Privacy fears grow - Are Government and Industry ignoring civil liberties

Google’s Street View service has contributed massively to the concerns of privacy on the internet.  Not only content with publishing views of individuals going about their legitimate business on line, Google recent announcement to use our search activity on their search engine to target advertisements takes the privacy debate to a new level.

Search information is valuable, allowing firms neatly to target ads to a person’s interests to generate billions in additional advertising revenue. Google, the industry leader, stores personal information for 18 months, and they are not alone as Microsoft’s search engine, Yahoo and AOL all retain search requests for 13 months.

But they are not the only people retaining information.  Today’s revelations by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, that a quarter of all government databases are illegal and should be scrapped or redesigned, throws into sharp relief the amount of information that is now available for a whole range of purposes.

The Trust says that storing information leads to vulnerable people, such as young black men, single parents and children, being victimised.

It says the UK's "database state" wastes billions from the public purse and often breaches human rights laws.

But the government says the report contains "no substantive evidence" on which to base its conclusions. A Ministry of Justice spokesman said the government was "never losing sight" of its obligations under the data protection and human rights acts.

"It takes its responsibilities seriously and will consider any concerns carefully, adapting existing safeguards where necessary," he added.

The government spends £16bn a year on databases and plans to spend a further £105bn on projects over five years but does not know the precise number of the "thousands" of systems it operates, the trust claims.

In the wake of numerous data loss scandals, the cross-party trust - which campaigns for civil liberties and social justice - examined 46 public sector systems.

It said 11 were "almost certainly" illegal under human rights or data protection laws.

And what is the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, doing about this? Well apparently nothing.  Maybe it is time for the Commissioner to start to earn his salary and start a formal investigation as to exactly what is being stored and retained by both Government and Industry. 

The trouble with civil liberties is that you don’t miss them until they are gone!

Fibre Taxation slowing the UK's broadband future.

The Government is in danger of creating a digital divide by discouraging investment in superfast connectivity unless it reviews the issue of fibre taxation. Despite Government backing next generation Internet applications and the use of fibre optic cable, it has continued to tax the rateable value of the basic infrastructure.

Elfed Thomas, CEO and founder of i3 Group, is calling on the Government to review the issue of fibre taxation ahead of the Digital Britain report expected later this month. He fears the imposition of the tax will create a digital divide between those companies able to afford the rate, and so benefit from superfast connectivity and those unable to offset the tax and thereby relying on the traditional copper networks.

He said: "Now is not the time for the Government to impose this tax. Fibre taxation is an issue which has been around for almost a decade but never before has it been such a potentially hot topic. Its resurgence comes as the Government is expected to back recommendations for the national deployment of dark fibre - to meet the requirement for universal Internet access to at least 2Mbps broadband speeds by 2012 in the Digital Britain report.

Given the Governments expressed commitment to ensure that the entire population has access to a less than ambitious 2Mbs, this is tax is clearly out of step with this aim.  It seems that the Treasury is still unaware of what is meant by “joined-up Government”.  With one branch of Government committed to improving Internet access for all whilst the Treasury tie the hands of industry behind its back by demanding an income from the means to deliver it!

Japan, Singapore, China, Sweden, Denmark and even Italy are rather more enlightened than the UK Government’s piece meal approach.  As I wrote last November in “When will the next generation broadband start to deliver for the UK”, our Government’s current approach and that of BT lacks the vision to deliver genuine advantage for UK plc in this crucial infrastructure.  Gordon Brown needs to get Lord Mandelson and Alastair Darling talking about something other than bonuses for failure in our Banks.

Further information @ H2O Networks site.

Happy Birthday “WWW”

The "World Wide Web", which has completely transformed the way we live, has turn twenty today.  Its inception dates back to 13 March 1989, when a computer scientist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Centre for Nuclear Research, popularly known as CERN Laboratory, presented a paper containing means and methods by which particles physics scientists could easily share and find out essential electronics documents. 

At that time, the use of internet was limited to defence and academics domains only and communication was wholly text-based, banking on general newsgroups, along with remote Telnet chat to send messages.   

The document, entitled "Information Management: A Proposal", heralded the worth of simplified iteration of Standard Generalised Mark-up Language, and it described what is now known as world wide web that has annealed into almost every sphere of our lifestyles. 

The paper resulted into the creation of Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML), a coding language used to illustrate methods of presenting images and texts in the web format, and when this language get combined with Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Uniform Resource Locator (URL), it builds an essential framework to support sharing of electronic documents in an electronic format.  

In order to mark the twentieth birthday of the web, CERN will be hosting a couple of "short presentations from web veterans, in addition to a keynote speech from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, alongside a demonstration of the original browser". 

So the World Wide Web is no longer a surly teenager.  I wonder what we can expect from this fast maturing character!

Latest Trends online according to Razorfish

Each year Razorfish, an interactive marketing company, publishes its “Digital Outlook Report.”  The report is very interesting for anyone who is interested in making a living from the internet.

The first section identifies the key trends to watch over the coming year before examining them in greater depth.  They are:-

Trends to Watch

1.      Advertisers will turn to “measurability” and “differentiation”
in the recession.

2.      Search will not be immune to the impact of the economy.

3.      Social Influence Marketing will go mainstream.

4.      Online ad networks will contract; open ad exchanges will expand.

5.      This year, mobile will get smarter.

6.      Research and measurement will enter the digital age.

7.      “Portable” and “beyond-the-browser” opportunities will create new touch points for brands and content owners.

8.      Going digital will help TV modernize.

Whilst the document is overly long at 180 pages and does offer a very US centric view, it is definitely worth a look and ties up with many of the issues that I have been looking at over the past three years on this blog.  Get your copy from this link:-  Razorfish : Digital Outlook Report 2009

Google Android paid for apps opens in the UK

Paid for applications will be available to UK Android owners from today, T-Mobile has announced.

For the first time, Android developers will be able to set their own prices for their apps. Previously, only free apps could be made available through the Android Market app store.

Speaking at an Android developer event, Regan Whitehead, mobile internet category manager at T-Mobile UK, said: "When users click on the Android Marketplace icon in the morning there will be a wide selection of paid apps on the market," including offerings from EA Sports and Activision.

Content on the Android Market is rated by users - in a similar fashion to YouTube - so developers who slap a high price tag on their app risk pricing it out of the market, according to Richard Warmsley, head of entertainment and internet at T-Mobile UK.

The store is like "eBay - developers are posting up their apps, they're setting the price, customers are rating independently and choosing what they want to have so it's an open market approach," he said.

The widespread interest in the potential of application marketplaces is hardly surprising, since  Apple revealed last year that it earned $30m in sales of iPhone apps in the first month after launching the App Store.

According to Maani Safa, head of mobile at The Telegraph Media Group, the newspaper's app - which was initially launched on Android - took about four times as long to port it over to the iPhone.

"Apple just make you jump through hoops," he claimed.

Because of these hoops, Safa said the company is "using Android as a trailblazer" - any app it creates will be launched first on Android and then ported over to other platforms because of the difficulties he had working with Apple

"Say you have a commercial deal in place and you want an application to go live on day X with an Android version. You create the application, you click on publish and literally within 10 seconds it's live in the application store, you call up the commercial partner and you tell them it's live ready to go. With the Apple version, you tell them it's date X - it gets to four days before, [Apple] gives you a call and says 'oh, by the way it's not going to go live for another two weeks'. 'Why?' 'It just isn't'."

There are currently more than 1,000 free apps available for Android.

T-Mobile's Warmsley said the top 10 apps downloaded on the G1 since its October 2008 launch are The Weather Channel, MySpace Mobile, ShopSavvy, Daily Horoscope, Free Dictionary Org, Ringdroid, Backgrounds, Barcode Scanner and Save MMS.

Currently, the G1 is only one model of Android phone is available in the UK and is exclusive to T-Mobile. Vodafone has just announced last month that they will begin shipping the HTC Magic Android compatible phone shortly. The phone will be available in the UK, Spain, France, and Germany.  

As regards the G1, T-Mobile's Warmsley said he was unable to put a figure on the number sold in the UK to date, but said that while "it's not a million", in a typical week T-Mobile's current sales rate of the G1 is 70 per cent of the iPhone's sales rate. O2 claims to have shipped more than a million iPhones in the UK.

The typical G1 user is a 32-year-old male, likely to be living in London or the South East - although there are also G1 'hotspots' in Leicester and Nottingham, according to Warmsley.

Additional Reporting from Silicon.com

UK ISP, Cable and Dongle User Numbers - March 2009

Here is an update of the UK ISP market covering DSL and Cable Access market as well as the the Mobile Dongle market in the UK. I have used ITU published data for Broadband usage numbers and Neilson Ratings to get an accurate picture as well all the reports and disclosures for each of the companies shown below. I believe these figures represent a reasonably accurate representation of the genuine adoption of broadband either via DSL, Cable or mobile dongle. Broadband connections included in this data cover download speeds equal to or faster than 256kbit/s.

ISP Total % of UK Accts. BT (inc Plusnet) 4,700,000 26.20% Virgin Media (inc Virgin.net) 3,934,800 21.93% CPW (inc AOL) 2,700,000 15.05% Sky 1,955,000 10.90% Tiscali UK 1,774,000 9.89% Orange 1,023,000 5.70% Royal Mail 560,000 3.12% O2 (Be & Dongles) 340,866 1.61% 3 (Mobile Dongles) 255,000 1.42% Kingston 195,255 1.09% T-Mobile (Dongle) 161,000 0.90% Vodafone (Dongle) 132,000 0.74% Thus 126,000 0.70% Entanet 92,000 0.51% Clara.net UK 72,000 0.40% Breathe 12,000 0.07% Supanet 6,000 0.03% Others 28,000 0.16% Total 17,940,121 100.00%

Unlike some of the largest UK ISPs, which have seen a decline or slowdown in high-speed services uptake, O2 has actually reported yet another growth increase from Q3-2008's +72,870 net additions to +73,776 for Q4. They're still some way behind 6th place Royal Mail but gaining fast.
Overall O2 outperformed the UK market in difficult economic times with over 10% growth and O2 is also working to increase broadband capacity at several locations around the UK. O2 has benefitted from the development of the growing “Internet Dongle” market. T-Mobile, 3 and Vodafone are also enjoying continued growth. BT is responding to the mobile challenge through BT Openzone (Wi-Fi Hotspots). BT has reported an increase in usage of 13% on Q3, with nearly double the amount of surfing minutes being used. BT Openzone is now available at more than 50,000 worldwide locations through roaming partners. BT FON membership also continued to climb and members now total 163,000.

As BT starts to roll out its 21st Century Network (21CN), they are seeking to work with a whole range of ISP partners such as Royal Mail to offer new services. BT Group has reported 8.1m wholesale broadband DSL connections at 31 December 2008. BT Broadband net additions of 83,000 in the quarter in the maturing broadband market, with a customer base of 4.7m including both BT Broadband and Plusnet.

Project Canvas leaps in to replace Kangaroo!

Project Canvas, the venture between BBC, ITV and BT to "bring catch-up from the PC to the TV", will cost the partners £24m to get up and running.   A fourth major partner, possibly Channel 4, Channel Five or a major internet service provider is expected to come on board in the near future.

The costs are intended to be shared equally and BBC has indicated that their share will be £6m of licence payers funding. 

The venture's backers aim to provide an open technology offering so that viewers with Freeview or Freesat and a broadband connection can access catch-up and on-demand programming via their TV from online services such as BBC iPlayer and ITV Player.

The BBC anticipates that these new web-enabled set-top boxes will cost somewhere in the region of £100 to £200, and that the catch-up television service will be delivered via the internet. The BBC, ITV and BT believe a sufficiently good service could be achieved with a relatively low speed internet connection of around 1.6 Mb, and other internet service providers are expected to back the scheme.

“We are excited about what this could mean for the viewing public,” Erik Huggers, director of future media and technology at the BBC, told The Times. “While audience demand for high-quality public service broadcasting remains high, the ability of the commercial operators to deliver is seriously threatened by a changing media landscape and the difficult economic climate. Innovation is in the BBC’s DNA, and with our funding model and great content, we’re in a unique position to innovate for the benefit of everyone.”

Earlier this month, a proposed catch-up TV service backed by the ITV, Channel 4 and BBC, was blocked by the Competition Commission. The Commission ruled that Project Kangaroo, the online television venture between ITV, Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide, was blocked by the Competition Commission this month on the grounds that it would stifle the video-on-demand market, so the trio insist that Canvas will be open to any content provider that meets technical parameters. For that reason, those involved with the project are careful to label it as “Freeview mark two; not Project Kangaroo mark two”.  Although I suspect it is the same team behind Canvas that was behind Kangaroo.

The team behind Project Canvas has stressed that other content providers, such as film rental services, would be welcome to offer their services through the platform, as long as they meet the necessary technical standards required.

Some television viewers are already able to watch shows from BBC iPlayer on their TV. Virgin Media offers BBC iPlayer to its 3.7 million subscribers, and this audience accounts for 30 per cent of all viewing requests logged by iPlayer.

Anyone who has tried to watch the iPlayer or any video content online at less than 2Mb will find the suggestion that, 1.6 Mb broadband accesses will be sufficient to support an adequate service to be quite amusing.

In addition, why is it going to cost £24 million to develop an iPlayer for a TV set-top box, when the likes of Sony and Pace not to mention Virgin have capability developed?  Agreeing open access standards for their content to be run on set-top boxes should not cost so much and there are enough set-top manufacturers who are ready to work with such a standard and build it into their equipment.  I recall from a recent Internet/TV project that the BBC frequently changed their iPlayer format to frustrate software developers trying to develop set-top box developments to deliver the iPlayer.

The BBC Trust, the corporation’s governing body, yesterday opened a consultation on the proposals, and will make a decision on the project by the end of July.

Goldman Sachs Technology Symposium - Apple Developments

Here are the highlights of Tim Cook the COO of Apple comments at the Goldman Sach Technology Conference currently going on in Redwood City, California and favourite to replace Steve Jobs as CEO.  There are some very interesting comments here as to the future direction of Apple.

Economic decline

“I’m not saying Apple’s immune to the economy. But if you look at last quarter as an example … last quarter in the U.S., the GDP growth was less than one percent.  It was miserable by anybody’s calculation. Apple, in the U.S., grew 27 percent.

For us, we’re focused on what we can control. And what we can control is how much we innovate, what products we do, the experience in our stores, the experience in our channel — all of those things. I think Apple’s success depends on how we do on those things versus whether the GDP is slightly above one (percent) or slightly below zero or whatever.”

IPod Touch cannibalizing iPhone sales

“I’d rather Apple cannibalize Apple than somebody else cannibalize Apple. It was very key for the iPod line to go in this direction.”

The iPhone SDK and platforms vs. products

“First of all, I think it’s really important to realize that very few companies in the world know how to build a platform. You can count them on a few fingers. Apple is one of them. We’ve had the Mac platform for years and really understand this.

When we started with the phone, we started by getting developers to focus on web 2.0 apps. And there’s over a thousand of these today. There are probably many people in this room that use them. But people also want to do more than that. And as we got into the phone more and more, it became clear to us that we should release an SDK and we’re going to talk more about that next week at our event. But in essence what it does is it will make the product even more compelling. This is a product that has the highest customer satisfaction (rate) of any Apple product ever shipped, which is a very, very high bar. We’re super excited about where this can take us.”

The real iPhone controversy (aka the missing iPhones)

“The real controversy, if you will, from some people’s point of view is the difference between phones that are activated on Apple-chosen carriers, and the total number of phone sales. So people want to know where are the iPhones? Here’s my short version of this: We have a situation where we’ve purposefully rolled out iPhone in four markets (the U.S., the U.K., Germany and France). We did this at this chosen speed so we would learn, and could apply those learnings to future rollouts, etc. And we are right on track where we want to be. The four million units that we’ve sold over the first 200 days gives us confidence that we can achieve 10 million units in 2008.

So where are the iPhones? Here’s the privilege, so to speak, of this problem. The demand for the iPhone is so intense in the markets where we aren’t offering it that people are exporting it out of the U.S. in many different ways and then running it on local carriers … The thing that I like about that is it shows there’s a lot of worldwide demand. And I think the most important thing for Apple by far in this first 8-10 months of selling in the iPhone world is to deliver a product that would delight customers.

Of all the problems we face, this is the one I face looking at with a little bit of a smile. Because it means there’s great demand for the phone. And to have people stepping over each other to have the phone isn’t a bad thing.”

The one carrier model vs. multiple carriers for the iPhone

“In the U.S., our fundamental choice was do we want to develop two phones: a CDMA phone and a GSM phone. We didn’t. We wanted to do the simplest approach in the beginning because that’s the fastest way to learn. We wanted GSM. GSM is a worldwide standard and AT&T is the largest carrier. The business relationship that we could work with AT&T allowed Apple to be Apple and AT&T to be AT&T. This is the power of this relationship. We feel very good about that. We went into Europe and picked the top carriers in three countries and got going in those countries. Now, are we married to his model? Will we do this everywhere? We’re not married to any business model. What we’re married to is shipping the best phone in the world and continuing everyday to innovate to make (the iPhone) better and turn it from a device into a platform. We are married to that.”

Virgin Media sinks deeper into the red but grows broadband!

The cable services provider Virgin Media had a difficult last quarter of 2008, with new customer sign ups dropping by a massive forty per cent.

The company posted losses of £50 million for the same quarter, which it said was due to the fact that it only managed to attract 14,800 new customers compared to 24,000 in the same period in 2007.  At the same time Virgin Media has seen a fall in customers taking out the profitable broadband, TV and phone packages, with only 185,000 sales in the last quarter compared to 272,100 in the same quarter of 2007.   However Virgin Media claims that "record numbers of customers" are now making use of its services and despite the economic crisis they have seen an increase of 57,100 on-net broadband customers, taking their total to 3.68 million.  This is just 1.5% growth in user numbers at a time when Virgin has been advertising heavily and launching new services such as the new 50Mb package at the end of last year

Virgin Media also noted an improvement in tier mix, with a third of their users now subscribing to their next-generation (10Mb and above) services.   Virgin Media also announced this week that it will be upgrading its 2Mbps broadband customers to a superfast 10Mbps service as it steps up its bid to become "the highest-quality broadband service in the UK". Indeed Virgin will begin migrating customers to the new connection in May, with prices for the 10Mbps package starting from £14 a month.

With Virgin’s broadband user numbers growing slower due to the economic downturn and increasing numbers of broadband users choosing to go to 3G Mobile broadband rather than tethered broadband.   Recently the Office of National Statistics indicated that fixed broadband has started to fall for the first time and this trend looks will have an impact on the major operators.  Expect to see aggressive price cuts to lure new customers from the major broadband ISPs such as BT and Sky during to spring of 2009 to compete with Virgin’s £14 a month 10Mb service.

At least Virgin has not yet decided to opt for Phorm like BT, however, there remain a number of legitimate revenue generating activities it could opt for now that it has deployed DPI (deep packet inspection) such as DNS and HTTP error monetisation.

Is the 3G Dongle the best broadband option for you?

With the 3G Mobile Dongle you no longer need to be tethered to a fixed line or a long term commitment to BT or Talk Talk.  Today there are almost 1 million dongle users in the UK and demand is growing so much so that, for the past two quarters that the number of fixed-line broadband connections in the UK has started to fall for the first time ever, according to the Office of National Statistics. 

With near saturation of mobile phone ownership, the option to go with a mobile dongle is winning over many new users with the promise of broadband that goes with them and it doesn't require them to pay twice: once for the broadband and once for the phone line.

What is the best dongle broadband option for you?  The answer to this question depends why you surf the net, whether for business or leisure or indeed a combination of both.  Equally is you usage occasional or regular usage.  In some cases, the mobile companies are offering laptops or notebooks as part of the tariff options.   However, the two primary options are Pay-as-you-go or Contract in the same way mobile phone service is offered.  So what are the options:-

Pay-as-you-go Dongles

Pay As You Go dongles are growing very rapidly in popularity as they do not require a long-term contract to enable a PC, laptop or notebook user to connect to the internet. The customer simply buys a dongle which has a set amount of time and data download capabilities.

The dongle is then plugged in to the computer as a plug-and-play device allowing for instant broadband access to the internet without a contract. The customer just uses the connection until they have used up the available amount of cash they originally purchased.

They can then just repeat the process thus avoiding a contract commitment of 12, 18 or 24 months to a mobile broadband operator. This system works very well for many users, providing them with access to the Internet, albeit with a limit in the time and the amount of available download before the credit is exhausted.

Customers who make use of their computer for longer periods of time each month very often opt to sign up for a contract with one of the big operators such as Vodafone, 3, Carphone Warehouse or Orange.

Contract Dongle

Although the same operators also offer pay-as-you-go deals, many people prefer the added convenience of long-term contract connection. The two systems basically operate in the same way making use of a broadband dongle to connect the computer to the Internet.

A contract connection offers the advantage of being simpler and cheaper to run on a month-to-month basis than pay-as-you-go wireless Dongles. The savings can actually be quite considerable if you make a large amount of use of your internet connection each month.

Downloading can be far more practical financially with a long-term contract. Many people feel that 18 or 24 month commitments can be outpaced by developments in the mobile broadband connection field. Therefore the most popular contract is one for 12 months giving a good degree of flexibility to move with the ever-changing broadband times.

In this way should you find a deal that suits your needs better, or there is a new technological developments with connection capabilities it is not a prohibitively long period until your contract comes up for renewal.

Both Pay As You Go and contract connections offer advantages and disadvantages. It is wise to consider which best suits your personal broadband Internet needs. As a rule of thumb longer hours spent surfing the web each month or large amounts of data download requirements favour a long-term contract.

Less time spent surfing and little need for major amounts of data download are best suited to be more flexible Pay As You Go dongle connections. 

Network Issues

However, not everyone is convinced that mobile broadband is up to the job.  3G Mobile network availability is clearly an issue in much the same way it is for some mobile operators.   There are also issues with the network when too many people are online and services drop off.  As an alternative, there are a couple of firms offering satellite broadband which has been touted as a solution for rural areas, but it is comparatively expensive with Avanti offers a 2Mb service for £45 a month.