introduction of secret courts, the restriction of legal aid & judicial review and the passage of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers (DRIP) Act.
Yvette Cooper in her speech to Demos last year, on Privacy & Security, expressed a balance that many libertarian critics of the last labour Administration would not expect. She emphasised
The digital age generates every second new and amazing opportunities that we should seize. But we cannot duck our responsibilities to face up to the difficult challenges it poses too – to make sure that the digital age serves the public and our democracy, and not the other way round.
Some other aspects of the citizenship debate are hung up on copyright reform where the voices arguing that the content industry’s definition of legitimate copyright and enforcement is a threat to civil liberties and democratic participation are scarce and weak. Intellectual property laws should protect the interests of the creator and of those who are inspired by the creation together with an overarching public interest. They must support the creation of derived works as well as so-called original creativity. The UK’s laws are amongst the strictest in the world and do not meet these goals. The proposals, made law in the Digital Economy Act legalising strong enforcement, private surveillance and industrialising the court process act as a constraint on freedom of speech, the right to fair trial, and continue the moves towards the privatisation1 of investigation and prosecution of crime. The European Union rejected this approach and we should remember David Martin, a Scottish Labour MEP’s role in killing this law at the European level since it wouldn’t enhance the legal rights of the citizens of Europe. The reason that the DE Act has not been back to parliament for confirmation is that now that the copyright holders have to pay for it, they don’t want it2.
The PLP Leadership have been captured on Copyright by the Musicians Union. For the record, there is no public interest argument for the current copyright laws. At the heart is an unjust duration, and an egregiously prohibitive exceptions policy. Harriet Harman spoke of the resurrection of the Digital Economy Act at Labour’s last conference and Labour’s culture team have been captured. They can’t get it through their heads that now that the Music Companies have to pay for the tribunals and IT to pursue fans, they don’t want to. They also need to get it through their heads that this isn’t about Google vs. European culture; if it’s between any two corporations it’s between the US Datenkraken and the big three content companies, (Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers) non of which are headquartered in either the UK or the EU. However, again, the parliamentary opposition to ACTA in the EU and the Digital Economy Act in the UK was led by Labour MPs. Labour’s National Policy Forum has said nothing about copyright; I expect the manifesto commitment to be poor.
There is also a cretinous populism in Parliament, which Labour shares about more e-voting despite all the evidence and expert testimony that it’s dangerous since it opens a huge risk for tampering and other older forms of corruption.
On Privacy the record of the Labour Party is better, with the European Parliament’s formidable defence of the rights to Privacy being led by Labour’s Claude Moraes and the majority of those MPs who voted against the emergency scheduled “Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act” being Labour MPs. The commitments to the sunset clause and civil oversight board would not have happened without Labour’s awkward squad and possibly without David Blunkett publically recognising that the Labour Government’s RIPA has insufficient judicial input leaving politically supervised police to authorise search warrants. If clever, this could be a differentiator between Labour and the Tories since Cameron seems to be happy with a politically authorised warrant, one would hope that might be picked up.
On the broader economic issues and on government projects, Chi Onawurah MP, the only engineer in the House of Commons and Labour spokesperson on Digital Government has commissioned a review and is developing a series of policies for Government. The review focus very much on the Government as a consumer. The key differentiators between Labour and the others will be on the issues of ownership and inclusion. On technology as a macro-economic growth engine, Labour has the strongest policy and understanding, addressing explicitly digital skills, local authority partnerships, commitments to open data and proposing small steps towards public money buying access and usability, the need for an ethical government data management policy and the centrality3 of open standards & licenses (again). The proposals for an Investment Bank and the reduction of tuition fees are also knowledge economy issues.
My four critical proposals are for reforms that
In addition I’d argue that the Digital Economy Act should be repealed. It’s unworkable, the music companies no-longer want it now they have to pay for it. It makes the UK one of the most restrictive legal regimes in the world, more so even than the USA.
While the remainder of this piece talks about issues broader than the digital economy and digital society, they remain important as reasons for selecting who to vote for.
The election is likely to be tight, there are committed libertarians standing for re-election as Labour Candidates who have got all the big digital liberty issues right. If they are all returned then the Parliament will be a better place for the politics of digital citizenship. Labour’s awkward squad will vote against the whip, we don’t know about the courage of the LibDems. For those for whom these issues are critical, you’ll need to find out what your candidates think, the dynamics within the parliamentary parties may become as important as the manifesto commitments.
Also by making an individual constituency decisions, we can help ensure that more expertise will arrive in the next parliament since it’s woefully short in the current one.
There is no doubt that for many people issues such as macro-economic policy i.e fiscal and monetary policy, the funding and governance of the National Health Service, Housing, Education and Energy will more important and for them the choice is obvious; there are only two realistic candidates to become Prime Minister but for those concerned with the state of the politics of digital, a Labour led House of Commons with a strong pro-citizen group may well be the best result. The coalition result on surveillance, privacy, secret courts, legal aid and secret courts shows the potential future. The Coalition’s Minister for Justice argues for the withdrawal from the EU and its court and the European Court of Human Rights. If the politics of digital is your first priority, then you should find out what your MP or PPC thinks and recognise that you are voting for an MP, not a government. To these broader issues, I’d add that Ed Miliband’s promise of a constitutional convention maybe the best bet we have of getting a genuine proportionate voting system in place as well as abolishing the House of Lords.
First published on trefor.net.
Dave Levy has worked in IT for over 30 years, employed in Government, Financial Services and by IT Systems Vendors. He continues to work as a consultant, primarily in the City of London. While working for Sun Microsystems in the late 2000’s he represented them on NESSI, the European Union’s internet industry R&D incubator. Dave is a member of the Labour Party and a member of the Open Rights Group’s Supporter’s Council. He writes here in a personal capacity, these opinions do not necessarily represent those of his employer, or anyone else. He blogs on Technology, Politics and Technology Politics here. (http://blog.davelevy.info)
Other tech reg posts include:
James Firth on why government should stop looking to big corporates for tech innovation
Gus Hosein on Data Protection Reform and Surveillance
The Julian Huppert crowd funding campaign here
Paul Bernal suggests government should hire advisers who know what they are doing
Domhnall Dods on Electronic Communications Code reform
James Blessing Says “No matter who you vote for…”
Peter Farmer on Ofcom really isn’t an all powerful deity
Dr Monica Horten on Why the Magna Carta applies to technology policy
Dr Julian Huppert MP proposes online rights framework to protect our privacy
See all our regulatory posts here.
1 For the logical endpoint, of the privatisation of law enforcement, see Jennifer Government.
2 It’s more complicated than this, but for reasons of space I’ll leave it there.
3 This is clearly easier said than done, since the Tories promised this in 2010.
4 This is a slogan but the UK should adopt the US principle that the public sector’s knowledge assets are available to the public.
Twitter in Lincolnshire was buzzing this morning with the announcement that singing knight Sir Tom Jones is doing a concert at Market Rasen Racecourse. Exciting eh?
What caught my attention was not the gig announcement. Unfortunately I’m having my hair done that evening so I can’t go. No it was the fact that it was the @RealSirTomJones who was going to be singing.
Not one of his alter egos @TheRealTomJ, @SirTomJones1, @SirTomOfReading, @Sir_Tom_Jones, @RealSirT0mJ0nes, @sir_tomjones1, @SIRtomsjones, @sir_tomjones, @SirThomasJones or @TheRealTomJ. Soo confusing. Good job the real one has the tick to show his account has been validated by Twitter.
It’s difficult to imagine that Tom Jones of “Delilah” and “Green Green Grass of Home” fame which let’s face it pre-date the internet let alone social networking has a personable Twitter account. A quick glance shows that indeed it’s run by a PR person. Tweets are mostly just gig announcements. Had Twitter been around in Sir Tom’s heyday his stream would probably have made for a very interesting read.
Now @RealSirTomJones has 504k followers. Understandable for a mega pop god. Probably every single woman who threw a pair of knickers on stage at one of his 60s gigs is a follower. I wondered how many followers the other Tom Jones’ had and struck gold when I looked up @Sir_Tom_Jones as a representative sample. @Sir_Tom_Jones has 5 followers and has only done one tweet which is the circumstances is totally brilliant.
https://twitter.com/Sir_Tom_Jones/status/550374518532112385
I leave you to check out the other accounts. It would be funny if one of them had more followers than the real mcoy. If you do end up following @RealSirTomJones do let me know. Just for a laugh:)
Deets here if you want to go to the gig. Actually I might go if I am around but August is far too much like forward planning.
We have introduced an average broadband price element to broadbandrating.com. This allows punters to see what the average monthly cost of a broadband line is over the period of a contract.
The average pricing takes into consideration any up front incentives and also any set up costs (router delivery charges etc). Where a reduced cost line rental is available the lower price is assumed. This is normally for an annual upfront payment.
The “normal” broadband (ie ADSL) average price works out at £14.35 a month. This is slightly skewed by TalkTalk who don’t bundle any telephone calls into their deal whilst the others chuck in at least weekend calls. Seeing as a lot of people only use their mobile phones these days we don’t see that as a huge issue.
Monthly charges will increase once the initial incentives are out of contract but in theory there isn’t anything to stop consumer switching supplier every time this happens.
The average “fibre” pricing is £24.42, also taking into consideration offers and incentives (the TalkTalk telephony observation remains)
For periods of time when ISPs aren’t offering cashback or rewards their average prices are significantly higher and presumably means lower new customer signup/higher churn. You have to believe that ISPs are also assuming low churn after the initial contract period as I can’t see much margin in their deals otherwise.
The cost difference between normal broadband and fibre is around £10 which presumably represents the difference in bandwidth usage costs. Broadband is certainly very cheap now. The average price of a pint of beer in the UK is £2.90. That means that regular broadband is the equivalent of around 5 pints a month. Fibre is more like 8 1/2 pints. That’s very affordable.
Londoners get an even better deal which will bemuse our rural friends as beer is usually a lot more expensive in the capital. Their tourist rip off prices are nearer a fiver a pint so we are talking less than three pints for a broadband line. Amazingly affordable I’d say:)
More details on the average prices here.
Check out our other broadband posts here. Loads of em:)
The internet is increasingly key to our daily lives and a crucial part of public policy making with ramifications across all areas. However, too often what we get from politicians is poorly thought through kneejerkery. I’ve seen this myself, on far too many occasions.
Just to pick up a few examples, when we were re-writing the Defamation Bill, there was a proposal being pushed that ISPs should be required to filter out any defamatory content on their network – quite a tall order.
David Cameron has been particularly bad – you may remember his suggestion at the time of the riots that he should be able to turn off social media to avoid panic. It took a lot of work to stop that and make it something that was ‘not even considered’. More recently, he’s been insisting that we should ban any messaging system that cannot be decrypted by GCHQ, completely failing to understand the essential link between encryption and cyber-security.
But this problem strikes the opposition too. There have been some really alarming comments about filtering out legal material online that completely miss the point of what is technically possible or desirable. And of course there are people in each party who do actually get it, although not all of us get to have the necessary influence over our front benches to achieve sensible outcomes.
My party has taken these issues seriously, and there are several things we hope to achieve in this area. One of these is stable sensible regulation – something that almost shouldn’t need to be said. Brilliant new ideas can easily be killed off if regulation is tweaked unexpectedly and long term investment will drop off if there is a risk of irrational rule changes. We as politicians should set a framework of principles, which should then be relatively stable. We should call on technical experts for help and have discussions with the community and businesses. We can then setting the detailed online rights rules in a rational way. That has to be the best way forward.
I’ve been particularly working to develop a Digital Bill of Rights, setting a basic framework for what people should expect online when it comes to issues like privacy, net neutrality and more. This has become especially important since the Snowden revelations. All of us want security, and all of us want privacy. How do we try to achieve both of those goals? When should the police or security services be allowed to collect information on us, and for what purposes?
Typically, these issues have been dealt with largely secretively and reluctantly, and with a focus on specific data types. For example, strong controls were introduced on DNA data in the Protection of Freedoms Act, but the Police just sidestepped them when storing biometric information, without even attempting to learn the principles from DNA data.
So those are my two key points – stable and sensible regulation, and a clear principle framework for our online rights. If I’m re-elected I’ll fight for those but it would be great to have more colleagues to help with that.
If you want to help me achieve this vision, please consider helping me out – http://www.backjulian.co.uk has the details.
Julian Huppert is Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge. He has a scientific background and is one of a very small minority of our MPs who can grasp issues relating to internet technology.
Although one or two more might creep in that pretty much concludes the week’s posts on advice to the next government. Other political week posts on trefor.net are linked to below:
James Firth on why government should stop looking to big corporates for tech innovation
Gus Hosein on Data Protection Reform and Surveillance
The Julian Huppert crowd funding campaign here
Paul Bernal suggests government should hire advisers who know what they are doing
Domhnall Dods on Electronic Communications Code reform
James Blessing Says “No matter who you vote for…”
Peter Farmer on Ofcom really isn’t an all powerful deity
Dr Monica Horten on Why the Magna Carta applies to technology policy
See all our regulatory posts here.
This year is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the Great Charter that established the right to a fair trial and put an end to arbitrary justice in private hands. What, you may ask, does this have to do with technology policy for the 21st century? It’s a strange twist of fate that this year, in Britain, we face calls for private companies to take on the role of (secret) police-man, judge and censor all wrapped up in one.
Post-election, the government of whatever colour – blue, red, yellow, purple or green – will have to face up to policy issues concerning the technology that runs our lives and the companies that control the underlying infrastructure. Broadly, the issues fall into two categories:
Control of content on networks (BT, Virgin, TalkTalk, Vodafone etc) and platforms (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc)
Surveillance using the underlying data created by transmissions using these networks and platforms
In both cases, the issue is whether technology companies can be asked to take action in respect of individuals and their private communications at the demand or insistence of third parties. Those third parties might be governments but might also be other private or public interest groups with a range of aims relating to, for example, terrorism, children, defamation or copyright. The kind of action they might be asked to take is to block or filter content; or collect, store and supply data.
The suggestion by intelligence chief Robert Hannigan, in his Financial Times article, for a public debate is absolutely welcome, and it will be down to the next government to show the strength of character to facilitate such a discussion.
My plea to politicians and government officials is that they should not simply accept these kinds of demands at face-value. They should try to understand the importance of the balancing act that they are obligated to carry out when addressing individual communications. These obligations fall under the human rights framework and they take us back to Magna Carta and the stand against arbitrary justice. Whatever the policy aim, it is paramount that the government must balance such demands against rights to free speech and privacy, and ensure that justice is conducted with due process.
There is scholarly and legal opinion that mass retention of communications data puts privacy rights at risk. In particular, the risk concerns abuse of powers of access to the data. From local councils seeking to get at dog owners, as apparently happened a few years ago, right through to very nasty possibilities of the misuse of data to spy on and pressure innocent individuals, such possibilities must be guarded against.
Similarly, it is widely recognised among experts that the blocking and filtering technology implemented by the broadband providers is capable of interfering with free speech rights, and there is a growing body of case law to that effect. This is especially the case where the filtering is carried out with no legal basis, using secret black-lists created by third-parties, and outsourced to companies operating in other countries under foreign legal jurisdiction. Arguably, such filtering represents an intolerable interference with a precious right to freedom of speech and uncensored publishing that we have enjoyed for over 300 years since the lapse of the Licencing Act in 1695.
In the country that gave birth to Magna Carta and to the most essential principles of democracy, it is incumbent on policy-makers to remember that any decision regarding interference with personal communications and online content must be necessary and proportionate, meet a legitimate policy aim and be provided for by law. Private corporations are the kings of today. Like King John, they should not be above the law. They should also not be asked to enforce the law. Arbitrary demands that technology companies take action without the proper legal basis, arguably puts democratic speech on a slippery slope going backwards.
Dr Monica Horten is a Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science. She is an independent expert on the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on Cross-border Flow of Internet Traffic and Internet Freedom. She is the author of two books: A Copyright Masquerade: how corporate lobbying threatens online freedoms and The Copyright Enforcement Enigma: Internet politics and the Telecoms Package and writes the Iptegrity blog (Twitter: @Iptegrity). She has a new book on Internet policy forthcoming from Polity Press in early 2016. She also has a forthcoming paper on free speech rights, private actors and the duties of the State.
First published on trefor.net.Other political week posts on trefor.net:
James Firth on why government should stop looking to big corporates for tech innovation
Gus Hosein on Data Protection Reform and Surveillance
The Julian Huppert crowd funding campaign here
Paul Bernal suggests government should hire advisers who know what they are doing
Domnhall Dods on Electronic Communications Code reform
James Blessing Says “No matter who you vote for…”
Peter Farmer on Ofcom really isn’t an all powerful deity
See all our regulatory posts here.
Aladdin: You’re a prisoner?Genie: It’s all part and parcel, the whole genie gig.[grows to a gigantic size]Genie: Phenomenal cosmic powers![shrinks down inside the lamp]Genie: Itty bitty living space!
Aside from the comic genus of the late, great, Robin Williams, the Disney classic “Aladdin” reminds me of conversations I often have with people in our industry.
Telecommunications is regulated; heavily regulated. Sometimes we can be forgiven for forgetting this, because of the “General Authorisation” regime. Courtesy of the various European Directives which ultimately govern many facets of our industry, anyone is presumed to be a “fit and proper” person to run a network/reseller and provide a communications service. Compliance with the rules is presumed until otherwise demonstrated, or in the rare few cases where ex-ante regulation such as charge controls is imposed.
I have many conversations, often with smaller operators, but not exclusively, where a sentence like “Why doesn’t Ofcom do something?” comes up. Be that in the long-running net neutrality debate, something ITSPA members will remember, where Ofcom’s Chief Executive went before a Select Committee and invited more powers to deal with issues, through to perceived abuses of various legislative, moral or ethical codes (I would say number portability ticks all of those boxes).
Whilst Ofcom, in delivering taxpayer value, has slowly exited several floors in Riverside House, to the extent, for those that have had the misfortune of being summonsed into the inner sanctum, will know it truly is an itty bitty living space, many also seem to think that Ofcom has, or expects it to use, “Phenomenal cosmic powers!”. Aside from the obvious issue of how often it is currently found to have erred by the Competition Appeal Tribunal and how worrying such unmetered discretion could be, Ofcom is simply not an all-powerful Genie. Its powers are very limited, derived (in voice and data telecommunications at least) from a handful of European Directives, Recommendations and Regulations, with a little thrown in via the Communications Act 2003, Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 and a few competition and consumer-right centric pieces of legislation. Yes, Ofcom has the power to set retail and wholesale price caps, but only after going through an exhaustive exercise of consultation and demonstration that such regulation is necessary and proportionate; the presumption in the regulatory construct of the day is one of deregulation and light touch regulation.
Various layers of jurisprudence have layered on top of this and reinforced the non-interventionist approach, such as last year’s Supreme Court judgement which essentially says that there has to be actual demonstrable consumer harm before Ofcom can exercise certain dispute resolution powers, not just uncertainty whether it will be caused or not.
Increasingly, Ofcom expects its stakeholders to tell it what powers it has and how it should exercise them; maybe they just like trolling me, but it is certainly increasingly my experience that you have to do the heavy lifting for them and point to regulatory and legislative provisions before they’ll entertain acting, if they can at all. In fact, I think my most uttered phrase in industry meetings is “Ofcom doesn’t have the power to do what you ask”. On top, they don’t expect things they publish or consult on to necessarily be the first a regulated telco hears of something – last year’s drop in fixed termination rates was a journey that started with the adoption of a Recommendation by the European Union in 2009, for example.
All of this conspires together to create an environment where there has to be a grave injustice with a well constructed legal argument as to why there’s an injustice and why/how Ofcom can act. For small operators, this could be tantamount to investigating crimes committed against them and prosecuting their burglar themselves!
Let’s just say that David does defeat Goliath and Ofcom takes action against an alleged injustice; well heeled and deeply resourced Goliath just throws some barristers at the Competition Appeal Tribunal and has the entire injustice reheard. If Goliath doesn’t like the Tribunal’s answer, it can go off to the Court of Appeal – right now I believe there’s one application in progress and there’s been 3 judgements appealed in the last few years. Then there’s been further escalations to the Supreme Court and also the constant risk of a reference to the European Court of Justice.
Ofcom is far from a genie, hardly a powerful wizard either. Perhaps a wise and battle scarred druid would be an appropriate analogy? Its decisions have no certainty until after the window to litigate expires (2 months from the date of the decision) and I would suggest it is becoming increasingly litigation weary – a sense I get from the current nature of its decision making.
I write this in response to Tref’s request for something to inform debate before the parliamentary purdah; Parliament’s wings are clipped here too – various European Directives explicitly prevent it from directing Ofcom in certain affairs, however, there are two things I would suggest they could strongly hint that Ofcom do (although one is really pushing it in relation to the non-interference directive) to ensure the sustainability of our highly competitive and vibrant telecommunications industry, assuming they aren’t too distracted throwing more public money at BT’s FTTC roll-out. Oh, and a third thing they can do outright.
Firstly, number portability is a farce. We used to be the world leaders in this area having one of the first truly open and competitive markets, only to have been lapped by Yemen. I strongly believe Ofcom does have the power to implement the appropriate European Directive in a more rigorous way to deal with some or all of the shenanigans we endure daily, but won’t.
Secondly, without boring you all (unless I am requested by popular demand) with a lecture in economics, the way that BT’s charges are controlled afford it the ability to subsidise its quad-play offering and Premiership football rights acquisitions courtesy of your business – its regulated weighted average cost of capital is calculated by Ofcom with reference to its near-junk status bonds and its beta of equity which are both influenced by its extra-curricular activities and artificially inflate your charges.
Finally, there was a government consultation process on streamlining the post regulatory decision making process to make things more, in part, accessible and to address some of the issues I refer to here. That seems to have stalled and/or died in a ditch, so would be worth dusting off and pursuing to a conclusion.
Three, relatively small, relatively simple things would address two grave injustices; fibre rollout (premises or cabinet), net neutrality, data protection, Openreach structural separation, privacy and snooping, nuisance calls – all great and important topics for politicians and ones I am sure will be covered this week; but these two would be a decent, easily administered shot of adrenaline for us all.
Other political week posts on trefor.net:
James Firth on why government should stop looking to big corporates for tech innovation
Gus Hosein on Data Protection Reform and Surveillance
The Julian Huppert crowd funding campaign here
Paul Bernal suggests government should hire advisers who know what they are doing
Domhnall Dods on Electronic Communications Code reform
James Blessing Says “No matter who you vote for…”
See all our regulatory posts here.
Since we have a potential change of government coming up, it might be useful to see how well the current one has been doing in the telecoms and technology space and where the next one might repeat the same mistakes. These are the random scribblings of an individual, and not a position paper by ISPA or any company that I work for (though the are probably people in those organisations who agree with the sentiment).
There is a fine line that people in business need to tread when trying to get the government involved in something. Whilst there is often a space for government involvement, there is also some risk that they will try to dominate the process and move it from being a good idea to something that actually would have been better for all of us if they’d never been involved.
Let’s start with the biggest heffalump in the room, BDUK. Whilst the idea of government injecting funds into various projects to make sure the country’s infrastructure is the best in the world and no region gets left behind, most of the people in industry recognised that BT would win most (if not all) of the contracts. This isn’t because of the evil machinations of the government or BT (much though people would like to believe that) but rather because the “scheme” was designed by civil servants with a paranoia that Eurocrats would jump on any project that thought outside of the most convenient box.
The “good” news is that the third round of funding seems to be focusing on more creative solutions, but I fear for those communities that are going to be left with solutions that will leave them far behind their dense cousins in the cities. The bad news is that BT’s obsession with copper (which they have a lot of) rather than fibre (which they have a lot of too) seems to be continuing with G.fast. In an ideal world, someone in government would recognise that fibre is the way forward, but it seems that only the smaller altnets are the ones who are delivering it.
Moving on from infrastructure, we have the fun that is monitoring and content. The two largest parties seem to have developed an unhealthy obsession with “out-nannying” each other (and many individuals in other parties have agreed with them on occasion). The last two governments have both tried (and failed for different reasons) to introduce widescale, automated watcher programmes that keep an eye on all internet activity using potential terrorism threat and “think of the children” as their rallying cries. If I were a betting man, then I’d put money that without the more liberal elements in the next government, we’ll see the same legislation in a new format raise its head over the parapet. It’s as if Sir Humphrey’s spirit lives long around the echelons of Whitehall.
Indeed, by using the “think of the children” approach, we also appear to channelling the late Mary Whitehouse in terms of restricting access to “objectionable content”. Whilst I agree that children shouldn’t be exposed to it, the approach being used where end users get no choice in the matter removes “parental” responsibility in terms of their own media, literacy and educational development; as well as teaching an entire generation to bypass security settings to get to the things they want to. For one, I pity the IT admins of the future, who have to deal with a generation who have been conditioned that the only way to source content is to bypass access control.
But what of looking forward? What should we be pushing our government (and politicians) to do from their ivory tower? Personally, I think it comes down to number of (relatively) simple steps that they could promote, and then leave the market/society to work out:
Education – So much promise has been shown with the Raspberry Pi and the maker community when it comes to what can be done when you set the mind free, but schools’ curricula have become so restricted to focusing on “now” and not encouraging “future”, that teachers are prevented from exploiting these developments purely for the ability to create. Not everyone wants to be a web developer, software designer or network engineer but letting kids run wild with technology is the only way new things happen. We need another generation of hackers – in the original sense of the word, meaning people who want to play around with things to find out how they work rather than emo kids who hang around in basements with green characters on a black screen. In fact we should probably just clone Tom – http://www.tomscott.com/
Infrastructure – Many new different technologies are being predicted as being “just around the corner” (the cynic inside says that they’ve been just around the corner since the 80’s but hey…), the Internet of Things, Driverless Cars, 5G, 4K, TLAs, Virtual Reality, Distributed Energy – all of which will need underlying infrastructure to ship control data. Whilst there are frequently voices raised exclaiming that we’re in the top N countries in the world for XYZ, and that we should be proud to be there, surely we should be setting our sight and goals higher? Rather than settling for 25mbps to 90% of the country, we should be looking at delivering 1Gbps in the next 5 years to everyone, and then how we move from 1G to 10G 5 years later. We might decide we can’t quite make it on that time scale and lower the goals a bit, but, at the moment, we’re shooting too low. In 2000, broadband (when it was still called DSL) managed 512k maximum to less than 20% of the country, 10 years later the average was 5Mbps and the coverage was 71%. Our minimum goal should be 50mbps average by 2020, and to hit that, we should be pushing infrastructure capabilities and formats now!
IPv6 – Whilst the previous two are rather grand sweeping topics that need lots of things to happen and a longer period of time before we see the greatest benefits, rolling out IPv6 everywhere is a much more pressing issue. The IoT is going to consume vast amounts of address space, address space that we’ve already run out of. The security services are demanding traceability of end users, and more networks are hiding them as they cope with a lack of space. In both cases, deploying IPv6 now, where ever and when ever possible, will help. It’s painful to watch clever people come up with more and more crazy schemes to share address space when IPv6 would solve the problem. For politicians, this is a great thing to jump on, its easy to measure success and government involvement is pressure on organisations rather than central financial investment – just include it as a requirement in all government tenders (preferably pushed up to an EU level as well) and see how fast suppliers start adapting.
Open data – The other easy win, the data exists, people want the data – make it available. Okay, you’d lose some revenue from the postcode database but everyone’s life will be slightly better as there is no longer a reason not to include postcode lookup in applications (other than laziness, and we can let market forces deal with that). “Publish and be damned” I say, and its great to see http://data.gov.uk/ already taking baby steps, but a change of government is an opportunity to push this issue forward at all levels.
And with that I’ll get my coat, take my soap box away and find another crowd to harangue.
James Blessing is currently CTO of Keycom PLC, a managed services provider. He has over twenty years of experience in internet technologies. Previously he was Strategic Relations Manager, EMEA at Limelight Networks, COO at Entanet, technical support manager and technical development manager at Zen Internet; senior project manager at Eunite; senior producer at Kiss102 and Kiss105; and a technical director at Net Nannies. James is also chairman of the trade body ISPA.
Other political week posts on trefor.net:
James Firth on why government should stop looking to big corporates for tech innovation
Gus Hosein on Data Protection Reform and Surveillance
The Julian Huppert crowd funding campaign here
Paul Bernal suggests government should hire advisers who know what they are doing
Domhnall Dods on Electronic Communications Code reform
See all our regulatory posts here.
Domhnall Dods says the next Government should be looking at Electronic Communications Code reformThirty years ago we saw the start of a new era in the UK telecommunications market. The Telecoms Act 1984 introduced competition and included the Electronic Communications Code which regulates the relationship between landowners and telecoms network providers. The primary policy objective of the Code was to enable operators to develop networks and encourage competition where previously BT had been the only operator. Unfortunately the Code never fulfilled its intended purpose and is seldom used due to the complexity of the processes and the very poor drafting of the Code.
This matters because the economy depends to an ever increasing extent on digital connectivity. In 2013 in their report on the Code, the Law Commission cited research showing the value to the economy of our industry as some £35 billion. For businesses a fast reliable connection is now vital. Consumers too increasingly regard superfast broadband as an essential service. Demand for bandwidth continues to grow. To deliver the 21st Century services that the UK needs, we need to enable investment in the networks needed to provide such services.
A modern, workable legal framework would help encourage fresh investment in UK telecoms infrastructure. This is an immediate regulatory step the Government could take to reduce the costs of network extension and so drive investment and innovation.
The current Code – outdated and counter-productive
The Code is widely regarded as a poor piece of legislation. In the main communications providers have tended to find other ways to avoid or overcome land access problems. They do this by finding alternative routes, sometimes by paying up the sums demanded for access as the need to connect a customer is so urgent, or in extreme cases by simply not installing the infrastructure at all.
The issue was examined by the courts in the Bridgewater Canal case when Geo Networks sought to install additional fibres in existing ducts under the Bridgewater Canal. The landowner claimed Geo had to pay more fees in addition to those paid for the existing ducts installed under the canal. Geo sought to rely on the code but this meant pursuing the matter through the courts for a number of years, ultimately ending in the Court of Appeal.
Mr Justice Lewison said of the Code “ In my view it must rank as one of the least coherent and thought-through pieces of legislation in the statute book”.
The Law Commission
Under pressure from industry the Government instructed the Law Commission to look into the matter in 2011. In 2013 the Commission recommended that a brand new code be drafted, starting with a blank sheet of paper.
Two years have now passed since the Law Commission’s recommendations were published but nothing was done until January of 2015. Then the Government rushed out amendments to the Infrastructure Bill which would have totally rewritten the Code. Unfortunately while the intent was good, the execution was poor and the proposals had to be withdrawn in the face of opposition from both communications providers and landowners. Nothing can now be done before the election but DCMS has issued a consultation on what a new code might look like so there is hope that reform might still take place after May and that the UK might at long last have a Communications Code fit for the 21st Century.
This should be an issue which commands cross-party support. The Government, announcing an agreement with the mobile networks to enhance their coverage, described the code as ‘out-dated and ineffective’ whilst the Opposition said during parliamentary debate of the Code last year that they ‘have made it very clear that we are in favour (of reforming the code)’.
A new Code is needed to make the UK an investment friendly environment
Crucially, the UK is now falling behind other European countries in the support given to those responsible for maintaining our digital infrastructure. For example, while network upgrades in the United Kingdom can (as shown by the Bridgewater Canal case) be a lengthy and expensive process and can require network operators to pursue costly legal action, other countries recognise the economic importance of such work and allow much quicker methods with less red tape.
If the Government is to achieve its stated ambitions in relation to world class communications infrastructure then it needs to reform the Code. The industry has been campaigning for this reform since 2009. What is needed now is political leadership and a commitment to produce a workable Code which balances the interests of network operators and landowners alike. Failure to do so will put the UK at an economic and competitive disadvantage. Businesses and consumers cannot afford for the UK government to continue to prevaricate on this issue.
Improvements and repairs are being delayed
Failure to reform the Code will continue to hinder the ability of communications providers to build the infrastructure needed to compete with BT. It also limits the utility of regulatory remedies such as passive access to BT’s infrastructure – in order to use the duct and pole sharing products which BT was ordered to make available, BT’s rivals need first to negotiate with landowners for the right to install their own fibre in BT’s existing ducts since wayleaves almost always prohibit the sharing of the duct with other operators.
This runs contrary to Ofcom and Government policies of encouraging infrastructure sharing. The current system builds in delays with the rental negotiation and other administrative processes, all backed up by a code which is so cumbersome as to be unworkable when seeking access to land to install infrastructure. Delays in rolling out network are frustrating both to customers (particularly businesses) and to communications providers alike.
Reforming the Code – what needs to be done
It is widely recognised that the current Code is outdated and no longer fit for purpose. It was drafted in an age when electronic communications were less of a priority whereas they are now a vital part of any business and regarded as an integral part of everyone’s life. As the Law Commission put it “The current Code is complex and confusing, it is inconsistent with other legislation, and it is not up-to-date with modern technology.”
There is considerable detail behind the issues highlighted above and this article cannot properly cover all the salient points. However, the starting point would be to address the following headline requirements:
Conclusion
Significant reform of the Electronic Communications Code is needed to deliver efficient and more effective delivery of increased competition as we move forwards into an era when fibre to the premises can be envisaged as being required. Network upgrade and extension will therefore assume an increased importance and relevance. It is vital that this is not compromised by outdated and unworkable statutory provisions.
The industry has been urging Government for at least 6 years to look at improving the Electronic Communications Code; UK businesses and consumers cannot afford to wait any longer for change in this fundamental piece of legislation which underpins the ability of communications providers to provide the infrastructure which the UK needs and the public increasingly expects.
This post was written by Domhnall Dods in a personal capacity.
Domhnall is a highly experienced telecoms lawyer and regulatory expert He has worked in the telecoms industry since 1996 having spent 12 years as Head of Regulatory Affairs at THUS plc. (1996 -2009).
On leaving THUS he joined Towerhouse LLP, a law firm specialising in the regulated sectors of the economy. Domhnall trained and qualified as a solicitor with Shepherd & Wedderburn WS in Edinburgh, qualifying in 1990. He was educated at the University of Aberdeen and Napier University Edinburgh.
Other political week posts on trefor.net:
James Firth on why government should stop looking to big corporates for tech innovation
Gus Hosein on Data Protection Reform and Surveillance
The Julian Huppert crowd funding campaign here
Paul Bernal suggests government should hire advisers who know what they are doing
See all our regulatory posts here.
Andrew Cormack of Jisc asks the next government for cloud policy guidance over safe and lawful use of cloud offeringsCloud computing, used appropriately, could benefit many organisations. Cloud services could let businesses deploy robust websites for their customers, provide best-of-breed collaboration tools for their staff or store information in highly secure data centres. Scarce and valuable IT experts might no longer need to spend their time operating commodity systems, but could concentrate on developing and building innovative new services. New ideas could be brought into production without major capital investment. But at the moment many responsible organisations are not taking up those opportunities because of uncertainties over compliance and risk.
The problem has become particularly apparent during Jisc’s discussions with universities, colleges and cloud providers. In trying to identify appropriate services and agreements for the education sector we’ve heard many different, often conflicting, opinions on what legal and organisational arrangements are required. Even when looking at application-level services, which should be a simple translation of existing sub-contracting arrangements, it’s not clear which configurations count as international nor which of at least three possible legal provisions applies to those that do. For lower-level platform and infrastructure services, some of the implications of privacy law seem bizarre – will the law really compel an infrastructure provider to examine its customers’ information, rather than treating it as just bytes, in order to ensure it is taking appropriate measures to protect it? Organisations that want to be sure they protect information according to the law and best practice might well give up on clouds, even if their own systems cannot provide the same security against physical, technical or social attack.
We had hoped that Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation would provide some clarity; it was, after all, announced as being “cloud-friendly”. However the various draft texts only deal with cloud services provided direct to European consumers or those used within a business group. For organisations that want to use third-party clouds to deliver their own services there is no obvious assistance. Indeed some proposals would actually increase the number and complexity of overlapping legal options that need to be taken into account.
This silence could, however, provide an opportunity for the UK to take a lead. It seems unlikely that more law is needed – the current problem is too much of that rather than too little. Much better would be clear cloud policy guidance, and possibly exemplars, for when and how third-party cloud services should be used. These should cover all levels of cloud provision, from infrastructure to application, and involve real-world situations, such as a SaaS cloud being built on an IaaS infrastructure. Clear statements of policy and regulation would help cloud providers develop appropriate platforms and contracts, while reassuring potential tenants that they can safely and lawfully use cloud offerings as a basis for their operations and services.
Without such cloud policy guidance and reassurance there is a risk that new applications will only be developed and deployed in the cloud by those unconcerned with compliance or user safety. Organisations that want to do the right thing will be hindered and delayed by the difficulty of working out what that is.
Andrew Cormack joined Janet, the UK’s National Research and Education Network, as Head of CERT in 1999. He is now the network’s Chief Regulatory Adviser, concerned with the legal, policy and security issues involved in providing the network and networked services to universities, colleges and research organisations. Previously he worked for Cardiff University’s IT Services operating, among other things, the first web cache in Wales. He can be found on Twitter as @Janet_LegReg and blogs at https://community.ja.net/
Other political week posts on trefor.net:
James Firth on why government should stop looking to big corporates for tech innovation
Gus Hosein on Data Protection Reform and Surveillance
The Julian Huppert crowd funding campaign here
Paul Bernal suggests government should hire advisers who know what they are doing
See all our regulatory posts here.
Perhaps the most defining feature of government internet policy – and this means pretty much all governments around the world, and particularly the last two governments here in the UK – is its incompetence. It has also been largely pretty illiberal, but for the current government at least that should be no surprise because illiberalism has characterised almost all its policies.
That illiberalism, however, does not seem to be as pronounced as its incompetence. Very little that governments want to do – or at least say they want to do – do they actually achieve. Their measures against copyright infringements fail to stop copyright infringements. Their surveillance plans fail to catch terrorists. Their ‘porn’ filters fail to prevent people having access to porn.
What’s more, their efforts have side effects – and indeed often appear to be worse than ineffective: they’re actually counter-productive. Measures against copyright infringement encourage piracy and the development of new methods of illegal file-sharing. ‘Porn’ filters block sex education sites. Mass surveillance distracts from and sucks resources from more direct, targeted forms of intelligence work – in France, for example, conventional surveillance of the Charlie Hebdo shooters was dropped for lack of resources six months before the shootings, while money was being spent on ineffective mass surveillance.
There are two immediate questions to ask about that incompetence: why does it happen, and how can it be avoided?
Answering the first is complex – but a significant part of it is the ignorance of the politicians. They don’t understand the internet, the people who spend time on the internet and how they spend their time. They design their policies based on false assumptions and bad advice – advice from people who themselves either don’t understand the internet or have a vested interest in a particular kind of solution. Copyright legislation based on the advice of the copyright lobby. ‘Porn’ filters based on the beliefs (and that is the appropriate word) of people who essentially don’t like porn, and think that’s enough to build a system on. Surveillance systems based on the advice of what might be loosely called the spooks.
That, then, leads to the answer to the second – and to the policy that I would suggest to whatever government comes into power in May. The government needs better advice – and very different advisers. A panel of advisers should be put together, drawing not on the usual suspects – the PR people of the ‘copyright lobby’, the heads of the intelligence services, the pressure groups of the ‘family’ lobby – but on people with real knowledge and understanding of both the internet and the community that spend time there. There is a huge amount of expertise out there, if only the government were willing to consult them.
These experts should come from the internet industry itself – and by that I mean people working not just for the government’s current favourite internet giants, whether that be Google or Facebook, but the small, cutting edge operators who make up the membership of ISPA. They should come from the hacker community – people who write the code itself. They should come from academia – from the computer science departments of some of our excellent universities, from law departments such as the one I work for myself, from social sciences and so on. They should come from civil society – the expertise of groups like Privacy International and the Open Rights Group should be an invaluable resource.
The panel of advisers should be consulted at the earliest stage, not consulted about a policy after the policy has, effectively, already been decided upon. All too often over the last few years particularly, the wrong decisions have been made for the wrong reasons behind closed doors, before the people who really understand the issues, the technology and the potential impact of the policies have a chance to explain just why they’re misguided and won’t work.
Of course accessing this kind of expertise would require a step of humility that seems beyond most politicians. They would need to be honest enough to say ‘we don’t know’ and to ask for help. If they are brave enough to do so, they could actually get something done, which surely must be a goal for most politicians.
Paul Bernal is a lecturer in IT, IP and Media Law at the UEA Law School, the author of Internet Privacy Rights (published by CUP in 2014), tweets as @paulbernalUK, and spends a lot of time blogging about the internet, law, privacy and politics. His blog can be found here. He would be a good adviser for next government internet policy.
Other political week posts on trefor.net:
James Firth on why government should stop looking to big corporates for tech innovation
Gus Hosein on Data Protection Reform and Surveillance
The Julian Huppert crowd funding campaign here
See all our regulatory posts here.
Virgin Media making some interesting ground at the moment. It was not so long ago they were in the news for being subjected to more blocking orders re websites promoting copyright infringement. We saw a lot of whingeing on Twitter about this and the traffic to our “how to bypass the Virgin Media filters” post shot up again as it periodically does.
Today the news is about how Sky have been ordered to hand over customer data of people suspected of torrenting movies. Can’t be long before the ask the same of Virgin.
At the same time Virgin have just released an offer of a £50 iTunes voucher for new customers. This is sending out the right signals to end users. Don’t download. Buy.
I’m a Spotify man meself and not an Apple fanboi but that’s a different story.