TalkTalk shows the way for UK broadband providers

Even those with the most scant knowledge of the UK broadband landscape will be aware that money saving is likely to be high on consumers' agendas this year. You’d think therefore that ISPs would en masse be unveiling budget deals to ensnare and curry favour with customers at this difficult time. You’d think so. But you’d be wrong. For in the early weeks of 2009, there’s only really been one broadband provider which has been making all the running. That company, broadband industry watchers not be surprised to hear, is TalkTalk.

Yesterday said ISP scored what stands as an outstanding pr coup when it announced that it was willing to waive charges for existing customers who are struggling under the prevailing tough economic conditions. And if you're in if any doubt that things are getting worse across the board have a look at this gloomy snap of a queue at a job centre in London last week.

It's like a scene from the early 80s when the Specials' succint evocation of a depressed job market Ghost Town was the soundtrack du jour. It's perhaps no surpise then that TalkTalk's deal has been reported everywhere from the Guardian to the tabs, and was praised by consumer groups – a sign surely of how well whoever devised the Emergency Plan has judged the pessimistic public mood. Meanwhile, independent broadband site Top 10 Broadband was similarly effusive.

Jessica McArdle, marketing manager of Top10Broadband.co.uk, said: "TalkTalk's broadband bailout scheme is an extremely responsible answer to the problems facing broadband users as well as UK consumers as a whole."

The headline-grabbing stunt followed TalkTalk’s heavy promotion of its similarly wallet-friendly Essentials deal. Customers signing up benefit from a deal that offers calls and broadband included in the monthly line rental. And to sweeten the deal, customers who take up the offer via Carphone Warehouse get a choice of a free laptop, Nintendo Wii or Playstation 3.

There’s a long way to go in 2009, but you’d have to say that currently it looks like the year could belong to TalkTalk. I for one wouldn’t bet against it adding to its 2.8 million customer base, which makes it the UK’s third largest broadband provider. BT and Virgin Media, whose costly 50MB deal is the very antithesis of TalkTalk’s approach, would be advised to watch their backs.

Download crackdown doomed to failure

This week it emerged that Lord Carter is considering imposing a tax on internet service providers (ISPs) to compensate record and film companies for their losses from illegal downloads. The mooted move follows estimates from leading figures in the entertainment industry that the sector stands to lose some £1 billion over the next five years as a direct result of piracy.

However, this isn’t really what music biz head honchos would really like to see happen. Ideally they’d like for the UK to adopt a zero tolerance approach to downloaders akin to that being piloted across the Channel. This sees illegal file sharers being banned by ISPs after they have been caught three times.

I’m not sure either approach is workable. The banning order certainly represents a weighty sentence. But how far this will act as a deterrent is debatable. After all, with millions of people to police, users are acutely aware that it’s going to be a devil’s own task to keep up with the sheer volume of downloads being completed. Within no time, I'd venture, it’ll be business as usual.

Meanwhile, the notion of a tax on broadband providers is equally problematic. But the sticking point here isn't so much that this is flawed as a plan so much as the timing is all wrong. Should Lord Carter introduce this it would pile financial pressure onto ISPs at a time when the crunch means that revenues are already likely to be diminished. This in turn, would jeopardise their support for his programme of bringing broadband to every citizen in every region of the UK. There's your rock, Sir, and there's your hard place.

I’ve no idea how the problem of illegal downloading can ultimately be solved. But in the form of Spotify, which allows unlimited access to a vast library of tracks in exchange for having to sit through some ad spots, it shows that creative solutions are out there. Hope springs eternal.

March to mobile broadband leaves BT flatfooted

BT it seems is finally waking up to the mobile broadband revolution. According to a report from the Observer, the UK’s largest telecommunications company is considering launching a mobile phone network. The move comes after the firm spectacularly failed to cash in on the mass migration of broadband to mobile devices such as laptops and phones. This, it’s fair to say, hasn’t gone down too well with BT’s shareholders.

And indeed why would it? Latterly, the company has appeared to lurch from one crisis to another. Worse-than-expected profits for the last quarter of 2009 were followed by the announcement of plans to cut costs by shedding thousands of jobs. The misery was compounded last week when the firm announced a second consecutive profit warning, alongside the news that its shares are now trading at near-20-year lows. The blame we were told lies with the global economic downturn since the Great Depression, blah, blah, blah.

But does it, really? Given BT’s failure to capitalise on the exponential growth of mobile broadband, it’s hard to look at chief executive Ian Livingstone’s management and not posit that some of the blame for the company’s shocking performance must lie with him. Not least because over the last 12 months, the number of UK mobile broadband users has grown to 7.3 million. That’s billions of pounds of revenue that has gone to smaller rival providers due to BT’s inertia to reacting to the seismic shift in the market.

In order to remedy their parlous situation, BT is now in talks with T-Mobile and 3 with a view to launching a mobile phone operation. However, by the time that these preliminary negotiations have become something more concrete and the specifics of branding and costs have been hammered out, it’s likely that up to a year will have passed. So that’s another 12 months of potential profit that BT will miss out on.

But if all this just meant a lower dividend for shareholders for a couple of years, it wouldn’t be a problem. After all it’s not really our concern. But alas that’s not the case. As a consequence of this mis-management and lack of market awareness, BT is now threatening to renege on pledges to fund the roll-out of the fibre wire network. The result? The taxpayer could now be forced to shoulder the burden.

Once upon a time thanks in part to its charming and successful ad campaigns, such as those starring kids’ favourite Buzby and Maureen Lipman’s Beattie character, and the bold modernistic architectural style of the BT Tower, BT was seen as a great British institution a few rungs down in our affection from the BBC. However, once we’ve dug into our pocket to bail them out, it’ll be just another struggling company whose financial imprudence we’re irritatingly having to bail out.

Broadband schemes evoke Blitz spirit

As the winter chill refuses to abate, it’s become all too common to overhear conversations bemoaning the weather. Have we all become soft? Whither the bloody-mindedness, stoicism and refusal to acknowledge adversity that characterised, say, Robert Falcon Scott’s expeditions to the Antarctic? You know, that same indomitable spirit that saw the East End through the Blitz, when housewives fed families with hearty meals despite having to contend with powdered eggs and less than a teaspoon of sugar every week.

Happily in some regions of the country it’s still alive and kicking – and not just in the form of formidable Women’s Institute members. This week, it emerged that there are around 40 local broadband projects across the country. Mostly situated in the kind of remote areas with weather that Scott would recognise from his expeditions, they’ve been born out of frustration with internet service providers’ inert attitude to ensuring that the nation is fully equipped with broadband. And their even less proactive approach to the fibre wire broadband roll-out.

My favourite - and the one that is perhaps most indicative that the wartime mend and make-do ethos is not dead - is in the hamlet of Alston. This is a place so unchanged by the passing of time that it was recently used to evoke Victorian England in the recent BBC adaptation of Oliver Twist. Here, the residents have actually braved the chill winds to get off their behinds and are quite literally digging for victory by laying the fibre optic wire themselves.

Also showing homemade ingenuity is a scheme in Bradley in Hampshire, where just 30 homes are served by the super-fast network. Perhaps the best thing about this one is that the village’s network revels under the name Bradnet - a name so quaint that it evokes nothing so much as the shonkiness of fetes and busybody residents’ associations.

Alas, it’s likely that once the fibre wire roll-out is complete these schemes will disappear. But for now at least, this kind of Robot Wars-style marriage of technology with old fashioned Britain should be celebrated. Blue Peter badges all round.

Virgin 50Mb take-up is super-slow

When Virgin Media launched its 50Mb broadband service late last year, it was with no little fanfare. The press conference was held in a beautiful building just off Buckingham Palace, presumably at no little expense. Meanwhile, lavish ads starring Samuel L Jackson ran non-stop over Christmas with a view to convincing everyone that this was a broadband revolution.

Here he is, looking as poised as ever.



Surely if Virgin's 50Mb is good enough for the World's Coolest Actor, then it's plenty good enough for you too? Alas, it seems that for all that marketing spend the public aren’t entirely convinced. This was backed up by a source at a broadband comparison site who demurred that take up for the 50Mb service has been “disappointing” so far.

Granted this lack of demand could perhaps be due in part to the fact that just 1.5 million people can get the service at the moment, but the muted response from the public does not augur well. Moreover, with conditions worsening in the economy day by day, it’s hard to see any improvement in the near future.

The sticking point it's fairly obvious is the price tag. Asking punters to shell out £53 in the current climate was always going to be a tough sell and is getting tougher week by week.

At the launch, the broadband provider’s chief executive officer joked that the host building’s location meant that the Queen was probably a Virgin Media customer. Perhaps that’s because right now she’s the only one who can afford it.

Hyundai in do or dai bid to enter UK mobile phone market

Few car manufacturers have been slagged off by the Top Gear petrolheads quite as gleefully as Hyundai. As far as Clarkson and his chums are concerned they’re cheaply made carbage. Whether that’s fair or not, is a moot point. But it’s hardly a ringing endorsement for Hyundai in the week they announced they are entering the UK mobile phone market.

But one man at least is optimistic of the company’s chances of grabbing market share in our handset sector. Namely, the fantastically named Norbert Winkler, chief executive of Hyundai Mobile Europe. He reckons that: "Hyundai is one of the five biggest car manufacturers and is ranked 72nd in the world's most valuable brands, which is bound to provide a positive image transfer to Hyundai mobiles.”

Alas his sunny outlook seems more than a little bit misplaced if the early snaps of the company’s mobiles are anything to go by.

Behold:



Not much to get excited about is there? Details of specifications of are scant, but it's not unfair to say that these two hardly shine in the looks department. And unless this is addressed by Hyundai design department for future offerings, I for one am predicting that the company's handset divison will dai on its arse.

Bournemouth pensioners to become 100Mb broadband speed demons

Bournemouth is a strange and fusty place. Its manicured Winter Gardens and bandstand concerts with easy listening classics are redolent England that doesn’t really exist anymore. One where Britons holiday in our seaside towns, sport hanky headwear and want nothing more from their two-week sabbatical than a donkey ride. It’s like the last 30 years never happened. Imagine a world without cheap air travel, profuse and profligate spending on credit cards and where our culinary palates never extended far beyond a good fry up and you’re halfway there.

Strange then that this week it was confirmed that Bournemouth is to be home to the only 100Mb broadband service available in the UK, in a stroke dragging the cosy old town kicking and screaming into the future. The Fibrecity scheme is being piloted by H20 Networks and the service will be available initially in 30 homes. As the roll-out advances, availability will be extended and according to local press up to 5,600 residents and businesses have signed up.

In one sense, it’s hard to see why Bournemouth was chosen. Its ageing population are unlikely to be heavy downloaders or keen viewers of online TV who might give the technology a real work out and prove a willing market for 100Mb broadband when H20 start charging for the service.

And yet, in another respect an English seaside town is an ideal choice for the service and a chance to see what kind of impact it has on the local economy. Should businesses move in en masse to take advantage of the connectivity, the advent of the service could be the catalyst for the economy to diversify into a more viable and robust model. Whether this will prove enough to save Bournemouth from the worst excesses of the downturn remains to be seen, but it leaves it in much better stead than much of the rest of the country.

Songsmith ads - Enough to put you off music for life

As expounded elsewhere, last year brought with it a slew of mad and bad ads for techy products. Nintendo’s Wii campaigns for Animal Crossing and Mario Kart Wii were plain embarrassing. Meanwhile, PC World’s spots for its range of bog-standard laptops addressed their audience like remedial children in attempting to hoodwink us into believing that being able to surf the web, while playing games and listening to music was a bold step into the future.

However, with the year but days old, the new ad for Microsoft’s challenger to Garageband might just have trumped last year’s efforts in a trice. Don’t believe me? Have a look for yourselves.



See what I mean? What in the name of arse has possessed Microsoft? Rather than actually making an ad that might impress us with the product’s functionality, they’ve instead made an ad so appalling that it seems that they’re hoping that we’ll buy Songsmith just to make them stop showing it.

What’s appears to have happened is that the agency creatives pitched an idea to make the ads really kitsch. That actually might have worked. But somewhere along the line those good intentions were focus-grouped into oblivion, so what you’re left with is a spot where you can no longer tell whether the cheesiness is intentional or otherwise. Thus, instead of Songsmith’s ad (there’s a spirit-sapping four-minutes of it!) being so good it’s bad, it’s so bad it’s unwatchable.

We’ll be keeping an eye out for shonky ads as the year goes by and naming and shaming the worst at the end of the year. Think of it as a public service. But if you, dear readers, espy anything before we do please send them to digitalmanblog@hotmail.com and we’ll put them to the sword. Keep ‘em peeled.

M15 isn't interested in your e-mails - get over it.

Today civil rights campaigners are up in arms about new rules that compel internet service providers to keep details of all e-mails sent in the UK. The crux of their beef is that this is a severe infringement of our civil liberties.

Here’s what the Earl of Northesk, who sits on the Science and Technology committee at the House of Lords, had to say on the matter.

"This degree of storage is equivalent to having access to every second, every minute, every hour of your life. People have to worry about the scale, the virtuality of your life being exposed to round about 500 public authorities.

"Under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, privacy is a fundamental right... it is important to protect the principle of privacy because once you've lost it it's very difficult to recover."

Does he have a point? Is this obloquy justifed? Not for me. After all, what's actually being stored by ISPs is the time and date of e-communiques. The content, and ergo anything that might actually prove incriminating, remains private unless appropriate licences are obtained.

More importantly, it seems like real hubris on the part of the man in the street to assume that M15 would be at all interested in his life. I mean aren’t 99 per cent of e-mails concerned with the tedious details of our lives, such as what to have for tea tonight and when we’re meeting for a grown-up lemonade? Only fantasists who regard themselves as Alan Parker-style urban warriors and teenage anarchists could really find anything to object to in having their inane wibblings on file.

More importantly, the Home Office is claiming that the data will be helpful in combating crime. I for one am prepared to take their word for it. I know that M15 used e-mail to trace would-be Jihadists who were involved in the bombs at Glasgow Airport. If e-mail logs are going to keep us safer, I’m happy to have them monitored.

Which? recommends PC owners become Super Smash Bros

In the movie Logan’s Run, humans who hit 30 are disposed of by the totalitarian regime. It’s a harsh way to go once you're no longer useful. But on the face of advice given by Which? Magazine, a similar fate is awaiting the nation’s computers.

The consumer journal has highlighted the problem of fraudsters and crims getting info from hardrives which have been abandoned at landfills. After running wiping software on eight drives, the mag then found it was still able to recover information that should have been gone forever. And amazingly it has concluded from its research that the only sure-fire way to put a stop to it is to take a hammer to your computer.

"PCs contain more valuable personal information than ever as people increasingly shop online, use social networking sites and take digital photos," said Sarah Kidner, editor of Which? Computing.

"Such information could bring identity thieves a hefty payday. It sounds extreme, but the only way to be 100 per cent safe is to smash your hard drive into smithereens."

Given the huge readership of Which? it’s not hard to see the article resulting in mass smashing of hard drives up and down this fair sceptred isle in an orgy of ultraviolence. But is all this really necessary?

I’m not so sure it is. My suspicions were raised in particular by the fact that free software was used by the mag to wipe the drives. Surely, this is a pretty foolhardy move? As any fule kno, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. And equally there’s no such thing as effective wiping software for free.

I'd say that investing in some effective wiping software is the best way of staying safe. Unlike Which's recommendations this approach won't deprive charities and schools in the developing world of vital second-hand computers.

Hippies - can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em

Glastonbury we’re told is one of the most spiritual areas of the UK. This in part due to it being where Albion’s leylines converge. It’s also said to be where King Arthur is buried and even apparently played host to the Son of God when Joseph of Arimethea brought his Holy relative over for tea and cakes. Whether 5,000 were fed that day is, alas, unrecorded.

It’s perhaps not surprising that a place which is so steeped in history should be resisting the relentless march of modernity. This became apparent this week when the Glastonbury Why Wi-Fi Campaign hit the headlines in a (quiet) riot of lurid tie-dye and patchouli oil. The protestors' concerns focussed in part on the old chestnut of radiation emissions from the nearby Wi-Fi network. And while their concerns about the effects on people's health of the radiation may prove valid – although we should note that a ream of reports suggest otherwise - , they're also using all kinds of New Age unscientific to justify their oppostion. And natch this ia a lot harder to stomach.

Apparently, Wi-Fi signals are disturbing the “positive energy flows” of the area. You read that right. Matt Todd who makes it his business to campaign against electro motive forces is so convinced of this that he’s “started building small generators which he believes can neutralise the allegedly-harmful radiation using the principles of orgone science”. These devices “use quartz crystals, selenite (a clear form of the mineral gypsum), semi-precious lapis lazuli stones, gold leaf and copper coil to absorb and recycle the supposedly-negative energy,” the Telegraph reports.

The sad thing is that should the hippies win the day and cause the £35,000 scheme to be scrapped, there’ll be a host of losers. Young people will miss what had been a cheap way of getting online, while local businesses will also incur extra expense of having to pay for broadband. The real loser though will be science, as all the empiricism and learning of the modern world gets sacrificed on the altar of the Neo Pagans.

Broadband New Deal - Too Little, Too Late

This week Gordon Brown hinted that the government could be prepared to fund the development of a next-generation broadband network for the UK. It was a move welcomed by ISP’s shareholders, who are fearful of the impact that financing such a network would have on their dividend, and rank and file employees who are fearful for their jobs.

It was also embraced by economists on the grounds that the government is displaying foresight to recognise the importance of a next-gen network to the nation’s economic health and is ensuring the UK’s competitiveness in the global economy in years to come. Prudent Gordon we’re invited to believe is some sort of economic next-gen visionary who sees high-tech industries as the salvation of our economy. You’ll forgive me if I demur.

Surely if this were the case he’d have impressed upon telecomms the importance of a fibre-optic network more vehemently over the past five years. Instead they’ve been offered scant financial incentive to invest and have come under even less in the way of coercive strong arm tactics. The result is that the much-touted roll-out of a fibre optic network has been a total non-event. What’s especially galling is that had they been legally compelled to start committing money to the cause at a time when their incomes were booming it would have been less of a challenge to meet the £30 billion cost of construction.

Instead what’s happened is that we’ve had to wait until the country is on the verge of economic meltdown before any action has been taken. This leaves taxpayers bailing out companies who until recently had been enjoying huge profits from us as a result of the UK broadband boom.

These developments have however left one ISP looking like a shining model of virtue next to its peers. Virgin Media has funded its fibre optic network at huge expense and is now offering 50Mb to over 1.5 million homes with 12.6 million in line for the service by summer this year. In contrast, its larger rival BT, which has repeatedly dragged its heels over committing funding, emerges with its reputation, for me at least, eternally sullied.

Swoopo: The Con Is On

Recently it’s been de rigeur for newspapers to publish credit-crunch beating tips. You know the sort of thing: “Why not make your own chocolate cakes for Birthdays?”, the writer rhetorically asks. Adding that all we need do is “Simply buy some Green & Blacks bars and some Tesco Finest Almonds and follow this recipe“. I’ll tell you why not. Because your DIY, Blue Peter-style approach to saving money actually costs more than buying something sticky and lovely from high-end bakers Patisserie Valerie.

Anyway,in this spirit of debunking the Ivory Tower-ed mend and make do mentality, we move seamlessly onto a site called Swoopo.co.uk. This touts itself as an auction site which offers users the chance to buy sought-after electrical goods, such as Nintendo Wiis, PCs and laptops, for a fraction of the high street cost. Sounds too good to be true? My, my you’re a smart one. That’s because it is.

Swoopo.co.uk works by users buying the right to bid on an item, with each bid priced at 40 pence and increasing the cost of the lot by eight pence. Each bid then adds a further 20 seconds or so to the auction time. If you’re lucky enough to be the person placing the final bid you win the right to buy the lot at the final price. The cash accrued by the site from the process means that they receive many times what they paid for the item and enables them to sell the item at discounts of up to 70 per cent. Thus, we’re led to believe, the buyer gets a bargain.

Indeed, some testimonies from users bear out that cheap goods can be secured in this way. However, judging by the majority of reports on message boards what is happening more often is that bidders very rarely get win items and are spending vast sums of money on bids only to come away with nada.

That’s because they are in effect gambling, with the likelihood of winning being determined by lottery-style chance. You're unable to see how many other people are bidding, so are throwing money into the web ether blindly. If you’ve any sense you’ll give Swoopo the widest of wide berths.

Clockwork Remote Control Bringing Steampunk To Mainstream

A few months back the Guardian ran a piece on the burgeoning steampunk scene. It's a niche Science Fiction movement that fetishises the look of Victoriana and age-old technology such as steampower and imagines how more modern tech might have appeared had it been invented at this time in history. Take for example this natty looking PC which has been modded for Steampunk effect:



What a beauty, no? But strictly science fantasy, surely? Hmmm...yes and no. Earlier this week, for instance, everyone from Gizmodo to the Sun ran pieces on a remote control from ethicalsuperstore.com that does away with batteries in favour of a wind-up, clockwork mechanism. And while its none-more-grey styling is, in truth, pretty unlovely compared with some of the elegant wonders that Steampunk modders have come up with, the incorporation of archaic tech suggests that some of the movement's ideas have gone mainstream. You can see it below:



In the light of the acres of press coverage this has received it seems like huge sales for the remote are something of a given. Especially since it chimes perfectly with growing eco awareness. Similarly the device will also resonate with the new mood of econodriving that the credit crunch has induced. Going back to the future for now at least seems to be the way forward.