2Meg broadband to become universal

Tuesday 06 January 2009 12:30:55 by John Hunt

Lord Carter, Communications minister, is expected to introduce a universal service obligation (USO) for broadband, with a requirement to provide services at up to 2Mbps, in his 'Digital Britain' review to be released later this month. The report is also expected to relieve BT of its current USO for providing telephone services to everyone in the country with a plan to share the new obligations amongst mobile phone and other broadband suppliers such as Virgin Media.

This somewhat follows plans in other countries such as France where communication providers are subject to an industry fee that helps to fund service to those in hard to reach areas. Last year Telia-Sonera in Finland was allowed to rip out its copper network in some of the most sparsely populated areas of the country in favour of using mobile coverage.

If the UK takes a similar approach, it could encourage investment in next generation services such as fibre to the home (FTTH) as BT would not be obliged to provide services to those hard to reach areas. Whether this would be good for the country or not is debatable. It could encourage a growth of the digital divide, where those in more urban areas are able to access the Internet at 100Mbps or above, and watch high-definition television using the fibre network whilst the "have nots" are stuck on an ageing 2Meg broadband that has been available for approaching 9 years.

Government set to back faster broadband

Tuesday 06 January 2009 12:08:43 by John Hunt

In talking to the Observer on Sunday, Gordon Brown announced plans to help curb unemployment in the UK by public funded investment in projects which could include high-speed broadband.

"When we talk about the roads and the bridges and the railways that were built in previous times - and those were anti-recession measures taken to help people through difficult times - you could [by comparison] talk about the digital infrastructure and that form of communications revolution at a period when we want to stimulate the economy. It's a very important thing."

Gordon Brown

David Cameron also pledged to ensure that the majority of the population would have access to fibre-optic broadband within 5 years, looking to gain universal coverage by 2018. But how will the Government help, and are these dates optimistic?

The cost of laying a national fibre network to every home / business has been estimated at between £15 and £29 billion, no on really knows how much it would cost in practise. Without public money, the project is likely to be a non-starter as BT have already rejected looking at a full roll out in favour of a slimmed down, $1.5bn fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) deployment which is supposed to be live by around 2012. Other providers are possible, but there is doubt over whether they would be able to do it cheaper since BT already have ducting and telephone exchanges which can be reused to help reduce the costs.

One problem faced by the large telco's, or any company looking to do this, is that they have to be spending their money in a way that will create a return for their shareholders. Whilst this may be possible for a proportion of the UK, when you start reaching out to the more rural areas, the costs of connecting users rises exponentially. With talk of a USO (universal service obligation) for broadband, this may eventually be applied to a future fibre network meaning that a nationwide deployment could be required.

No one doubts that a fibre to the home (FTTH) deployment would be a good investment, future proofing our telecommunications network, and bring us in to line with other countries who have a first-class telecoms network. The questions remain over exactly how much it will cost, how long will it take to make a return on investment for shareholders and how the government can kick start this investment to benefit our economy for the long term.

Bug in tbbMeter causes problems - 01 Jan 2009 - solution

Thursday 01 January 2009 02:38:22 by Sebastien Lahtinen

In a rather embarrassing tale, we have to report that we have received several reports from users today that their copies of the tbbMeter bandwidth monitoring software we provide is displaying an error indicating that it has expired:

This was a safety feature we built into early beta test versions of the application and should not appear in production versions; however it appears we accidentally left this code in place.

If this does not rectify the problem, please check our advanced troubleshooting options.

If all else fails, please feel free to e-mail us on team@thinkbroadband.com and we will assist where possible.

PlusNet users are very social

Tuesday 30 December 2008 13:55:34 by Sebastien Lahtinen

PlusNet have analysed the top ten websites on Christmas day and the results reveal that we all love to network with our friends. Facebook was the second most popular site with Google reaching into the top position. Facebook users logged on in increasing numbers between 2-3pm during the Queen's Speech broadcast. Shopping sites like Amazon also fared well after users looking for post-Christmas bargains.

"Social networking was very popular among our customers over Christmas, especially during the afternoon of the 25th. The study is a good illustration of how the web is changing the face of the traditional Christmas as more people go online for their fun, information and entertainment.

People were very busy staying in touch with friends and family during the afternoon but their thoughts turned to seasonal bargains later in the evening with more logging onto the shopping sties."

Neil Armstrong, Products Director; Plusnet plc

Other popular sites include noradsanta.org and the Met Office.

Year in Review: 2008

Monday 29 December 2008 21:26:32 by Sebastien Lahtinen

The 2008 year has certainly been eventful with the global credit crisis taking grip and affecting every single industry, but what has it meant for broadband? What new innovative applications will be developed in the next twelve months? These are the questions we ask as each year draws to a close.

The broadband provider consolidation has continued over 2008 with Tiscali still touting itself for sale, a conglomerate of ex-Pipex brands as part of it. Only as recently as three months ago, Cable & Wireless finalised their purchase of Thus Group Plc, and Demon Internet with it. We expect some takeovers in the first half of 2009 with the pressures of BT price increases announced in November, putting more pressure on some business models.

Broadband Speeds

Ofcom launched the Broadband Speeds Code of Practice which took effect earlier this month, a voluntary scheme which expects providers to do what to be quite honest, they should have been doing long ago; being open and honest with their customers. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of the scheme, although we are starting to see some improvements in how service providers are structuring their processes.

After lengthy trials, Virgin Media finally launched its 50 meg broadband service only last week in what can best be described as challenging market conditions, setting a new bar for broadband connections. We certainly expect this to be the market leader for the next six months in terms of speed with the vague possibility that Be/O2 might offer something in that region through their bonded broadband solution, although the real loser is likely to be Sky because of the attractiveness of Virgin Media's television, broadband and phone bundles, especially when they get some more HD channels onto their service. We think (and hope) VM's 50 meg service is likely to perform very well and we'll be keeping a close eye on it over the next few months to let you know; if you want to help us, why not carry out a speed test and download our bandwidth meter (tbbMeter) application.

The state of broadband in terms of proper fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) is still disappointing with only signs of deployments in Ebbsfleet and some H20 Networks rollouts in a few areas. No matter what services we come up with, it's fairly certain that fibre optic cables will be the future of our communications infrastructure and the sooner this goes in, the quicker we can get the next generation of communications services from an increased number of high definition television channels, other entertainment services, to high definition video conferencing and super-fast broadband where the idea of waiting for downloads is a historical concept. Even with the proposed BT fibre rollouts bundled with VDSL technology, the ultimate solution is still likely to be end-to-end fibre. The problem of course, is the investment required which no commercial company with shareholders to please is going to do lightly without a clear sign of significant returns on investment. This is likely to require some involvement by the government in one form or another at some point.

Our Site

Our focus for 2009 is going to be on updating our site to really change the focus to you, the user. We're going to be trying to ensure, more so than ever, that we don't just provide you with information that may be technically of the highest calibre, but which not all our users understand. Over the last couple of years we have made significant efforts to try and speak in 'plain english' but we think the tools on our site aren't quite up to scratch in this respect. We will however assure you that we will continue in making sure we give you information which is 'technically right'.

We're going to continue to build on tbbMeter, our bandwidth monitoring application to help you understand your broadband usage both in terms of levels and quality so you can make the best decision on which package and supplier is right for you as well as adjusting your usage patterns to avoid being slowed down because you download too much at peak times.

We'll also be publishing more videos which discuss broadband issues as well as instructional videos to help you make the most out of your broadband connection. We have so many ideas we can't wait to share with you, but there are only so many hours in a day, more so given most of us produce all this whilst maintaining full time jobs elsewhere. We do this because we're passionate about giving you the best information and doing the 'right' thing.

Over the next year, we will continue to help users solve their problems as the broadband experts in a market filled with so many suppliers of broadband services and probably even more sites trying to advise you as to which service provider is right for you (along with which credit card, insurance or energy supplier you should use it would seem). We'll leave it to the other sites to tell you what electricity company to go for and focus on what we know best; broadband.

We often get called a 'comparison site' in the media in the same way as we were labelled a consumer campaign site in the days of campaigns for broadband coverage or unmetered telecoms—Our focus has never been on persuading you to change broadband suppliers. We want to be the definitive source of broadband related information and analysis, respected for the knowledge we have built up and on which our advice is based, as well as being able to help you with your broadband problems. Our staff and volunteers are very dedicated and have a wide ranging knowledge base from the underlying intricacies of the IP protocol on which the Internet runs, to the commercial experience of broadband services & pricing and the problems users come across trying to access support services. We hope that this complements rather than duplicates existing sources of information on the Internet.

We'd like to thank everyone on the team without whom none of this would be possible, and the users who make this site such an interesting project for us to work on. We appreciate all the e-mails of support we regularly get from users who find a solution to their problems on our site.

Happy New Year!

Sebastien & John
Co-Founders, thinkbroadband.com

Editorial: You're either on Virgin Media or you're in the slow lane

Thursday 25 December 2008 21:04:40 by Sebastien Lahtinen

Last week Virgin Media announced the launch of its long awaited 50 meg broadband service. At the press conference, it was clear that Virgin Media are pushing the boundaries on broadband, and for the first time, taking the lead by setting a new standard far in excess of what is commonly available in the UK market. It is positioning itself both as a premium brand as well as a bundler of television and phone services. This unique combination coupled with its new 50 meg pricing is likely to be a threat to operators such as Sky Broadband who rely on the LLU network, although it was very interesting to see Be/O2 react quickly to the launch with its own announcement of a near 50 meg alternative.

The boundaries between the online and offline worlds is closing as we update our status on Twitter from our mobile phone or access our home network whilst away via our broadband connection. We have no doubt that Virgin's 50 meg service will perform very well technically, initially at least, but what can you actually do with 50 Mbps? I think the key here is to remember that it means that everyone in the household can stream video from the Internet, at the same time, without loss of quality; no longer will you have to shout and find out who's hogging the Internet; everything is that bit quicker to load. Also, gamers will find the service very useful, as will those working from home. Virgin showed us we "have an appetite for data consumption" based on the fact their bandwidth utilisation goes up by 70% per year, and is expected to reach 100% per year within a couple of years, so this product is certainly welcome.

Thinking back eight years, in the dawn of the millennium, I was waiting for my cable operator (whatever they were called back then) to provide me with this new technology called broadband; but they did not. In the end, ADSL was available in my area first, and thus how ADSLguide (as we were called back then) started. Virgin Media has had the unique strength of a more modern network in the ground for some time, and it took them many years to realise how to use it, culminating in their 50 meg product which no large scale operator can easily economically match at this point in time, although Be/O2's bonded DSL service has some potential.

Whilst we've been quick to criticise Virgin for their 'fibre optic broadband' advertising (and 50 meg doesn't change that), they have now actually delivered a service based on fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) whilst BT is just talking about it and trialling it. It doesn't however solve the need for fibre roll-out, but it does make the business case very different. The only risk now to Virgin is whether the state of the economy will result in fewer orders than they would have had a year ago.

Putting all this aside, as Virgin rightly point out, users don't care about how the broadband is delivered; all they care about is the service they receive. They are rather bullish about their service having put up the money to build the network, but they do have a right to be too. They clearly feel very passionate about this.

"You're either on Virgin Media or you're in the slow lane".

Neil Berkett (CEO), Virgin Media

The question now is, what will BT's response be? Virgin have already stated they have the technology to offer 100 Mbps broadband, today. That's a tough line to match.

BSkyB and Tiscali talks stall over price

Monday 22 December 2008 11:58:05 by John Hunt

With the 'For Sale' sign up at Tiscali since April, the news will come as a blow that talks between Tiscali and BSkyB, the last remaining bidder to buy the UK arm of the company, have stalled over the price for the business. Throughout the process, various bidders have come forward offering different amounts, but all have been turned down thus far. With Sky as the sole interested party at present, and in the current financial times, it is no wonder that they are being careful about how much money they put forward, to prop themselves into the third largest broadband provider in the UK.

For those who've followed the process thus far, it may seem like Tiscali have shot themselves in the foot as they turned down better offers whilst trying to seek around £600m for the business. Carphone Warehouse for one came forward with £550m but were turned down by Tiscali. To rub it in, they later offered £450m, but again were turned away. Sky were thought to be offering close to £450m when talks started, although if this is deemed to be too high, will Tiscali be forced to take a poor deal or will they hold out until things look a bit rosier in the economy?

6 Welsh broadband not-spots to get broadband

Friday 19 December 2008 10:31:29 by John Hunt

In line with their promises about eliminating broadband not-spots, the Wales Assembly Government's Regional Innovative Broadband Support Scheme (RIBS) has extended its contract with BT that will see the communities of Reynalton, Saundersfoot, Llanpumsaint and Bronwydd Arms, Cilcennin in Ceredigion and Gwytherin, Conwy able to get broadband. Under the scheme, BT Openreach will fund half of the needed work for the project, and work is expected to start immediately.

These 6 not-spots cover around 1,000 residents and are part of a larger group where broadband is not available for various reasons including, poor quality telephone lines or just being too far from the Exchange. If you live in an area of Wales where broadband is unavailable, be sure to register on the Welsh Assembly's Broadband not-spot website.

iPlayer goes cross-platform (again)

Thursday 18 December 2008 19:00:17 by John Hunt

Many readers will be familiar with the BBC iPlayer, the on demand catchup TV service from the BBC that allows you to watch programmes from the past week via the BBC website. Perhaps less will be familiar with the first incarnation of BBC iPlayer as a downloadable program that allows you to queue up and download the content you wanted to watch rather than streaming it using the Flash player on the website. In fact, BBC iPlayer Desktop is still available and it allows you to watch what you've downloaded without being connected to the Internet, handy if travelling or away from a fast Internet connection.

Whilst this version was only available for Windows originally, users were up in arms about this as they too wanted to view the content on their Mac or Linux based PC's. The Flash version, when it was released in December 2007 solved this cross-platform problem partially as it made the content available to everyone who could view flash video, but the BBC have now held up their end of the deal by also bringing the promised downloadable version to both the Mac and Linux. I do run in to one problem on my Linux PC however. The BBC requires a newer version of Flash than is currently available for the 64-bit Linux that I'm using.

Be fight back with 45Mbps bonded broadband

Tuesday 16 December 2008 15:46:19 by John Hunt

Be Broadband, the ISP owned by O2's parent company, Telefonica, have announced today the successful completion of their bonded broadband trial which ran on the London Paddington exchange. The trial was mainly aimed at understanding the technical capabilities involved using ADSL2+ over two telephone lines which were bonded together to make one line. Customers reported real-world speeds of between 30Mbps and 45Mbps- just 5Mbps shy of Virgin's headline 50meg speed. Be will be carrying out further trials through 2009.

A single twisted pair copper phone line is limited in how fast it can transfer data, and connecting multiple lines together is one solution to try and increase the bandwidth without deploying equipment closer to the exchange such as in the BT FTTC trials. One drawback of bonding is that you will need to pay for two telephone lines, one for each DSL line, which will increase the cost. DSL does also vary speed depending on the distance from the exchange (unlike the Virgin cable services) and so the highest speeds will only be available to those who live the closest.

"We want to push the limits of high-speed broadband. We already offer the fastest possible broadband on an ADSL line, but we want to take it a step further. If you want broadband around the 50Mb mark but don’t want to go the cable route, Be wants to offer you a real alternative."

Felix Geyr, (Managing Director) Be Broadband

One point worth making is that although Be services are not limited to the area of the Virgin cable network, many of the exchanges where Be provide service will overlap with Virgin, and this will also leave many areas of the UK unable to get either Virgin's 50meg of the Be bonded broadband. Competition will breed new services though and if other providers are able to offer similar services to Virgin's 50meg soon, maybe Virgin will be forced to up the speed sooner than they thought if they want to keep the crown of fastest broadband.

BT trial of Phorm ends successfully

Tuesday 16 December 2008 11:03:24 by John Hunt

BT's trial of the controversial Phorm advertising technology which looks at where users go on the net to better target advertising has ended successfully according to a statement from Phorm. Shares in Phorm jumped by 82.5p to 282.5p on the news.

"Phorm, the advertising technology company, is pleased to announce that the trial with ISP partner BT has now concluded. The trial achieved its primary objective of testing all the elements necessary for a larger deployment, including the serving of small volumes of targeted advertising. "Following the successful completion of analysis, both of the trial results and of any changes required for expansion, BT has informed the company that it expects to move towards deployment."

Statement from Phorm

The trial which involved 10,000 people, branded Webwise also helped protect users from websites that are thought to be fraudulent or untrustworthy. The Phorm technology used has raised many concerns over privacy, even invoking a police investigation (that was later dropped) in to secret trials that occurred without users consent. News that the system is heading toward a full deployment will frustrate those that believe there are still legal concerns with the system. FIPR (the Foundation for Information Policy Research) has been vocal against Phorm as it believes the system uses illegal interception and also infringes copyright of website owners.

Carphone Warehouse via their Talk Talk brand and Virgin Media are also expected to trial the Phorm system although they haven't advanced as far as BT. Virgin Media has stated that it is committed to implementing such a system though.

Virgin Media launches 50 meg broadband service

Monday 15 December 2008 11:14:59 by Andrew Ferguson

After what feels like months of being drip fed minor details about the Virgin Media 50 meg product, we finally have the official details.

It is to be known as the XXL package and will have a monthly fee of £51 (including VAT). As expected there will be a 12 month contract for those migrating onto the product from an existing Virgin Media broadband package, or signing up for the first time. Subscribers to the XXL package will receive a N wireless router with their new cable modem to ensure the wireless network in the home is not the bottleneck. Upload speeds will initially be 1.5Mbps with options to increase this in the future.

The monthly price of the XXL product is actually lower if you take an optional telephone line from Virgin Media, with this double play bundle costing £46. The triple play bundle of television, 50Meg broadband and a telephone line works out at £66 a month.

The product will be rolled out in phases, with some 1.3 million customers having the product available to order from today. 10Mbps (L) and 20Mbps (XL) customers will also be moved onto the new network, but will not get a new modem which means that while their connect speeds will not increase, they may find that congestion is less of an issue. The capacity this frees up on the old DOCSIS 1.0 network may also resolve some of the local congestion that people see currently.

The roll-out to cover all the 12.6 million homes passed by the Virgin Media network will complete during the summer of 2009.

By taking a gamble and launching a product with no traffic management suggests that Virgin Media is confident that it has created a large enough network to cope with hundreds of thousands of people downloading the internet. Of course if the majority do decide to try and build the worlds largest repository of internet data at home, they may change their minds, but for now we have a next generation product that people can go and use, and the content providers may now have a market to whom they can sell true HD online video.

Virgin Media 50Meg product - is it a revolution?

Sunday 14 December 2008 19:39:31 by Andrew Ferguson

The Virgin Media 50Mbps cable broadband product that relies on DOCSIS 3.0 to offer 50Mbps speeds initially and could run at 200Mbps by bonding channels together in the future is the worst kept industry secret of December 2008.

The unanswered questions are what price will the service be, and whether it will have traffic management like the other products in the Virgin Media cable range. We think there are two likely options for the product:

1. A monthly fee of £42 per month and retain the existing traffic management scheme but with different amounts, perhaps 10GB during the day, and 6GB during the evenings.
2. Alternatively they may plump for the more catchy 50Meg for £50 and drop all forms of traffic management, at least until take up of the product starts to fill the capacity that the new DOCSIS 3.0 network will have.

The 50Mbps product will, once roll-out is completed, bring the option of next generation broadband speeds to some 46% of UK households. The big question that everyone is wondering is how popular the service will be. Currently 10% of Virgin Media broadband customers opt for the most expensive 20Mbps product, with a massive 71% watching their pennies by opting for the slowest 2Mbps product.

If within 18 months, Virgin Media can have 10% of its customers on the 50Mbps product, this is likely to encourage its competitors to push on with next generation investment. A price point that makes it unpopular may impact on how willing investors are to spend money on getting next generation services to the remaining 54% of UK households.

BBC, ITV and BT to collaborate on next generation broadband television

Thursday 11 December 2008 16:02:02 by John Hunt

The BBC, ITV and BT are joining forces to deliver the next generation of on demand TV over broadband. The proposal is to create a standards based open environment for broadband connected digital receivers which would help content providers and Internet Service Providers adopt the technology.

The good news is that the devices are to be subscription-free and will carry free to air channels as well as a huge selection of on demand TV, films, and interactive content in both standard and high definition. There is no schedule as to when the new devices are expected to be ready and plans are subject to the BBC Trust approval and public consultation. The group are hoping to involve a wider range of partners by launch.

How much will be based on the current technology used with the BBC, ITV and BT is yet to be seen. BT Vision, the on-demand broadband television service from BT already features a cut down version of BBC iPlayer (the on-demand service from the BBC) known as BBC Replay. Hopefully, more service providers will get on board soon to help ensure that this new platform will have the ability to work for everyone and not just those who get broadband from BT. With new technologies in the pipeline such as fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) from BT, and competing providers such as H2O in the process of deploying fibre through the sewage network, we hope the devices will prove to be cross-platform and have the ability to take advantage of the benefits that the faster services can provide.

Which goes after Davenport Lyons

Thursday 11 December 2008 15:11:05 by John Hunt

Davenport Lyons, the law firm that has been behind letters to UK broadband users accusing them of copyright theft is now being chased by UK consumer group Which?. A complaint has been raised with the SRA (Solicitors Regulatory Authority) by Which? on behalf of innocent consumers as it believes that Davenport Lyons have been "bullying" and "excessive" when demanding money.

Davenport Lyons have been sending out letters on behalf of clients such as Atari (who have now severed ties with the firm) and the porn industry demanding £500 on behalf of rights holders or further action will be taken in court. Some people believed to be innocent of downloading the copyrighted material have paid up to stop the threatening letters, with one user even cancelling his broadband connection after his claims of innocence were ignored.

"We think the SRA needs to take urgent action against Davenport Lyons. In the current financial climate, we expect an increase in the action that companies may want to take against individuals."

Deborah Prince, (head of legal affairs) Which?

More details are available on the Which? website and if you have been wrongly accused by Davenport Lyons, Which? have provided an e-mail address to get in touch.

IWF appeals procedure reverses Wikipedia block

Wednesday 10 December 2008 11:22:32 by Andrew Ferguson

Wikipedia should be back to normal for people, i.e. anonymous editing from UK connections should work, and where the site was slowing down due to being passed through a providers IWF proxy this should have gone away.

It appears that the Internet Watch Federation (IWF) invoked its own appeals procedure and decided to remove the Wikipedia Scorpions page from its IWF list of pages with potentially illegal indecent images of children under the age of 18 on them.

"Following representations from Wikipedia, IWF invoked its Appeals Procedure and has given careful consideration to the issues involved in this case. The procedure is now complete and has confirmed that the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978. However, the IWF Board has today (9 December 2008) considered these findings and the contextual issues involved in this specific case and, in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list.

IWF’s overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect. We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users. Wikipedia have been informed of the outcome of this procedure and IWF Board’s subsequent decision."

Extract from press release on IWF website

This incident has made the IWF and its work much more visible to UK Internet users, with many previously not aware of its existence at all, and even less aware of the procedures providers have for blocking material that is on the list. Some providers make it clear to users and others hide the blocking behind fake 404 errors which has created some confusion as people assume there is a fault with Wikipedia. In the case of sites hosted abroad set-up to explicitly host child porn, a 404 may be preferrable, but for mainstream sites such as Wikipedia users would often prefer an indication of the block.

One area not resolved is whether the IWF would add the complete web page URL to its proscribed list for any new material or simply block the image. URL's are notoriously difficult to manage, and it would be all to easy for the IWF to think it has blocked an image by blocking a URL but still leave the page visible to UK web users, e.g. accessing a page via a sites websearch often produced a very different URL to one where people have navigated to the site.

It is an unfortunate world where bodies like the IWF are needed but the current amount of discussion of web censorship and monitoring means incidents like this are likely to increase. Taste and decency has been a big issue for TV and radio in the last year or two, and as the Internet increasingly becomes just another entertainment medium issues in this area will become more mainstream.

ASA replaces previous Virgin Media adjudication

Wednesday 10 December 2008 10:21:45 by Andrew Ferguson

Some may recall Virgin Media being up in front of the ASA back in October 2008 when the ASA said that to make speed claims you had to have evidence from all providers.

December 2008 sees the same adjudication surface again, with the complaints still upheld but a change of wording.

The ASA noted Virgin had based their "fastest" claim on throughput speeds rather than on advertised "up to" download speeds. We considered, however, that readers would be used to definitions of broadband speed in terms of download speeds and were therefore likely to understand the claim "fastest" as an absolute claim that implied it was not possible to obtain a broadband connection in the UK that permitted a faster maximum download speed than Virgin's service. We understood that, on the basis of a previous ASA adjudication, cable broadband technology allowed users, on average, to experience a faster broadband service in terms of throughput speeds when compared to the equivalent ADSL based service. We understood that that was due to the fibre-optic and co-axial cable technology such services used. We understood, however, that it was possible for users to obtain a broadband service with a faster maximum broadband download speed than 20 Mb, on an ADSL2+ based service, allowing speeds of up to 24 Mb. Because we understood that it was possible in certain instances for some customers in optimum conditions to obtain a faster maximum broadband download speed than Virgin's 20 Mb service, we concluded that such an absolute claim was misleading.

Extract from ASA Adjudication

What is interesting is that just 8 weeks on from that original ruling, we are in a situation where Virgin Media has gone public and said only two out of ten online speed testers are accurate on their 20Meg product, yet the firm was happy to use an award based on tests from a site such as Broadband Choices whose tester failed the Virgin Media 50Meg and 20Meg tests.

Comparing Virgin Media 20Meg cable services against ADSL products (up to 8Mbps) should be a contest with an obvious winner. ADSL2+ is likely to be a much closer race particularly once average results from customers are taken. While only 5 or 10% can get a faster download, people do manage it and one key advantage for many will be the choice of ADSL2+ providers and higher upstream speeds. One provider not mentioned at all is Ask4 who offer 25Mbps via fibre and Ethernet to developments around the UK, and it offers symmetric upload and download speeds starting at £15 a month for 4Mbps.

Virgin Media is launching its 50Mbps product on Monday 15th December, but Ask4 is keeping up by offering 50Mbps services to students in The Pinnacles Sheffield.

Wikipedia editing broken for anonymous UK users

Monday 08 December 2008 10:54:56 by Andrew Ferguson

For many, the Internet Watch Foundation and the list of child abuse image URL's it maintains so that UK Internet Service Providers can then run blocks has become highly visible over the course of the weekend.

A URL and image from an album cover by the Scorpions has made it onto the IWF list, due to its use of a naked child on it. The album, when sold on sites like Amazon in the UK has a UK version of the cover which features the band members, but Amazon.com does host the reportedly illegal image, and it is thought has also been reported to the IWF over the weekend.

Blocking images of child abuse is something that is worthwhile and while things cannot be totally blocked on the Internet, if nothing were done then perhaps even more draconian measures could be enforced. The blocking of the whole Wikipedia article rather than just the image is what is causing a lot of noise from Internet users, and to some extent this may be down to the ways different providers implement the IWF list. It would appear some UK providers that have the IWF list are blocking the high resolution image, but still serving the Wikipedia page with the smaller resolution thumbnail. Whether the IWF will continue to block this image hosted in many other places on the Internet as they are reported is something we will have to watch unfold. Back in 2007 O2/Be were in the headlines over some Lycos blocking, and UK Online customers seem to frequently comment on Rapidshare being blocked.

There are some suggesting that this whole situation feels like censorship of Wikipedia, and this is not because Wikipedia is not visible to people, but rather the way Wikipedia tracks editing of articles by anonymous users. Where people vandalise an article, Wikipedia blocks the IP address they come from, which, with the IWF proxy filters working on the site at present, means a large amount of the UK is seen as just a few IP addresses by the site. Registered users on Wikipedia can still edit articles.

In terms of moving forward it appears things are at an impasse since Wikipedia has a policy that it does not censor content and the material is hosted outside the UK so does not fall in to any jurisdiction where the UK can issue a take-down notice, if the image was deemed illegal. The IWF talking to the BBC indicates that it had contacted the police prior to adding the page to its list. A statement from the IWF about the Wikipedia URL in question was released yesterday. The Wikimedia Foundation, the not-for profit behind Wikipedia has also released a statement in which it urges the IWF to remove Wikipedia from its blacklist, along with a Questions & Answers page for those affected.

BBC Radio 4 interviewed both the IWF and Wikipedia this morning on their program. For those who missed it, you can listen again on the BBC website. The piece was at 08:54.

Ofcom allows easing of rules on IPstream in parts of UK

Friday 05 December 2008 10:36:48 by Andrew Ferguson

BT Wholesale has a had a two tier approach to its BT IPStream product pricing for a while, and with Ofcom now granting a variation in undertaking as asked for by BT, there is wider scope for the prices of IPStream products to vary across the country.

Ofcom has effectively divided the UK into a number of market areas based on the amount of competition in the area. The definitions were covered back in our news during November 2007. The area that Ofcom has granted the variation in is Market 3, which is defined as those areas with 4 or more principal operators and the exchange serves more than 10,000 premises. Market 3 covers 69.2% of UK premises.

The full document detailing the variation and comments from interested parties during the consultation period can be found on www.ofcom.org.uk, but be warned it is a 30 page document that is not a light read.

The proposal, while affecting IPStream now, covers the 21CN WBC product range also, which while available is still relatively low volume due to low coverage and the small number of providers (believed to be 8) supplying it. The freedom in pricing means it is impossible to know what BT Wholesale will do, it may try and take on the competition from LLU providers and reduce prices, or it may decide that those remaining with them in Market 3 will remain even if prices are raised slightly, and this may then be used to fund new product roll-out such as the fibre products, or simply subsidise the costs for providing broadband to the remaining 4000 or so telephone exchanges.

One interesting aspect is that the removal of the rules means BT Wholesale in the Market 3 area could release a product for a single provider, so if BT Retail or anyone else for that matter wanted a new Video over Broadband product that maybe had servers closer to the consumer, reducing network costs or ideally in the exchanges BT Wholesale can work on and release this without any requirement to offer the product on the same basis to all other providers.

Sky latest broadcaster to offer Live TV streaming

Friday 05 December 2008 10:09:19 by Andrew Ferguson

A new live TV streaming service from Sky removes the need for a satellite dish to watch a number of channels. Existing Sky customers with a Sky Multi-room or a Sky Broadband Max subscription will have free access to the Live TV channels in addition to the existing Video on Demand, but non-Sky customers can take out a subscription that will let them view up to 9 channels.

The basic entertainment pack is £7.50 per month initially rising to £15 per month at the end of January 2009, and comprises of National Geographic, British Eurosport, Disney Channel, Sky Sports News, Sky News and coming soon MTV One, Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. For £22 a month you can add Sky Sports 1 or 2, and Sky Sports 3, or Sky Sports 1, 2 & 3 and Sky Sports xtra for £30 a month.

The live content can be viewed in a web browser on both a PC and Mac with three viewing quality levels so you can pick what works best with your connection, or balance the amount of bandwidth used against a monthly allowance. Apparently the highest quality approaches that of a standard definition TV broadcast, but we are unable to comment on that claim and the amount of bandwidth it uses since it seems those with just Sky HD are left out in the cold.

There is a restriction of one computer per household that can view the channels at any one time, and programmes may be 'blacked out' until rights clearance allows them to be shown online.

Telephone line rental wholesale prices to increase

Friday 05 December 2008 09:21:02 by Andrew Ferguson

Apparently raising the price cap that limits how much Openreach can charge will increase the amount of competition in the market and allow Openreach the money to invest in delivering services.

The basic framework of price changes is laid out below:

Fortunately these prices are not set in stone just yet, there is a consultation period that will close on 20th February 2009 where interested parties can submit comments on the proprosal to Ofcom.

The price rises if they occur represent a rise from £8.39 (excluding VAT) a month to £8.70 a month for a telephone line from the many companies now able to provide billing for telephone line rental. The rise in rental for a shared LLU line, as used by Sky, O2 and others is fairly minimal, but TalkTalk may feel the squeeze with a possible rise of 76p per month and have no option but to pass on the price rise.

The basic idea for allowing Openreach to increase its pricing is to ensure Openreach has the funds to maintain the copper telephone network, and just maybe put some aside for future enhancements such as the fibre dream that many are doubting. If the price rises are used to simply prop up the BT share price, or make Openreach look more attractive for a sell-off the reaction will be very negative from many quarters.

Reuters has some comments from Openreach and Ofcom which reveal the price changes are likely to take effect from April 2009, and Ofcom seems to think that firms may absorb the price rises. We believe it unlikely in the current economic turmoil that retailers will accept a further reduction in profit levels, a lot will depend on what sort of income they receive from the chargeable calls in the telephone packages.

Hi-Velocity users experiencing migration problems

Thursday 04 December 2008 13:01:27 by Andrew Ferguson

Users of the provider Hi-Velocity have been contacting us over problems with obtaining Migration Authorisation Codes, in some case taking weeks and for one customer they were told that the delay was with BT, but upon further research by the customer they managed to discover their connection was a Tiscali based one and a MAC was obtained from their wholesale division.

Hi Velocity uses the ISPA logo on its website, but does not appear to actually say they are members of ISPA, the inference of using the logo though is that they are current members. ISPA has confirmed Hi-Velocity was previously a member but is no longer a member.

Screenshot from Hi-Velocity website

Under Ofcom rules all telecommunications providers are duty bound to belong to one of two Alternate Dispute Resolutions schemes. The providers website lists CISAS, but gives the contact details for The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, contacting CISAS reveals that Hi-Velocity was a member in the past, but is not currently. Contacting Otelo reveals no sign of Hi-Velocity being a member of that scheme either.

Thus if customers of Hi-Velocity are not getting anywhere this leaves Ofcom, who while they do not act on individual issues, will intervene once a pattern of problems has been identified.

We originally emailed Hi-Velocity a week ago over the migration problems, but have not had any response, and on telephoning them to enquire as to which ADR scheme they use was informed the manager was in a meeting and the member of staff was new and did not know the answer. On calling back after 30 minutes as advised we sat in the queue for 15 minutes even though we were first in the queue.

If you are having problems in terms of obtaining your migration code from Hi-Velocity, then as well as contacting Ofcom you can share your problem with others on our forums.

Broadband speeds code of practice comes into effect 5th December

Thursday 04 December 2008 12:57:05 by Andrew Ferguson

It is not clear how much use a voluntary code of practice on broadband speeds will be, but hopefully if providers who have agreed to it consistently break the rules Ofcom will act with a larger stick to ensure compliance.

The Broadband Speeds Code of Practice was first announced on 5th June 2008, and on the six month anniversary of the initial release Ofcom is keen to point out that providers covering 95% of broadband users are signed up.

The code is mainly about ensuring consumers are better informed about potential speeds, to avoid people seeing headline figures of 24Mbps and not being aware that with ADSL2+ only around 15% of lines will ever connect at speeds like this. The main points of the code are:

• provide consumers at the point of sale with an accurate estimate of the maximum speed that their line can support;
• explain clearly and simply how technical factors may slow down speeds and giving help and advice to consumers to improve the situation at home;
• offer an alternative package (if there is one) without any penalties, if the actual speed is a lot lower than the original estimate; and
• explain fair usage policies clearly and alert consumers when they have been breached.

The last six months has seen some progress with estimates of line connection speeds featuring more prominently in many providers sign-up processes. Of course the speed your ADSL/ADSL2+/cable broadband connects at does not mean you will always see download speeds close to this; congestion from the millions of others potentially online at the same time is a big factor too.

One area where progress still seems to be slack is informing consumers of when they're breaching a fair use policy. Far too many still appear moaning of slow broadband speeds to find they've entered a different traffic management level. While fair use policies are generally designed to be dynamic and often do not kick in unless a providers network is very busy, the average consumer may get a better idea of what is considered high usage if the levels from the previous month were published on the providers website.

The broadband industry is a highly competitive one, and with many people attempting to cut back on spending, the pressure and attractiveness on providers of skirting around areas like traffic management is at an all time high. What effect this code will have on solutions sold as unlimited, but where different types of traffic are throttled is impossible to tell. For many consumers they may not care, but those embracing all that is possible with broadband very soon start to notice the problems, e.g. when a 5 Meg connection is unable to stream a 1 Meg video stream, but the neighours slower 2Meg connection with a different provider is able to play video streams for hours on end.

Penrhyndeudraeth has a solution to blackouts on the way

Thursday 04 December 2008 11:49:44 by Andrew Ferguson

Penrhyndeudraeth featured in our news back in August 2008 over problems with broadband outages, and it seems the problems are ongoing. The most recent period being 12th November to 1st December according to people in the area.

In an attempt to show the level of annoyance at the ongoing problems an online petition has been started at www.penrhynexchange.com, and at the time of writing has some 80 signatories.

We have contacted BT Wholesale to see what if any works are planned for the exchange, and were told that what is hoped to be a final fix is scheduled for 10th December. The solution being to bring the main ATM based back haul network closer to the town. The exchange in the area is due for its 21CN upgrades in the first quarter of 2010.

While a few days without broadband may seem of little consequence to some, there will be small businesses relying on ADSL services, and others working from home rather than traveling to work every day. The size of the town also means none of the usual unbundling operators are available.

Amazon MP3 launches with albums from £3

Thursday 04 December 2008 10:14:38 by Andrew Ferguson

The choice for legal music that does not use Digital Rights Management (DRM) has just increased with the launch of AmazonMP3 from the website that at one time just sold books.

Prices are competitive with Albums starting at £3 and tracks priced from 59p. The files are MP3 format encoded at 256Kbps and for downloading albums the Amazon MP3 Downloader software is required, which is available for Windows XP, Vista, Linux and Mac OS X.

Competition Commission talks on Project Kangaroo

Wednesday 03 December 2008 13:08:52 by Andrew Ferguson

The Competition Commission is having concerns over the alliance between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel4 who are behind Project Kangaroo. The project is about the broadcasters working together to provide a paid for video on demand service once content has been removed from their various catch-up TV services.

The Competition Commission is involved since it is carrying out an investigation to ensure the alliance will not be too dominant to the extent that other commercial services would not be able to compete.

"The Competition Commission (CC) has provisionally concluded that the proposed video on demand (VOD) joint venture between the BBC through BBC Worldwide Limited (BBCW), ITV plc (ITV) and Channel Four Television Corporation (C4)—UKVOD, also known as ‘Project Kangaroo’—will restrict competition in the supply of VOD services in the UK."

Extract from Competition Commission press release

These findings are only preliminary, the commission has until February 2009 to publish its full findings, at which time it could recommend prohibition of the project, or simply a number of measures to ensure other services such as iTunes are not unfairly locked out of offering UK TV content.

The concern centres around the simple fact that since the broadcasters will already have been involved in rights discussions from the time a show was first conceived of, it is possible that terms could be built in that mean content is withheld from rivals even when they are willing to pay for it.

The fragile nature of physical media distribution has been highlighted with Woolworths going into administration along with their Entertainment UK arm. This part of Woolworths' was responsible for around 40% of CD's sold by Asda, WHSmith and Zavvi and has lead to Zavvi cancelling online orders. In light of this, the reduced costs of online distribution of content and the fact that unsold stock does not waste warehouse space will be looking more attractive to retailers.

The biggest danger for rights holders, is that if content is too expensive or difficult to get hold of in a format they want, people will simply revert to the myriad of free places that they can get material.

Tiscali adverts up before the ASA

Wednesday 03 December 2008 10:53:17 by Andrew Ferguson

Tiscali has a number of adverts mentioned in this weeks Advertising Standards Authority rulings. The first relates to an advert on TV which some may remember where a man returned home and said to his wife "I've just got us Tiscali's best ever broadband offer...", the advert had several others variations on the same theme.

This first advert received eight complaints from viewers with people feeling that the up to 8Mbps claims were misleading as most customers would not achieve those speeds. The ASA has not upheld the complaints, and the adjudication goes into depth as to why. Interestingly the percentages of people getting various connection speeds (not through-put speed) appear in line with some old data from 2006.

The second adjudication covers two press adverts and one Internet promotion for Tiscali broadband. In this case TalkTalk and a member of the public made the following complaints.

1. The claim of free line rental was misleading, because of the one-off set-up fee
2. The claim of unlimited UK phone calls was misleading
3. The claim of up to 8Mbps broadband was misleading
4. The press adverts did not make it clear the package was only available to people in certain areas of the UK
5. The Internet promotion did not make clear that the headline price of £7.99 was only available for three months.

The first two complaints were not upheld, the third was which seems slightly at odds with the previous adjudication and the final two complaints both were upheld.

It seems most likely that the speed complaint was upheld due to the lack of prominence of the qualifying text, which Tiscali has already increased in press adverts that it now runs. Tiscali apparently submitted some independent tests for the period August 2007 to September 2008 comparing the provider with 6 other providers, and Tiscali was second best with an average connection speed of 6.5Mbps, and the later set gave an average connection speed of 6Mbps. Unfortunately the ASA noted that the tests were carried out on one line or proportionally small number of lines and in a different set of bulk data the ASA noted no significant difference in connection speed between LLU and non-LLU lines - which technically sounds sensible since Tiscali largely still uses rate adaptive ADSL for its LLU the same as BT Wholesale (non-LLU).

The ruling reveals that the Tiscali LLU footprint was 52% when the ruling was compiled (58% on their website today), and those outside the LLU areas are offered a 25% discount on their phone line rental rather than free line rental, but it is a bit of work to find this out when browsing the products. The final complaint was upheld because the ASA felt people would think it meant the package prices started at £7.99 and not that it was a limited time promotion.

With the plethora of speed test awards handed out, this ruling shows one significant danger that can happen with ADSL and ADSL2+ products. If the population sample is not representative of the spread of line speeds across the country it can give a false impression, and with awards being increasingly used in advertising to score points over other providers one has to be cautious. One does wonder if in reality to some extent consumers don't care what speed their broadband connection connects at, what they notice and worry about is the actual speed when viewing various websites. For example, it is entirely possible for someone with provider A to have a connection connect at 5Mbps, but due to congestion, packet loss etc not be able to view a 1Mbps video stream, but someone with provider B connecting at only 2Mbps to be able to view the stream without any jitter.

uTorrent shifts towards UDP to make it work better

Wednesday 03 December 2008 10:39:54 by Andrew Ferguson

Peer to peer applications are changing it seems. uTorrent is running experiments that may see it shift a lot of data from TCP to UDP. In the short term this would benefit some torrent users since providers that have simply rate limited the TCP ports used by BitTorrent will have to play catch up, and UDP by its connectionless nature may prove to be harder to traffic manage, but given providers can identify UDP gaming traffic it will only be a matter of time before any limits kick back in.

The Register has an article by Richard Bennett that tells us that Gamers, VoIP users and video conference users need to beware. Now if a provider has allocated just 20% of its available bandwidth to UDP traffic at peak times, and P2P starts to shift into this area, then yes packet loss may rise and jitter, when the packets arrive with variable delay, will increase. Simon Morris who is a BitTorrent Product Manager has countered The Register's article on utorrent.com.

uTP is our UDP-based implementation of the BitTorrent protocol. Normally BitTorrent is implemented on top of TCP which is the standard congestion control mechanism for the internet. It so happens that the congestion control mechanism inside TCP is quite crude and problematic. It only detects congestion on the internet once “packet loss” has occurred – i.e. once the user has lost data and (probably) noticed there is a problem. The problems of TCP are fairly well known in technical circles, but it doesn’t get fixed as TCP is one of those protocols that is implemented in every OS, client and server, on the internet. Co-ordinating a giant upgrade is a very long process.

Because BitTorrent publishes the world’s most popular BitTorrent clients AND because these clients are talking mostly to each other (not to web servers), then we have an opportunity to detect end-to-end congestion and implement a protocol that can detect problems very quickly and throttle back accordingly so that BitTorrent doesn’t slow down the internet connection and Gamers and VOIP users don’t notice any problems. This is our objective.

Simon Morris BitTorrent Product Manager

So it seems they are claiming that the new uTP layer they've added will throttle the UDP packets back when congestion is seen, but it is not clear whether we are talking congestion on an individuals connection, or congestion at any point between two peers? If peer to peer is trying to behave better and be more traffic friendly then that is perhaps to be welcomed, but gamers are often some of the first to notice problems, and any packet loss or jitter that this causes can ruin a game.

Change of directors at Phorm

Tuesday 02 December 2008 09:49:21 by Andrew Ferguson

TheRegister is reporting that four directors of Phorm have left in what appears to be a difference of opinion between them and CEO Mr Ertugrul.

The board will gain Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, Investment bankers Stefan Allesch-Taylor and Stephen Partridge-Hicks and Kip Meek who is also the chairman of the telecoms industry lobby group Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG). For those not aware of the BSG and its role the analysis by The Register covers this.

PC Advisor also reports that the Crown Prosecution Service is collecting evidence to establish whether earlier BT trials of the technology where consent was not sought from participants was legal or otherwise. There is no real news on the progress of the current BT trial and how far away any use of Phorm in its Webwise form is, but given the rate Phorm is burning investment capital it seems safe to assume they would like it to launch before they run out of money.

Some will question if Phorm is trying to buy credibility by surrounding its name with respected people in a battle to change the perceptions its brand has developed; In that light, maybe Phorm wasn't the best of names as it does sound a lot like Phishing (stealing bank login details through a fake website usually by users being confused) and Pharming (redirecting a legitimate site's traffic to fake site).