UK regulatory posts
You might wonder what happens to the Civil Service now that an election has been called. Well Civil Servants enter a period called Purdah where they are not really allowed to do anything in case it is seen to favour one party or another, or turns out to be contrary to what the Government to be decides is sensible policy.
They actually have a 51 page instruction manual on how to conduct themselves during Purdah.
Instructions include:
You might wonder what happens to the Civil Service now that an election has been called. Well Civil Servants enter a period called Purdah where they are not really allowed to do anything in case it is seen to favour one party or another, or turns out to be contrary to what the Government to be decides is sensible policy.
They actually have a 51 page instruction manual on how to conduct themselves during Purdah.
Instructions include:
#debill actually made it to a trending topic on twitter today. This reflects the huge amount of interest around the country on the subject of the Digital Economy Bill.
I watched it both on iPlayer and via Tweetdeck where I could see real time comments on what was being debated. MPs inside the chamber were also following twitter – you could see them referring to their mobile phones whilst others were speaking.
I’ve actually changed my view on twitter since getting involved in #debill. It is a hugely powerful medium and one that can spread messages globally very quickly. For example one of my blog posts was retweeted by Jeff Pulver who has somewhere in the region of 355 thousand followers. If you have a message to get across and push the right buttons twitter is huge.
Interestingly because #debill was a trending topic on twitter, ie one of the top topics being followed by people it also attracted its fair share of spam – people jumping on the bandwagon – notably today by people trying to flog iPad.
We are all still finding our way in this connected world.
PS there can’t have been more than 20 MPs in the house debating such an important subject – democracy in action. It is getting harder and harder to decide which way to vote.
As a general principle and in support of the rule of law, nobody involved in the campaign process against the implementation of the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) supports the theft of someone else’s property as is the case when downloading a pirate copy of a music track. However, before we examine the history of the legislation, let’s take a reality check about where we are.
The cat is well and truly out of the bag. The downloading of copyrighted material is now so widespread and with faster and faster broadband and bigger and bigger hard drives it is never going to stop. Infringers will just move on to alternative means – encrypted P2P for example. On this basis all the hard work on the DEB is likely to be a complete waste of time. It is also very difficult to prove who has used a specific broadband connection to indulge in this copyright infringement; what’s more the burden of proof in this bill lies with the accused to prove themselves innocent. This is totally wrong and goes against all the principles of modern UK society.
Just got back from the “Bring Democracy to the Digital Economy Bill” reception kindly sponsored by “Consumer Focus”. There was a great speaker line up. My shorthand is non existent but this is pretty much what was said. If not verbatim then it provides the gist and I’m happy to modify and if I have any of it wrong – but I don’t think I have.
Tom Watson MP
Opening remarks. Not against change per se – just against doing it without adequate scrutiny. DEB is a bad law.
John Grogan MP
The probability is that the PM will go to the Queen to seek dissolution of Parliament on the morning of 6th April. This is likely to be before the 2nd reading of the DEB has started in Commons!. There is no precedent for this!
Noted that at a similar event sponsored by BPI 5 or 6 lobbysists claimed ownership to clause 120A. There was clearly a lot of effort being put in. It is reasonable to expect that things are not considered in haste.
Stephen Timms and Jeremy Hunt have apparently agreed to a clause 18 amendment today but word is the Lib Dems are not going to sign up to it.
The process is going to be concertina’d to 1 hour in the Commons and 1 hour in the Lords.
Not many MPs will be around during the wash-up. Most will be out on the campaign trail. It is important to garner as much support as possible against this bill at this last minute. It won’t be end of world if this bill is delayed so that we can have a proper debate.
Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group
20k people have written to their MP. 2 k people have emailed Harriet Harman. £12 – £14 k raised in one morning to pay for an advert protesting overt the lack of scrutiny in this bill. MPs should be asking themselves whether this bill is legitimate
Simon Milner, Director of Industrial Policy, BT
BT wants to see reduction in piracy – after all BT sells music online. However the company wants to see that the law is balanced and proportionate. In this case the Government views have been too influenced by the music industry. For example people will be cut off because they haven’t taken suitable steps to stop music piracy. This isn’t right and could be unenforceable in law. Consumers could be left with an unholy mess.
Andrew Heaney, Executive Director of Policy and Regulation, TalkTalk
Used the example of his mother. If one of mum’s neighbours hacked into her broadband connection she could be cut off without being able to resort to legal aid. She would have to prove she has taken reasonable steps to stop it. This would cost her money perhaps a few hundred pounds? This is disgraceful / shameful.
Andrew had spoke with Stephen Timms about this. His reply was “But we have to do something don’t we?”.
Scott Taunton, Managing Director, UTV Media GB
Future of local radio is at stake here. There is not enough time to scrutinise the bill properly. The Secretary of State will have the ability to turn off AM and FM frequencies & move people to DAB. There are 120 m analogue radios around the country. This debate has come late in the day. Up to 120 local radio stations could be left behind in the switch off. DAB was 1st broadcast in 1988 radio technology has moved on to better things. Ofcom records only 3% of population has dissatisfaction with radio so why are we doing this?
(Note I haven’t given the non ISP bits of the bill any thought but it does seem outrageous that the Secretary of State seems to be awarding himself powers left right and centre)
Lord Whitty, Chair, Consumer Focus
Lord Whitty had lost his voice and his place was taken instead by that would be Adam Scorer, Consumer Focus Director of reputation and impact, or short, campaigns.
“This is a wholly unsatisfactory process. The idea that consumer interest is served by ISPs policing by decree is more than a shame in what is otherwise a good DEB.”
To finish off I was told this evening that Stephen Timms and Jeremy Hunt (cons) have apparently agreed to a clause 18 amendment today and that the Lib Dems are not going to sign up to it.
At this point I don’t know which way it is going to swing. Watch this space.
PS both MPs speaking were impressive individuals – you should vote for them.
Paid a visit to Google in London on Friday morning. Fascinating offices. Refreshments available in reception whilst you checked yourself in and then breakfast from the breakfast bar afterwards.
I was there to meet Google’s regulatory bod, Luc Delany to discuss the company’s approach to the Digital Economy Bill. Google has a fairly light approach to regulation – the company claims to spend only 10% of what Microsoft spends on lobbying.
The Government, with it’s recent embarrassments, would do well to note that in the USA organisations have to disclose how much they spend on lobbying – down to individual lunches. It would be interesting to see how this mapped out in the UK in respect of the DEB stakeholders.
Of course clause 17 (or is it 18 now?) is the one that concerns Google. That’s the one that potentially gives Peter Mandelson powers to decide which websites are acceptable and which aren’t.
There is a feeling that we have all done everything that can be done on the DEB now, aside from last minute noises. We are now just waiting for judgement day. If the DEB does go ahead in its current form I will say that there is going to be one heck of a stink during and after the election.
I have to say that visiting Google is a pleasure. We played a bit of pool, I picked up an electric guitar and had a strum and spent some time in the surround vision version of Google Earth. It has a name but I can’t remember it. You stand inside a ring of large monitors and move a joystick to guide yourself around the world. Great.
Also chilled out in a deckchair for a bit (in the atrium – under the palm tree) before we both had to move on to other meetings. Life’s a beach.
One thing I didn’t realise is that much of the development of Google mobile operating system, Android, happens right there in the London offices. It made me proud to be a Brit (don’t often say that – I’m normally proud to be Welsh).
The Lib Dem team focussing on Dept of Cuture Media and Sport issues now has an official party position on the Copyright Protection aspects of the Digital Economy Bill.
It is a sensible approach opposing website blocking whilst recognising the need to support the Creative Industries. It is worth reading over at Bridget Fox’s blog.
Readers might be interested to know that internet usage on the Timico pipes grew by 22% over the same period yesterday as punters went online to watch Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling’s Budget speech.
This is roughly the same growth that we saw during the Olympics and also during last summer’s Ashes cricket tests and the Open golf.
In a sense they are similar events – jeering crowds, cheering crowds etc. I’d rather be watching the sport though.
Anyway he did confirm the 50 pence tax on phone lines.
I note that Google has stopped censoring Chinese searches and is routing its traffic via servers in Hong Kong in order to be able to do this. One wonders whether the Chinese will take measures to block access to these servers!?
I wonder also whether the UK Government has considered blocking access to Google within these shores. After all millions of people will be using the search engine to find out how they go about indulging in a bit of Music Piracy. How to avoid detection.
When I do a search for anything using Google I get a list of websites that match my search criteria. If I was a naughty boy and wanted to download free music in breach of the copyright laws, that Google search would probably contain information as to where I can get this music and probably a link to the relevant song/page. Surely this is wrong! Isn’t it?
Will the Home Secretary be using the new found powers he is awarding himself through the Digital Economy Bill to block UK access to Google and thus prevent this miscarriage of justice from happening?
This might sound a bit extreme but I think the scenario shows the absurdity of what UK gov is trying to do with the Digital Economy Bill.
The election campaign is in full swing with Prime Minster Gordon Brown this morning giving a speech, entitled “Building Britain’s Digital Future” and broadcast live at about 8am on number10.gov.uk.
I’m not going to provide a detailed analysis of this. You can catch that from all the tweets at #bbdf. The PM covered a wide range of subjects that fall under the banner of Digital Britain. Much of the content I am concerned with was just a regurgitation of what has been said for the last year – 50p tax on phone lines, high speed access for all etc. etc. I don’t really see the evidence that this is going to happen yet, or at least not much progress.
What was important in my mind was the recognition or reinforcement of the point that UK.gov has to embrace web technology. There is a long way to go here as well. I note that the speech was broadcast on the number 10 website. I found out about it on twitter via @hadleybeeman. When I “tuned in” there were 87 watchers. By the time I had to leave to go to work there were 157. That’s only 157.
There is clearly a disconnect between the PMs speech being made available on line and people knowing it was there or feeling inclined to watch it. There is a long way to go before Government is properly online.
It was probably to some extent down to the timing – during the morning rush hour. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favour of much of what the Government is saying about Building Britain’s Digital Future. Regular readers will know that this doesn’t extend to how they are going about it though.
The appointment of Sir Tim Berners-Lee as joing head of a new Institute of Web Science might sound good but web technology, once it got off the ground has proliferated because private industry recognised that there was money to be made. That same private industry is even prepared to take big punts where it isn’t quite clear where the money will come from (eg twitter).
So in my mind the main area of focus should be creating the environment for ideas to flourish. An Institute of Web Science can no doubt contribute to this – just by being there. More important is to make sure that all the contradictions we keep hearing about – digital inclusion versus blocking of websites and cutting off internet access; the improvement of the rates set up for fibre; reforms to the online copyright licensing regime etc etc.
If anyone wants to add to the list by making a comment on this post that would be great. After Easter the Internet Services Providers Association (ISPA) is going to be working on its own manifesto stating what the ISP industry thinks Government should be doing. All inputs considered.
The election campaign is in full swing with Prime Minster Gordon Brown this morning giving a speech, entitled “Building Britain’s Digital Future” and broadcast live at about 8am on number10.gov.uk.
I’m not going to provide a detailed analysis of this. You can catch that from all the tweets at #bbdf. The PM covered a wide range of subjects that fall under the banner of Digital Britain. Much of the content I am concerned with was just a regurgitation of what has been said for the last year – 50p tax on phone lines, high speed access for all etc. etc. I don’t really see the evidence that this is going to happen yet, or at least not much progress.
What was important in my mind was the recognition or reinforcement of the point that UK.gov has to embrace web technology. There is a long way to go here as well. I note that the speech was broadcast on the number 10 website. I found out about it on twitter via @hadleybeeman. When I “tuned in” there were 87 watchers. By the time I had to leave to go to work there were 157. That’s only 157.
There is clearly a disconnect between the PMs speech being made available on line and people knowing it was there or feeling inclined to watch it. There is a long way to go before Government is properly online.
It was probably to some extent down to the timing – during the morning rush hour. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favour of much of what the Government is saying about Building Britain’s Digital Future. Regular readers will know that this doesn’t extend to how they are going about it though.
The appointment of Sir Tim Berners-Lee as joing head of a new Institute of Web Science might sound good but web technology, once it got off the ground has proliferated because private industry recognised that there was money to be made. That same private industry is even prepared to take big punts where it isn’t quite clear where the money will come from (eg twitter).
So in my mind the main area of focus should be creating the environment for ideas to flourish. An Institute of Web Science can no doubt contribute to this – just by being there. More important is to make sure that all the contradictions we keep hearing about – digital inclusion versus blocking of websites and cutting off internet access; the improvement of the rates set up for fibre; reforms to the online copyright licensing regime etc etc.
If anyone wants to add to the list by making a comment on this post that would be great. After Easter the Internet Services Providers Association (ISPA) is going to be working on its own manifesto stating what the ISP industry thinks Government should be doing. All inputs considered.
The Digital Economy Bill passed through the House of Lords this week after completing its Third Reading. During the debate the Government kicked Lib Dem amendment 120A into touch.
This was the one on blocking of websites illegally containing copyright content and which caused an uprising of the internet industry last week. Lord Young speaking for the Government commented that “the clause was not enforceable and was incompatible with the Technical Standards Directive”.
The Government did commit to proposing a compromise clause that could give the Secretary of State power to “consult on blocking measures”. The debate in full can be found here.
In laymans terms this potentially gives Lord Mandelson (or whoever sits in that seat in a couple of months time) the ability to take power into his own hands… hmm… Not much better than 120A was suggesting in many people’s minds. These things are best handled by court judges, as indeed is the current position in Law.
The First Reading of the Bill in the House of Commons also took place this week and the date for the Second Reading is yet to be confirmed. As I have previously mentioned on a few occasions now due to the shortage of Parliamentary time before the election the Bill is likely to undergo very little scrutiny at the Second Reading before the front benches consider the Bill during wash-up (stitch-up).
Interesting to note that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has also updated its Digital Ecomomy Bill Impact Assessment. The report estimates a cost to ISPS of £290-500 million with a benefit to rights holders of £1,700 million.
The report also admits that the costs and benefits of Clause 18 have not been subject to prior consultation due to the limited time between the introduction of the clause and the finalisation of the impact assessment. In laymans terms what this says is that they haven’t really considered whether this part of the DEB is worth the effort.
A recently leaked Music Industry letter to Rights-Holders discussed the fact that when it comes to pursuing online copyright infringers any cost sharing that might be agreed would be split 75% Music Industry/25% ISPs. I can now see where they got this figure from. Foot – Gun – Bang. They are after 50/50 share of the costs which on the face of it doesn’t seem fair. In fact if the RH benefits is almost £2Bn as suggested and the costs to ISPs are £0.5 Billion there seems to me to be a strong case for RHs to pay all the costs as is, (and I might be wrong here) currently the law.
The perceived benefits to Rights-Holders has also to be taken with a degree of caution here. What they are saying is that if you stop people from downloading music (& movies etc) illegally they will start paying for it instead. It also presupposes that the measures under consideration will actually stop copyright infringement. During the Panorama programme on the BBC this week it was clearly suggested it wouldn’t.
Meanwhile the UK Performing Rights Society for Music, which represents songwriters, composers and music publishers, announced this week a 2.6 per cent rise in annual revenues to £623m and a growth in online revenues from legal licensed digital music services from 72.7 per cent to £30.4m.
!!!!!!
I caught this article in Sam Knows telling us that in France the number of people downloading content illegally has increased since the 3 strikes law was introduced. One wonders if it has encouraged people to do more of it, knowing that they can get away with it twice even if they are caught!!
In the press today is a report that says “The growth of illegal file-sharing could cost European countries 1.2m jobs and 240bn euros (£215bn) by 2015”.
“the UK’s creative industries experienced losses of 1.4bn euros in 2008 because of piracy.”
Really, so where did that 1.4bn go? It certainly didn’t go into bank accounts (otherwise the ratios would be really healthy), it hasn’t been spent in the shops (or they wouldn’t be suffering) and its not been invested in anything (because that amount of investment would have been noticed?).
The basic maths works something like this:
People closely following the Amendment 120A debate at the Lib Dem Spring Conference will already know that the Emergency Motion was carried unanimously (apart from one vote I understand).
I am reporting it here for the record and following on from yesterday’s short post announcing it. You can read a bit more on the Lib Dem website here.
The Digital Economy Bill is going right to the wire I feel.
An Emergency Motion against the Digital Economy Bill amendment 120A has been tabled at the Liberal Democrats Spring Conference in Manchester this weekend.
Obviously I’ll keep us all updated but it may make next week quite interesting on the Parliamentary front if the motion is carried.
The music industry thinks its prospects within the Digital Economy Bill are still good to middling with concerns over website blocking voiced by MI5 seen as a potential scupper.
A weekly newsletter sent by Music Industry representatives BPI to stakeholders such as Sony Music, Warner Brothers and EMI Music also discusses the results of a TalkTalk sponsored survey that finds that “71% of 18 – 34 year olds would continue to infringe copyright, in spite of the Bill provisions, and would use “undetectable methods” to do so”.
There is also the suggestion that MI5 might have helped pay for the survey!
It might be my naivety but I was surprised nay shocked at the ISPA Council meeting today. You must read all this post.
The informed betting is that the General Election is going to be on May 6th. The betting for the dissolution of Parliament is either the 1st or 8th April. Normally notice given is 6 weeks but I’m told that because the Labour Party is (allegedly) short of funds they only want a 4 week election campaign – eat yer heart out US of A. My bet is the 8th because they will all want a nice Easter break before the pitched battle to come.
The Government has confirmed that the Budget will be on 24th March (at 12.30pm for the detail minded – warm the TV up soon). Normally we might expect a week to be given for the media to digest and comment about what will presumably be a budget pitched to give us all as much of a feelgood factor as possible after the last year or two of financial hell/instability/crisis/disaster/nightmare/worry/prosperity (delete as appropriate).
News is distributed so quickly these days (thanks to us ISPs) that by the time us ISPs finish doing the day job and get around to writing up the blog it almost seems like old news already. However in the interest of completeness (ish) of content on trefor.net on the subject of the Digital Economy Bill I’m going to post it anyway.
Following on from my comments last week regarding the outrage amongst ISPs over clause 120A the industry has united and written a letter published in the FT this morning. The signatories are a roll call of the heaviest hitters in the internet in the UK and include ISPA – drafts were circulated to us for comment on Monday.
It will be simply scandalous if 120A proceeds after this. Coincidentally and as a bit of an aside one of the consequences of 120A would be potentially to slow down the aforementioned lightening distribution of said news. Half the websites concerned could be blocked!
To the letter
Most people won’t have given much thought as to how their email gets from A to B or how that video arrives from YouTube. It just comes down the broadband connection which is plugged into the router next to the phone (or somewhere like that). Right?
Well today the worlds biggest router manufacturer, Cisco, announced their latest and greatest product. It isn’t something that you will want to plug into your phone line though because it would take up most of the living room and there wouldn’t be enough room left for the sofa.
It would also be a bit of an overkill because this router, the CRS-3, is powerful enough to handle up to 322 Terabits1 per second, which is roughly a hundred million times faster than the average UK broadband connection speed!
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.
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
The ISP industry is up in arms today as the House of Lords yesterday rushed through ill considered amendment 120A to the Digital Economy Bill proposing to allow rights holders to serve notice on ISPs to block access to sites considered by them (rightsholders) to have illegal content – music, movies, software etc.
This is a huge issue. Rightsholders would be able to ask ISPs to block sites without a court order. If an ISP refuses and the rightsholder subsequently succeeds in getting a court injunction then the ISP will have to pay costs.
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.
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.
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.
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.