Posts Tagged ‘Digital Britain’

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Is Pre-Release killing the music business? #Digital Britain

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

In the context of the debate going on over copyright protection in the Digital Economy Bill there is an interesting event happening tomorrow night at the Performing Rights Society in London.

Entitled  ”Is Pre-Release Killing Our Business?” tomorrow’s discussion is centred around the fact that in order to raise awareness the music industry conducts promotional campaigns for up to three months before a CD is released.  This stimulates demand for a product that is not yet available and it only takes one promo copy of a CD to be pirated and loaded onto a P2P network for that CD to be freely available which of course eats into sales at launch.

Because of this industry bodies including ERA and the MMF are calling for abolition of pre-release windows in their entirety. Tomorrow night’s speakers including the BBC’s Head of Music for Radio 1 George Ergatoudis, Martin Talbot, MD of the Official Charts Company, Ben Drury of 7 Digital and Emily MacKay of the NME.

It just goes to show that the whole fight against music piracy is something that has to be conducted across many fronts.

More details on the Music Tank website here.

It strikes me that there are so many discussion points/arguments surrounding the Copyright aspects of the Digital Economy Bill that it will be worth collating them all in an easy to access format – watch this space.

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Lets start getting sensible about Digital Britain

Friday, March 5th, 2010

You have to ask what’s the point!?

It’s so exciting when you come across announcements such as that made by the Government this week saying that they are attempting to get over 7 million people who can’t get online today, access to the internet. By 2014!

This is of course great news!

The plan is being underpinned by funding in a number of areas

  • Up to £12m to support the Plan through work of the Consortium for the Promotion of Digital Participation (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills)
  • £300m for the Home Access programme to provide free computers and internet connections to 270,000 families with school children (Department for Children, Schools and Families)
  • £30m over three years for UK Online Centres under the Smarter Government initiative.

The release also reiterates the Government’s Universal Service Commitment which will pave the UK’s networks with good quality broadband so by 2012. Every home and business will be able to access a connection capable of at least 2Mpbs. BIS words, my italics.

Just a couple of questions really. The £300m will get roughly a million people online (assuming the 2.3 kids per couple which is what it was when I was a nipper but may have changed!). So that’s another 6 million to go? £42m would appear to be on the light side to get that additional number of people online.

But perhaps the 2Mbps USC by 2012 will do it?  We are well into 2010.  Time moves fast in this life. There isn’t a viable proposition on the table to be able to meet this USC. It isn’t going to happen with the current plans in place.

BT for example does it’s network capacity planning on a 2 year horizon. Even with a surprise injection of Government funding the roadmap is almost in place now up until the end of 2012. I know things can change but…

The panacea straw known as BET, grasped at by the government, will blow away in the wind. It has not excited those that live and love amongst the haystacks because it is too expensive and in any case is an “up to 2Mpbs” service, not an “at least 2Mbps” service.

All the statements we get regarding Digital Inclusion and Universal Service Commitment are well intentioned but there does come a point in time where you have to get serious about it and I don’t believe what we are seeing happening now is “getting serious”.

We need a real commitment to making this happen. It needs a Government Department of its own with strong support and a leader that understands the issues and can champion the cause.

Now it is easy for me to say this. I am not in Government and don’t have to make the difficult decisions. Where does the money come from for example?

What I am sure of though that it is the right thing to do.

The current Government machinations are just noises being made in the run up to a general election. They run the risk or rushing things through and making mistakes, as is being seen to happen now with the Digital Economy Bill.

The only sensible thing to do is call a General Election now, reset the clock on legislation and get on with making Britain Digital with a proper sense of purpose.

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Posted in broadband, internet, regulatory | 3 Comments »

BET not high in popularity stakes which could upset the Digital Britain 2mbps cart

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

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.

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Review of 2009

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

If you have managed to keep a job in 2009 it has probably not been a bad year for you. For consumers, fuel apart, costs have by and large come down as vendors compete more aggressively in the tough market conditions. In the UK we haven’t started paying for it yet. If you have been out of work in 2009 I guess it will have been a different story.

At work Timico continued to grow both in sales and profitability. It hasn’t been easy but the year end looks as if it will be significantly up on last year.

Highlights in the year include decommissioning our last 155Mbps ATM connections to BT, followed later in the year by our 622Mbps pipes. They have been replaced by resilient Gigabit Ethernet Hostlinks.

We also set up our new Network Operations Centre in Newark and saw the successful move of the NetOps team up to Nottinghamshire from Ipswich.

One of the big success stories of the year is the growth in the high bandwidth leased line business. Uncontended (ie dedicated connectivity) leased lines are becoming more affordable and companies are increasing offloading (at least some) corporate resources into the ”cloud”. We have similarly seen a growth in our MPLS estate with some customers signing up for hundreds of connected sites.

2009 also saw some major technology introductions. ADSL2+ was introduced early in the year. The technology is capable of “up to 24Mbps” though we only quote 16Mbps to our customers – most users will not get the max performance and I think it is better to manage expectations in this way rather than have unhappy customers.

Timico was the second ISP in the country to sell Ethernet in the First Mile and have also been participants in the BT Fibre To The Cabinet  (FTTC) trials, the early stage of the much promoted £1.5Bn investment in Next Generation Access technology.

“Digital Britain” was also a much used “buzzword” during the year. It is easy for me to criticise and I realise it is a lot harder when you are making the actual decisions but I am afraid that we will look back and decide that the present Government did not do a good job on this one. The first 4 months of 2010 are going to be very important with laws being passed or not passed that will potentially adversely affect every internet user in the UK.

Don’t get me wrong though. 2010 is going to be an exciting year with lots happening. More tomorrow.

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Alliance Against IP Theft meets MPs

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

The Alliance Against IP Theft held a meeting yesterday at Westminster Hall in The House of Commons.  Present were 5 speakers from the creative industries – from Fulham FC, Universal Music, a freelance writer and journalist, a publisher from Random House and a construction manager at a film studio – and a panel of MPs including Tom Watson, John Whittingdale, Kerry McCarthy, Lord Corbett and Steven Pound. The meeting was chaired by Janet Anderson who leads the All Party IP Group.

Each speaker gave a talk on how piracy was having a negative impact on things like investing in new talent.  The MPs then asked a series of questions.

Most vocal was Tom Watson who argued that to give the Secretary of State unrestricted power to make rulings on copyright in the future was actually a potential problem for rights holders – MPs would be concerned that a Bill was trying to give powers to the Secretary of State without parliamentary oversight.

Mr Watson also questioned the figures that rights holders produced that suggested that every unlawful download was a lost sale. The panel agreed with him when he said that the creative industries had never been in a healthier state in terms of popularity, despite filesharing.

Lord Corbett gave an indication of how the Bill will progress through the Lords – it will receive its Second Reading next Wednesday December 2nd and is likely to leave the Lords and enter the Commons by the end of January. With a two week half term break in February, it was suggested that as Parliament is rumoured to be dissolved at the end of March for the general election, there was a good chance that the Bill will run out of time.

This is clearly an important phase where lobbying for and against this Bill is going on.  It is the first time I have been involved at such close quarters in something so important – one that is generating high emotion from both sides. The strange reality is that I doubt that there is a single person who is against the proposed regulation on P2P filesharing who actually supports the illegal activity.  It is just that they don’t think this regulation is the right way to go about it.

Also I’m not a particularly political person but it does strike me that we should now just get on with a General Election because we are now entering a silly season where there is a danger that Laws will be rushed in without properly being thought through. Of course I know politics doesn’t work like that…

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Digital Economy Bill is a lesson in politics

Friday, November 20th, 2009

It’s out, after the first reading in the Lords yesterday!  The Digital Britain bill that is, now known as the Digital Economy Bill.

After months of debate, lobbying and speculation the proposed detail has been published and at first sight it appears to have bits missing. Of interest to ISPs is that there is a lot of content pertaining to Copyright of online digital content – ie illegal P2P filesharing but nothing regarding the Universal Service Obligation for broadband.

There is clearly some political manouvering going on here.  The 50pence tax is already supposedly going to be in the Finance Bill.  Word is that the Government doesn’t think that the USO specifically needs to be in any legislation as it will either be covered by the Finance Bill or the money is already there from the Digital Surplus – the fund set aside to help with Digital TV switchover.

By doing this the Government is trying to increase the likelihood of some of  the Digital Britain Review becoming law by splitting it up into smaller bits. It is also quite possibly using this to brush under the table that they are going to struggle with the implementation of an USO.  They just can’t get their brains round the problem. It is very unfortunate for the millions of Digitally Excluded unfortunates around the UK in suburbs and rural communities alike.  I might be wrong about this but I don’t think so.

Also of interest are proposed powers that will allow the Goverment to take over management of Domain Name Registry Nominet if it doesn’t like how it is being run. Nominet has seen some board room action this year with a couple of Directors making a lot of noise over governance.   The issue is fairly compicated but I believe that one of the issues was the amount of surplus cash being generated by the not for profit organisation. 

Details of the Bill can be found here.  Separate post on copyright comes next.

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Posted in broadband, internet, piracy | 1 Comment »

How to win votes at a General Election

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Spanish Minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade Miguel Sebastian has just announced that 1Mbps broadband will be a legal right in Spain by January 1st 2011. Apparently 4 million people in Spain cannot get 1Mbps today.

What’s more they are putting up 400M Euros to help with this.  Whether this is enough is in my mind neither here nor there. Also I don’t know how solid this is – the UK Government also made bold statements with Digital Britain that have become more confused and wishy washy as more people get involved.

Here in the UK we now await tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech to tell us exactly what we will be in for. It already seems that the 50 pence broadband tax is not going to be part of it or at least this is deferred to a Finance Bill that is unlikely to see the light of the Royal Seal.

Years ago when I worked for Mitel there was a story that a politician running for election as Prime Minister of Ontario ran on a manifesto of getting rid of speed cameras.  Apparently he won with a large majority.

Here’s a tip for those running in the next UK General Election. Promise Next Generation broadband for all by 2012. It a guaranteed election winner and the cost is also neither here nor there.

PS the link is to a Spanish online service – I used Google Translate to read it - it is brilliant.

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Parliament tv Digital Britain stitch up

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Representatives of BT, Vtesse, The TalkTalk Group, and Avanti Communications appeared before an AdHoc Committee of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills yesterday.

The guests appeared to support the 2Mbps target for Universal Service and moreover kept repeating the phrase Universal Service “Commitment” as opposed to Universal Service “Obligation”. As readers will be aware Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms has already reaffirmed that USO is where the Government is at. The panelists may have had their own agenda here or not keeping up with the times.

I also hear “we don’t need faster broadband today”, “we should let the free market decide”, “it is very difficult to say what people will do with higher speeds”, “it wouldn’t be public money well spent”.

In my mind there is a significant level of “heads in the sand” here. Yesterday I was looking at HD TV streaming speed requirements and 17Mbps seemed to be the requirement for the BBC’s output. Multiply that by the number of family members wanting to watch in their own rooms…  There are no doubt codecs (MPEG4) that support good quality at lower speeds.  However the point is that 2Mpbs doesn’t cut it.

UK plc needs to get more aggressive in the global internet game.  The video evidence is available here.  I didn’t watch all 2 hours so there could, I guess, be some revelations after the 40 minutes mark that you might like to hear for yourselves.

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Martha Lane Fox, Queen of the Digitally Excluded

Friday, October 16th, 2009

The Government’s Digital Inclusion Champion and my newest Facebook friend, Martha Lane Fox, gave a speech at yesterday’s Parliament and Internet Conference in Westminster.

There is a group of 4 million people, including the elderly and families living on the breadline, who do not have access to the internet and who run the risk of losing out in the digital economy. Moreover the children (20% of families don’t have internet access) face being left behind their education as other children forge ahead with modern life skills.

Aside from her inspirational case studies a few points interesting points arose:

Research suggest that if internet was provided to all families currently without then it would add £10Bn to the economy.

Cost was seen to be the significant barrier to internet access amongst the poor. We were told that these same families would be able to save £300 a year by accessing cheaper products online – if they were able to do so – a tangible incentive.

Earlier in the day Carphone Warehouse strategist Andrew Heaney, in discussing the 50 pence Digital Britain tax on analogue lines, said that CW had estimated that they could lose 100,000 customers as a result.

I put this point to Martha and she agreed that there were conflicting government goals here. On the one hand wanting to reach the digitally excluded whilst on the other hand raising the barriers by increasing prices.

Note I take Andrew Heaney’s comments with a pinch of salt. The former Ofcom executive has very firmly established himself in the anti-regulation camp here – gamekeeper turned poacher!

In walking the corridors of Westminster there is definitely a feeling of the last days of empire. However MLF has a two year remit which seems likely to span different flavours of Government. Her appointment appears non political with support from both sides of the House of Commons and so her role will hopefullybe safe under the Conservatives (should they win the election :-) ).

MLF will have to use all her powers of influence and persuasion to make her mark here and we all wish her every success.

To conclude, MP and Communications Group co-chair Derek Wyatt came up with the idea of getting industry to help educate the digitally excluded by providing help with training. This met with the universal approval of the meeting and is an initiative that is well worth everyone’s support.

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Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms reaffirms that 2Mbps USO remains on the table

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

In his speech at the Parliament and Internet Conference in Westminster today Digital Britain Minister Stephen Timms reaffirmed that 2Mbps Universal Service Obligation remains the goal of the Government’s legislation.

Having spent the morning in a workshop with Andrew Heaney of Talk Talk and Andy Carter from the Department of Business Innovation and Skills I had grown disappointed with the progress of the USO concept introduced by Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report.

People had been telling me that USO was now USC – C for commitment. This was confirmed today. What’s more there was no guarantee of 2Mbps on the table they said. In fact there didn’t appear to be a minimum speed guarantee at all! I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the whole thing was a political con.

Then, talk about a roller coaster conference, Stephen Timms in his speech told us that no, 2Mbps remained the minimum speed people should be getting, and indeed it was an “Obligation”. He confirmed this when I asked the question from the floor.

This is a clear steer from Government here and is in fact an example of the clarity being sought by Ofcom CEO Ed Richards in his own speech earlier in the day.

So there you go you doubters everywhere! Unless the Government changes its mind, 2Mbps is what rural dwellers and the digitally deprived townies will be getting.

Of course the real debate is whether 2Mbps is enough. MP Derek Wyatt suspects it isn’t. We are about to see 3D video games and TV channels which will run over broadband connections.

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