Convergence Conversation

Just as Lord Voldemort is euphemistically referred to as “He Who Must Not Be Named”, so the same treatment is applied to the word “recession.” The “R” word is, quite frankly, a dirty word. It strikes such fear into the heart of business, that companies would much rather use another word in its stead. Here are a few:

Downturn.

Slump.

Bottom out.

Realignment.

Bagel.

(Bagel is my personal favourite, it’s what Josh Lyman from the US show The West Wing insists on describing it.)

Of course it doesn’t matter what you call it. You can call a spade a “digging facilitation device”, but everyone knows it’s a spade so why pretend otherwise? Instead of wasting time thinking of names to call a recession, time should be spent on the most important question; how do you get out of one?

In my days working at an advertising agency, the answer of course lay in spending money on advertising. More...

There is plenty of information flowing on future fibre access,  and it is great to see BERR begining the 'Broadband for all' trials in Oldham and Suffolk.  The EU commission is also busy on fibre access policy formulation,  briefing the commission on future internet services,  and concerned about future innovation. It has  also announced a 2009 review to see whether the USO review should include Broadband. We now have the 'Digital Britain' report to look forward too by Lord Carter.

 All this,  yet we still have no minimum performance guarantees of service for Broadband,  no effective labeling of services, thus no transparency of service.  As the SAMKNOWS report shows the engineers have built stable, (they must be stable to work) but different flavoured broadband services and in an odd way,  the marketeers in selling total, complete, f More...

Ben Piper of Strategy Analytics has derided Internet connectivity in the US, describing it as "outpaced by other developed nations in terms of broadband deployment, penetration, availability and affordability". He appears to be gifted in framing his assertions by raising the spectre of the Russian Sputnik initiative in 1957 which spurred the US to engage proactively in the space race.

In his report's accompanying press release, Ben is quoted as saying: "Through inertia, complacency and false security, the United States was late out of the broadband starting gate, and has barely begun the game of catch up.... More...

Earlier this week, I was called to a house in the village having problems with their PC and internet. (Everyone is having problems here at the moment, due to a very shaky rural electricity supply playing havoc with IT kit - for which we pay exactly the same as anyone in an urban area, but I digress). I ran some speedtests.......




You can't argue at that, can you?! I nearly went and dug up their drive looking for the fibre in our village that has so far eluded me...

So, even though I know it is a 1/2Mbps service because of the poverty of the copper, distance from the exchange etc, I now have to explain to an average householder that this isn't the service she is actually receiving, nor ever likely to out here in the sticks. More...

The modern economy depends on the innovative use of new technology. Innovation is a key source of comparative advantage. We cannot compete with the developing economies in manufacturing and even services are being outsourced, so we must innovate. These are the kind of statements you always hear from European politicians and the truth is that they are at least partly right.  The European Commission has just released a paper identifying the following as the key challenges for the next stage of the Internet:

(1) continuing to update broadband infrastructure to improve accessibility and speeds;
(2) keeping the Internet open to new business models and innovation; and
(3) addressing privacy and security concerns. More...

The BSG report on the costs of fibre deployment has been published.

More light reading for the weekend!

September has been a busy month in the world of next generation broadband. Government reviews, UK and EU regulatory consultations, not to mention our report on the cost of fibre-based next generation broadband, have certainly moved the debate on in the UK.

The month started with the BSG publishing its report ‘The costs of deploying fibre-based next generation broadband‘. This report used geographic and cost data specific to the UK, allowing us to model the cost of deployment across a variety of geotypes. The long and the short of this is that the report suggests that fibre to the cabinet will cost up to £5.1bn, and fibre to the home up to £28.8bn. More...

A conglomeration of 17 IT and Telecommunication giants are combining to spend $1bn promoting mobile broadband across the world. Hope rests on the investments abilities to differentiate mobile broadband from WiMAX, as a ubiquitous service with fewer limitations of coverage when compared to its more static cousin.

The popularity of Mobile Broadband has far outpaced initial estimates, and internet dongles have quickly become a mainstay of the technology scenery up and down the country. The new investment will move mobile internet access away from external dongles and towards integrated SIM applications allowing in-built internet access in lap-tops. More...

I was really privileged to have been part of the stimulating discussion that took place at the most recent Convergence Conversation, held tonight at Olswang, London.

Particularly interesting was a clear recognition that the adoption of mobile broadband is intimately linked with how consumers really want to use their mobile phones (if they know what they want yet, that is) and whether the adoption of mobile broadband - and associated services - can really accelerate given the current European mobile landscape.

The catalyst will not be the development of 'made for web' handsets - although they have certainly started to get people thinking about what more they can use their devices for. More...