At yesterday’s well-attended BSG meeting, Value Partners (ex Spectrum Consulting) presented the results of their survey of service and application providers’ views on superfast broadband. People from BBC and Sky through mySpace and direct.gov were interviewed about how they saw things today, in a few months and over the longer term.
The basic conclusion was that it was the end user experience that mattered, and that access was not the only pinch point – the whole end-to-end service needed to work.
The current position was seen to be acceptable (for now) because expectations were low, and content providers could provide adaptive versions (eg text-only at busy times). But once TV sets have internet built in, and cloud computing takes off, expectations will rise and guaranteed quality of service becomes an issue. This could lead to a bandwidth crunch and even a “battle for bandwidth”.
Looking to the future, there were surprisingly few original ideas: HD everywhere, video meetings, enhanced collaboration – plus “something no-one has thought of”. Definitely a “build it and they will come” view – confident that any capacity will be fully used.
Surprisingly despite the importance of the end-to-end service, most service providers didn’t want to have to understand how the network worked, and didn’t talk to network providers very much. And they accepted that there would probably be a mix of capabilities for the foreseeable future.
The panel discussion was opened by Richard Cooper, responsible for IP distribution at the BBC. He explained how adaptive bit rate coped with the current network variability, and emphasised that customers would not put up with much buffering. HD iPLayer is available now, but demands a high powered PC as well as fast broadband, so is not used much. In the future he saw massively increased consumption of video, more devices especially IP on TV (they have Wii applications already), HD essential, and linear TV over IP – notably the Olympics. QoS vs neutrality issues are going to have to come to a head soon, with challenges for smaller players.
Ed Uzzell of Sony explained their vision of 90% devices connected by 2012, and saw an IPTV arms race between content providers and device manufacturers.
Mark Hewis of LoveFilm described the on-demand service they had launched with Sony. Customer expectations were the same as for broadcast TV – buffering not acceptable. He wanted ISPs to take the lead in explaining what the network could deliver – he’d rather know in advance that a particular location could not received the streamed version, because he could offer the customer the option of downloading it and playing it back in say 10 mins. Streaming games would driev huge demand with non-cacheable content.
The discussion afterwards dealt mainly with the relationships with content delivery networks and how that needed to improve. The BBC work had at it themselves, but despite their size, even they needed help and could not cover every ISP.
Wednesday 24 March 2010
Tuesday 23 March 2010
Pensioner in price cap shocker
Ofcom has published its Review of the Wholesale Broadband Access Markets (WBA), updating a 2008 assessment. A lot has happened in the past two years, you might think. But not in the case of WBA. Last time around Ofcom, like a latter-day King Lear, split the moiety of the United Kingdom that has the good or bad fortune not to be Hull into three. Like Lear, Ofcom proposed a somewhat unequal distribution to its daughters, though one would hope that the consultation process will be a little more fit-for-purpose.
At any rate, unlike Lear, Ofcom does not seem to have changed its mind much in the intervening period about how the kingdom is to be divided. Back in 2008 16.4% (now 14.2%) of UK premises were in exchange areas served only by BT. Another 13.7% (now 13.8%) had two or three competing operators and the remaining 69.2% (71.3%) were blessed with four or more. And no doubt also "
What with all those forests, meads and stuff, it was clear to Ofcom that no regulatory intervention was needed there, then and now. Not so for the other two daughters, though. In 2008 Ofcom imposed general access and non-discrimination provisions on and obtaine voluntary commitments from BT to keep wholesale prices between a floor and a ceiling. The floor commitment ran out last summer and the ceiling goes this December.
Now, though, Ofcom is proposing to ease restrictions where there are 2-3 operators, in the hope that competition will pick up there. Meanwhile it will bear down harder on the one-operator daughter with a price cap, an obligation for prices to be oriented to cost and another for cost accounting to provide transparency. Presumably, in the matter of competition Ofcom is convinced that "nothing will come of nothing".
Of course the outcome for Ofcom's predecessor was far from happy. It remains to be seen whether Ofcom's discriminatory behaviour will also lead it to perish on some blasted heath, but that's a drama for another day.
At any rate, unlike Lear, Ofcom does not seem to have changed its mind much in the intervening period about how the kingdom is to be divided. Back in 2008 16.4% (now 14.2%) of UK premises were in exchange areas served only by BT. Another 13.7% (now 13.8%) had two or three competing operators and the remaining 69.2% (71.3%) were blessed with four or more. And no doubt also "
What with all those forests, meads and stuff, it was clear to Ofcom that no regulatory intervention was needed there, then and now. Not so for the other two daughters, though. In 2008 Ofcom imposed general access and non-discrimination provisions on and obtaine voluntary commitments from BT to keep wholesale prices between a floor and a ceiling. The floor commitment ran out last summer and the ceiling goes this December.
Now, though, Ofcom is proposing to ease restrictions where there are 2-3 operators, in the hope that competition will pick up there. Meanwhile it will bear down harder on the one-operator daughter with a price cap, an obligation for prices to be oriented to cost and another for cost accounting to provide transparency. Presumably, in the matter of competition Ofcom is convinced that "nothing will come of nothing".
Of course the outcome for Ofcom's predecessor was far from happy. It remains to be seen whether Ofcom's discriminatory behaviour will also lead it to perish on some blasted heath, but that's a drama for another day.
Monday 22 March 2010
Labour slowly getting faster
There will be lots of cynicism about Gordon Brown's speech on getting superfast broadband to everyone in the UK - probably justifiably, but at least it's something. What Labour don't yet seem to be getting is the idea that it's not all about bunging cash at BT.
Jim Knight, the minister responsible for digital inclusion, accepted that the government had to intervene to ensure super-fast broadband reached remote areas of the country. But he told BBC Radio 5 live: "You offer incentives to the market to get to those areas that otherwise they're (HW: presumably meaning BT or Virgin) not going to be able to make a profit out of going to."
This ignores the prospect of community groups "doing it for themselves". Time to release the passion and innovation of the community, surely ?
Jim Knight, the minister responsible for digital inclusion, accepted that the government had to intervene to ensure super-fast broadband reached remote areas of the country. But he told BBC Radio 5 live: "You offer incentives to the market to get to those areas that otherwise they're (HW: presumably meaning BT or Virgin) not going to be able to make a profit out of going to."
This ignores the prospect of community groups "doing it for themselves". Time to release the passion and innovation of the community, surely ?
Wednesday 17 March 2010
Social TV Forum @ Olympia; The Future of TV & Social Media
I visited the exhibition at this event, looking mainly for interactive TV initiatives with targeted advertising opportunities. I have to say there weren’t many.
About half the stands were for Social Media agencies – all excited at the prospect of taking your money to tell you how to do what you already do. OK, so I didn’t give them a fair chance to convince me that they had the single unique answer for turning social media into a money-spinner but, hey, life’s too short.
I did start to listen to a workshop speaker on ROI for social media. But when I realized I’d been sitting next to him on the train and had seen most of his presentation then, I wandered away. None of it was rocket science anyway. Neat presentational tool called Nudge though.
Of the stalls I talked to people at, the highlights were:
• Monterosa: assuming people are on their laptops while watching TV; allows
games based on program (eg who’s fired next?), plus chat and comments;
could use for product placement opportunities once allowed
• tv genius: web-style search function on STB simplifies search for VOD
content; works with …
• NDS: EPG design platform
• Comment technologies: white-label social networks
So not a lot really.
http://www.social-tv.net/
About half the stands were for Social Media agencies – all excited at the prospect of taking your money to tell you how to do what you already do. OK, so I didn’t give them a fair chance to convince me that they had the single unique answer for turning social media into a money-spinner but, hey, life’s too short.
I did start to listen to a workshop speaker on ROI for social media. But when I realized I’d been sitting next to him on the train and had seen most of his presentation then, I wandered away. None of it was rocket science anyway. Neat presentational tool called Nudge though.
Of the stalls I talked to people at, the highlights were:
• Monterosa: assuming people are on their laptops while watching TV; allows
games based on program (eg who’s fired next?), plus chat and comments;
could use for product placement opportunities once allowed
• tv genius: web-style search function on STB simplifies search for VOD
content; works with …
• NDS: EPG design platform
• Comment technologies: white-label social networks
So not a lot really.
http://www.social-tv.net/
Monday 15 March 2010
BSG cost model for fibre
The BSG have appealed for information about fibre costs in order to review the A-M model produced in Sept 2008.
"We are particularly interested to get cost data from actual deployments by local and community projects and other new entrants that may have utilised new methods of deployment, to understand how the costs of deploying fibre may have changed since the report was first published".
At the Newark colloquium I attended, organised by Digital Dales, several people said that the A-M costs were way too high. I'd suggest that if anyone has evidence of this, then they send it to the BSG - contact Peter Shearman (Peter.Shearman@Intellectuk.org]
"We are particularly interested to get cost data from actual deployments by local and community projects and other new entrants that may have utilised new methods of deployment, to understand how the costs of deploying fibre may have changed since the report was first published".
At the Newark colloquium I attended, organised by Digital Dales, several people said that the A-M costs were way too high. I'd suggest that if anyone has evidence of this, then they send it to the BSG - contact Peter Shearman (Peter.Shearman@Intellectuk.org]
Friday 5 March 2010
Broadband Delivery UK
Stephen Timms announced yesterday the formation of a new body, called Broadband Delivery UK, to oversee the 2Mb/s broadband universal service obligation. Long on rhetoric and short on detail - who is on it, what are its terms of reference, what powers will it have- the statement is nonetheless interesting for its reference to a new Analysys Mason report (they must be doing well out of all this !) which describes which communities might be prioritised by the fund. More comments on this once I've read it !
Huw
Huw
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