The U.K. government’s reversal in favor of cutting off suspected repeat infringers’ Internet access continued to prompt criticism from consumers, digital rights activists, ISPs and others (CD Aug 26 p5). Telecommunications provider TalkTalk said it’s “dismayed” by the proposal, which came barely two months after the “largely sensible and pragmatic” measures to deal with infringement in the Digital Britain report. Peter Mandelson, the secretary of state for business, innovation and skills, has apparently “caved in under pressure from powerful lobbyists in the content industry,” the ISP said. Disconnection of those suspected of infringement won’t work, because it’s easy for them to mask their identity or activity to avoid detection, it said. The evidence that’s used to identify offenders is unreliable because of multiple-user subscriber accounts and Wi-Fi hijacking, and many innocent users would be cut off from broadband, TalkTalk said. And pitting ISPs and content providers against each other will prevent cooperative new business models from evolving, it said. Disconnection probably would cause serious problems for ISPs and users of Wi-Fi networks, said Sophos, an information-technology security company. Customers about to be cut off could claim that other computer users have been illegally using their Internet connection to download and share copyrighted material, it said. Technology consultant Graham Cluley asked whether whole companies will be disconnected when unauthorized downloads seem to originate from the workplace. People who illegally download material have no qualms about using someone else’s connection to do it, he said. The government proposal is not only unworkable but also “ridiculous,” Cluley said. It’s also heavy-handed, said a consumer group called Which? It will lobby the government for a rigorous, reliable way to identify illegal file-sharers before action is taken against them. Public Knowledge said it hopes that the U.K. won’t let people be thrown off the Internet based simply on allegations of copyright infringement. That result would violate EU policy and deprive citizens of their rights, a spokesman said. “It would be a shame to sully such a vibrant and competitive ISP market” by giving the providers or the Office of Communications the power to disconnect users without a court finding of wrongdoing, he said.
The U.K. said it’s willing to rethink it reluctance to consider Internet access cutoffs of those suspected of copyright infringement. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said Tuesday many comments in a proceeding about dealing with illegal peer-to-peer file- swapping insist that cutting off access is the only real deterrent. The policy change sparked strong criticism from digital rights activists and ISPs.
Talks broke down between Deutsche Telekom and competitors over how to define and finance access to DT’s fiber network, German telecommunications lawyer Axel Spies said on Monday. The infrastructure is too expensive for DT alone to roll out nationwide, he said. So the carrier has been negotiating with competitors over access to its cable distribution boxes and dark fiber to allow them to build their own networks while using parts of its network and over joint deployment in some places, Spies said. But DT pulled out of talks several weeks ago and asked national regulator BNetzA to set the prices, he said. Vodafone followed suit with a similar request, he said. BREKO, which represents local access competitors, and German Competitive Telecommunications Association VATM asked the regulator to rule as quickly as possible, said Spies, representing the VATM. Market players need certainty as soon as possible, but DT “should not be allowed to dictate the prices and conditions for VDSL access,” he said. The regulatory framework for network access must be fair and give all parties incentives to invest in broadband, Spies said. Joint projects make sense only if competitors know what prices the regulator will impose, he said. German weekly publication Die Zeit reported that DT CEO Rene Obermann is stepping up pressure on BNetzA, claiming it’s a “sin against infrastructure development” to expect the incumbent to invest in broadband rollout while competitors angle to use the new networks at very low cost, Spies said.
U.K. wireless microphone companies are irate over government plans for paying for the spectrum move they're required to make, they said Wednesday. The Office of Communications decided in June to clear the 800 MHz band used by those in what’s called program-making and special events and turn it over to mobile applications. Now it’s seeking suggestions on how to compensate users required to switch spectrum. The criteria for funding eligibility, however, fall far short of what’s required, the British Entertainment Industry Radio Group said.
EU price caps on mobile voice and text roaming may be raising the costs of non-European mobile operators, analysts said. The limits may not have increased mobile roaming traffic, leading European operators to try to recoup revenue by raising wholesale rates to non-EU providers, they said. The European Commission denied the contention. Telecom regulators in Africa, South America and the Middle East are considering roaming rules, they said. The effects of the EU rules should be high among the concerns of operators outside Europe, said Analysys Mason consultant Amit Nagpal.
Telecommunications subscriptions and revenue are rising despite lower consumer prices for services, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said Tuesday in its latest Communications Outlook report. But despite strong growth through 2007, the global financial crisis will likely dampen the investment plans of many operators and may slow investments in core networks, it said. The crisis could also hurt new entrants who depend on access to capital to expand and compete with better-funded incumbents, it said. Revenue growth has been driven by people’s increasing reliance on telecommunications services for social and economic interactions, the report said. Households in OECD countries spend an average of 2.2 percent of their budgets on such services even during financial downturns, it said. Telecommunications is a $1.2 trillion market in the OECD and markets have expanded at around 6 percent per year since 1990, it said. Voice is still the largest revenue source for operators despite lower fixed and mobile calling prices. The mobile and broadband sectors have seen major growth since 2007, the report said. Together, subscriptions accounted for 74 percent of all communication subscriptions in 2007, and OECD states now have a mobile penetration of 96.1 subscribers per 100 inhabitants. The other area of growth, broadband, is now the dominant fixed-access method in all OECD countries, the report said. DSL is still the leading technology, followed by cable and fiber, it said. At the same time, prices on all platforms have fallen since 2007, the report sad. Broadband prices dropped significantly between 2005 and 2008 as operators gained new customers and bundled broadband with other services, it said. The growth in broadband subscriptions helped fuel the expansion of the Internet. The number of Internet hosts was 540 million in January 2008, more than one-half of which had a generic top-level domain rather than a country-code domain, it said. The expanding number of networks and devices attached to them has led to a shortage of unique Internet addresses, but operators must switch to Internet Protocol version 6 before IPv4 addresses run out in 2011 or 2012, it said. Companies are also investing heavily in new high-speed broadband networks, changing the audiovisual landscape, the report said. But traditional linear content diffusion still holds an advantage over other media because most homes have TVs, it said. Broadband is viewed as a way to boost productivity and growth but its impact depends on competition, it said. Facilities- based competition may be hard to develop in some markets, and investment in next-generation access networks is mostly occurring in urban areas, it said. This raises questions about the potential for new digital geographic divides and whether alternative technologies such as high-speed wireless can provide rural and remote areas with enough capacity for emerging services, it said. Regulatory frameworks, which reached a certain level of stability and maturity in the last decade, are now being reviewed to ensure there’s competition, it said.
Europe will lose its competitive edge in broadband and mobile phones without a new digital agenda, the European Commission said Tuesday. Its digital competitiveness report assessed how the i2010 plan, to give the region the world’s most competitive knowledge-based economy, has fared since it was adopted in 2005 and what policies are needed beyond next year.
HDTV rollout and a steady stream of contract wins and renewals produced strong financial results for SES in the first half of 2009, CEO Romain Bausch said Friday. With group revenue up 7 percent to $1.2 billion, and EBITDA running more than 10 percent ahead of the year-earlier figure, the resilience of SES’s business in the challenging economic landscape is clear, he said. Transponder capacity use rose to 80.5 percent from 79.6, and on June 30, there were 886 transponders in use, compared with 855 at the end of 2008, he said. Contract renewals contributed to the strong showing, he said. British Sky Broadcasting renewed long- term leases on 24 of its 31 transponders, MTV took additional capacity for HD programming, and Germany’s Premiere leased an additional 1.5 transponders to boost its HD lineup, he said. SES has 156 HD channels on the air, divided evenly between Europe and the U.S., and growth will be based on fast rollout of additional HD offerings, he said. Nine satellites are being built, one to launch this year, four to be launched in 2010 and three in 2011, with a ground spare, he said. They will add 204 transponders and increase capacity 19 percent, he said. Performance on the services side of the business was “lackluster,” and most of the growth came from infrastructure, said Chief Financial Officer Mark Rigolle. In April, SES and Eutelsat launched the S-band payload of the Solaris Mobile joint venture for mobile services by satellite in Europe, Bausch said. It went into orbit, but during testing significant shortcomings in relation to the original technical specifications were confirmed. Eutelsat filed an insurance claim for the full value of the payload, he said. Still, the companies can meet their commitment to the EU by using the current payload to offer some of the planned services and continuing to develop their business to ensure that all EU countries are covered by 2012, Bausch said. SES and Eutelsat are considering whether to deploy S-band on other satellites or to dedicate an S-band satellite to meet the requirements, he said. A decision, he said, is expected this year. Bausch was asked whether SES would take advantage of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last week by ProtoStar Ltd., which leases capacity to DTH and broadband services in Asia. The group constantly looks at other operators’ satellites to see whether they can help increase SES’s business, he responded. The company is looking to expand in the Asian market where ProtoStar was supposed to work, and it’s considering whether to invest in a satellite of its own or take advantage of existing opportunities, he said.
A claim by the U.K. Daily Express Thursday that spy agency MI5’s Web site was hacked turned out to be less than accurate. The story, which is now unavailable online, said that a “Team Elite” hacking gang broke into the Web site of the counter-intelligence and security agency and collected information about everyone who visited, Sophos Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley wrote on his blog. The newspaper also reported the hackers downloaded viruses onto the computers of visiting users, he said. But the story wasn’t what it seemed, he wrote later in “MI5 website hack overhyped by Daily Express.” There was a problem with the Web site, Cluley told us. Some “gray hat” hackers found a vulnerability and told MI5, which fixed it, he said. The hack wasn’t done maliciously and no information was taken, he said. Moreover, there’s no sensitive information on the Web site, he said. The hack “is an example of Cross Site Scripting (XSS),” said Matt Hampton, chief technology officer at security firm Imerja. MI5’s site wasn’t validating input before displaying it and, as a result, “malicious information could have been published, potentially causing a huge amount of embarrassment and potentially harm,” he said. The breach is important because MI5 should have been running a more secure site, Cluley said. More shocking, said Hampton, was the revelation that the government site hasn’t been audited for XSS vulnerability. All local government systems that face the Internet must be scanned for potential problems and it’s “strange, and indeed worrying, that a Central Government site hasn’t met these requirements,” he said. “Apologies dear Clu-blog readers, as I've let you down,” Cluley wrote.
Payments across borders and those made by mobile users to other individuals offer banks the best chance to attract those who haven’t used the institutions to new kinds of services, ABI Research analyst Mark Beccue said. Nearly 3 billion people in developing countries don’t use banks, and access by mobile phones is the solution, he said during a webinar last week. Though policy makers are supportive in general, regulatory questions about mobile banking remain unanswered, said Timothy Lyman, a senior policy adviser to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, a policy group.