BT plan to share it cable ducts with rivals

Monday 08 February 2010 10:46:44 by John Hunt

BT are investigating ways which would allow it to share cabling ducts with rival companies according to a report in the FT. This would allow other network operators to cheaply build networks without having to dig up the roads, which is both costly and disruptive, and could allow other operators to deploy their own fibre-to-the-home solutions, expanding to areas which BT deem unviable.

The announcement follows news last month from the Conservative party who pledged to force BT to open up its ducts for sharing, although BT have been in talks since last year with Ofcom about this.

"We told Ofcom last year we're willing to provide open access to our ducts . . . and we are working with them on how to achieve it. Although it's unlikely to be the silver bullet to get fibre to every home, open access to all ducts, not just ours, might help BT and others extend coverage and so we would like to see a future government support such a move."

Ian Livingston, (CEO) BT

Duct sharing would open up interesting opportunities for other network operators. Virgin Media have done little to expand their broadband network since it was originally built and conglomerated, and with access to new ducting, they could expand to further parts of the country at a much lower cost than the original cost of having to dig. Of course, whilst BT may be willing to share ducts, there may be problems in some areas where cabling ducts are already full, and therefore sharing is not possible.

Other large operators are keen to get their own high-speed broadband services live. Duct sharing could give them the opportunity to do this, and could also add extra competition at a wholesale level. BT currently have a huge market hold due to their coverage of the country, but with other operators able to expand to a similar area, it could boost competition in rural areas. There could also be opportunities other than duct sharing. Virgin have a network that covers around 57% of homes, and a wholesale model similar to that of BT's could allow other operators to start marketing faster services. The Virgin network has one big advantage over that of BT, it can potentially support speeds up to 200Mbps to the home; however Virgin have previously been adamant on having no plans to open up their network to the wholesale market.

DTG concerned at industry engagement of Project Canvas

Friday 05 February 2010 14:37:04 by John Hunt

In December the BBC Trust gave Project Canvas a provisional green light to go ahead with the BBC's involvement following a lengthy consultation period. The Digital TV Group (DTG), made up of over 140 trade organisations including broadcasters, hardware manufacturers and platform operators, have raised concern about Canvas's plans and intentions particularly given their industry involvement to date. The DTG are working with members toward a 'Connected TV' standard which has similar goals as Canvas to create an Internet connected television service which will become available within their 'D-Book 7' specification.

"Many DTG Members have expressed concern that, while the DTG Membership have demonstrated a willingness to develop a Connected TV specification through the normal DTG process, the proposed Canvas [joint venture] members appear to have not fully engaged with industry."

"A significant number of DTG Members fear that the published Trust Provisional Conclusions making only a 'best endeavours' requirement on the Canvas JV to engage with industry to achieve consensus is insufficient and unlikely to deliver an industry agreed specification.

"Many DTG Members believe that it would be a great shame if this were allowed to happen and a major departure from the processes that have delivered the successful platform that Freeview is today."

DTG Statement

The DTG are obviously going off of their experience so far with dealing with the Project Canvas team, but it should be noted that on the Canvas website it does state they intend to work with the DTG and to the Connected TV standard.

"As part of its submission to the BBC Trust, the BBC asked for permission to develop the technical specification for devices in conjunction with the industry. The BBC Trust granted permission for the partners to begin this work with standards body the Digital Television Group (DTG) in July 2009. "The DTG's work to establish a standard for 'connected TV devices' will be published as an industry standard (DBook 7) in early 2010. "All 'Canvas compliant' devices will meet this standard."

Project Canvas

Rural Scotland sees 8 further exchange upgrades

Wednesday 03 February 2010 14:23:14 by John Hunt

A further 8 telephone exchanges in Scotland will see benefits from an upgrade programme which will increase capacity following a deal between the Scottish government and BT. 71 exchanges were announced in December 2009 that needed extra capacity to allow more broadband connections to be added and these 8 will increase the number to nearly 80.

"The huge popularity of broadband has led to demand outstripping capacity at some of our smaller rural exchanges, so this is good news for consumers and businesses who can't currently benefit from the technology. This latest announcement means we will be working with the Scottish Government to upgrade nearly 80 small exchanges across Scotland over the coming year."

Brendan Dick, (Director) BT Scotland

The first of the exchange upgrades are expected to be complete in March. The 8 new exchanges that will see upgrades are New Luce, Kinlocheil, Applecross, Glenelg, Colintraive, Orton, Drumbeg and Whitsome.

Targeted Advertising - Where is the boundary between right and wrong?

Wednesday 03 February 2010 09:28:23 by Sebastien Lahtinen

Virgin Media customers visiting bt.com may find themselves being profiled on the home page seeking to persuade them to switch their service from Virgin to BT. It would appear that anyone visiting the BT site from a Virgin Media broadband connection is shown a different advert which links to a campaign which outlines the telephone, broadband and television service offered by BT:

Comparison of BT.com - Virgin Media user (left); Other users (right)

We are not aware if Virgin customers are the only ones being targeted in this way, but this type of marketing is certainly quite common.

Targeted advertising is a hot topic on the Internet with more and more sites using such techniques to provide more relevant advertising. This means that one day you might be browsing books on Amazon, and the next day whilst visiting a completely unrelated website (such as thinkbroadband), you see an advert for a book you might be interested in based on the profile built on your preferences over time. This kind of issue does raise some privacy questions, although we should add that all BT are doing in this case is saying "Hello Virgin Customer!" which in itself is not really profiling, merely providing the user with a customised greeting in the form of an advert based on their IP address. This is a bit like a BMW dealer saying "Wouldn't you prefer to trade in your Mercedez for one of our cars?" having seen the car you arrived in.

But where do you draw the line?

Many websites you visit, ourselves included, will use ad networks such as Google to provide relevant advertising whilst allowing them to focus on writing the best content, rather than hiring a salesman to sell advertising. Recently, having visited one major hotel chain's website, I keep seeing banner adverts from that chain encouraging me to stay at one of their hotels. I certainly find this useful, as I would prefer advertising that is relevant to me as it means I am more likely to respond to advertising I see. Similarly, if you are visiting our site, you are obviously someone with an interest in broadband, so you may find adverts on another site about broadband services are topical.

This may seem all positive, so where's the problem? The examples often cited by privacy advocates often argue against targeted advertising revolve around shared use computers. For example, if you were shopping around for an engagement ring, you could find that your surprise has been spoiled when your partner starts getting suspicious about the advertising for wedding services. Of course, this should all be fixed by using separate profiles, or sometimes by features in web browsers such as "Incognito Window" (Google Chrome) or "Private Browsing" (FireFox), or "InPrivate Browsing" (IE), but there is the possibility that some targeting may be based on IP address, so even these are not a guarantee.

So what's the fuss about?

The strongest objections against profiling have been targeted at Phorm, a company that specialises in 'hijacking' traffic at your broadband service provider, and then injecting information that allows profiles to be built. Whilst this system does use cookies, and can be disabled quite easily, the objections centre on the method by which the data is collected, namely interception. Here, these companies contract with the broadband service providers rather than individual websites being visited, and users often feel this is an invasion of their privacy. Such companies build profiles by way of categories you might be interested in, such as "sports" or more precise areas like "one day cricket". They claim to avoid sensitive subjects such as medical conditions, but this has not alleviated the concerns of a vocal group of users.

Phorm is by no means the sole company in this area, although their name has been associated with all the criticisms of this technology. A couple of years ago, I was discussing the industry with a PR company representative who was working on an account for one of these companies. I asked them why their client didn't just allow the individual not only to opt out from advertising, but see exactly which categories they were profiled for, and even allow them to edit those categories themselves.

Targeted advertising is bound to increase, and informed opt-in is likely to yield the best results in terms of conversion. The key for companies offering this service is to put the user in control.

SeeSaw runs beta aiming at a March launch

Tuesday 02 February 2010 02:43:30 by John Hunt

SeeSaw, the service that stemmed from the original work on Project Kangaroo, has last week launched a beta of their TV on demand service. The beta takes the form of an invite only system with the lucky people who signed up early able to access the content that is available. The beta is reported to be full, but numbers will be re-evaluated and possibly more people added.

So what will users get to see? SeeSaw have signed a deal with Channel 4 and Five to air certain programmes that include Skins, Grand Designs and Peep Show from 4, and Neighbours, The Gadget Show and Home and Away from 5, but it doesn't cover the whole catalogue of shows that are available via 4oD or five on demand. Some BBC content will be available including Doctor Who. SeeSaw have also approached production companies directly which has got it the rights to Footballer's Wives and The Apprentice as well as 50 made for TV movies from a US company, RHI Entertainment. Sport is expected on the cards, with plans to show content from the 2010 World Cup and also the 2012 Olympics.

The full service is expected to be available from March with over 3,000 hours of content. How this will go down in the ever-competitive on-demand television market will be interesting to see. A lot of the content will be available for free elsewhere such as on 4oD's website, or via YouTube, but if they can bring in good content, and get the user-interface right, it could sway people to SeeSaw.

Timico acquires NewNet plc

Monday 01 February 2010 10:40:05 by John Hunt

Timico have today announced the acquisition of Hampshire based ISP NewNet. The move follows acquisitions in 2007 of KeConnect and in 2008, Twang.net by Timico who provide unified communications to businesses.

"The acquisition of NewNet plc allows us to fulfill our objective of further increasing the size and value of our business by enhancing our range of connectivity and hosting services to address the growing demand amongst business customers for fully-managed network and data centre solutions. With its extensive portfolio of award winning services and its focus on delivering excellent customer support, NewNet clearly shares our commitment to service excellence and will make an exciting addition to the Timico Group."

Tim Radford, Chairman, Timico

NewNet operate from Fareham and have in the last few years started a small LLU roll-out programme which covers 11 exchanges in the Hampshire and Surrey area. Whether this was a big appeal to Timico is unclear, but it would be interesting to see the growth of this network to cover more exchanges.

How fast is your broadband router?

Monday 01 February 2010 07:15:52 by John Hunt

Have you ever considered the impact your broadband router may have on the quality and speed of your broadband service? Not only do you have to pick the right router that supports the service you're subscribing to (e.g. an ADSL2+ router for an ADSL2+ service), you may find that there are significant variations between different manufacturers, models or the firmware (the software that runs on your router).

Fluidata is a wholesale provider that many will know for their L2TP broadband service which uniquely runs on the BE Unlimited LLU platform. They have carried out testing on BE LLU broadband connections to identify which routers perform the best.

This testing has identified that some of the most expensive Cisco ADSL routers perform quite poorly in comparison to more common brands, but even Linksys (now owned by Cisco) can very depending on the actual model.

The testing was carried out on a 1,550m BE LLU phone line capable of an 'up to 24 meg' service downstream with 1.3 meg upstream capacity. The speeds shown are in Kbps and represent the average sync speed rather than actual IP throughput over five tests per router.

This data provides an interesting insight into the variations in speed that routers can provide. In particular, we would highlight the SpeedTouch 608WL which is one of the top performers at 17,921 Kbps using the 8.2.1.1 firmware, but which only achieves 15,444 Kbps using the older 6.2.10.3 firmware. Users should note that with a few exceptions (e.g. Cisco), firmware upgrades are free and simply take a few minutes to install.

Cisco routers are known to be among the most expensive for terminating DSL connections, but fare badly in comparison to its cheaper counterparts, so spending money on a router is not necessarily the answer. This certainly matches some of our own experience comparing Cisco 1801 and Netgear DG834 routers on BT Wholesale 21CN lines.

It is however important to note that whilst the above figures provide an insight into BE lines, this data may not be accurate for customers on other broadband services where wholesale operators use different equipment in the telephone exchange. Indeed, large providers such as BT have a policy of purchasing equipment from different vendors so speeds may vary based on your exchange/DSLAM.

The tests were repeated again with the line set to ADSL2+ with Annex M enabled (which allows lines to sync at an upstream speed of up to 2.5meg). Only routers which were Annex-M compatible were tested:

A general trend shown here is that the higher the upstream speed, the lower the downstream. This is to be expected by the nature of the Annex M technology which makes use of some frequencies on the line for upstream that would have otherwise been used for downstream. We also note with interest that the ZyXEL routers negotiated the highest upstream speeds but also maintained a respectable downstream, impressive for such an inexpensive router.

So, if you're buying a BE based ADSL2+ Annex-M service from BE Unlimited or another company which uses this network via Fluidata, you should consider using a ZyXEL Router.

Conservatives: "100Mbps by 2017" and "break up BT monopoly'

Sunday 31 January 2010 13:12:25 by Andrew Ferguson

This morning, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has promised that a Conservative government would deliver 100Mbps broadband services to the 'majority' of homes by 2017. In an interview for the Andrew Marr show, he also suggested that where the private sector was unable to deliver a solution, such as in some rural areas, the BBC licence fee might be used to fund this.

The suggestion is that the BBC continues to set aside the 3.5% of the licence fee that is currently being used to fund the digital switchover but for this money to be diverted to fund broadband expansion. Exactly what constitutes a 'majority' of UK homes having access to 100Mbps by 2017 is unclear, so we hope this is clarified if it forms part of an election manifesto.

"In the 19th century we built the railways. In the 20th century we built the motorways. In the 21st century, let's build the super-fast broadband network that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Britain."

George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor

The current government has promised a Universal Service Commitment (USC) of 2Mbps by 2012 and has also planned a 50p/month levy (the 'broadband tax') which will be used to fund 'next generation broadband' for areas where the market is unlikely to deliver. This levy is expected to raise between £1-1.5bn by 2017 to pay for the 'final third' project to connect the most rural of areas resulting in 90% next-generation broadband coverage. It is not quite clear exactly what 'next generation' means in this context, however we expect this is referring to services in the 25Mbps+ range.

Mr Osborne goes on to compare the Labour government's 2Mbps USC with the promises by South Korea for 1Gbps, although he did not expand on the Conservative policy for delivering basic broadband services in a shorter timescale which may be of concern to those who can't get broadband at the moment. He also proposes the break up of BT to enable LLU operators and cable operator Virgin Media to deliver better services:

"If there are some parts of the country where the market can't get to; because I think the best way to deliver this is by breaking up the British Telecom monopoly at the moment which holds back companies like Carphone Warehouse or Virgin. If we find the market can't do that, then use the BBC licence fee, the digital switchover money in the licence fee, to get broadband out to the rest of the country, but let's see first of all if we can have the market delivering that super-fast broadband."

George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor

The licence fee is currently £142.50 per year, so 3.5% would amount to about £5/year per household. This amount is not too dissimilar to the £6/year levy (50 pence per month for every phone line; although we note that businesses would also be caught in the levy being planned by the government) particularly after factoring in any increases in the licence fee. With around 25 million TV licences in the UK this would raise between £750m and £1bn depending on how quickly it could be implemented and possible rises in the licence fee, perhaps slightly short of the estimates the copper landline levy would be expected to bring in. We are therefore primarily seeing a shift from one type of tax to another.

Who will be the most tech savvy? Developers or content industry?

Wednesday 27 January 2010 09:20:51 by Andrew Ferguson

The Digital Economy Bill currently passing through the Committee Stage at the House of Lords is trying to help foster digital innovation and protect the rights of content creators. There has been significant discussion over the legislation, particularly in relation to copyright infringement such as the transfer of files to other people over the Internet without the permission of the copyright holder.

TalkTalk has been one of the most vocal voices against the plans for protecting copyright, not because copyright shouldn't be protected but because of the impact the plans may well have. Their latest release warns that 'Robin Hood' developers will neuter the bill with new applications and tools. This is something that is almost inevitable—In the digital world there is nothing like a challenge such as breaking some encryption or building an ability to hide data from others.

The Digital Economy Bill has focused on P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing technology which no doubt is responsible for a significant amount of unlawful activity, but it fails to address the key issue; namely that technical measures are unlikely to have any long term impact on the amount of illegal file sharing. Innovative programmers will develop better technology which can combined the use of encryption, proxies and distributed routing of traffic through multiple jurisdictions to make the identification of content (as perfectly legal or unlawful) as well as those engaging in unlawful copying of content an expensive, if not technically almost impossible task.

We may end up with a bill that increases costs for the music industry and service providers, which all of course filter down to consumers. It is quite possible the bill will end up being obsolete within a matter of months, or indeed we may find reports that copyright infringement has dropped, when in fact it has simply become much harder to detect.

TalkTalk raises a few interesting points to illustrate other ways in which the legislation, or more precisely the detection of breaches, can be avoided:

• Applications that scan internet radio stations, matching meta tag information and then downloading the selected tracks.
• Websites that stream premium content outside the UK, but can still be accessed inside the UK, when it was not licensed for the UK audience.
• Applications that can remove DRM or rip streamed content from various catch-up TV services.

Of course it could be made illegal to carry out any such activities, but in order for it to be effective we would need to require licenses for anyone using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), remote desktop protocols or indeed any encryption whatsoever. Suddenly, the framework sounds quite similar to the great firewall of China.

People will always crack, hack and work around every restriction sooner or later, and the only way to deal with this problem is to ensure that rights holders provide a framework which ensures easy and legal access to digital content that is fair both to the end users and those in the music and film industries. The pricing models in the music industry have so far failed to adapt to the online world, and the Internet is too often seen as the problem, rather than a platform for a new innovative revenue stream. It is important for example, to ensure that when renting movies online, you provide the best quality versions in open formats, so those wishing to enjoy the highest quality experience are not forced into obtaining illegal copies ripped from a high definition DVDs and distributed illegally, but can enjoy this content legally at a fair price.

When asked why you might need faster broadband services, many examples cited include more video content, but the Digital Economy Bill stands a real chance of hindering rather than enabling many of these new services as there is little incentive for rights holders to ensure next generation distribution models. In the House of Lords debate today, the issue of piracy was discussion with respect to one of the recent films. One noble Lord suggested that the film's takings may have been increased by the interest raised on the Internet, rather than resulting in a financial loss.

EU Commission to monitor Virgin DPI trials

Tuesday 26 January 2010 17:01:44 by John Hunt

The European Commission has announced it will closely monitor planned trials of deep packet inspection (DPI) which will be used by Virgin Media to monitor the amount of illegal file sharing on its network. No personal or identifying data will be collected or stored by the Virgin system so users will not see action coming from this, but the system could potentially be modified in the future to support this.

Privacy International does not see DPI as a legal thing for Virgin to do, and has advised that it would lodge a criminal complaint against Virgin if it goes ahead with the trial as it believes that under RIPA, ISPs don't have the right to monitor communications without consent or a court order. Similar complaints happened when BT ran it's trial of Phorm, and the City of London Police did not deem that any wrong doing had occurred. The European Commission weren't impressed with the way the trial was run and opened its own investigation in to how the UK are implementing European data protection laws.

The Commission have so far identified three gaps in UK law. Firstly, there is no independent national authority to supervise the interception of communications, required under the ePrivacy and Data Protection Directive. The RIPA act authorises interception of communications where the party has reasonable grounds for believing that consent has been given which doesn't comply with EU rules defining consent. The RIPA act also only prohibits interception where it intentionally occurred, rather than the EU law that requires Member States to prohibit any unlawful interception.

Whilst Virgin may or may not fall foul of current UK law as it stands, they may do so of EU law, but until the UK pull their foot out and fix things up to EU standards, there may not be any sanctions except financial penalties to the UK government for not conforming to EU law.