Tag: hero

Categories
Business fun stuff surveillance & privacy

ISPA Internet Hero and Villain Finalists

Normally I like to add value to a news item if I am going to comment on it.  I see so many scraper websites that pick up my stuff you wonder what they get out of it.

I have just sat down to comment on the press release from ISPA announcing the internet Hero and Villain finalists for this year’s ISPA Awards. I found however that ISPA had already put across  much of what I might have said. I have therefore reproduced it below in its entirety with links to where you can buy tickets for the Awards on 11th July.

I will say that as one of those with a vote for these awards it is always easy to find candidates for heroes but not so for the villain. Actually that isn’t right. There are plenty of MPs that we could line up with very little understanding for how the internet works but with their own objectives in controlling it. I’m speaking personally here and not on behalf of ISPA but we have to be careful how we approach the subject of internet regulation in the UK. We need to work with MPs to help make things better in a sensible way without shooting from the hip in an emotion filled gunfight.

The winners will be announced on the night of the awards and you can read the ISPA release below. There are some great “goodies” and some shocking “baddies” taken, the internet being the global entity that it is, from around the world.

ISPA release:

Continue reading “ISPA Internet Hero and Villain Finalists”
Categories
broadband Business

B4RN is a hero at ISPAs 2012

B4RN broadband -Barry Forde and Chris Conder at ISPAs

B4RN Broadband is award winner

B4RN broadband has just been announced as winner of the Internet Hero at the Internet Service Providers Association annual Awards bash. They were pretty clear winners in the vote that involved all of the ISPA council (moi included).

I’m not going to dwell on the other candidates or on the Internet villain. It is quite fair that the attention is all focussed on B4RN. B4RN has featured on the blog before. It is literally a ground breaking project.

B4RN is aiming to light up 1,500 or so properties across the 8 parish areas in the Lancashire/Cumbria borders at a cost £1.86M. That’s roughly over £1,200 per home/business. They are doing it with a combination of hard cash raised from investors and potential customers and “effort”. The “effort” is payment in kind – much of the total cost of the project is down to civil engineering works – digging the trenches in which the fibre is laid.

The 1,500 properties will need over 256km of fibre – that’s roughly £1,200 per property connected and just over £7 per metre. A very significant chunk of the cost of the project is going to be paid for in kind so the overall cost per property/per metre will come down from this. B4RN has enough cash to initially light up the core of the network – that’s 40,000 km through 8 parishes.

If you take a look at the Openreach website you can see their regulated tariff. For laying fibre the costs range between £25 a metre and £140 a metre.  Believe me this is not a “have a go at BT” post. BT has to gear for scale and is not used to having to gear for low cost.

These numbers suggest there is a clear need for competition in the local loop/Openreach space. The Openreach position will be that the market isn’t big enough for two players.

The people that got B4RN going are real heroes. The biggest problem that the UK has is that there aren’t enough of these heroes to go around. It’s not just guts you need it’s know how and it’s not just know how locally on the ground. It’s know how right the way up through the ranks of the civil service and up to government ministerial level.

BT will be whispering in the minister’s ear “do you really want to take the risk with critical national infrastructure by letting just anyone get involved”. That’s what’s happened with the BDUK rollout of funding for rural NGA broadband – we are left with BT and possibly Fujitsu though only in a few regions (that’s my understanding anyway).

I don’t have the right answers here. Hopefully B4RN’s winning of the ISPA Internet Hero award will give someone food for thought.
imagePhoto – Barry Forde and Chris Conder of B4RN proudly show off their award.

Categories
Business Regs surveillance & privacy

Internet Heroes (hooray) and Internet Villains (boo hiss) #deappg

In an unprecedented move the Internet Services Providers’ Association has opened the nomination process for Internet Hero and Villain to you, the general public.

The Hero and Villain are fun categories in the forthcoming ISPA Awards (London, 7th July) and last year were won by Tom Watson MP and Lord Mandelson for their respective roles during the passing of the Digital Economy Act. Last years’ was a pretty straightforward vote.

This year I think it is going to be different. I’m not so sure that there are potential candidates with the same outstanding qualities.  I could be wrong and would be glad to hear from blog readers who they think might put up as heroes and villains.

I can think of a judge or two that would fit into either camp and at least one MP. ACSLaw, who were an unsuccessful candidate last year could also easily fit in as a villain this year (though they are so last year!).  I’m looking for ideas. You can provide suggestions directly to ISPA via Twitter to @ISPAUK #ISPAs or email them at [email protected] or you can leave a comment on the blog.

The ISPA council will be voting on a shortlist of candidates for both awards before the night.