Vodafone announce cheaper roaming charges for Internet use

Thursday 02 July 2009 15:17:53 by John Hunt

Vodafone have released new mobile roaming charges for Internet use which will help make usage abroad more affordable. The new rates vary depending on whether you access via your phone or your laptop (presumably by a mobile broadband data contract).

Zone 1 is made up of European countries (although a couple are missing) and Zone 2 the rest (see Vodafone press release for complete list).

The new charges (0.20p per MB if all usage is used) are much cheaper than previous prices of £4.99 per MB and are largely due to the introduction of EU wide rules on roaming charges. Any usage is per calendar day based on the UK timezone. At midnight UK time, a new £4.99 charge would be applied when you reach the first MB. Usage below a megabyte is charged per kilobyte- 100KB costing 50p.

Charges can still mount up quickly with online video often at a couple hundred megabytes for high quality streams. Users would be best to avoid using BBC iPlayer or similar services abroad. Also, it's worth ensuring that your laptop is up to date with security updates before leaving, and disabling auto-updates as large updates are sometimes made available which automatically download and can reach in to the hundreds of megabytes.

Parliamentary committee to examine Broadband Speeds

Monday 29 June 2009 13:07:54 by Sebastien Lahtinen

Following the release of Lord Carter's Digital Britain Report, the Business & Enterprise Committee of the House of Commons has announced today its intention to open an inquiry into broadband speeds in the UK. It will consider, amongst other matters, the following:

• Whether the 2 Mbps Universal Service Obligation by 2012 is "ambitious enough"?
• The appropriateness of the Government's broadband tax on copper lines to fund next generation access?
• Are service providers providing the speeds which they promise?
• The balance of current regulation encouraging fair competition and investment?

We hope that the inquiry raises the issues surrounding broadband notspots and slow-spots to the forefront of the wider policy debate.

PictureBox launches on Virgin Media

Monday 29 June 2009 11:07:11 by John Hunt

Virgin Media and Universal Pictures have announced that PictureBox, an on-demand movie service will launch on the Virgin TV platform in July. The service will allow TV subscribers to view films whenever they like from a rolling selection of 28 films for £5 pounds a month.

Titles will include both recent and old films. Seven new titles will be added every Friday, and many films will be available in HD. Films in the coming months include Hot Fuzz, The Bourne Ultimatum, Children of Men and The Holiday, as well as some older titles such as Scarface, Total Recall, The Nutty Professor and E.T – The Extra Terrestrial.

PictureBox is also available on BT Vision, Tiscali TV and topup TV.

"This agreement is a significant step in the growth of the PictureBox brand, which will now be available to Virgin Media's 3.6 million TV customers in the UK. Our reach in the UK has now increased more than fivefold and the service has expanded internationally since initial launch less than three years ago."

Belinda Menendez, president, NBC Universal International TV Distribution.

ISPA announce Internet Hero and Villain Finalists

Monday 22 June 2009 11:21:32 by John Hunt

ISPA have announced the finalists for its Internet Villain and Internet Hero awards, the winners to be announced at it's annual award ceremony. The villain award is aimed at those that ISPA feel have had a negative impact on the Internet industry, where as the hero award, at those who've had a positive impact.

Internet Hero Finalists

• Featured Artists Coalition - "For recognising publicly that the focus of music companies should be the development of new business models for distributing content online rather than attempting to pass responsibility to ISPs to take action against users"
• Community Broadband Network - "For their relentless pursuit and support for next generation access at grass roots level"
• European Parliament - "For rejecting by a significant majority an amendment to the Telecom Package designed to allow disconnection of users' Internet connections for alleged copyright infringement without direct judicial oversight"
• Lord Carter - "For his attempt to bring a holistic view to government policy across the communications spectrum"
• Thomas Gensemer - "For showcasing the enormous power of the Internet in leading Barack Obama's online presidential campaign"

Internet Villain Finalists

• Baroness Vadera - "For excluding a number of ISPs and Rights Holders in agreeing a Memorandum of Understanding that was exclusive and ineffective in progressing relations between the two industries"
• European Parliament - "For supporting an amendment to the Telecom Package on cookies which could yet bring the Internet to a standstill"
• President Nicolas Sarkozy - "For his continued commitment to the HADOPI law, which advocates a system of graduated response, despite repeated arguments suggesting the law is disproportionate from a number of important groups including the European Parliament"
• Stephen Conroy and the Australian Government - "For continuing to promote network-level blocking despite significant national and international opposition"

Last year saw the Hero award go to Peter Robbins, Chief Executive of the IWF with the Villain award going to HM Revenue and Customs for failing to take the security of personal data seriously.

BT may increase fibre coverage with 50p tax

Thursday 18 June 2009 10:48:54 by John Hunt

BT is examining its fibre to the cabinet roll out plans and considering increasing coverage to 90% of homes after details of the planned 50p tax on phone lines was revealed in Lord Carter's Digital Britain report on Tuesday.

The report set a target for at least 90% of homes and businesses to have access to high-speed broadband by 2017 with the £6 a year (50p a month) levy planned for every fixed phone line which will contribute to a 'Next Generation Fund' to help the final third of the country to get access to these faster services.

"We're keen to get fibre to as many homes as possible - and so the levy is a positive step towards increasing availability. The devil will be in the detail, but, if the plans are workable, then it could be feasible that we [would] deliver somewhere in the region of 90 per cent coverage."

Ian Livingstone, (CEO) BT Group

BT's current fibre roll out is in trials in London and Wales but is expected to be deployed to cover 40% of homes by 2012, costing an estimated £1.5bn. UBS analysts estimate it could cost them a further £3bn to get to 90%.

Other providers are less sure that the 50p levy is a good idea.

"A tax on fixed lines is the wrong solution, penalising existing customers and conflicting with the government's stated objective of driving broadband take-up."

"With equal access to infrastructure and evidence of consumer demand, we would back ourselves to compete successfully, just as we have done since entering the broadband marketplace three years ago."

BSkyB statement

Analysts suggest that the increased rollout would be bad for Sky as they could lose some of their valuable pay-TV subscribers to rivals who could provide similar services over a next-generation broadband service.

Carphone Warehouse are also wary, advising that the government will have to consult and justify the tax before being able to make it law.

The Digital Britain report is finally out

Tuesday 16 June 2009 15:43:22 by Andrew Ferguson

So what is the future for the Digital Economy in Britain? The final report has been published and makes for a 245 page report, split into nine chapters, the report in PDF format can be downloaded from www.culture.gov.uk (it is available as a single 3MB PDF file, or a Word document summary, or a single PDF file per chapter).

The key points to arise from the report are the following:

1. The UK is to have a Universal Service Commitment of 2Mbps (2 Mega bits per second) by 2012, this is to be funded in a number of ways, £200m surplus from the Digital Switch Over Help Scheme, commercial gain through tender contract, contributions from private partners, money from other public sector organisations, consumers themselves by resolving wiring issues in their homes. Additionally the wider coverage obligations placed on mobile broadband providers will help to meet this obligation.
2. The report does not set an minimum speed for upstream or latency, though does suggest that money spent on meeting the USO should be spent in such a way that does not preclude expansion to Next Generation speeds in the future.
3. A 50p per month on fixed copper lines (basically telephone lines, i.e. residential phone lines, business analogue lines, ISDN2 lines and cable telephone lines. This £6 a year will go into the Next Generation Fund, the purpose of which is to fund the roll-out of Next Generation services in the third of the country where at this time commercial operators are saying solutions like fibre are not feasible. A sum of £150m to £170m is expected to be raised per year from the fund, with the aim of connecting most of the final third by 2017.
4. The 50p levy is not part of providing the basic 2Mbps USO.
5. In the area of illegal file sharing the report outlines a proposal to legislate and give Ofcom the a duty in reducing the amount of file sharing over the Internet in the UK. This will comprise of notifying account holders when it appears their account has been used to infringe copyright, and an obligation to keep records so that serious repeat infringers can be identified and thus allow targeted court action against the most damaging breaches of copyright.
6. A code of practice to underline these obligations will be produced, which should set out the processes for rights holders to inform Ofcom.
7. Ofcom will also be provided with additional powers, so that if this warning system does not have a significant impact on illegal file sharing then Ofcom can place additional conditions on broadband providers. For example blocking of sites, port blocking, bandwidth capping, data volume caps, traffic shaping. This measures are only expected to be used if the overall level of illegal file-sharing does not diminish after a 6 month initial period.
8. The report outlines that it plans for the first stages of the warning system will be deemed successful if infringement is reduced by 70% in the first year.
9. Fair use gets a mention, since at present even if you own a copy of an album on CD, ripping it onto your MP3 player is a violation of copyright law. Nothing concrete appears, other than to mention that this area is heavily constrained by the EU copyright framework.

So there we have the main points relating to broadband, the levy is not likely to be popular and people acceptance will largely be down to whether they feel broadband is a utility and everyone should have a bite at the cherry. In terms of Next Generation services, eight years of £150 amounts to about £1.2 billion, which considering BT has talked of £5bn to do Fibre To The Cabinet to the whole country does not look to be a large enough pot of money.

The Universal Service Obligation looks set to be a slow process, we can expect the creation of a Network Design and Procurement Group in the Autumn, which suggests 2010 at least before people start to see action on the USO. Procurement is almost a dirty word as many people will associate it with long drawn out Government projects that deliver late and are over budget. Hopefully in this case, a lean mean machine can be created also access to information on the USO needs to be straightfoward so that consumers can easily find out which service is available in their area and what speeds it can offer.

Martha Lane Fox appears to have gained a figurehead role, as Champion for Digital Inclusion, forming part of the reports aim to drive forward Digital Inclusion and convince people that going online is worthwhile. The appointment seems somewhat odd, a more well known respected UK figure might have been more appropriate.

Overall its hard to say the report has been a waste of time, since the USO is better than most other countries, but at the same time the overall ambition is clearly still led by the commercial operators, with the Governments role being one of filling in the holes around the edges. Whether the new role for Ofcom will succeed is hard to know, and there is no guarantee that reducing the amount of unlawful file sharing will lead to an increase in sales, and if some surveys are to be believed it may for some content lead to a reduction in sales.

So the message now is clear, if you want ultra fast broadband, i.e. something over 8Meg then you need to move into the cities, otherwise you may be waiting until 2017 or later. Of course by then other countries will have completed their own Next Generation roll-outs, leaving the UK where it is now in relative terms in the worldwide digital economy. There is still the risk that countries that missed the first generation broadband wave could leapfrog the UK as we take our step by step approach to faster broadband.

Be in summer offer for students

Tuesday 16 June 2009 10:04:52 by Andrew Ferguson

Thinking about a broadband connection for the next year at University for undergraduates may not be the top priority for everyone, but Be is attempting to lighten the load somewhat by offering 3 months of free broadband worth up to £64.50 for those who take out a 12 month contract.

In shared houses it is not uncommon to have one student staying over the summer, for example post-graduates and those who have summer work locally, so the offer may help to reduce costs. The offer has a limited window of opportunity as it ends on 30th June 2009.

Details of the offer can be found at www.bethere.co.uk/students.

Lord Carter speaks out about universal broadband

Monday 15 June 2009 13:37:25 by Andrew Ferguson

It is not clear whether the general public has the same degree of anticipation with respect to the Digital Britain report as does the broadband, media and music industries, or whether apathy has already set in.

BroadcastNow.co.uk has interviewed Lord Carter, minister for communications, technology & broadcasting and covered four main areas: Broadband, Online Piracy, BBC Worldwide/Channel 4 and Local News, which are all available as streamed video. With respect to broadband and the universal service commitment Stephen Carter had the following to say, there is more in the four minute video.

"As a base building block we think there needs to an establishment of universality, the identification of who doesn't have it and the funding and design program to infil those not-spots and not-a-lot-spots, but to to be clear we have never said that a base level of broadband connectivity is the ceiling of our ambitions it's the first stage building block."

Lord Carter on Broadband USO

So looking at what has been said, perhaps we need to brace ourselves for a lower than 2Mbps figure as part of the first round of universality, and hope that the methods chosen to meet a new USO will either bring speeds beyond that as a by-product, or that the USO will be reviewed frequently. A mid-range figure of perhaps 1Mbps could be met by adding some extra 3G towers, Openreach improving the copper network in a few areas, and satellite subsidies to the truly remote properties/businesses.

The UK has consistently hit the target with innovation on technology but has very often messed up the implementation phase, with other countries forging on ahead. If the UK truly wants to be centre stage in the world-wide digital economy, we must do much more than meet the bare minimum target wise.

Virgin Media announces Music Download Service

Monday 15 June 2009 12:52:11 by Andrew Ferguson

There has been music download services previously, but often these were hampered by Digital Rights Management with rules whereby you stopped your subscription and all the music you had downloaded would no longer play. Virgin Media seems to have turned the existing model upside down and has announced the launch later this year of a 'Music to Keep Forever on Any MP3 Player' service.

At this time negotiations are still ongoing with major UK and independent music labels, but Universal Music is on-board and subscribers at launch will have access to their entire catalog. The service won't be free, it will involve a monthly subscription, with various tiers, ranging from entry level with a limited number of downloads and an 'unlimited' service that will allow you to both stream and download MP3 files onto whatever devices you desire.

The new service reflects the shared commitment of Virgin Media and Universal Music to keep step with growing demand for online music in an increasingly digital world. In parallel, the two companies will be working together to protect Universal Music's intellectual property and drive a material reduction in the unauthorized distribution of its repertoire across Virgin Media's network.

This will involve implementing a range of different strategies to educate file sharers about online piracy and to raise awareness of legal alternatives. They include, as a last resort for persistent offenders, a temporary suspension of internet access. No customers will be permanently disconnected and the process will not depend on network monitoring or interception of customer traffic by Virgin Media.

Extract from press release

If Virgin Media can get the other major music labels on-board and the price is right, this service could very well boost the take-up of the Virgin Media cable broadband services, not forgetting that where Virgin does not provide cable it can supply access to the service over the ADSL infrastructure. Interestingly given the proximity to the announcement of the Digital Britain report, one would assume that what Virgin Media describes in terms of policing the area of online piracy fits in with what the report states as its aims.

As and when pricing information is published we will of course let people know. In the same way as SMS bundles on mobile contracts set upper ceilings for the number of messages you can send on unlimited accounts we expect something similar with the Virgin Media music download service. Unlimited in terms of advertising is usually a misnomer and generally means a limit that is well in excess of what the average consumer of a product/service uses.

What will the Digital Britain report say?

Monday 15 June 2009 09:44:05 by Andrew Ferguson

The Digital Britain report may become one of the most important reports for the UK broadband industry, or it may just join the growing pile of reports and research. From tomorrow, we can debate the merits of the report and end the speculation.

The Interim Report gave us some hints about what we should be expecting from the final document. Let's look at what we expect to see:

• The Universal Service Obligation, the minimum broadband speed which should be available to everyone in the country was headlined at 2Mbps in the Interim Report. We are very concerned that the final report may cave into pressure from mobile broadband operators which we suspect are likely to be pushing for a sub-1Mbps USO. This would in our  view be a disaster for the UK Internet, considering in particular that the USO is only expected to take effect from 2012.
• The issue of contention, congestion or the quality of a connection have been avoided so far; we hope the final report will define what sort of speed drops will be tolerated on the USO service.
• Latency is a big issue, and while online gaming is seen as a preserve of spotty teenagers, it is an area that has a lot of spending. Satellite services preclude the popular games and mobile broadband is far from ideal for twitch style gaming. Latency is also an issue for many other uses including Internet telephony services (VoIP).
• The lack of any upstream bandwidth commitment has been a glaring omission from the report thus far; this must be addressed when the Internet is becoming so much more about user generated content. The media industry would certainly be better off with the public being able to share less files illegally, but this would be the wrong way to deal with this problem.
• Where can you get the USO service? The Interim Report did not address how a consumer would identify the provider of a USO solution. In some areas, we may expect that the USO could be covered by mobile broadband providers, whilst in other areas it may be covered by BT services. The consumer needs one place to find this information in an easy-to-access way.
• The issue of copyright abuse is the most contentious area of the report. We've seen three strikes policies, throttling and premium priced services all suggested. We could speculate that one of the likely solution is something along the lines of a 'bad boy pipe', where users thought to be sharing material without permission are placed onto a slower link to the Internet, or have peer to peer applications slowed down. The danger with the media industry serving notices that are hard to verify is that the systems for spotting the violations will be open to abuse, e.g. false IP addresses in torrent trackers. If the media industry simply concentrates on punitive measures then no real progress will result, the persistent offenders will encrypt their traffic to avoid being spotted.
• So who pays for it all? This is probably the biggest question yet the answer is simple. We all will. The question is where does the money come from in the short term? Iit seems likely that up to £250m will be available from the Digital TV Switchover fund, but extra funding is likely to be sought from the industry, although we suspect that a lower USO will be adopted to lower this cost. To some extent the size of this digital switchover surplus is already being brought into question, due to requests for funding for regional TV news services.

The original interim report had many people hoping it would kick start super-fast broadband roll-outs across the UK; the current economic climate means this is very unlikely, and as those who read the interim report realised, this was very unlikely to ever happen.

So where do we go from here? We will of course be reporting the outcome of the report, but we would encourage everyone to read it for themselves--Too often outlets will overlay their own prejudices and agenda's to any coverage so it is important people speak up for themselves and make their voices heard.