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broadband Engineer internet media piracy Regs video

Cisco Drives Nail in Music Industry Coffin with CRS-3?

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 […]

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End User internet

Bandwidth bandits – the story continues with the GoPro HD Hero

I have been raving about the Kodak zi8 but now enter the GoPro HD HERO stage left. This is a headcam that Ben, our head of NetOps, has bought this month to go snowboarding. Instead of holiday snaps he wants memories in 1080p HD on YouTube that all his mates can watch when he gets […]

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broadband Business ofcom voip

VONGA – POTS Lite

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 […]

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Business internet

ISP industry consolidation

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 […]

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broadband End User internet

The National High Speed Broadband Lottery

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 […]

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End User video

Kodak and YouTube are burning up your bandwidth

Since I got my KodakZi8 in mid November I’ve been videoing – not a surprise. The statistics however are startling. In that time I have recorded around 13.3GB of HD video – all of which resides on my hard drive. I have also uploaded 26 of these videos to YouTube with a modest 616 total […]

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Business internet

predictions for the second decade

In 1978 at school the computer studies class had to send punch cards off to Manchester University for their computer to process. It was one of the few in the world! There was no internet or any electronic means of sending the data. The output of the computer programs were returned as thick wodges of […]

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Business internet media video

BBC piles the pressure on ISPs with internet TV

Channel 4 and Talk Talk have joined Project  Canvas, the BBC’s set top box standardisation effort that already includes the BBC, ITV, BT, Five. The end goal is to connect the internet to your TV and allow programmes to be streamed over your broadband connection.  The BBC press announcement doesn’t go into schedules but it […]

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Business Cloud internet UC

2010 is “Year of the Home Worker”

At Leicester Tigers’ Welford Road rugby ground on Thursday Timico launched “Meet Me Now”, a brand new Web Collaboration and video conferencing service with Presence and IM. I missed it due to ITSPA prize awarding duties at the House of Commons. I also had to miss out on a long planned trip to watch the […]

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Business piracy

Dan Bull – Dear Mandy [an open letter to Lord Mandelson]

Sometimes music is intended to be pirated. Check out the YouTube video by Dan Bull. The people speak out.

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End User internet

Zi8 is a stunner and will drive internet bandwidth usage

Following on from the Jeff Pulver #140 Conference in London yesterday I’ve been trying out a new toy. This is the Zi8 HD digital video camera by Kodak and I have to tell you it is a stunner. Presented to me yesterday by Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak the HD video quality is outstanding and […]

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broadband Business internet

Parliament TV Digital Britain Stitch Up

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 Broadband Universal Service and moreover kept repeating the phrase Universal Service “Commitment” as opposed to Universal Service “Obligation”. As readers will be […]

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Business internet piracy

ISPs meet with Lord Mandelson to discuss P2P

Representatives of the big five consumer ISPs together with Nicholas Lansman of the Internet Services Providers Association met with Lord Mandelson on Wednesday to discuss P2P legislation.  I will have more details of the meeting next week. There is quite a bit going on here and this week speaking before the Culture, Media and Sport Select […]

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Business ofcom Regs

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

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 […]

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broadband Business internet voip

Digital Britain FTTC Broadband – The Truth

I spent this afternoon at the Muswell Hill telephone exchange! I’d not been into one before and it must be said it felt like walking into an old high school. A pre-war building that echoed to my footsteps…The most noticeable thing walking in was a constant clicking sound. TDM switching still alive and kicking!! Eerie. […]

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Business UC video voip

Unified Communications and how it made my day

I’ve just had one of those life enriching experiences. I’m currently looking at back-up and storage options to enhance our own SAAS capabilities. i365, “a Seagate company”, looked as if it would fit the bill so I called them. As I was calling I realised it was one of the numbers provided by Timico on our VoIP […]

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broadband End User

What Type of Traffic Uses Up Broadband Bandwidth?

It is interesting to see the mix of traffic on the Timico ADSL network and thus what is taking up the broadband bandwidth usage. As a B2B ISP the profile will be dramatically different to that of a consumer provider. For example the amount of bit torrent traffic is fairly low at around 6%. This […]

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Business internet

Bandwidth Bandits

Internet bandwidth use is continually on the up and is further stimulated each time we roll out faster broadband services. As the UK ISP community lines itself up to offer 40Mbps broadband based on BT’s Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) proposition it is worth looking at what services and applications businesses are going to use […]

Categories
Business internet ofcom Regs

Ofcom report indicates reduction in music downloading

The Communications Market Report published by Ofcom yesterday has thrown up some interesting stats in subject areas regularly commented on in this blog. For example Ofcom says that there is an overall reduction in the number of people downloading music and videos.  This overall decrease is only 1% but the number is marked in certain age […]

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Business internet

Federer at the net attracts on net audience

Here we go again.  Wimbledon.  I never used to be a Wimbledon watcher but since taking my tennis playing son to see the tournament last year (Centre Court, Murray, Nadal, Venus Williams) I have changed my attitude. This year I’m watching it from the office.  The web traffic that is.  At 13.00 hrs our network […]

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broadband Business internet

BBC Claims BT is Throttling iPlayer

The BBC has an article online regarding the fact that BT is broadband throttling the iPlayer traffic of customers taking “Option1”.  Option1 appears to be BT’s cheapest broadband package at 8Mbps with a 10GB download limit. I’m afraid that it is a fact of life that ISPs cannot afford to keep providing the services they do at the prices they […]

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Business media

Rural broadband on the BBC news this morning

The BBC has picked up a rural broadband news item this morning with another community rolling out fibre, this time with a 20Mbps broadband service, presumably with a bigger backhaul than the 2Mbps that serves Wennington and Wray (see posts from 2 weeks ago). I suspect the media is building up for more coverage when […]

Categories
Business voip hardware

Interview with Dean Elwood of voipuser.org

Dean Elwood runs the industry leading website voipuser.org. Over the 6 years this has been going Dean has come into contact with most of the major thought leaders in the communications space. He has also seen many of the new developments in VoIP play out in the form of discussion and comment on the website’s […]

Categories
Business voip hardware

Ideal mobile VoIP client runs on a Blackberry

Runs on a Blackberry. In my experience Microsoft push email isn’t reliable enough and I am seriously thinking of changing back to RIM Can call using any available network – wifi, GSM or 3G – deally can detect least cost route or allow you to set preferred network connection Has the same inbound number as my […]

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Business internet

FTTH final installment

For completeness the last two videos in the series including the connecting and lighting of the fibre. You need to follow the posts from the beginning of the week to get the full story.

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broadband Business internet

Broadband Fibre Farming Tails – The Happy Ending

Last episode from the broadband fibre network laying story that has gripped the nation (see earlier posts here and here if you missed them). I am pleased to say that it has a happy ending, and Wennington now has two more users connected by high speed link to it’s network. Shame about the 2Mps backhaul. As […]

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Business internet

Episode 2 – JFDI – Just Farmers Digging for Internet access

This is episode two of the Lancashire based rural soap opera in which farmers dig for victory in the Battle of Digital Britain and Fibre To The Home. Yesterday’s post attracted a lot of attention which suggests there is a great deal of interest in this subject.  Note in this acronym infested industry I had never […]

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broadband Business internet

Farmer Rolls Out First Rural Broadband Fibre Network as Digital Britain Takes Too Long

On the hills high above Wennington in Lancashire the local community is taking its internet destiny into its own hands and is laying broadband fibre. The Wennington/Wray communities were no hopers when it came to the provision of ADSL so in 2005 they were awarded a £25k grant by the North West Development Agency to roll out a 2Mbps […]

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Business internet

20% increase in P2P downloads since Pirate Bay court case.

At the ISPA Legal Forum today it was stated that research has shown that illegal P2P downloading has increased by 20% since the high profile Pirate Bay court case. This was revealed as the result of a recent 3 month research study into Consumer online behaviour by University College London academic Robin Hunt. Hunt said that a […]

Categories
Business internet UC

The forecast for Unified Communications is cloudy

Oracle has been in the news recently with the acquisition of Sun. One of the prizes that comes with this purchase is Open Office. This probably would have fitted in very well with Oracle’s Network Computer play of ten or more years ago – I remember visiting Oracle at the time to try and design […]