Your starter for ten: Can ISPs prevent exam cheats?

Recently, I offered to help a little Czech chum of my acquaintance with his A-Level film studies essay. It was to be simply a case of tucking and tidying up his prose and checking spelling. I thought it'd take five minutes of my time.

But when I looked at the piece it was a different story. Instead of an original work, it was a Frankenstein's monster of an essay, cobbled together from other people's travails he'd found online. After a while I gave up. I'd been chastened partly by my boy's lack of effort. But mostly I'd quit when it dawned on me that cheating in national exams is now much easier than ever before.

That's something that's been confirmed for me today by a report in the ever-reliable Register. In a great story, the site notes that exam boards are asking broadband providers to take a greater role than ever before in clamping down on exam cheats. In particular, they're asking for a hotline to be manned by ISPs' staff who'll be tasked with taking down exam papers as soon as they come to people's attention.

It's too early to tell how many providers have taken these extra measures. But it'd be hard to blame them if they didn't - especially since they're being expected to pay for it themselves.

MacAce offers Apple apostles 24Mb broadband

This week the UK's Mac-only ISP MacAce announced a new service offering 24Mb broadband. The reponse from some quarters has been a raised eyebrow. Why do Mac owners need an ISP of their own? Why can't they just use the same service as the rest of us? Isn't this just Mac owners being snobbish again?

This impression is compounded because as any fule kno Mac owners can in fact already get 24Mb by opting for Be Broadband. But in fact the idea that a Mac-only broadband service is a pointless frippery could not be wider of the mark.

If owners are to be believed even the best ISPs customer service is targeted at PC owners. This leaves Mac types tearing their hair out in frustration, especially since Macs are generally a more difficult proposition to configure for internet access.

Success for MacAce seems assured, no? Even priced at £16.46 pounds per month for the cheapest deal with a peak download period of 10GB, it looks like an easy sell. And the one-month rolling contract and lack of migration fee means that cost-conscious types won’t be discouraged. Meanwhile, the fact that Mac folk tend to be early adopters suggests that they'll be pliant market for faster broadband.

One thing is for sure, though, a bit of competition in the market for faster Mac broadband is long overdue. And with any luck, prices will drop in time, too.

ASA rap for Virgin Media

UK internet service providers are no strangers to raps over the knuckles from the Advertising Standards Agency. Over the last couple of years, it’s been the disparity between actual connection speeds and those being delivered that has been at the root of most of complaints that were upheld.

And we've had some splendidly spiteful spats, that's for sure, as broadband companies traded body blows in their ads. But that looked to have come to an end with a pledge before Christmas that they would clean up their act. It seemed to be the broadband industry equivalent of the Hays Code that cleaned up Hollywood with tough censorship rules in the 1930s.

A few months down the track, has it changed them any? Has it hell. This week it emerged that prime offender Virgin Media was in the dock again. The complaints centred on claims that the copper wire network used by other providers is struggling to cope with demand as well as Virgin Media’s loudly trumpeting that its network was a fibre optic. As this ad attests, they've been far from shy about their 50Mb service:



In the end the ASA eventually upheld no fewer than four complaints against them. This brings Virgin Media total to 13 complaints in total since the start of 2007 – a rap sheet to rival even that of supercrim and lifetime lag Charles Bronson.

I can understand Virgin Media doing its upmost to market its 50Mb service. It’s a tough sell at the moment, after all. But unless their campaigns are cleaned up, it won’t just be their public perception that is tainted. Rather it’ll be the whole industry that suffers.

TalkTalk trash talks BT

Boxing experts will tell you that their favoured sport is a noble art that owes its appeal chiefly to skill and has very little to do with ultraviolence. This is patently untrue. We watch boxing for the same nasty, mean-spirited reason that we watched playground scraps. That is, for the sheer bloody excitement of seeing people batter one another. A spat is inherently fascinating. And I’d just as soon watch two irate football mascots in animal suits going at it as I would Ali and Foreman.

Truth be told I’m just as entertained when broadband companies take to the ring for 12 rounds. And as previous contretemps have shown, this happens more often than you’d expect. This week it’s the turn of BT and TalkTalk’s subsidiary Opal to duke it out. And as you can see here, TalkTalk, which in playground logic is to blame since they started it, have not pulled any punches.

I’m especially taken with TalkTalk’s claim that their £10 business broadband offering is so goddamn cheap that it could force rivals to go under and prompt a wave of consolidation in the broadband sector. Equal parts hugely hubristic and insulting to competitors, it’s the sort of trash-talking that even Ali, who once famously rattled Joe Frazier by calling him an Uncle Tom, might baulk at.

Whether BT’s offerings will indeed suffer as a result of the new Opal deal remains to be seen. I’d like to think that the market could be shaken up further and God knows UK-based small to medium-sized businesses could do with a break right now. One thing we can say for sure is that as the broadband sector gets more cut-throat in months to come, we’ll get more of these set-tos. And best of all we’ll get see who the real contenders are. For now, it’s round one to TalkTalk.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know on: digitalmanblog@hotmail.com

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.

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.

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.

Star Wars USB Memory Sticks - Why Not Mobile Broadband Modems?

See above what are without doubt the finest looking USB memory sticks in Christendom. I got the Boba Fett one for Christmas and am happy to report that it's every bit as cool as the bounty hunter himself. Better yet, they're in limited runs of up to 5,000 and are individually numbered for collectability. And while fanboy purists might scoff at the Wicket the Ewok offering, I've always thought that the fluffy fellas' contribution to the Rebels' good fight was underrated. For me, they're akin to the Gurkhas of the Star Wars Universe - loyal almost to a fault and most pertinently full of spirit and scrapping despite their lack of size.

But I digress....A bit of digging reveals that Mimobot is the company behind these mini marvels and that as well as top grade Star Wars merch they're in the business of producing a whole host of branded and brilliant USB sticks. There's a series of Halo-themed products and a Domo range for fans of the cult Japanese anime. Or if it's designer toy stylings that float your boat, you can choose from hundreds of Pete Fowler-style goodies.

In fact, with the sheer range of desirable goods on offer, it makes the very functional-looking USB modem sticks now selling in vast quantities look like very plain girls at the digital party. And in this respect I can't help but feel that broadband providers might be missing a trick. After all, how much more likely would you be to choose one mobile broadband package over another if they offered you a range of eye-catching designs for their USB modems? I think we all know that the answer is VERY VERY LIKELY. More so, if the designs were limited edition and were made exclusive to a particular ISP.

If broadband companies have any smarts they'll apply their energies to ensure that fashionable, more individual looking USB modems become the NEXT BIG THING. You've only to look at what big business fashion mobile phone handsets have become to see the potential. A vast market of people who want devices that say more about them than the standard cold, grey bit of plastic that currently passes for a mobile USB modem could be lying there untapped.