SEARCH CLINIC

Rural areas in England and Scotland have been allocated nearly £363 million to improve their broadband connections.Cumbria gets one of the largest shares of the £530 million pot, with over £17 million to cope with its 96.2% of homes eligible for subsidies.

By contrast, London gets nothing as it assumed that private investment will cover all parts of the capital.

It is a change of strategy for the government which originally asked counties to bid for money with local authorities and residents deciding how the money should be spent.

County councils and private enterprise partnerships will be put in charge of broadband rollouts in their areas, and will be required to draw up delivery plans and find additional funding from elsewhere.

The areas receiving most funds are:

• Cumbria: £17m
• Devon and Somerset: £31.3m
• East Sussex: £10.6m
• Kent: £9.87m
• Lancashire: £10.8m
• Lincolnshire: £14.3m
• Norfolk: £15.4m
• North Yorkshire: £17.8m
• Suffolk: £11.68m

Wales and Northern Ireland have already been given their share of the £530 million broadband fund which was set aside from the TV licence fee.

The government hopes that by allocating money instead it will speed up the process and has pledged to make the UK the best place in Europe for broadband by 2015.

Up to one third of UK homes will not get fast broadband services from the big commercial players without government subsidy.

This is because the number of people living in rural areas versus the cost of creating a next-generation broadband do not represent a good return on their investment for players such as BT and Virgin Media.

So for example Northumberland has 71% of premises that will not be reached by commercial projects. It has been allocated over £7m.

Berkshire, with only 8% of homes unlikely to get next-generation services via commercial firms, gets £1.4m.

But some have questioned whether the £530 million will be enough to fill in the gaps.

The upcoming 4G mobile auction should be used as an opportunity to upgrade the UK’s patchy mobile infrastructure, says an advisory group.
The Communications Consumer Panel said regulator Ofcom should oblige operators to extend services to rural areas.

It also suggested the money made by selling off the airwaves could be used to upgrade rural coverage.

It estimates that three million people live in mobile blackspots. The panel said it did not believe that new 4G services would extend beyond existing coverage.

4G is the next-generation for mobile services, offering faster speeds- which will be crucial as more people use smartphones to surf the web.

The panel is suggesting that Ofcom run a “reverse auction” after the initial sell-off, in which operators can bid for money to extend their services in rural areas.

The 4G auctions begin next year with services likely to start rolling out from 2013.

There is a great deal of interest in the spectrum – which has been freed because of the switch to digital TV – as it operates in the low frequency 800MHz band.

This spectrum will be particularly good at penetrating buildings and will allow operators to offer better in-building coverage which is becoming an increasing problem as people use their smartphones at home.

It estimates that the UK needs an extra 1,400 base stations to improve rural coverage.

Ofcom has said that mobile coverage is one of its priorities and is conducting its own research into the problem. One of the biggest blackspots for mobile coverage is on rail networks.

Research conducted for Ofcom last year found that on the East Coast mainline the probability of maintaining a 15 minute phone call was as low as 10% for two operators.

Rural broadband bills could fall after telecoms regulator Ofcom moved to cut the wholesale price that BT charges other internet providers.
The company is the only operator in many smaller telephone exchanges and ISPs have to factor ‘renting’ BT’s equipment into their price plans.

That means customers often miss out on cheaper deals available in towns and cities.

The reduction only affects broadband services of up to 8Mbps.

From mid August until March 2014, Ofcom has ruled that BT must cut its rates by 12% below inflation per year.

Rural campaigners welcomed the news.

The Countryside Alliance said it was “delighted” by the decision.

Many ISPs, other than BT, are able to offer consumers cheap broadband through a system known as local loop unbundling (LLU), where they place their own equipment in the exchange.

In less populated areas, where this may be uneconomical, they have to effectively ‘rent’ the system for delivering their service from BT

BT Wholesale’s costs are passed on, typically adding around £10 to customers’ broadband bills, according to the website BroadBandChoices.co.uk.

BT said the impact of the cost reductions on its revenues would be in the “low millions”.

The prices BT Retail charges consumers will remain the same.

Ofcom has not applied the reduced charges to ADSL2+, a next-generation copper-wire technology which offers speeds of up to 24Mbps.

It said it hopes that this will encourage BT Wholesale to invest more in this.

The government is keen to see next-generation services thrive in rural as well as urban areas as it aims to make the UK the fastest broadband nation in Europe by 2015.

Critics have argued that relying on copper technologies will not future-proof networks and have urged operators to invest in fibre optics which can provide much faster services.

Whether consumers will benefit from the price cuts is not yet clear.

A legal challenge to the Digital Economy Act has failed get the government’s controversial snooper’s legislation overturned.The judicial review, requested by BT and Talk Talk, rejected claims that Parliament had overstepped its powers with anti-piracy measures.

However, Mr Justice Kenneth Parker upheld one of the objections, relating to who pays for the law’s enforcement.

The act, which was rushed through Parliament by Labour before the 2010 general election, obliges internet service providers (ISPs) to co-operate with rights holders in identifying computer users who may have downloaded music, software or videos illegally.

BT and Talk Talk mounted a legal challenge in the High Court, claiming the legislation violated several European laws on commerce and privacy.

Justice Parker rejected four of the five points put forward by the ISPs but ruled in their favour regarding a piece of associated legislation that makes service providers liable for 25% of the cost of policing their users.

The government will now be forced to re-examine the draft costs sharing order, however it is unlikely that will significantly delay the implementation of the Digital Economy Act.

What they eventually secured was a law that compels ISPs to write to their customers at the rights holders’ behest, warning them to cease their behaviour.

If the the customer does not comply, their ISP may eventually be asked to limit the user’s internet access or, in extreme cases, make their personal details available so legal action can be taken.

Opponents of the Digital Economy Act claimed that it allowed for severe sanctions against computer users, based on little more than the word of a large corporation.

They pointed out that the act also failed to clearly define a route of appeal for those users targeted.

Given that legitimate UK broadband users have already been spammed by legal ambulance chasers for spurious demands: ACS the legal firm ambulance chasing alleged net file shares goes bust this red tape will extend the big brother attitude against genuine ecommerce in the UK.

New research by a mobile broadband comparison website has found the slowest places in the UK.People living in Milton Keynes get the slowest 3G mobile broadband speed in the UK according to the research.

The average speed for mobile broadband in the Buckinghamshire town was 1.73Mbps (megabits per second), compared to 3.6Mbps in Peterborough, the fastest town.

Mobile speeds are increasingly crucial to users as smartphones become ubiquitous.

The data was compiled by broadband comparison website Top10.com.

It analysed thousands of 3G speed tests carried out by users of its Streetstats 3G app. The app is only available for the iPhone, meaning the data only looks at speeds available via Apple’s handsets.

At 1.73Mbps it would take up to 10 seconds to load a webpage and over two minutes to download an app such as the popular Angry Birds game.

Birmingham, Liverpool and Cardiff also featured in the slowest 10 towns, according to its research.

The fastest UK town according to the data was Peterborough with an average of 3.86Mbps. It was followed by Carlisle (3.5Mbps), Eastbourne (3.47Mbps) and Stoke (3.35Mbps).

Other towns in the top 10 included York, Dundee, Brighton, Derby and Reading – all offering speeds over 3Mbps.

Some coverage may have improved since the survey was carried out, as O2 has recently begun to use portions of their radio spectrum, previously reserved for voice, to add extra 3G capacity.

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom is due to publish its own study of mobile broadband coverage later this month.

The “top” ten slowest towns for 3G
* Milton Keynes – 1.73Mbps
* Leicester – 2.01Mbps
* Huddersfield – 2.17Mbps
* Cardiff – 2.18Mbps
* Liverpool – 2.21Mbps
* Blackburn – 2.23Mbps
* Stevenage – 2.23Mbps
* Hull – 2.35Mbps
* Stafford – 2.37Mbps
* Birmingham – 2.43Mbps

The company also has a broadband speed test which lets you see how fast your upload and download times are currently.

Telecom watchdog Ofcom is seeking to stop internet service providers from advertising unrealistic broadband speeds.
Currently most ISPs advertise services as ‘up to’ a certain speed – for instance, 10Mbps (megabits per second).

But Ofcom’s latest research finds that very few consumers actually get these headline speeds.

“There is a substantial gap between advertised speeds and the actual speeds people get in their homes,” said Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards.

“The chances of someone receiving the advertised headline speed are fairly remote,” he said.

“We would like to see clearer information provided to consumers which more accurately reflects the likely speeds they will actually receive,” he added.

Ofcom’s latest research into broadband speeds found that just 14% of customers on ‘up to’ 20Mbps services received speeds of over 12Mbps, while 58% averaged speeds of 6Mbps or less.

Cable and fibre optic services fared better, with 92% of Virgin Media customers on an ‘up to’ 50Mbps service averaging 45.6Mbps.

Its lower 10Mbps service saw average speeds of 9.6Mbps.

BT’s Fibre-to-the-Cabinet technology, which is currently available to 15% of UK homes, has an average of 31.8Mbps on the 40Mbps service.

Unrealistic broadband speeds has long been an issue for consumer groups, who say such advertising is adding to consumer confusion over net services.

The Advertising Standards Authority is also looking into the issue.

Ofcom is recommending that ISPs use Typical Speed Rates (TSR) to avoid confusing consumers.

It has set guidelines for these speeds. It recommends that ADSL services currently advertised as ‘up to’ 20Mbps (megabits per second) be changed to a TSR of between 3 and 9Mbps.

BT has announced a controversial service that some say could allow broadband providers to create a “two-tier internet”.
Content Connect, as it is known, allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that use BT’s network to charge content firms for high speed delivery of video.

It could spell the end of so-called “net neutrality”, where all traffic on the net is treated equally.

Critics say it will also reduce competition for consumers.

“This is a sea change in the way that content is delivered by ISPs,” Jim Killock of the net freedom campaign organisation, the Open Rights Group.

“It is essentially them saying: ‘Rather than delivering whatever content is on the internet as best we can, here are our services that we will deliver through our own network.’”

He said the result could be a “fundamental shift” from consumers choosing what video and gaming services they buy on the internet to “buying services from the internet to bundled services from ISPs”.

“This would reduce competition and take investment away from internet companies – that would be bad for everyone.”

In addition, net neutrality advocates says that allowing large content providers, such as YouTube, to pay for premium delivery could put smaller companies at a competitive disadvantage, reinforcing the gap.

But a spokesperson for BT denied that the offering would create a “two-tier internet”.

It said that its new service would speed up download speeds across its network – even for those not buying into Content Connect – by easing congestion.

Network neutrality is one of the founding principles of the internet and is meant to ensure that all ISPs treat all web traffic equally – serving merely as a conduit for whatever data is passing from content providers to end users.

But debates have been raging around the world as the explosive growth in internet traffic – and particularly video – has put a strain on the existing infrastructure.

In the US, regulators recently voted in favour of rules that are designed to uphold the principles of network neutrality.

The EU has openly backed network neutrality, but has introduced regulation that allows network providers to manage traffic on their networks, provided what they are doing is transparent.

The UK regulator Ofcom is expected to clarify its stance later this year.

In the meantime, the UK government has already said that it backs a two-speed internet. This new offering from BT seems to be the first major step in that direction.

UK Government plans to censor pornographic websites are unlikely to prove effective claim ISPs.
The proposal to cut off access to pornographic material was floated by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey in an interview with the Sunday Times.

The government is talking to ISPs to set up a meeting at which the proposal will be discussed.

But, say experts, technical challenges mean any large scale filtering system is doomed to failure.

A spokesman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, confirmed Mr Vaizey’s plan to talk to ISPs about setting up an age verification scheme to govern access to pornographic sites.

“This is a very serious matter,” said Mr Vaizey. “I think it’s very important that it’s the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect children.”

“I’m hoping they will get their acts together so we don’t have to legislate, but we are keeping an eye on the situation and we will have a new communications bill in the next couple of years.”

In response to the government proposal, Nicholas Lansman, secretary general of the Ispa industry body, said: “Ispa firmly believes that controls on children’s access to the internet should be managed by parents and carers with the tools ISPs provide, rather than being imposed top-down.”

Mr Lansman said its members provided parents with many different means of controlling what is accessible via the computers in their homes.

“Online safety is a priority issue for the internet industry and ISPA will be discussing the options available to protect children with Government,” he said.

“ISPs currently block child abuse content which is illegal and widely regarded as abhorrent,” said Mr Lansman. “Blocking lawful pornography content is less clear cut, will lead to the blocking of access to legitimate content and is only effective in preventing inadvertent access.”

BT, the UK’s largest ISP, said it would be “happy” to take part in any discussion of the issues, but added: “There are many legal, consumer rights and technical issues that would need to be considered before any new web blocking policy was developed.”

He said the sheer volume of pornographic material online and the number of ways that people access it, via the web, file-sharing networks, news groups, discussion boards and the like, made the job impossible.

While some proponents of a national pornographic filtering scheme cite the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) as an example of how such a scheme might work, Mr Davies said it was not a good guide.

The IWF circulates a list to ISPs of sites found to be hosting illegal images of child sexual abuse.

However, said Mr Davies, the IWF draws up its list largely using information passed to it by the public. In addition it only tackles illegal content found on websites.

Such a system would not work if it was used to deal with millions of porn sites, chat rooms and bulletin boards, he said.

Experience with filtering systems, he said, shows that they are a very blunt tool that often blocks access to sites that could be useful.

“You end up with a system that’s either hugely expensive and a losing battle because there are millions of these sites or it’s just not effective,” he said.

Mr Davies also feared that any wide-scale attempt to police pornographic content would soon be expanded to include pirated pop songs, films and TV shows.  “If we take this step it will not take very long to end up with an internet that’s a walled garden of sites the governments is happy for you to see,” he said.

His comment was echoed by Jim Killock, chair of the Open Rights Group which campaigns on digital liberties issues.

“This is not about pornography, it is about generalised censorship through the back door,” said Mr Killock. “This is the wrong way to go,” he said. “If the government controlled a web blacklist, you can bet that Wikileaks would be on it.”

Britain’s data privacy watchdog is to look again at what personal information Google gathered from private wi-fi networks.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) had investigated a sample earlier this year after it was revealed that Google had collected personal data during its Street View project.

At the time, it said no “significant” personal details were collected. But Google has since admitted that emails and passwords were also copied.

Privacy watchdogs in numerous countries, including France, Germany, Canada and Spain, have also investigated the information.

(Please see the Search Clinic post of last week on Canada’s view of Google’s snooping http://www.searchclinic.org/2010/10/googles-streetview-in-breach-of-privacy-law.htm )

A spokesman for the ICO said it had kept an eye on international investigations since its own one concluded in July.

That investigation said that the information “did not include meaningful personal details that could be linked to an identifiable person”.

However, Google’s admission of more detailed data has now prompted further action by the ICO.

“We will be making enquires to see whether this information relates to the data inadvertently captured in the UK, before deciding on the necessary course of action, including a consideration of the need to use our enforcement powers,” a spokesman said.‬

Information about the gathering of personal data came to light following a request by data protection authorities in Hamburg, Germany, for more information about the operation of Google’s Street View technology which adds images of locations to maps.

This revealed that Google had “accidentally” grabbed data from unsecured hotspots for years as its Street View cars captured images of street scenes. In total it is thought to have grabbed about 600 gigabytes of data.

It led to many data protection authorities pressing Google for access to the mass of data it grabbed to see whether laws on the protecting of personal information had been broken.

Google said it had since “strengthened” its internal privacy and security practices.

Alex Deane, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said Google should launch an immediate investigation into how the breach happened.

“As if building up a database of photographs of millions of people’s private homes wasn’t enough, the news that Google has also harvested e-mail addresses and passwords is nothing short of outrageous,” said Mr Deane.

Dr Search wonders whether the UK’s maximum fine potential of £500,000 will be levied as it appears that Google deliberately lied to them and the UK populace.

Customers of telecom firms have been told to reclaim money owed to them when they switch contracts.The regulator Ofcom says in the past two years about two million people have left at least £10m on their old accounts.

Typically the money is for line rental paid in advance, or promotional credits offered at the start of a contract.

Ofcom said its advice applied to mobile and landline phone services, broadband connections, and pay TV.

The regulator said all companies should automatically refund all money owed, but until now only three had done so.

It said only BT, Orange and the Post Office had had a policy of automatically refunding all outstanding money on their customers’ accounts.

T-Mobile has now agreed to do so and Vodafone is now doing so for its direct debit customers.

Meanwhile Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile have agreed to do so from 1 December for sums greater than £1, and O2 will now automatically credit sums of more than £20.

But Ofcom said Sky, Talk Talk and Three are still insisting on customers contacting them first.

The regulator criticised this stance, saying everyone in the industry should refund customers with all the outstanding credit they were owed, without customers having to ask first.

“Consumers were telling us that they found it difficult to claim unused credit from their providers when they left their contracts,” said Ofcom’s chief executive, Ed Richards.

“Taken together, people have been millions of pounds out of pocket as a result.

“We hope that automated refund processes, clearer signposting by providers and our new consumer guide should help consumers claim back money that is rightfully theirs,” he added.