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I’m on the William Wright show tonight at 18.30 hrs talking about 1, VONGA and 2, the Digital Dales Colloquium and the problems of internet access in rural areas.
You can listen in here.
Timico top performing salesperson Jo Barker shows off her new Audi R8. I’m told it does over 200mph but Jo assures me that she has set the cruise control to never go over 70mph.
Personally a car is no use to me if you can’t get a set of golf clubs in it – doesn’t look very practical to me!
The Digital Dales Colloquium was held at Timico HQ in Newark on Friday and packed out the main lecture theatre. With the focus of how to get rural areas onto the internet much of the meeting was spent debating the lack of level playing field when it comes to bidding for projects that involve European funding.From a third party perspective BT appears to have much of this stitched up because their existing deal on rates paid for their network infrastructure is based on a volume play. This means that BT can assume lower costs for fibre runs where new market entrants putting fibre in the ground perhaps for the first time incur much higher charges. The chart below, pinched from network provider Vtesse Networks MD Aidan Paul’s presentation, shows how the rates applied to fibre vary depending on how many fibres you have in the ground on a given route. Clearly if you are an incumbent operator with a large market presence this method of rating is going to give you a significant competitive advantage over a new player. The figures represent rateable value applied to each kilometre of fibre.
The weird nature if the curve doesn’t inspire confidence. Moreover as a separate discussion point these rateable values are quite high numbers and in my mind represent an impediment to the competitiveness of UK plc in general. What is more surprising is that despite the growth in BT’s fibre business the actual rateable value of the corporation has dropped considerably. Your guess is as good as mine as to why this is though no doubt BT has very competent staff involved in its negotiations with the Valuation Office.
Vtesse has been involved in a long running litigation to try and redress this situation. Lord Justice Sedley recently pronounced: “It is now evident . . . that Vtesse has a tenable argument that, contrary to the VO’s case and BT’s claims, the 2008 Ofcom report shows that it is possible not only to disaggregate BT’s rateable holdings but to assign a hypothetical rental value to their fibre-optic cables. If that can be done, there is arguably a gross disparity in BT’s favour between the rateable value of its and Vtesse’s cables. . . . By contrast, the injustice of allowing the continuance of what may be a radical inequity in the rating system will go unredressed by the proposed disposal.” The BIS select committee Chairman Peter Luff MP has also spoken out about this: “Government intervention at this stage should concentrate on changing policies to encourage investment in the NGA market. Perhaps the best example of this is the business rating system which currently discriminates in favour of BT and against its competitors. We believe that the Government should consider a reduction, or even a temporary removal, of business rates on fibre optic cable. This would be a more effective use of limited public sector funds than direct financial intervention.” In other words removing business rates on fibre runs would be a good way of promoting investment in connectivity for rural areas. I don’t have a handle on the relative numbers but I would say this was also a much fairer way of funding investment in NGA than the 50 pence phone line tax.
As the clock continues to tick on the IPv4 exhaustion counter I note that we have dropped down to 8% of addresses remaining. I don’t know when this happened but I certainly get the feeling at as we approach the end it is speeding up – I was expecting it to slow down as people conserve address space.
Anyway I’m pleased to say we have now rolled out IPv6 across the Timico core network. Not open for business yet but we are getting there and we do have a few trialists up and running.
Any bets on when the counter gets to 5%?
Never a dull moment on this blog so here are is the next bit of excitement for today. This is the list of exchanges to be covered by phases 4b and 5 of the FTTC broadband rollout plan between summer 2010 and summer 2011 and follows on from a previous post with the list for phases 1 – 4.
Together with the current published exchanges these latest names will provide coverage to ~6.3 million homes and premises.
BT have specifically asked me to write in blood that these are very much subject to change so don’t go believing everything I write (difficult concept I know 🙂 )
“Update from 18th March – a complete list of exchange availability dates is now held on the trefor.net fttc page. This is updated as I get news in from BT.”
Pre-register an interest by sending email to [email protected]
CLERKENWELL
KENTISH TOWN
KINGSLAND GREEN
LOWER HOLLOWAY
NEW CROSS
SOUTHWARK
UPPER HOLLOWAY
WALWORTH
BERKSWELL
BURNTWOOD
CHESLYN HAY
HEATH HAYES
KNOWLE
LEAMINGTON SPA
LICHFIELD
RUGBY
STRATFORD-ON-AVON
BISHOPS STORTFORD
BOREHAM
BURY ST. EDMONDS
DOWNHALL
LEIGH ON SEA
SOUTH BENFLEET
SOUTHEND ON SEA, ESSEX
WICKFORD
DAVENTRY
FAZELEY
GREAT OAKLEY
HUNTINGDON
LOUGHBOROUGH
LONG EATON
MICKLEOVER
MARKET DEEPING
MARKET HARBOROUGH
NARBOROUGH, LEICESTERSHIRE
OADBY
POLESWORTH
RUSHDEN
SHERWOOD
ST.IVES, CAMBRIDGESHIRE
STAMFORD
ST.NEOTS
SUTTON IN THE ELMS
SWADLINCOTE
TRENTSIDE
WESTON FAVEL
YAXLEY
ASHTON- ON-RIBBLE
ASTLEY BRIDGE
BIRKDALE
CHORLEY
FORMBY
LANCASTER
LITTLEBOROUGH
PENWORTHAM
RAMSBOTTOM
ROCHDALE
ROSSENDALE
TOTTINGTON
BOWES PARK
CROUCH END
CLAPTON
FINCHLEY
GOODMAYES
GANTS HILL
HACKNEY
ILFORD CENTRAL
ILFORD NORTH
LEYTONSTONE
NORTH FINCHLEY
PALMERS GREEN
POPLAR
ROMFORD
STRATFORD
UPTON PARK
WINCHMORE HILL
WALTHAMSTOW
ADDISCOMBE
BALHAM
BECKENHAM
BEULAH HILL
BEXLEYHEATH
BROMLEY
CHESSINGTON
CHISLEHURST
SOUTH CLAPHAM
CROYDON
CATFORD
DEPTFORD
DULWICH
FOREST HILL
GIPSY HILL
GROVE PARK
HAYES COMMON
KIDBROOKE
KINGSTON
LEE GREEN
MALDEN
MOLESEY
MORTLAKE
NORTH CHEAM
NORBURY
PURLEY
RICHMOND KEW, SURREY
RUSHEY GREEN
SANDERSTEAD
STREATHAM
SURBITON
TEDDINGTON
THORNTON HEATH
TULSE HILL
WALLINGTON
WANDSWORTH
WALTON-ON- THAMES
WORCESTER PARK
WEST WICKHAM
HESWALL
LYMM
PENKETH
STOCKTON HEATH
ACTON
ASHFORD, MIDDLESEX
BUSHEY HEATH
CHISWICK
COLINDALE
CRICKLEWOOD
EALING
EDGWARE
EGHAM
FELTHAM
GOLDERS GREEN
HAMMERSMITH
HARLESDEN
HARROW
HAYES
HENDON
HOUNSLOW
ISLEWORTH
KENSAL GREEN
KINGSBURY
KNELLER HALL
KENTON ROAD
MILL HILL
NORTH EDGWARE
NORTHOLT
NORTH WEMBLEY
NORTHWOOD
PERIVALE
PINNER
RUISLIP
SOUTH HARROW
SHEPHERDS BUSH
SOUTHALL
STAINES
STANMORE
TWICKENHAM
UXBRIDGE
WEST DRAYTON
WEMBLEY
WILLESDEN
HARTFORD
HULME HALL
MACCLESFIELD
MIDDLEWICH
NORTHWICH
SALE
STEPPING HILL
WHITEFIELD
WINSFORD, CHESHIRE
GARFORTH
HAWORTH
HARROGATE
MORLEY
ROTHWELL, WEST YORKSHIRE
YORK
ASHFORD, KENT
BEARSTED
BLUE BELL HILL
CANTERBURY
COPTHORNE
CROWBOROUGH
EAST GRINSTEAD
GRAVESEND
HERNE BAY
SEVENOAKS
TONBRIDGE
TUNBRIDGE WELLS
UCKFIELD
WEST MALLING
AYCLIFFE
CRAMLINGTON
GOSFORTH, TYNE & WEAR
INGLEBY BARWICK
NEWTOWNARDS
BURGESS HILL
CRAWLEY
HORLEY
HORSHAM
HAYWARDS HEATH
POUND HILL
PORTSMOUTH NORTH END
SOUTHWATER
BRIGHTON WITHDEAN
WATERLOOVILLE
BROOMHILL
CHESTERFIELD
DRONFIELD
MOSBOROUGH
ABINGDON
AMERSHAM
BANBURY
BEACONSFIELD
BEDFORD TOWN
MILTON KEYNES
CHESHAM
HEADINGTON
HOLMER GREEN
HITCHIN
HIGH WYCOMBE
LEIGHTON BUZZARD
OXFORD
PENN, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
SUMMERTOWN
STONY STRATFORD
SHENLEY CHURCH END
STEVENAGE
WANTAGE
WOLVERTON
BATH KINGSMEAD
MIDSOMER NORTON
RADSTOCK
SWINDON
TROWBRIDGE
BOTLEY
RINGWOOD
TOTTON
WINCHESTER
BRIDGEND
CHEPSTOW
HENGOED
LLANTRISANT
NEWTOWN LLANTWIT
ALDERSHOT
ASCOT
ALTON
BAGSHOT
BOURNE END
BRACKNELL
BURNHAM, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
BROOKWOOD
BORDON
BLACKWATER
CAMBERLEY
FARNBOROUGH, HAMPSHIRE
FARNHAM
FLEET, HAMPSHIRE
GODALMING
GUILDFORD
GERRARDS CROSS
HASLEMERE
MARLOW
NEWBURY
READING CENTRAL
SLOUGH
THATCHAM
TWYFORD, BERKSHIRE
TILEHURST
WOODLEY, BERKSHIRE
WOKING
WINDSOR
WINKFIELD ROW
YATELEY
BAYSWATER
HAMPSTEAD
LORDS
MAIDA VALE
PRIMROSE HILL
ALSAGER
BROMSGROVE
DROITWICH
EVESHAM
FERNHILL HEATH
HASLINGTON
SANDBACH
WORCESTER ST.JOHNS
WORCESTER ST.PETERS
WORCESTER
CHESTER CENTRAL
CHESTER NORTH
CHESTER SOUTH
CONNAHS QUAY
HAWARDEN
BATTERSEA
BRIXTON
CHELSEA
EARLS COURT
FULHAM
NINE ELMS
PIMLICO
SOUTH KENSINGTON
VAUXHALL
WEST KENSINGTON
EXETER
You heard it first on trefor.net – or maybe not!
The great and the good of the WiFi hotspot industry descended on London today to meet the Valuation Office Agency. On the agenda was the fact that the VOA wants to slap business rates on WiFi hotspots.
The law says that rates are applicable based on the perceived rental value of any WiFi hotspot that uses brackets to support an aerial, the cabling to that aerial, the cabinet that houses the WiFi equipment and the value of the land that the aerial is connected to.
This “land” could of course be a single brick 20 feet in the air, but there is gold in them there bricks!
The VOA is undergoing this exercise it seems a) because they are obliged to by law and b) if they don’t they are likely to be subjected to a judicial review at the request of mobile operators who are themselves charged rates for their masts and have a track record of crying foul to get a level playing field .
The bad news is that if they can get the work done before 31st March 2010 the VOA can back date the rates to 2005! This rolls on a year if they can finish the job by 31st March 2011 but if they miss the 2011 date they lose 5 years worth of rates which can then only be backdated a year. So there is pressure on them to get the job done.
Having stared blankly at a wall for two years the VOA has, in desperation, called in the operator community to find out how to go about it.
The meeting started very heatedly with the three surveyors from VOA being bombarded with angry/concerned questions from participant companies that included commercial organisations such as Timico (who of course made a calm and measured contribution to the discussion) , BT Openzone, The Cloud and SwissCom together with those whose role was somewhat more charitable, for example with the provision of wireless broadband access to rural communities.
The problem for the latter is that the VOA can’t differentiate between a service that is provided on a “for profit” basis and the charities. All they are concerned about is the rateable value. Even if a site is provided free of charge they still look around at what a free market rent might be to come up with the value. There is no “fairness” involved here.
Another problem is that no one at the VOA has a clue what the rental value of a WiFi hotspot aerial site is.
In the absence of any real information the VOA has drawn a line in the sand at £100, which at the current 46.6 pence in the pound being charged for business rates could amount to a significant total cost for many operators, especially if backdated. The £100 is a challenge for operators to provide them with real value information and is based on a sum agreed with Traffic Master for each of their cameras (after two years of heel dragging by TM).
The whole subject is hugely complicated. There are millions of hotspots out there with potentially many different rental scenarios for variable valuations. For example a lamppost in the City of London will be worth more than one in Carlisle (random place not in London).
There are 80 valuations offices in the UK and the team we met today will have the task of training inspectors in each of these offices to go out and value each hotspot. Once they have worked out how to do it themselves that is.
Many of the valuations are likely to be very low – £25 or less say. Where do you draw the line at which sites to go and value, remembering that a £25 RV would only be worth twelve quid a year on the rates.
At this point I could feel a slight sigh of relief amongst the operators – this looked like a very lengthy job. The VOA is, however, trying to find a shortcut.
There are some get out of jail free cards that only really came to the top of the deck towards the end of the meeting.
The four criteria being applied to the decision as to whether a hotspot is rateable are whether the site is beneficial, exclusive, active and not too transient. I’m not a lawyer and not about to expound on lengthy definitions for each word here but “exclusive” and “not too transient” will have helped many of us in the room.
If a hotspot is a normal wireless router, in a café or a hotel for example then it is considered that this router can be moved from one space on a counter to another. This means that it is transient and means that this hotspot is not rateable.
If a hotspot can be switched off by someone other than the operator, for example by the café owner switching it off at the wall before he goes home, then this also means that probably no rates will be payable.
So community networks operating as a “charitable” type of service should be able to get around having to pay rates just by making sure that the farmer/librarian/good neighbour hosting the particular hotspot has the ability to switch it off at the wall. Obviously this doesn’t point to 100% reliability but I suspect that this is the scenario actually seen in many community networks already.
As I said the VOA is in a hurry and there is therefore a danger that in rushing things they will get it wrong. Tune in to trefor.net for more information as it happens, hot off the wireless wire.
PS The meeting was billed as a Wireless Fidelity Conference – quaint huh? I’m not going to tell you what hereditament means – Google it 🙂
It’s been quite an amusing afternoon at BT Central in Newgate Street. After the ITSPA council meeting I stayed to moderate the Technical Workshop which covered VONGA and Number Porting.
More on Number Porting anon but VONGA, or Voice over Next Generation Access, was an interesting session. BT is, as we all know, rolling out Fibre To The Cabinet and then Fibre To The Premises (anyone wanting the service please get in touch).
The FTTP product from Openreach is going to have an option to take voice services that will replicate WLR3 – the standard analogue line Plain Old Telephony Service or POTS.
There are I think several drivers for this within BT. Firstly BT either appears to be obligated to, or has decided to only provide fibre services to new Greenfield site builds rather than any copper based connectivity. They still however have an Universal Service Obligation to provide telephony services to anyone that want them.
Enter VONGA stage left. VONGA allows end users to plug an old fashioned telephone handset into an Analogue Telephone Adapter socket on their “broadband” router to make phone calls.
VONGA is also part of BT’s long term preparatory work before they turn off the old fashioned PSTN and move over to 21CN voice – 2020 at the earliest as reported here.
When I first heard of VONGA I kind of got excited. ITSPs around the country were asking all about it. In fact they were worried that BT might be trying to eat their still meagre lunch.
Don’t worry lads (and lasses). There is an alternative called CPCA that allows you to provide your own telephony services from the ATA sockets in the BT kit although it wasn’t totally clear to me whether anyone could do this completely independently of paying something to BT for the privilege. BT seems to think they are the only ones able to provide the PATS level service and point to a battery in the router that will keep the service alive for up to 4 hours in the event of a power cut (all subject to spec confirmation). Ofcom and most ITSPs would disagree here.
Despite what I’m sure are Openreach’s best efforts to corner the WLR3 futures market it will be possible for Communications Providers to sell users the FTTP connection and then sell their own services overlaid onto and through the Ethernet ports in the router – just like they do now. In fact this is effectively the naked DSL currently unavailable in the UK, albeit using turbo DSL.
VONGA does notionally provide Quality of Service for voice running over a separate VLAN tied to each ATA socket. However this QoS will also almost certainly be available to users just taking FTTP.
There are several disappointing facts associated with VONGA. Firstly trial dates stretch well into 2011 and then there is no firm date for production so this isn’t likely to happen before 2012.
Secondly VONGA, initially at least, strives only to replicate what is currently already there – so expect only boring old fashioned G711 voice services. This is a shame really considering that G711 will occupy only 100kbps or so out of the 100Mbps available over the fibre so could provide a higher quality product taking up just a little more bandwidth.
I think BT is boringly missing a trick by just trying to reinvent an old fashioned service but then again I realise that this is part of the long term goal to replicate and then remove the boring old 20CN network.
The third and final disappointing fact, which is more of an amusing one really, is the that VONGA uses SIP as a signaling protocol. SIP enables the internet’s version of old fashioned telephony but takes it on to another level by providing features such as Video. Presence and Instant Messaging.
SIP however doesn’t support all the legacy features of the PSTN – it’s moved on from there. You don’t need ringback for example if you can see when someone is off the phone.
The Alcatel Lucent SIP softswitch being used by BT (one of at least four different VoIP platforms being used across the BT empire) therefore doesn’t support all the features of the Plain Old Fashioned Telephone System.
This means that whilst you might expect a broadband VoIP service to offer more than POTS in this case it actually offers less – POTS Lite if you like. Who’d have thought such a thing was possible!
Sorry about the continued abundance of acronyms!
PS we were sat in the pub after the meeting thinking up titles for this post. Kinda fonda VONGA didn’t sound true, VONGA Ponga was a bit childish so VONGA – POTS Lite got it.
I hear that according to Ofcom naked DSL is officially dead in the UK water and that they are not interested in pursuing it. Naked DSL is the product that would allow VoIP providers to offer voice over broadband without having to pay for the voice element of the underlying analogue phone line.
If a consumer or business is only using his telephone line as a means to carry ADSL and not to make phone calls they don’t need the cost element of the underlying line that enables telephony. This is available in some other countries but not in the UK!
Not a forward step from Ofcom – and this is coming from someone who sells both analogue lines, ADSL and VoIP.
On the other hand one of the bugbears of VoIP pure play operators such as Vonage is that when a customer wants to port his telephony service to them, from BT say, the act of doing so effectively cuts off the original phone line and by default the broadband connection and the VoIP service that would run over it. Anti-competitive I’d say.
The Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA) is championing a change here and we can hopefully expect that this is something we will see by the end of 2010. The notional solution is that BT will provide a new “ghost” number for the analogue line so that it doesn’t get cut off.
with very intermittent WiFi connectivity – how did Robin Hood manage?
Normal service will be resumed after half term.
Great day out meeting the Network Operation team at NewNet HQ in Fareham. In making this acquisition Timico will look to maximise the benefits to both businesses and just as importantly, to their customers.
This is the first of many get-togethers planned with the NewNet team to extract these benefits. Today we just discussed each others’ networks and looked at potential quick wins in terms of improvements and cost savings.
I’ll post separately on progress with these improvements as they happen. In fact I’m planning on making this a diary of this process so that readers can effectively watch it happening from the comfort of their browsers.
It should be interesting for people to see what goes on “under the bonnet (hood)” of an ISP.
The photo is of the NewNet network operations team with some of the Timico crowd at the meeting in Fareham today.
Iam pleased to announce sponsorship of the first Digital Dales Colloquium of 2010. Entitled “Making the Final Third Happen”, the meeting will take place at Timico’s Newark Headquarters on Friday February 26th.
Digital Dales events are key get-togethers for stakeholders in rural community broadband projects. They attract a wide range of participants including MPs, the media (including the BBC), equipment vendors, service providers, local authorities, community leaders and of course end users.
With the Digital Economy Bill currently very much in the news, and a March 1st meeting scheduled between the Broadband Stakeholders Group and the Valuation Office Agency to discuss Property Tax this February meeting is very timely. Rates on fibre connections are seen as a major obstacle to making rural broadband an economic proposition.
Also on the agenda will be a progress report on the FTTC Virgin Media trials in Cornwall, an overview of ongoing projects in the USA, a proposal by Dr Charles Trotman of the Countryside Landowners Association on collaborative approaches to the Rural Broadband problem, and feedback from Lindsey Annison on innovative funding options.
The sponsorship of the Digital Dales Colloquium is very much part of Timico as a service provider living up to our social responsibility. No one organisation is going to solve the problem of the “Digital Divide” but if we can all make a contribution then it will make a difference.
Check out more details on the Colloquium including how to sign up here.
Having once again set off on the acquisition trail I thought I’d check out the level consolidation that has been going on in the ISP industry.
ISPA helped out with membership stats for 2010 and 2005 that make interesting reading.
Back in 2005 ISPA had 120 members, excluding Virtual ISPs who white label someone else’s service. Today there are 137. Nothing startling there you might think. The devil, however, is in the detail.
58 ISPs (48%) on the 2005 list are not there in 2010! 25 small (42%), 7 medium (58%), 21 large (57%) and 3 corporate (33%) names have vanished from the UK ISP landscape.
What surprised me was that the disappearances in the small category were not greater but there again if an industry is going to consolidate then the larger companies represent the low hanging fruit.
I’m sure that some of the names present in 2005 have just decided not to be members of ISPA in 2010. Cisco, for example, have either decided they no longer need to be part of the ISPA party or are moving away from the internet as a market! They are of course not an ISP anyway. The trend though is clear.
Some of the household names/victims that are not in the 2010 list are shown below for effect. Most have been acquired and/or rebranded:
Bulldog Communications Ltd
Pipex
Telewest/Blueyonder
Easynet Ltd
Energis Communications Ltd
Thus Plc
NTl
Wannadoo
Mistral Internet
PSINet
Video Networks
The Digital Economy Debate has generated a flurry of responses today – no doubt people getting messages out of the way before the rugby this weekend!
Firstly the UK hotel industry, via its mouthpiece the British Hospitality Association, has issued a press release expressing grave concern that their members could have their internet access cut off because of the illegal activities of naughty guests.
The miscreants will of course have long checked out by the time the long arm of the law reached out to behind the reception desk.
From personal experience (of having hundreds of hotels as customers and not of Torrenting whilst staying at them) hotels are particularly prone to guests taking advantage of the internet in the room to download material via P2P.
A long long time ago, way before Timico, I worked for Mitel who had at that time something like 80% of the UK hotels using their phone systems. Research in those days suggested that 90% of all internet surfing out of hotels was to pornographic websites. It was more unusual for people to have broadband at home and access from the office was strictly filtered.
So the BHA now joins the Educational system in wanting immunity from prosecution under the Digital Economy Bill. McDonalds will be next. At this rate a large part of the UK broadband estate will be seeking immunity from the Bill.
Also speaking out today is Parliament’s own Joint Select Committee on Human Rights which says the Government’s response to the problem of illegal file-sharing in the Digital Economy Bill may have created over-broad powers.
Andrew Dismore MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “Illegal file sharing is itself a breach of important rights, but the concern we have with this Bill is that it lacks detail. It has been difficult, even in the narrow area we have focussed on, to get a clear picture of the scope and impact of the provisions. The internet is constantly creating new challenges for policy-makers but that cannot justify ill-defined or sweeping legislative responses, especially when there is the possibility of restricting freedom of expression or the privacy of individual users.”
At least people are starting to shout louder. Andrew Dismore MP seems to have his head screwed on.
If you want to keep up to speed on the debate in the Lords go here.
With all the fuss in the press about Google and their possible exit from the Chinese market I got a timely email this morning from the (a?) Chinese Domain Name registry.
We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on February 03,2010, One company which self-styled “LSHB Technology PLC” are applying to register “Timico” as Network Brand and Domain Names as below :
“timico.asia
timico.hk
timico.in
timico.mobi
timico.net.cn
timico.org.cn
timico.tw”
After our initial examination, we found that the Network Brand applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it, hope to get the affirmation from your company. If your company and this “LSHB Technology PLC” as the same company, there is no need reply to us, We will accept their application and will register those for them immediately.
If your company has no relationships with that company nor do not authorized, please reply to us within 7 workdays, if we can’t get any information from yours over 7 workdays,we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by “LSHB Technology PLC”. Thanks for your cooperation.
Best Regards,
Amanda Hua
Senior Consultant
PX-Dnr
I could respond to this in a number of ways, in the first instance by simply ignoring it as the clever marketing scam that it is. I could also reply politely telling them that I am flattered that Timico is sufficiently on the map to be imitated by organisations in other countries but to go ahead and sell them the domains.
Alternatively I could put out a press release in support of Google with a public affirmation that Timico has pulled its plans to move into China. I can think of better places to start our overseas expansion anyway: the Maldives, the Caribbean (that’s Carrribbean to American readers), Wales.
Only kidding. We already operate in Wales…
I was talking to some people today about what type of broadband they had. One of them surprisingly said she didn’t have broadband. I found this astonishing. However the truth came out when she told me she just used next door’s which was unsecured.
Whatever you think of the morals of this it is a real life pointer as to the problems of proof when it comes to accusing a broadband owner of illegal downloading.
I present here, for your delectation, the winner of the “dontdisconnectus” “Sing our Petition” competition. The opposition to the Digital Economy Bill is building but it has some way to go yet I feel.
I was talking to some people today about what type of broadband they had. One of them surprisingly said she didn’t have broadband. I found this astonishing. However the truth came out when she told me she just used next door’s which was unsecured.
Whatever you think of the morals of this it is a real life pointer as to the problems of proof when it comes to accusing a broadband owner of illegal downloading.
I present here, for your delectation, the winner of the “dontdisconnectus” “Sing our Petition” competition. The opposition to the Digital Economy Bill is building but it has some way to go yet I feel.
The Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has launched a public reporting webpage (on the Directgov website) for terrorist-related material found on the internet.
The public can report URLs of suspected terrorist material direct to a police unit who will investigate. If the website is found to be in breach of the Terrorism Act 2006 the police will issue a Section 3 Notice to have the content modified or removed presuming it is hosted in the UK.
The type of content users may report can be found here on the Home Office website and the reporting page itself here.
As part of the fight against terrorism this must be good though I imagine it will be difficult to maintain an adequate level of publicity for the scheme so that people know where to look to report a website.
Also the savvy terrorist will use hosting provider in a country that doesn’t care or doesn’t have the same laws so unless this initiative was conducted on a global scale it will probably only have a small effect.
I don’t generally use this blog as a vehicle to promote my employer, Timico. On this occasion though we have hit the news with the acquisition of Fareham based ISP NewNet.
“Uhuh” do I hear you say? Well there are a few points worth making.
Firstly there is an ongoing consolidation happening in the maturing ISP industry. We are seeing it at the top level, most recently with Carphone Warehouse’s purchase of Tiscali, and also in what might be termed as the Tier2 level in which Timico now operates.
Many companies in the mid size space have already been gobbled up by the biggies on their way to building market share: plus.net, bulldog, pipex et al spring to mind.
A void has to some extent appeared in the market for provision of quality ISP services to UK businesses. Many of those who used to do it are now part of big corporations where low cost is the most important issue, not customer service. Some have stayed independent, Zen being the obvious name that springs to mind, but their number is dwindling.
The challenge for ISPs addressing the business market is how to be able to sustain the necessary investment in infrastructure (eg MPLS, 10GigE, storage/cloud) and also to maintain the high levels of support demanded by a business customer whose internet connection has become mission critical.
Most ISPs in the UK today are still small operators whose idea of 24×7 operation is to give out the mobile number of the owner to a customer, or simply not to offer the service. This is neither scalable nor in the main satisfactory.
The Timico acquisition of NewNet makes great sense all round. Both companies have the same customer focussed culture, focussing on high levels of service. NewNet considerably extends the Timico capability in terms of co-location and hosting. Timico brings to NewNet a range of fixed line and mobile services and the combined entity is very much greater than sum of the parts.
All exciting stuff and more, I’m sure, anon.
Not plagiarism, just admiration. A guide to illegal music downloading for the non technical.
Thanks to boggits for the lead.
Not plagiarism, just admiration. A guide to illegal music downloading for the non technical.
Thanks to boggits for the lead.
The cogs of Government continue to grind. I know many of you yawn at some of these regulatory posts but man cannot live on network diagrams alone. The 5th day of the Digital Economy Bill House of Lords Committee stage was held yesterday.
No non-Government amendments made it through but a number of important concessions were made.
Clause 11 in particular concerns “Obligations to limit internet access”. The brakes are being put on this in that no order to cut off someone’s internet access could be made until 12 months after Ofcom has looked at this issue and come up with a Code of Practice.
It is now also proposed that it becomes a requirement, as opposed to an option, for the Secretary of State to request a report from Ofcom on the “suitability of a technical obligation”, ie whether a consumer gets cut off in a particular instance (I assume).
There will also be full appeals process which could be heard by a tribunal before any technical measure is imposed. It will still lead to a pretty messy situation downstream even if it delays the day of reckoning.
Note this is still not backed up by any sign of copyright licensing reform that will make it easier to download music in a legal manner.
There is a lot more to read about but you can do that yourselves here – if you have a few hours to spare and don’t mind finishing up with a headache. Despite all the glamour and the luxury expense fuelled living 🙂 a lot of what MPs do is deadly boring and is reported in such technical legalese as to make it often undecipherable to the “man on the street”.
It is worth noting something else. ISPs regularly receive “abuse” reports from Rights Holders. These letters informing an ISP of supposed illegal downloading activity from one of their customers’ IP Addresses
At last week’s UKNetwork Operators Forum (UKNOF) meeting a representative of Janet, the UK Education network, said that of the ‘abuse’ reports they received last year, 10% turned out to be for the IP addresses of printers, 15% were address space that wasn’t actually being used and 50% only had a 0 second interval for the time that material was being offered for download.
By this token, and I admit only in this anecdotal case, 75% of the supposed illegal activity would never pass scrutiny. This suggests that it is going to be very difficult for anyone to determine the validity of such an assertion by a Rights Holder, be they a judge, ISP or anyone else. There is no way an ISP would want to get involved with this without someone picking up the costs and being fully indemnified.
How is Facebook a business tool? It is interesting to understand how people use it at work especially considering that businesses do get concerned about staff wasting time. I have in the past defriended someone because they seemed to do nothing but talk about their car whilst working from home.
A quick snapshot this morning of status updates by my friends show:
MD of a wireless networking company
someone I used to play rugby with
VoIP Technical Authority from one of the worlds leading communications electronics manufacturer
international product manager for cellular handset manufacturer
renowned ISP consultant
university PhD student
international tech journalist
UK Member of Parliament
international cricket website
rugby playing prison warder
gateway presales engineer
MD of international telco startup
product manager for mobile network
global voip and social networking guru
owner of a social media startup
networking engineer
rural broadband activist
It doesn’t matter what the nature of the conversation is between my Facebook friends. It is rarely to do with specific business issues. The point is it is just a hugely productive tool because it builds up an ecosystem of contacts that makes it easy for me to talk business with them another time, and not on Facebook. It is the internet version of a round of golf.
VoIP QoS should not be an issue if the network is managed correctly. This means the LAN, the WAN link and the core network of the service provider.
If the WAN link is an ADSL then it can be susceptible to congestion at the exchange though in my experience this very rarely happens, even at times of extreme network usage such as the Olympics or last summer’s cricket. Problems here typically stem from underprovisioning of bandwidth. An Internet Telephony Service Provider should also be operating an uncongested core network and a properly designed LAN should never give problems.
Problems do still occur but if you have the right tools these should be straightforward to detect and sort out. One of the ways we manage our network is by using probes embedded at key point in the network.
The diagram below shows the output of one such probe earlier this morning. We are looking at connection downtime, lost packets or packets arriving in the wrong order, jitter and latency or delay. It can be seen that latency is almost the only measurable effect. All the other numbers are too low to count. Even the worst case latency figure seen here of around 46ms is not going to be noticed by the human ear and most of the calls are below 20ms.
This is a very useful tool for IT managers having to run multiple services over a multi-site Wide Area Network and allows them to spot problems before anyone notices and starts to complain.
Stop right there! Before you go any further I know what you are going to say. “I’ve always had my head in the cloud”.
But no 🙂 . What I mean is that we are just moving trefor.net into the cloud. More specifically onto a Xen based virtual server on a resilient hardware cluster. I might say this is to cope with the increasing load imposed by the growing number of visitors but this isn’t totally true, or not at least the main driver.
As much as anything you have to practice what you preach and on this occasion this is what I am doing. Thanks to Ian P. Christian (Pookey) for his help with this.
I can see clearly now the cloud has come…
It slipped my mind when talking about FTTC last week that should anyone be interested in taking this service when we roll it out please let me know. My phone number and email address can be found here. Otherwise mail to [email protected]
The Pope has been in the news over the weekend telling his team that they need to get blogging to better engage with the faithful.
He is a bit late out of the blocks here. I just took a quick look on Facebook and found that someone had already set up a group entitled “The Pope” with a princely 975 members. There are also quite a few already claiming to be the Pope on the Social Networking website.
I then took a look at Twitter. Same story here. I checked out thepope but his tweets were protected. This didn’t sound quite right and in anycase he said he lived in Spain and only had 57 followers so either His Holiness hasn’t pushed the button on the viral marketing campaign yet or this wasn’t him.
thepope.com is registered to someone with a Las Vegas address. This didn’t sound right either and a quick look at that website revealed that it was jam packed with religious organisations there on a pay per click basis. Seems to me he could fix this by getting is own Top Level Domain – .pope. He has the right contacts.
He could then have www.the.pope which could provide click through services for his flock without their having to pay. Obviously visitors would be able to make donations in order to contribute towards the cost of running the server – just click on the plate…
I was beginning to despair until I found pope2you.net which to my relief seems to be a genuine “Pope” website.
Now if I was the Pope I wouldn’t worry too much about the stuttering nature of what might be termed as the Vatican’s latest marketing campaign. He can hark back to the days when all Moses had was a couple of stone tablets with which to spread the news.
It did eventually take off, using viral marketing, a range of direct broadcast mechanisms and a fair old dose of Government intervention/regulation. That was despite the corruption to Moses’ original hard drive.
So my message to His Holiness might be stick with it but perhaps think about changing your PR Agency.
My two youngest kids are just playing Halo3 on the X-Box against two of their friends – also brothers. They are talking to the other kids through headsets – the younger lads in one team and the older siblings in another. Using VoIP over the internet!
I understand there is some echo on the voice (by the tone of the conversation) but they are plotting strategy.
I’m just flabbergasted by this. I know I knew this was doable but when you see it in action it is amazing.
Doesn’t stop their mum coming in and sending them upstairs to get into their pyjamas though. Some things never change!
I make no apologies for the nerdy nature of this post. It is basically a list of telephone exchanges and the approximate date by when they will be enabled for high speed broadband Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC). No guarantees – planning permission etc.
Despite being “just a list” make no mistake it is a thing of beauty. Apart from there being poetry in the names it represents a big change for many of the people living within reach of cabinets hanging off these exchanges. It means that these lucky, lucky people will be downloading multiple HD video streams at 3.5Mbps each etc etc etc rather than grinding away on their existing ADSL which, if it is running at the national average speed, could be doing somewhere between 3 and 5Mbps.
When I say lucky I do mean it is a bit of a lottery because to get FTTC you have to be living in a densely populated area – so maybe not so lucky if that isn’t your thing. Life is a bit of a trade off.
Sorry to my country dwelling friends who would give anything to get the national average ADSL speeds and happily settle for ordinary video quality instead of HD. For the moment they have to stick to admiring the poetry, until the balance of trade-offs shifts.
“update 18th March – I now keep an up to date list of exchange availability on the trefor.net fttp page here.
FTTC Exchange rollout plan:
Phase1 – trial sites and thus available now
Muswell Hill,
Whitchurch,
Glasgow Halfway
Phase2 – End Jan 2010
Calder Valley
Cardiff
Dean
Glasgow Western
Halifax
Leagrave
Pudsey
Taffswell
Thamesmead
Bury
Didsbury
Enfield
Heaton Moor
Luton
Chelmsford
Chingford
Failsworth
Hemel Hempstead
Tottenham
Watford
Woolwich
Caerphilly
Basingstoke
Canonbury
Belfast Balmoral
Edmonton
Oldham
Rusholme
Phase 3 – End April 2010
Glossop
Waltham Cross
Billericay
Hoddesdon
Woodford
Lea Valley
Hainault
Loughton
Berkhamsted
Stanford-Le-Hope
Elstree
Brentwood
Slade Green
Barnet
New Southgate
Hornchurch
Eltham
Sidcup
Stamford Hill
Ingrebourne
Ponders End
Greenwich
Barking
Stalybridge
Prestwich
Denton
Urmston
Chorlton
Cheetham
Wilmslow
Swinton
Walkden
Moss Side
Manchester East
Hyde
Ashton Under Lyme
Altrincham
Edinburgh Corstorphine
Glasgow Giffnock
Edinburgh Craiglochart
Glasgow Bridgeton
Dartford
Penarth
Barry
Pontefract
Shipley
Castleford
Low Moor
Headingley
Armley
Hinckley
Chester le Steet
Hetten le Hole
East Herrington
Durham
Bristol North
Bristol West
Downend
Tettenhall
Leamore
Fallings Park
Nuneaton
Walsall
Great Barr
Northern
Wednesbury
Lisburn
Phase 4 – End July 2010
ALBERT DOCK
WANSTEAD
MILE END
PARSONS GREEN
SKYPORT
GREENFORD
BICESTER
NEWPORT PAGNELL
AYLESBURY
DIDCOT
HARPENDEN
MAIDENHEAD
CROWTHORNE
WOKINGHAM
EARLEY
LANGLEY
CAVERSHAM
READING SOUTH
HENLEY ON THAMES
SOLIHULL
EARLSDON
KENILWORTH
TAMWORTH
WARWICK
ORTONS
STONEYGATE
COALVILLE
WILLASTON
LLANISHEN
LLANEDEYRN
HEDNESFORD
TOOTHILL
BLUNSDON
CHIPPENHAM
WORLE
PORTISHEAD
LOCKSHEATH
CHANDLERS FORD
FAIR OAK
ANDOVER
EASTLEIGH
BRAMHALL
CONGLETON
LOFTHOUSE GATE
GUISELEY
BEAUCHIEF
RANMOOR
PENICUIK
DALGETY BAY
DUNFERMLINE
LIVINGSTON STATION
GLASGOW NEWTON MEARN
BOTHWELL
BRAINTREE
MERTON PARK
PUTNEY
WIMBLEDON
SUTTON CHEAM
MITCHAM
BRIGHTON HOVE
SITTINGBOURNE
PORTSMOUTH CENTRAL
BT today appealed to its partner community for more trialists for their BET service. Currently in pilot phase, Broadband Enabling Technology (or BET) uses SHDSL to offer a broadband connection speed of up to 1 Mbps over a distance of 12 Kms from the local phone exchange. By using another line and bonding them together the speed can be effectively doubled up to 2 Mbps.
BT is testing this technology at the following exchanges:
Badsey, Worcestershire
Dingwall, Scotland
Horsham, West Sussex
Inverness Culloden, Scotland
Leyland, Lancashire
Llanfyllin, Powys
Ponteland, Northumberland
Twyford, Berkshire
Wigton, Cumbria
Wymondham, Norfolk
So far there have been around 40 installations which isn’t much across 10 exchanges (cf 1,750 FTTC on 3 exchanges). I’m not sure why there have not been more takers – whilst it is targeted at less densely populated rural areas there must be more people in those areas wanting to get on the internet. The plan is, in theory, to roll out a further 200 exchanges but I don’t think it is a done deal yet with the decision to go to production not yet being taken.
BET has aroused some emotion amongst rural dwellers looking for equality with city slickers in the broadband stakes. They complain that an up to 2Mbps service (as mooted by the Government’s Digital Britain Review) doesn’t really cut it. I guess the pressure is going to be on BT to make sure that this service does enter production regardless of uptake. Interesting though.
Timico is not a BET trialist but if you need help with getting on the trials by all means drop me a line and I will point you in the right direction.
Today BT launched Fibre to the Cabinet broadband (FTTC). The trials as reported in trefor.net were conducted during the later half of 2009. By the completion of the trial phase BT had finished 1,750 installations over three exchanges: Glasgow Half Way, Muswell Hill and Whitchurch, with a fairly high success rate considering this was a trial. Well done to Lee Martin and the team at BT Wholesale for their work here.
The overall results, we hear, are a ringing endorsement of the technology. The average speed seen is around 25Mbps with the range being between 17Mbps and 39Mbps. Our trialists ran at around the average.
BT is now launching four flavours – two consumer and two business, the latter having the faster 10Mbps uplink. Timico will also be launching the product though we are waiting until there is a little more coverage.
Post trial there are 32 exchanges (2,000 cabinets) enabled in Q1. By May there should be 103 exchanges and a further 63 planned for adding by September. In terms of premises passed there will be 500k by the spring, 1.5 million by the summer and 4 million by the end of 2010.
There are a number of other developments coming down the jungle path of the connectivity world ADSL2+ Annex M is about to start trialing at BT Wholesale. Annexe M offers the opportunity to trade some downstream speed in exchange for more upstream. We don’t yet have pricing or an indication of the speed improvements though this is not going to be dramatic – a few hundred kbps.
This product does overlap with FTTC but should, when released, be immediately available in all ADSL2+ enabled exchanges. The ADSL2+ rollout will cover 55% of homes by March 2010, and 75% by March 2011. The lag between ADSL2+ and FTTC means there will be quite some time before FTTC is a viable mass alternative.
You might ask what difference does a few hundred kbps make but if a business is looking to use SIP trunks this might mean the difference between making VoIP viable or not.
The one other development being discussed is true QoS over the 21CN network. BT has however been talking about this for a year and a half and whilst Q3 is mooted as a possible launch date don’t hold your breath.
By the way all this came out of the BT Wholesale ISP Forum that is periodically held at the Post Office Tower in London. A great venue and a great chance for the industry to discuss all things internetty.