Category: Broadband
The Digital Britain report and what it means to you
The report we’ve all been waiting for is finally out but, now that the dust has settled, what’s actually changed and what does it mean for you? Have a read of the Tech Digest breakdown.
Broadband
What we’re expecting
Universal Internet program whereby at least 98% of the UK would be covered by broadband fast enough to stream live TV services, i.e more than 2mb/s – possibly funded by the part of the licence fee set aside to assist the nation with digital switchover which won’t be needed by the time the analogue signal has been switched off in 2012.
The freed up funds could be given to BT to help with the huge costs of supplying fixed line broadband to remote locations. It’s also possible that the remaining and most difficult to reach communities could receive broadband via satellite although this would mean subsidising subscriptions to services such as Sky.
Mobile broadband is also expected to be widened to much of the nation. Currently only a small proportion has 3G service from the big five mobile operators with large parts of Scotland and Wales ignored.
It’s hoped that the part of the electromagentic spectrum currently dedicated to the analogue TV service will be sold off to Vodafone, O2 et al and used as encouragement for them to expand their infrastructure and increase their speeds.
What we got
- Small 50p levy on fixed telephone lines to build an independent fund to be used to maximise the spread of hard-wired, fast internet to as much of the UK as possible. Without this and left to private enterprise, only 2/3 of the country would ever receive quality service in the next 10 years.
- Promise to modernise the UK wireless network to ensure we don’t fall behind in mobile internet services globally speaking
- Upgrade of all national radio stations from analogue to digital DAB by 2015
What it means
By the sounds of things, a small increase in our telephone/broadband bills – a phone line tax – most likely raised at the ISPs and almost definitely passed on to the consumer. Not ideal but I can handle giving a little for the gift of decent broadband to my remote countrymen.
The commitment to mobile broadband sounds rather wishy washy and although the sentiment is good, I wouldn’t go expecting 3G coverage in Kinlochbervie any time soon. There’s plenty of wheeling and dealing to do with the big five over termination rates and bandwidth tenders before we get that far but at least the Government has a bargaining chip.
As for digital all national radio services. Well, hmm, still doesn’t sound like enough to warrant buying a DAB radio if you live in the sticks.
Piracy
What we’re expecting
A lot of toing and froing between ISPs, record labels, Ofcom and EU legislation about how the “problem” of piracy can be tackled without infringing the rights of the consumers in regard to be being monitored and shut off.
Likely that UK ISPs will be given some kind of power beyond idle threat letters to cut off persistent mass file sharers. Some thoughts are of a three strikes rule but the point is that there will be firm legislative backing to follow through on the threats
What we got
- Development of legal download markets in the UK to provide a viable alternative to piracy
- Ofcom handed task of reducing file sharing and powers to notify of unlawful activity as well as hand over the details of serial infringers to allow legal action to rights holders.
- ISPs given the task of reducing file sharing by 70%. Given powers to throttle bandwidth of repeat offenders but no three strikes legislation.
- Online piracy and the downloading and uploading of copyright material whether though peer-to-peer or otherwise to be considered civil theft.
What it means
Well, it’s a promise to get heavy on file sharing, and more to the point, a promise to get heavy on ISPs if they don’t. You’re probably still safe grabbing the odd TV episode here and there – don’t quote me on that – but expect to have your bandwidth cut and invitations to a court hearing from not so friendly record companies should you do so in any serious quantity.
Unclear how easy it’s going to be to police but expect the UK legal system to show you little mercy or offer you much protection. Watch your backs.
Channel 4
What we’re expecting
The short fall in profits and huge financial issue facing the public funded Channel 4 should be answered. There’s a good chance that part they’ll be helped out by the Government to make sure that the services don’t fold.
What we got
- Talks between BBC Worldwide and Channel 4 to secure the future of the latter
What it means
Channel 4 will go on, seemingly as aided by the commercial arm of the BBC and perhaps after 2013 by the by the licence fee itself.
The License Fee
What we’re expecting
No rise expected for the consumer and nor do we think it’s going to be scrapped either. Universal Broadband should ensure that all licence payers receive equal opportunity to experience the services that we’re all charged for.
However, it’s likely that the BBC will have to put up with having their lions’ share cut down in order to fund institutions like Channel 4 and the implementation of the Digital Britain schemes.
What we got
- No mention of BBCs exclusivity on the licence fee as such
- No mention of the cost of the thing either
- Slightly unclear references to the sharing out after 2013 but a clear knowledge that the BBC has no inherent right to it
- Provision of spare switchover funds to aid local and regional news organisations to ensure their survival
What it means
It looks as if the BBC will lose their monopoly on the license fee come 2013. Very good chance that a lot of it will go to regional news and Channel 4.
Local newspapers and websites – often cited as the cornerstone of UK journalism – will not disappear into the ground. You’ll still receive your large, papery copy of the Maidenhead Advertiser complete with lollypop lady stories, cats up trees and completely outmoded cinema listing as well as local TV news, which ITV can no longer support, and local news websites.
Conclusions
If you live in Scotland and Wales, you don’t file share and you don’t work at the BBC, then it’s generally good news. Channel 4 and all that enjoy it – most of us, I asume – will breathe a sigh of relief.
In fact, it’s only really bad news for pirates and, even then, it’s unclear at the moment as to how well this 70% clampdown’s going to be enforced. Try switching to free streamed services. Ownership is so 90s.
All in all, it could have been a little stronger but then everyone would’ve complained. It’s the 50p levy that’s probably the most important and best move for the country as a whole. Great news that Channel 4 will be looked after along with local news organisations. Maybe not an Earth shattering report but good, solid important stuff.
(via music š ally)
BT hits back in iPlayer throttling row
You may remember last week, we published a post regarding BT’s apparent throttling of its users broadband connections. Well, the telecom giant has hit back, going public with its condemnation of online video services like the BBC’s iPlayer and YouTube.
Basically this is how the row has unfolded: The BBC releases a story accusing BT of slowing down broadband connections at peak time – to less than 1Mbps between 5pm and midnight – when users should be getting up to 8Mbps. BT responds by sending an email to BBC Radio 4 programme You and Yours stating that content providers “can’t expect to continue to get a free ride”. They also go public with this stance.
The Beeb have responded today, via their blog, saying that BT’s move was a “forthright call for cash” and that the row could end with net neutrality becoming obsolete.
What this means is that ISPs, who currently make no differentiation between types of internet traffic, could begin to charge content providers for their output, particularly bandwidth hoggers like the iPlayer.
The row illustrates how much the net has evolved over the last few years. With the mass introduction of high-bandwidth streaming service like the iPlayer, Spotify, YouTube and the like, the pressure on ISPs to provide a fast and consistent service to their users has increased dramatically.
Lord Carter’s Digital Britain review is due next week and should call for broadband at high speeds and low prices. It might just be that content providers are going to have to come to a compromise with the ISPs to make that happen.
Whatever the outcome, the end users should not be the ones who are penalised. If an ISP advertises up to 8Mbps broadband with unlimited data allowance then that is exactly what they should provide. They shouldn’t promote a service if they are going to struggle to provide it.
(via The FT)
3 launch one month contract mobile broadband
3 have today announced a new one-month contract mobile broadband offering. The package offers 5GB of data allowance a month for Ā£15.
They claim that it’s “Britain’s most flexible and affordable contract” and we’re not going to argue with them. I’ve had a little look around and it is bloomin’ good value compared to the other players in the market.
For the same price and contract terms, Vodafone will only give you 1GB and Orange and O2 will only allow 3GB.
If you’re using 3 mobile broadband on pay-as-you-go at the moment, you’ll simply need to pop a new, free sim card into your dongle. New customers will need to buy a new dongle – they sell the Huawei MF627, E156g and E1550 for Ā£19.99.
The plan is called “Broadband 5GB 1 Month” – I hope they didn’t pay the marketing geniuses too much too come up with that one – and it’s available online here.
Mobile broadband is becoming ever more popular and this is certainly a good deal if you want to go down that path. Consider if you really need to though, many 3G phones will allow you to share your 3G connection with your laptop using apps like JoikuSpot. And the iPhone will now allow tethering – even if this might not be a cheap option at present.
Tesco launches contract mobiles
Ever nipped to Tesco’s for some crisps and a pot of houmous and thought, “blinking flip, it’s a darn pity Tesco doesn’t do broadband.”
No me neither. Call me a curmudgeon but I like to get my hardware and broadband from a shop that doesn’t also sell equestrian equipment, not that I’ve got anything against horses, they’re fine, just fine, I mean, you can’t trust them, but you know, no ones asking you to – sorry I’m tangent-ing. Tesco is selling broadband, laptop and phones – that’s what I meant to say.
You can build you own deal from mobile broadband dongles and netbooks to contract phones with free TVs. It’s certainly worth a look if you’re looking for a new contract phone or mobile broadband service.
Their laptop range isn’t exactly up-to-date, but they’re by no means antiquated. Head on over there and tell us what you think, the person who can construct the most appealing deal wins. What do you win? The satisfaction of knowing you’re the kind of person who can spend 20 minutes of your life looking at broadband deals and make a competition out of it. And that’s a very special quality to have. Very special.
Average broadband speeds break the 4Mbps barrier in the UK
The average broadband connection in the UK provides over 4Mbps for the first time according to broadband.co.uk. No particular mention of upload rates but then I guess we’re all a bunch of web leechers, right?
The figure are up from 3.2Mbps on last year’s study with Virgin Media still the fastest, closely followed by O2. Naturally, quality of service is not included in this accolade but, of course, the real issue is that with the likes of iPlayer, the popularisation of video streaming and now HD in the equation, we’re using even more bandwidth than ever. Ergo, we’re not actually getting a faster browsing experience.
Having a quick look, I’m getting speeds of an average of 5Mbps plus here at Shiny Towers. What are you getting where you are? Send in your average speeds to @techdigest with an @reply and we’ll see who’s the winner. In the mean time, I’m off to Korea for some proper internet access. Not North.
T-Mobile UK – mergers, acquisitions and a huge slice of the UK mobile pie
Let’s start this from the top. T-Mobile UK has had its name plastered all over the business pages of late.. Rumour is rife that they’re to sell out or merge in some way since a spokesman from the their parent company, Deutsche Telekom, expressed disappointment at the upcoming results in the UK market. Predications are of a writedown of 1.8bn euros and he said:
“The British market is highly competitive and has comparably low margins. In our view consolidation is a means to take excess capabilities out of the market. Nothing is unthinkable on our side.”
Now, on the one hand, this is fantastic non-committal business speak but at the same time it’s not the kind of talk you’d come out with if you weren’t planning on taking some kind of action. So exactly what is the plan? Well, they could reduce the investment in the UK branch of T-Mobile but then that’ll only cause an equally large loss of market share and profit. So, quite rightly, all the talk is of merger or takeover or somewhere in between. The question is, with or by whom?
3
The most obvious candidates are the struggling UK networks with 3 presumably top of the list. 3 seems to have the money, the ambition, the plan, the drive and, to put it bluntly, the bollocks to pick up T-Mobile with whom they already share a network. Now, if they took hold of T-Mobile’s huge customer base too, then that old problem of termination charges wouldn’t be quite the barrier it’s proved so long to be.
Orange
Orange has lost its way. From a consumer point of view, they’ve done nothing interesting since Orange Wednesdays and that fashionable network image they had in the 90s has all but vanished. All we’re left with is a few cinema adverts and bunch of expensive animal tariffs that no one understands or particularly wants to get involved with.
They don’t do a lot in the way of gutsy exclusive handsets deals and, although it’d be just the tonic to get them back on their feet, I can’t see them getting involved. Hard to tell whether it’s a question of not having the cash to play with or the lack of foresight but it’s high time Orange made a move of some sort.
Virgin Mobile
Surely this is the moment for the third wheel of the UK networks? There hasn’t been any room for a sixth operator and if Branson is serious about this foray into telephony then here’s an easy way to finally get a foothold, but does he, or various branches of his media empire, have the cash to back it up? I think not.
O2 & Vodafone
The two biggest kids in the park aren’t probably so much interested in what T-Mobile would offer them as what it would take away from the other players if they controlled it too.
Part of me feels that Vodafone is too aloof as an operator to get involved and it’s questionable whether O2 has the capital after the extensive market push in the last five years. They’d probably love a piece of T-Mobile. They’d pretty much have the top tariffs and many of the handsets in the country completely sewn up but, as I say, one wonders how much cash they’ve got left after sponsoring the Dome amongst other marketing spending.
UK ISPs
Mobile broadband is a fantastically growth area at the moment and T-Mobile has been doing an excellent job of getting their 3G solutions out there in the shape of netbooks and dongles. It actually represents quite a shame that DT is looking to sell at all considering their UK department has such a progressive attitude to data, price plans, handsets, offers and advertising but thems the breaks, unfortunately.
So, with broadband such an important utility these days, then this might be the kind of space where a fixed line ISP might be able to extend their reach. Naturally, it’d be a tricky move into a very strange world, as far as handsets are concerned, but there have to be worries out there in the industry that 3, 4 or 5G technology might eventually present consumers with the option of ditching a separate home broadband solution. This would be a good time for an ISP to start future-proofing their business model.
Others
The final option is that another player not from the mobile telephony world would jump into the game and with a sizeable slice of the pie too if they could stump up the estimated Ā£3.2bn for T-Mobile. One suggestion is News Corps’s Sky who might be interested in offering the kind of TV, landline, broadband and mobile packages that Virgin Media does.
Another option is BT who, admittedly, has the tiniest of little fingers in the moble pie already but I’ve never met anyone who uses a BT Fusion handset. Have you?
BT must rue the day they flogged Cellnet which of course became O2. Perhaps this is their chance to get back in and you could certainly imagine them finding the money.
Conclusions
Whatever the outcome, I’d be surprised if this is the last we hear of Deutsche Telekom’s UK troubles. There’s already a few shareholders speaking their minds and it’s all gone eerily quite at all the other operators.
I suppose the big question for the consumer is what difference it will make for us and, of course, that’s all about who would buys T-Mobile out. Personally, I’d like to see 3 take up the mantle. They probably have the best understanding of the network through working with them at the moment and they might finally be able to deliver the value they offer customers on a much larger scale.
We wait to see.
UPDATED: BT announces cheapest UK home and mobile broadband combo
It’s pretty much a straight up fight for your data between all the mobile networks and just about everyone else who pipes any kind of service into your home. Doubtless the electric and water companies will be on it soon enough but today is the turn of BT to land their latest blow in the shape of the cheapest home and mobile broadband combo package on the block.
They’re offering you a dongle, 1GB of mobile data per month at a supposed 7.2Mbps and limited 8Mbps home broadband package for a total of Ā£303.08 over 18 months or just Ā£15.65 a month if that sounds too scary.
The deal’s well over Ā£100 cheaper than similar offers from Virgin and Orange and comes with the BT satisfaction of speedy set up and the fact that it’ll probably work more often than not.
Out now over here.
Government gets behind 2Mbps broadband for all by 2012
The UK government has signalled its backing of at least one section of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain interim report from earlier this year by setting aside enough cash to give everyone in the UK a minimum of 2Mbps broadband by 2012. The cash will come primarily from an underspend in the promotion of digital TV.
It’s not yet clear exactly what form that broadband might take – ADSL, cable, wireless and satellite are all options – but that information will hopefully be contained in the final version of the Digital Britain report, which is due out in early Summer 2009.
(via BBC)
UPDATED: BT blocks the Pirate Bay from mobile broadband customers
Anyone considering mobile broadband might want to rethink their decision today, after BT announced that it would henceforth be blocking access to the Pirate Bay for its mobile broadband customers. The company states that it’s in “compliance with a new UK voluntary code”.
BT’s mobile broadband is based on Vodafone’s network and it’s being claimed that the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) – who were responsible for a block on Wikipedia earlier this year – are behind the move. Apparently Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone and 3 have also all agreed to participate.
The move comes after the Pirate Bay’s administrators were convinced of assisting the making available of copyrighted content and sentenced to a year in prison. The four are appealing the decision, though I argue that I don’t think it’ll make the blindest bit of difference.
What we really don’t want, though, is an unelected, non-governmental organization like the IWF deciding what content we’re allowed to consume online. As OnlineFandom points out, many Swedish labels have found ways to gain considerable commercial benefit out of The Pirate Bay, sharing content on it with full permission. Why should Brits miss out on that?
(via Tech Radar)
Will WiMax or LTE win out?
EDGE, 3G and HSDPA are all very well, but what will the next jump in technology be for wireless internet? There are two competing technologies – WiMax and LTE. Which one is likely to win the race in the UK?
WiMax is based on Wi-Fi, and doesn’t require a SIM card for usage. Its benefits are that it’s an open standard – anyone can create the gear required to use the technology without paying license fees. That means the tech can be up to half as expensive as the equivalent LTE tech.
LTE, on the other hand, is based on the existing 3G network technology. In fact, LTE stands for “The Long Term Evolution of 3GPP”. Its advantages are that it’s well-understood by carriers, and when a device is out of range of an LTE signal, it can drop back to a 3G or 2G service. LTE’s currently a little faster, too, but that difference should be addressed by the ratification of a new WiMax standard later this year.
In the last year or so, Motorola’s been trialling an LTE service, but there are already commercial WiMax deployments out there. As a result, WiMax has an early lead. But given how entrenched many operators are in their love of 3GPP networks, we’ll soon be seeing more of that. In fact, Motorola’s already testing an LTE network.
What’s eventually likely to happen, however, is that laptops and netbooks will rely on WiMax (thanks to lower prices and enhanced compatibility) and LTE will take hold on mobile devices, just because it’s easier for operators to continue working how they do now.
So I reckon it’ll be a draw, and both technologies will have their own places in the next 5-10 years. Bit of a cop-out, perhaps, but there you go. What’s your opinion? Drop us a tweet at @techdigest letting us know exactly how wrong we are.
