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July 17, 2001 - July 23, 2001

News - July 23,2001

EXCLUSIVE: Special CloudNine Deal

By:mark.j @ 3:32:PM - Comments (2) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

CloudNine have kindly sent us another exclusive ahead of the general press release time. It's a special 'summer time' promotional deal that could help breathe new life into customers of BTs Off-Peak Surf / Surf & Talk based systems:

PRESS RELEASE 23rd July 2001

Cloud Nine Communications Ltd

Cloud Nine announce a summer promotion for BT Surftime Evening and Weekends and BT Surf Together or BT Surf and Talk Together customers.

Cloud Nine are primarily a business provider so most of our traffic is daytime. Owing to spare off-peak bandwidth and port capacity CloudNine is offering a 12 month subscription to it's Premium Off-Peak Surftime package for just 34.99 including VAT.

The offer is open to the first 1,000 subscribers Cloud Nine or while port/bandwidth capacity lasts.

Free Domain name Registration
Webmail
Unlimited e-mail addresses
Ten mailboxes
Unmetered Internet Access 0844 04
Free telephone calls Mon-Fri 8am-6pm and Weekends*

All for £34.99 for a year's offpeak unmetered access.

*For FREE off-peak telephone calls customers must subscribe to BT Surftime Evening and Weekends or BT Surf Together or BT Surf and Talk Together.

Follow this link to the sign up page.

Typically you'd already need to be registered with BTs Surf/Surf & Talk based Surftime product in order to make use of the package. Having said that, £34.99 inc. V.A.T for a full years off-peak unmetered access seems like a good deal, even when you include BTs fee.

Gamers Better Adjusted/Concentrated

By:mark.j @ 10:27:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

While this won't apply to many of our readers, now and then a lot of you will no doubt enjoy a good offline or multiplayer (online) computer/video game. Used by children and adults alike, we ourselves find games help to relax and improve concentration.

According to THIS report in the 'Sunday Times Newspaper', a new UK Government report agrees:

COMPUTER games are giving a generation of young Britons a level of co-ordination and powers of concentration equivalent to those observed in top-level athletes, a government-funded study has shown.

Youngsters who play computer games regularly but not excessively also tend to have more friends and be better adjusted than those who make do with traditional pastimes such as reading and television.

The research, funded by the government's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), challenges the common view of computer gamers as "geeks" who cut themselves off from the world and develop few social or wider academic skills. Instead, it suggests that playing computer games could sharpen young people's mental agility to a level superior to that of previous generations by exposing them to intense stimuli from a young age.

"People who play games regularly seem to develop a mental state that we have seen before only in serious athletes or professionals such as astronauts, whose life depends on concentration and co-ordination," said Jo Bryce, who led the research. "Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people."

So next time you're busy fragging (killing) other players from around the world in a game of Operation Flashpoint (love it) or HL:CounterStrike, remember it's helping you become a better person =).

Vispa Respond To Usage Limit Item

By:mark.j @ 9:51:AM - Comments (7) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Yesterday Net4Nowt published a small news item regarding an E-Mail Vispa had sent out to its customers relating to usage limits. Today Vispa have responded to clarify an issue they feel has been misinterpreted:

I would like to draw your attention to recent claims against Vispa about a maximum limit of 6 hours to which I would like be set straight.

The so called "general wide" email which was sent by myself to just 5 users of the 912 Unmetered customers currently using the service basically highlighted that we consider as a guide for residential customers 6 hours, which from feedback from users, Telco's etc to reasonably amount of time with "a young" FRIACO service, anymore than this, worked out over a 7 day period we would rate as a business package which offers more features anyway for a few extra pounds more a month, however non of the users in question have been removed from our service or been asked to upgrade, unlike recent reports have claimed.

Out of the 5 users in question, 4 users responded by saying it was indeed a fault on their part and really did not need home computers to be online while at work (computers basically idle), 2 of the 4 actually thanked us for pointing out that there modems were dialling back up all the time after disconnection period and grateful they were not using an 0845 based service.

This leaves just 1 user "which we know about" that has caused in my view "unjust" and "unrequired" bad press for the company. For over 2 years we have pushed Internet services forward, jumped past over 75% of the market, offered many customer desired requests that other ISP's would not care to offer and at the same time remoulded what customer services are all about. Something that 99.9% of our users will be able prove.

Our 0845 based services are lighting fast and show other "so called major players" to shame. Currently being used by 97% of our user base which continues to grow at between 8%-12% each month ("Did I say Growth, Strange did I hear we were a dieing ISP!!!"), while our unmetered service which I will confirm had a couple of problems with radius issues have been cleared up and performing quite well indeed.

There simply is nothing to write home about, and certainly far from an evidence to say that we offering a bad service, infact we are getting some excellent comments, and the few I have personally responded to or called up have been really charming customers. "I know what a good amount do for a living, how there families are...I've have even got into reading up on the Welsh Hockey league - Thanks Mr Cook"

However I conclude by saying because of 1 user, people who have no idea how it works can stick with the terrible levels of service offered to them, while ours can hold heads up high knowing that they are receiving an excellent service. However at no point am I going to sit here on behalf our users and accept for one minute that Vispa won't be here in a few weeks/months time, or we are as bad as other ISP's who have fallen at the first hurdle. We are MUCH better than many of the big players as our users have found out. Lets see if your with the same ISP in 2 years time, most of ours are, let alone how many of your ISP's will reach their first birthday!

Vispa’s response seems a little excessive given that the original item was merely highlighting something most customers weren’t aware of. N4N never said it would make them a bad ISP or offer a bad service, just that there were others without such limits. None of this changes the fact that they have a limit, which isn’t denied and that most ISPs of a similar price and service haven’t adopted - yet.

In reality this does something very different, it once again highlights the differences between large and small providers. Much as CloudNine complained of to Oftel, smaller ISPs aren’t given the flexibility of products offered to larger ones, thus making it harder for them to operate and forcing in service limits.

Peugeot and Vivendi Abandon In-Car Internet

By:mark.j @ 9:29:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Plans to equip a new line of Peugeot cars with Internet access have formally been abandoned by the popular automaker. The Vivendi project, called Egery, was aimed at creating a new platform for the mobile Internet, but quickly turned into a fiasco:

"The PSA teams never wanted to collaborate with Egery," the unnamed person continued. "Same thing on Vivendi's side, to the extent that Egery quickly became an empty shell."

Peugeot is now seeking a new venture with Ford Motor, in which Vivendi would have a much smaller stake, to offer its customers an alternative in-car web technology. They’re currently in negotiations though, for the moment, nothing is official.

Hopefully this won't spawn a new breed of manic driver whom surfs the Internet while driving at the same time - DOH!

News - July 22,2001

ISP Review Weekly Update

By:mark.j @ 11:41:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Will the rain ever stop? It's late July 2001 and what's historically the height of summer. Now I realise England is an eco-turbulent country and that the most dangerous weather condition here isn't a hurricane, rather some DEADLY DRISSLE (ahhh scary stuff), but where's the sun?

These days the warmest time of the year is mid-late spring and early autumn, perhaps it's time people updated their holidays and calendars to fit summer in place of spring? Anyway..

It's been another busy week, primarily from the perspective of administration (forum moderators etc.) and things you, the readers, generally don't get to see. We're also about ready to begin changing forums, something that will be done slowly and not in an instant - watch for more next week.

So other than the update of a few pages and daily news, as per normal, what have we done? Well perhaps the biggest improvement this week was a noticeable speed boost to the new 'Specific ISP Forums'. It's too complex to explain how we did it (coding stuff), but it seems to have worked.

We also made it so people can see the last forum post in their profiles, how many days they've been registered and how many posts they make per day (mathematical average). The 'Reader Survey/Poll' system is also back online, this was disabled for 24 hours while we upgrade it to give admins more control and fix a few bugs.

There are still a few cosmetic issues to sort, bugs to fix and some smaller features to add, yet the new forums seem generally feature complete. As of now we're just waiting on some code to integrate forum content within the site (like the existing one does now), once that's done we'll be finished.

The new Readers Top 50 system is also making progress and we expect it to follow soon after the new forums have been completed and moved. There's a lot of work to do and so we'll leave it at that for now, enjoy the wet weekend.

Hutchison 3G UK Still On Target

By:mark.j @ 11:14:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Despite growing fears many operators will be forced to delay the introduction of 3G broadband wireless mobile phones, Hutchison 3G UK still claims to be sticking with their mid-2002 launch date. This follows in the wake of Vodafone's warning that a handset shortage may delay its own 3G launch.

"Our 3G operation is going at full-blast," Hutchison managing director Canning Fok told reporters on Saturday during a conference call from Milan, where he was reviewing the conglomerate's Italian 3G network efforts.

Hutchison remains bullish on the prospects of 3G and is sticking with its European launch target despite global worries about the costs and prospects of the unproven technology, touted to provide high-speed wireless Internet and multimedia services.

Hutchison's other European 3G projects are in the United Kingdom, Austria and Sweden. Hutchison, controlled by Hong Kong's richest tycoon Li Ka-shing, also plans 3G networks in Hong Kong and Australia.

Unlike Vodafone, which must migrate from its legacy second-generation networks, Hutchison has what the advantage of building 3G networks from scratch. "We don't have 2G baggage, and we are launching multimedia services, which makes our business model more flexible than others."

2nd Fixed Broadband Wireless Auction

By:mark.j @ 11:07:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Around the time mobile operators were bidding billions for 3G broadband wireless licenses, another auction was also taking place. Namely the auction of 'Fixed Broadband Wireless' licenses for ISPs similar to the one Tele2 currently runs:

What we on about? Those 15-year fixed wireless licences that provide point-to-point Internet access for subscribers. They offer fast, permanently connected Internet access without the need for cable or telephone connections and high-capacity data transfer rates of between 2 and 5 Mbps. They're worth having but the DTi's complete mismanagement of the auction back in November last year meant what could have been a successful extension of broadband Britain ended up in a shambles.

Indeed the last auction didn't go well for the government, with barely any licenses being sold and the rest showing no interest and thus being stuck in limbo. Sadly the government seems keen to ‘avoid learning’ from past mistakes:

The government just will not accept the fact it made a big mistake and so when people didn't come rushing forward it ignored the whole thing again. Until yesterday, when the new e-minister made his first proper "announcement" - that they will sell the licences again. But with exactly the same system. He probably didn't know what he was letting himself in for.

Anyway, Mr Douglas says the bidding will start again in September and the DTi welcomes any bids from companies now.

The Register's item points to the sheer stupidity of those involved with the process. Having said that it'll still be entertaining to see what happens, we have to assume these people know what they're doing? (Cough). At this rate it’ll probably take a miracle before we see any ISPs going competitive against the likes of Tele2.

Vispa Detail Usage Limit To Customers

By:mark.j @ 10:51:AM - Comments (7) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Net4Nowt were the first to spot Vispa Internets most recently released customer support E-Mail, which appears to act as a warning for usage limits.

Vispa has now become one of the first 'new generation' unmetered dial-up ISPs to declare any kind of limit or even act upon it, part of the E-Mail stats:

If your a user who is indeed using over 6 hours a day (we consider this more than enough time at present), our engineers will be passing these usernames over to our sales team to chase up and explain this situation. If your aware of your usage pattern then please take steps to lower it before we make contact.

We are aware of a few users using the service in excess of 10 hours a day. This effects other users who wish to make use of the service, our policy has always been, again stated in http://www.vispa.com/products-friacofaq.php that if user abuse effects other users then we will take steps to remove these users from the system.

Vispa's new £14.95 per month unmetered package, having only been online a very short time, hasn't been devoid of service problems either. A quick look at their service status page shows some of the issues they've had to resolve, although none of the problems appear to of caused any great discomfort.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that some customers could now feel cheated, especially since many of the other ISPs charging similar amounts don't yet have any such limits.

With little to no feedback it's very difficult to know how customers will react, although Vispa are technically acting on what's already stated in their T&C's, the ones most people never read. As stated in our recent unmetered guide, you should ALWAYS study the T&Cs of any ISP before signing up.

News - July 21,2001

British Broadband NOT Expensive?

By:mark.j @ 9:45:AM - Comments (22) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Telecom analyst, Ovum (Tim Johnson), yesterday came out with one of the most questionable sides to the broadband story yet. Despite the fact the UK is widely regarded as the most expensive country for broadband (ADSL Wise).

Never the less, Ovum believes it's too cheap for the marketing costs needed to persuade users to upgrade their connection:

Johnson said the problem was caused by other countries selling cut-price ADSL at a loss to speed up adoption, and unfair business practices by British Telecom (BT).

He said ISPs that have emerged from cut-throat competition in the UK narrowband market have little money to invest in marketing broadband services. Worse still, they do not have the confidence to sell ADSL at the price necessary to cover their marketing costs, which he says is around £70 per month. ISPs currently offer ADSL for £40-£50 to stay in line with BTopenworld's price of £39.99 per month.

Nick Wells, marketing director at ISP Claranet, told vnunet.com: "BT Ignite's wholesale product is £35 per month plus VAT, more than the £39.99 BTopenworld charges for its service. There's just no incentive for ISPs to market ADSL because we'd lose money on each customer."

The VNUNet item makes for a detailed and entertaining read, which presents a very good picture from what we'd call - 'The Market Perspective'. Much as we stated yesterday, the industry is stuck in a vicious circle, ultimately created by the high cost of ADSL from BT.

It's a pity the item doesn't highlight just how much cheaper other countries are selling broadband, the differences are simply too great to ignore. Hopefully as time goes on BT will lower prices to more realistic levels, allowing ISPs to profit and spend on marketing. By then BT might have enabled a couple more exchanges (Year 2999?).

Home Office Criminalizes Chat Room Meetings

By:mark.j @ 9:28:AM - Comments (6) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Although it's not yet clear how they'd enforce it, the home office will make it a criminal offence for Net Predators/Paedophiles to meet children offline:

The new law would be backed by an "anti-grooming" civil order -- as proposed by former home secretary Jack Straw in May -- to protect children from Net predators wanting to make contact with them whether through chatrooms or by email, for harmful or unlawful sexual purposes.

"To merit a criminal offence, the adult would need to attend a meeting, or make a physical effort to attempt a meeting with a child," said a Home Office spokesman.

The new provisions, recommended at the second meeting of the Taskforce on Child Protection on the Internet on Thursday, would apply offline as well as online, but are specifically intended to protect children from the predatory behaviour of Internet paedophiles before the commission of a substantive sex offence.

We'd like to think/hope the system in ZDNets item will never be needed and that children are educated enough about the dangers so as to be intelligent with their Internet use.

Typically Cyber-Rights and Cyber-Liberties groups have responded angrily, although we'd have to side with the government on this one, it's a very specific law and one that’s needed.

xDSL Enabled Exchange Capacity

By:mark.j @ 9:20:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

ADSLGuide has managed to publish a list of enabled exchanges and their current capacity levels, or as they themselves state:

Ignite have released information on those exchanges that are currently full and awaiting new kit, plus those that are filling up fast.

If you've placed an order and it's taking a while to get an install date then check the list, your exchange may show up. If your exchange isn't on the list it indicates that there is plenty of capacity.

You can view the full list HERE.

News - July 20,2001

AOL Takes On Incumbent Broadband Providers

By:mark.j @ 3:39:PM - Comments (5) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

AOL Time Warner is trying to gather industry wide support in order to help its plans for breaking the logjam in Europe's consumer broadband market.

It intends to champion the notion that broadband ISPs, like itself, should lease the data portion of the so-called "last mile" of the local loop while the incumbent national telecommunications firms (whom own the lines) would continue to sell traditional voice services.

"If you go down the line sharing route, you get the best of both worlds," Clare Gilbert, vice president and general counsel for AOL Europe, told Reuters on Friday. This would result in a company like British Telecom handling voice calls and a raft of competitors specialising in high-speed data transmission.

The notion of sharing the lines, she added, would enable Internet service providers like AOL to keep costs down for services such as broadband ADSL, providing high-speed Internet access over existing phone lines.

Apparently this would help spur demand and allow for market forces to dictate the rollout of such services, Gilbert said. AOL believed telecommunications companies would be more amenable to share their networks in this way because they would not have to give up control of the networks to an outsider, she added.

Not surprisingly BT was less than enthusiastic about AOL's idea.

"In principle, this is something we would like to look at," said BT spokesman David Orr. "At the moment there is no demand for broadband. We would like to be snowed under with requests but we are just not," he said.

Given the current problems, it's unlikely AOLs process would be explored in the UK anytime soon, although BTs response is somewhat naive. You can't help but wonder who does their market analysis, do they ever wonder why there's no demand?

Perhaps it's because potential subscribers/pre-subscribers give up at the first 'availability check' upon finding their exchange isn't enabled? Or maybe it's because UK ADSL services are amongst the most expensive in the world?

It could even be because so few people actually know what broadband is. Ever try TV adverts guys (BT)? No? That's because there's not enough coverage yet (no profit) - right? Then again it could just be because there's nothing to use ADSL with (content) that doesn't end up costing more money. No wonder ADSL take-up is so poor when you're in this kind of vicious circle!

PlusNETs RADSL Announcement

By:mark.j @ 3:22:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

PlusNET have become the latest major player in the UK ISP market to announce support for broadband RADSL (Rate Adaptive DSL) services, although not without questioning its merits for business use.

We'd probably be expecting to see a few more of these considering BTs latest RADSL technology finally came online this last Wednesday 18th July 2001:

PlusNet pronounce RADSL great news for home users but ask, ‘What about British business?’

(Sheffield, UK 20th July 2001) PlusNet announced today that orders are already being taken for the new kid on the broadband block, RADSL. Launched by BT on Wednesday, RADSL technology offers high-speed, ‘always-on’ Internet access to those users who previously were just out of the available catchment area for standard ADSL. All of PlusNet’s ADSL Home accounts on their Plus.Net, Force9 and Free-Online Internet services will now be provided using new RADSL technology.

Rate Adaptive Digital Subscriber Line, to give it its full name, gives consumers a second chance to get broadband access if ADSL installation had previously failed because of poor line quality or if they were located too far from their local exchange. ADSL technology enabled premises at a distance of up to 3.5km to be connected; RADSL usefully extends this range to a maximum of 5.5km.

Great news in itself but it comes as something of a disappointment for British business as a whole. RADSL as currently supplied by BT uses a 500kbps USB modem connection for your PC. This is in contrast to the more business-orientated, network compatible Ethernet services that are available with standard ADSL, and which are capable of delivering higher bandwidth options.

USB modem services give a higher contention-rate of 50:1, meaning you share your access at the exchange’s port with 50 other users. Whilst ideal for a fast home connection, this compares unfavourably with the contention ratios of 20:1 supplied to PlusNet’s Professional and Business users.

“We greet RADSL with pleasure since it means that we can now offer ADSL service to even more residential users because we have more reach”, stated Alistair Wyse, Product and Development Director for PlusNet. “However we do feel we must express our disappointment about the overall speed of broadband rollout across the UK. This new development is good news for home users but doesn’t offer anything of real value for business users”.

Indeed, whilst it is true that technically there should be no reason why more than one computer be connected to the Internet through a shared USB-modem, for an ISP who pride themselves on service quality, to pretend that this is anything other than a single-user access solution places them in somewhat of a quandary.

“For this reason we have decided that, rather than offer RADSL as a separate stand-alone account, we will provide it as a standard feature of our already existing ADSL Home accounts”, explained Wyse. “We have no plans to provide this USB solution for our business customers. Until RADSL supports Ethernet connectivity and therefore network-compatibility at contention ratios of 20:1, Business customers requiring the fixed-cost and always-on, high-speed benefits of ADSL must be located within 3.5km of their local exchange. Only then can we be assured that the service we provide for them is of the quality our business customers have come to expect from us”.

Plus.Net, Force9 and Free-Online offer a complete range of fixed-cost and broadband solutions for Home and Business use. Their fully-featured web site Portals are highly informative; click on your favourite ISP from the following:

Plus.Net – The Smarter Way to Internet
http://www.plus.net/

PlusNet for Business – Business Critical Internet Services
http://www.plus.net.uk/

An interesting press release considering PlusNET is the first major ISP to speak out against any portion of RADSL, especially considering how new it is. When BT plans to support Ethernet based RADSL we don’t know, although it would explain why business based RADSL has so far failed to surface. It’s probably a quality issue related to SLA (service level agreements).

Quick ISP Review Site Update

By:mark.j @ 11:00:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The 'Complaints' and 'Unmetered/FreeCall ISP List' pages have both been updated today along with some smaller changes. We've also added the new 'Business Unmetered' ISP into our 'Specific ISP Forums' and linked it in accordingly.

Please note that the 'Specific ISP Forum' may be unstable at random times today due to some very complex feature coding. This could result in strange errors or brief downtime, so please try to type your message in a word processor first, so you don't loose it if things go wrong.

Vodafone To Delay 3G Rollout

By:mark.j @ 10:56:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

With newer 3G (3rd Generation) broadband wireless technologies now being expected somewhat earlier, it comes as a shock to hear Vodafone may be delaying their launch. Apparently a shortage of handsets could be to blame.

A Vodafone spokesman confirmed the report that they were slowing the rollout of 3G infrastructures in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. It now planned to build 750 3G base stations in the UK by the end of this year instead of the original plan for 1,200.

The group said it still aimed to launch 3G, or UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), in the second half of next year but acknowledged it could slip into 2003.

The news of further delays sent Vodafone shares down 3.6% in early trade and hit others in related sectors. A leading Vodafone analyst said the slowed rollout meant the company would cut its capital expenditure on 3G by five percent in the year to March 2002 and 13 percent the following year. "This means UMTS could be slipping again which obviously means lower spend for the equipment makers," he said.

Cyber-Liberty Advocates Hit Back @ IWF

By:mark.j @ 9:28:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Following yesterday’s announcement that the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) wanted to force ISPs into closing down any newsgroup that contained child pornography, today Cyber-Liberty advocates have hit back:

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) resolved on Wednesday to take a tougher line with Internet service providers (ISPs), by telling them to completely drop newsgroups that are found to contain illegal content on a regular basis. But civil libertarians have slammed the decision as "deplorable", claiming that the move inverts the original advisory remit of the organisation.

The IWF was set up in the autumn of 1996 to look at the growing problem of child pornography on the Internet. Its role was to act as a mediator between the Internet industry and law enforcers, following fears that ISPs would be held responsible for hosting unwholesome content posted by third parties.

"The original purpose was to sift out kneejerk reactions that were going to be counterproductive... amid concerns that the police would go wading in there banning newsgroups," said Malcolm Hutty, director of the Campaign against Censorship of the Internet in Britain. "Now it's trying to set itself up as a regulator and claim that it has some kind of legal clout."

The ZDNet item takes a deeper look at the IWF and points out the good and bad merits of either argument, although not as well as it could. What we fail to understand is why ISPs can't just remove these groups before things get really difficult, nobody wants child porn on the Internet and it should be eradicated. Typically such issues always get lost in the politics.

NTL Customers Hit By Worm

By:mark.j @ 9:11:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

According to DigitalSpy, Ntl technical support has posted a warning regarding a new worm. Apparently it contacts specific sites many times over port 80 and has caused regional Inktomi traffic servers across Ntl's network to become overloaded:

Our engineers are adding filtering to our Inktomi cache servers to hopefully resolve this issue and limiting the number of connections that can be made.

We advise all customers running Windows 2000 and especially IIS to read THIS URL. It may also be wise to close down any services that are currently running until you are certain that your PC is not infected.

Several forum users have already reported seeing something like this; hopefully it'll soon be resolved, nasty stuff.

UPDATE:
The problem now seems to have been resolved:

Our Network Engineers have now succeeded in altering the configuration of Inktomi cache servers and DNS to filter this traffic, resulting in a significant improvement in browsing performance.

These changes are being rolled out to all our cache servers overnight. We still recommend however that all customers running Windows 2000 and/or IIS to take the appropriate security measures as detailed in our previous post.

News - July 19,2001

Oftel Called To Account Over LLU Flop

By:mark.j @ 3:56:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

State regulators, such as Oftel, are being called by The European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) to explain why they're still failing to open up their local loops satisfactorily:

The European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) has called upon state telecommunication regulators to explain why competition is failing in their markets and how they intend to resolve this, after its latest research showed that six months after local loop unbundling was mandated by the European Union, incumbent operators are still failing to open up their networks.

Consequently new entrants are still being kept out of most European telecom markets and have less than 5 percent of Europe's DSL lines. Wokingham, UK-based ECTA, a European association of independent carriers, said that in major markets such as France and the UK, there are few unbundled lines, and in Germany, where the process was launched two years ago, new rivals have access to less than 2 percent of Deutsche Telekom's 49,400,000 analogue lines.

The ZDNet item is a short, yet entertaining read, which sadly doesn't mention details of when and whom will be called. We seriously doubt whether any such meeting would do much to improve the situation, although if it pushes Oftel to pressure BT more then that can only be a good thing.

Demon Bulger Case Clarification

By:mark.j @ 3:49:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Earlier in the month it was revealed that 'Thus' backed Demon Internet had won against an injunction, which would have made them legally responsible had a member of the ISP posted certain details (location of the J.Bulger killers).

Today some more details have surfaced in order to clarify the new ruling. Demon feared that, under the injunction, it could have faced fines for contempt of court if such material was posted on its servers.

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, president of the High Court's family division, which granted the lifetime injunction in January, agreed that the original form of the order was "inappropriate" for the Internet.

George Gardiner, senior partner at law firm Buchanan Ingersoll, explained that there was nothing new in the ruling, but that it was better to play safe.

"This just maintains the principle of 'notify and take down'," he said. "Demon has obtained clarification that, provided it removes any information identifying the two men as soon as it is made aware of it, it will not be in breach of the injunction."

Demon asked the judge to specify the steps ISPs should take to prevent offending material being published. But Dame Elizabeth said the pace of change would make it impossible to cover all eventualities, and that it was better to leave the injunction in general terms.

NTLs Financial Results & Crisis Talks

By:mark.j @ 3:35:PM - Comments (6) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

While NTLs full financial results for the last quarter aren't due until 26th July 2001, they still managed to let some details slip into the public domain. The company has reported a profit of £115 Million for the second quarter:

It also said that its full year results for 2001 were expected to be £100 million higher than previously forecast.

The early announcement was a bid to quash fears over the company's slumping share price (in the last week alone NTL's share price has almost halved), and its debts. At the end of the last quarter it had around $15 billion of debt.

"Our current operating results are very strong and we have always had great confidence in the future," said NTL CEO Barclay Knapp.

The Register mentions some information regarding 'fears over the company's slumping share price', which we believe is related to a rumour about NTL being in 'crisis' talks with shareholder France Telecom.

Only just this afternoon an NTL spokeswomen stated, "Ntl is not in crisis talks with France Telecom."

BTInternet Re-Do Site Design & Move

By:mark.j @ 3:26:PM - Comments (6) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Several readers have E-Mailed us today to mention that the ever-popular (subscriber no.) unmetered dial-up ISP, BTInternet, has had a site re-design.

Not only that, the original BTI domain now routs onto BTOpenworlds web server, clearly pointing to BTs earlier intentions of bringing the two groups closer together.

Despite this the site has been very ugly for the past few hours due to a problem uploading the new code, although it’s now fixed:

In response to your suggestions we've been doing a spot of DIY. We hope you'll find the new site faster, easier to navigate and more useful than before.

Do people find the new site any better than the original? Still looks somewhat flaky.

IWF Get Tough On Illegal Newsgroups

By:mark.j @ 10:50:AM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) has decided to get tough on ISPs still allowing newsgroups to be viewed that contain images of child pornography.

This comes in the wake of ISPs asking for clarification, believing they could be arrested for viewing the groups themselves in an effort to determine whether they should be removed:

After much heated discussion and opposition from cyber-liberty advocates, an IWF board meeting resolved that UK ISPs should be should be called to review their policies on newsgroups, and reduce the amount of groups that are shown to be regularly receiving illegal content.

The decision follows growing concern that the majority of racist and illegal pornographic content on the Internet is concentrated within a small number of newsgroups, which the IWF has been identifying and notifying ISPs about regularly for some time now.

While the IWF has no legal powers to force ISPs to act on its recommendations, it is funded and backed by the two major UK service provider trade associations -- the ISP Association and the London Internet Exchange -- so yesterday's decision is likely to have some impact on content hosted in the UK. The IWF also enjoys the backing of the government and the police.

The ZDNet item is interesting and once again points to the deeper arguments involved. As many 'freedom of speech' activists believe, it's not just simply a case of removing the newsgroups, they fear one step will lead to more and so on etc. Perhaps that’s a good reason to remove them now rather than wait for the law to be brought in?

UK Fantastic Launches Business Unmetered

By:mark.j @ 9:52:AM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

UK Fantastic, the same group behind residential unmetered ISP 0800Dial, have launched yet another ISP in the same mould for businesses. Simply called 'Business Unmetered', the ISP (spotted by Net4Nowt) comes with two packages - smaller one first:

Unmetered Internet access for the office...
For use at the office, Business Unmetered provides unmetered access to the Internet from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, at a cost you can keep within your budget. What's more, it's a cost that will not spiral away - £12.99+VAT per month gives you unmetered Internet access with no call charges during these hours. That means that no matter how long you and your colleagues stay online during weekdays from 8am to 6pm, you know your Internet bill will be only £12.99 per month

The Business User package includes...

-0800/0808 dial-up access to the Internet
-28k, 56k modem and single 64k ISDN connection
-99% first-time daytime connection targets
-Access from 8am-6pm, Monday-Friday
-15 free email addresses
-10mb of free web space

Cut-offs come into effect after 20 minutes inactivity and 4 hours absolute use. You may then reconnect immediately should you wish to do so. Outside the hours of 8am to 6pm, the service reverts to a local call metered service.

Please note that the second 24/7 package (below) isn't linked in properly on the main page yet and you can get all the details HERE:

Unmetered Internet access for the office...
For professional use, Business User 24 provides unmetered access to the Internet at a cost you can keep within your budget. What's more, it's a cost that will not spiral away - £17.99 + VAT per month gives your business a quality Internet connection that's free to dial 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. That means that no matter how long you and your colleagues stay online, you know your Internet bill will be only £17.99 + VAT per month.

The Business User package includes...

-0800/0808 dial-up access to the Internet
-28k, 56k modem and single 64k ISDN connection
-99% first-time connection target
-24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week access
-15 email addresses
-10mb of web space
-No daytime 'no-use' cut-offs

From 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, there are no 'no-use' cut-offs. Cut-offs come into effect after 4 hours of absolute use. Outside these times, cut-offs come into effect after 20 minutes inactivity and 4 hours absolute use. In both cases, after cut-off, you may then reconnect immediately should you wish to do so.

Typically the ISP currently supports BT Line customers only, although compared to the prices we've seen for other business packages this isn't bad. No mention of contention ratio and we'd imagine such a thing to be higher given the price. We’ll be adding this ISP to our listings ASAP.

BT Plays Down Service Level Agreements

By:mark.j @ 9:40:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Business level leased and broadband connection lines, especially from BT, should always come with a standard SLA (service level agreement). However in recent months these SLAs have come under fire for being untrustworthy and frequently broken by the provider.

In a rather unusual twist, one only BT could pull off; they've tried to defend SLAs by playing their importance down:

"SLAs are important but a reputation is even more important. Our customers recognise that a track record in delivering a service is key," said Dave Hughes, vice president of BT Ignite's Internet and data services.

Hughes' comments on SLAs are surprising in light of recent complaints from companies unhappy at the lack of any SLAs for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections, for instance. But new research suggests he may have a point.

Peter Judge, directing analyst at telecoms research firm Infonetics, said a recent study of 75 companies in the UK, France and Germany appears to add weight to BT's argument. "BT is right to think that some people still look at reputation. In our sample, 62 percent said it was important or very important. However, considering BT's poor reputation, this should actually be a concern [for the company]," Judge said. In a poll of IT Week readers in February, BT's brand was associated with underperformance in technology.

As the ZDNet item cleverly points out, BT has avoided the whole problem by concentrating on an area (reputation) that they're not exactly known for.

Overall the underlying issues of service and support quality that's supposedly guaranteed through an SLA (to some degree), still needs to be resolved.

Changing Between ADSL ISPs

By:mark.j @ 9:29:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

For sometime now R/ADSL has been a 'hard installation', in the sense that once installed and connected with an ISP, you couldn't change providers (ISP) without having to pay another costly installation fee.

Thankfully this could all be about to change as the ever-informed team from ADSLGuide explain in their latest news update:

BT have proposed a method which would allow the user to switch between the ISP without the need for an engineer to visit the users home to replace the equipment with identical equipment (what would be required at present). Hence, the need for a second install fee would not be necessary, but an admin fee would be charged for the process.

A similar system to this has been 'rumoured' in 'official' circles for sometime now, although to date nothing has ever come of it. Apparently the information came directly from BT, although having not seen any press releases we'd assume it's still someway off.

Issues over 'move' costs and or contracts have yet to be revealed, although hopefully more details will emerge in the coming weeks. No doubt BT will find someway to tag a charge on the end.

Oftels ST-FRIACO Unmetered Guideline

By:mark.j @ 9:19:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Oftel has issued a new report into how BT has acted towards the provision of Single Tandem FRIACO. In short the publication examines BTs current direction towards ST-FRIACO and makes suggestions for how better they could operate it to other Telco's in the future.

One of the primary problems is capacity, which BT has been trying to address since the beginning of the year with some success. Oftels report addresses this with suggestions for how capacity issues should be resolved and planned for.

As usual this is a very technical document and probably of little interest to most readers, especially since ST-FRIACO isn’t that popular among ISPs, although the final paragraph is quite clear:

4. Does BT have an ongoing commitment to provide STF services?

14 Without fettering the Director General’s discretion, the exercise of which would of course depend on the facts as they may arise in an individual case, the Director General is minded to consider that BT would unduly discriminate if it were to cut off supply of STF in order to meet new demands for metered interconnection.

Oftel considers that, especially if the proposed new flexibility for rearrangements is introduced, BT would have an ongoing commitment to provide STF services to operators with existing STF connections (subject to reasonable cause for cessation of supply as may be contained within the contract eg defaulting operator), in the same way as it has an ongoing commitment to provide other services, such as metered interconnection.

You can read the full report HERE.

News - July 18,2001

Brief CloudNine Services Update

By:mark.j @ 5:06:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

CloudNine kindly sent us a small service update this afternoon, seeming quite pleased with their recently introduced FRIACO packages. While most of the update is private, we can snip the following:

Our FRIACO service is looking pretty good. Rock solid stable since we launched and signups now coming in at about the same levels as we were getting when we first launched the Surftime products.

They go on to mention some future improvements to their website and support departments and touch on the issue of market competition.

LogicSurf Internet ABANDON Unmetered

By:mark.j @ 3:36:PM - Comments (2) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

In a shock announcement this afternoon, LogicSurf Internet, which had been due to go live at the end of the month with a new unmetered package, has now chosen to abandon the idea.

The following message was sent to us this afternoon and should help explain their reasons, although many will feel cheated and misled:

After weeks of talks LogicSurf Internet has decided that they are taking too much to handle at this time. We are a new company that started 4 months ago and 1 month in to the year we jumped straight on to unmetered access, which we have all seen done before by other net company's and seen that they have failed.

So we are focusing on 0845 and other net services to get settled in before we expand to unmetered and other big services. We know that we are going back on our word and for the last 5 weeks you have been signing up for 0808 access. We apologise about this but for the future of LogicSurf Internet and their users these changes needed to be done. Therefore we can focus on more user issues and offering extra user services.

Regards

Managing Directors
LogicSurf Internet
http://www.logicsurf.net

Thankfully the announcement doesn't mean unmetered won't ever arrive, just that they'll wait to establish existing services before moving on to it. In a climate where 0845 access is less of a concern, it could mean we'll be waiting awhile before this ISP can produce what they'd hope to.

Fears Of 3G Bankruptcies - Ludicrous

By:mark.j @ 3:28:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Following the auction of last years 3G broadband wireless licenses, operators have long since complained of the cost. That combined with the price of building the networks and phones themselves has been phenomenal.

However despite what some operators have said, three Spectrum Strategy analysts dismiss claims by such companies that the overriding costs will result in their bankruptcy:

"The idea that the expenditure will 'bankrupt' operators is ludicrous," reckon William Bratton, Justin Jameson and Stephen Pentland in an interesting analysis published here. The three acknowledge that many 3G concerns are justified, the carriers' huge investment in 3G infrastructure and licenses should be recouped by higher ARPU (Average Revenue Per Subscriber) by 2012.

At the root of the calculation is the premise that subscribers will spend $25 a month on data, up from the $2 a month that's spent right now. The figures are based on a network that's invested $10 billion and has 9 million subscribers.

The threesome argue that this is a conservative estimate, and that there's "plenty of upside" in that calculation. We're not so sure about the 'plenty' but it's close enough to be interesting, so let's have a look.

The Register's item doesn't say anything we didn't already know, although it's flawed in the prediction of how the report believes customers will respond to 3G. While it's unlikely any operators will succumb to bankruptcy, ultimately it'll be the customers whom have to pay a premium.

Sweden Overturns Data Protection Directive

By:mark.j @ 3:14:PM - Comments (3) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

In what's likely to be another major problem for the EU/EC, the Swedish Supreme Court has today overturned the European Data Protection Directive. They ruled that a person who posted libellous material on the Internet was merely exercising his freedom of speech:

The defendant was accused of setting up a Web site, where he published serious criticisms about several Swedish banks and named individuals working at these banks, whom he accused of cheating money out of customers. But the Swedish Supreme Court rejected convictions in the lower court and appeal court, and freed the person from all charges.

The EU Data Directive has been accused of infringing the European Convention on Human Rights that guarantees the right to freedom of speech and protection of privacy. The Directive stipulates that anyone publishing information about an identifiable individual on the Internet must gain permission from that person before anything is written. But protection of privacy under the Convention is specified as including private and family life, home and personal correspondence.

The Supreme Court decided that acts taken by bank directors in their work do not fall into this category of privacy.

The ZDNet item then goes on the cover the ruling and its potential impact in more detail. It's hard to comment on exactly what this could mean considering we don't have all the facts, which seemed to be a big problem with the case itself.

WonkyPig Back - More Price Changes

By:mark.j @ 9:46:AM - Comments (7) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Following nearly five days of downtime, WonkyPig have now resurfaced, although you'll have to access their site HERE due to the following reason:

Our Main Wonkypig Server is curretnly offline for the final stages of its maintenance, the service is currently operational on Wonkypig 2 - We hope to restore full service shortly.

Despite this the new site now looks MUCH better and the ISP appears to be going into direct competition with 08002go:

We are back after our data centre re-fit, over the last few months we have been working with our main carrier to ensure a smooth change over of servers, routers and dial up racks. We are pleased to say that it's now all done and now back to full operation.

We offer unmetered internet access for just £9.50 per month, check out the services offered with our unmetered package. v.2.0

Free Dial Up Access
Free Mobile Phone
25mb Webspace
Domain Name (.co.uk)
Site Builder Software
News Server
Email Server
Telephone Support

Typically and despite the text above, the signup link isn't yet operational and there's no mention of cut off times or port ratios, we doubt it'd be 12:1 with such a low price. Hopefully all this will be sorted before the ISP places itself back onto the primary domain.

Another interesting thing to note is the 'Webcam' feature ("Watch the WP Staff @ Work"), which we quite enjoyed since the image is currently static:

WonkyPig has a lot of ground to make up and stability to show, hopefully this 6th or 8th time around things will finally settle. Keep an eye on our WonkyPig Specific ISP Forum for the latest changes and THIS post for fun.

The Global Digital Divide

By:mark.j @ 9:26:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

While many of the first world countries would like to embrace the WWW (World Wide Web) to its fullest extent, they're often held back by poorer nations unable to adopt such technology. It's essentially the 'Digital Divide' effect taken out of a local problem and placed into the global market, but not for long.

World leaders assembling this weekend on a luxury cruise liner in Genoa, Italy are set to embrace a new development aid framework that aims to address the yawning gap between rich and poor nations in the electronic realm.

A report issued this week by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the consulting group Accenture, recommends that countries adopt policies that promote greater education, entrepreneurship and transparent government.

"We think we've come up with a blueprint for how to do it," said Mark Malloch-Brown, UNDP's chief administrator, whose program is active in 132 countries.

This week's G8 meeting in Genoa builds on a push begun a year ago at a Group of Eight nations meeting in Okinawa, Japan, which featured a call by top industrial nations to promote affordable technology and regulatory policies that respond to developing nations' needs.

The nagging question at the follow-up meeting in Genoa is whether all of the study and planning of the past year can provoke stepped-up funding commitments on a scale that can make any sort of dent in the digital divide. We'll just have to wait and see.

News - July 17,2001

BigBlueSky Issue New Service Update

By:mark.j @ 7:35:PM - Comments (29) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

In recent weeks the once popular unmetered ISP BigBlueSky has been rather quite, primarily because there hasn't been much to say following the last update.

Many may remember the update in which BBS attacked BT by accusing them of being responsible for the downfall of their service. However it later emerged, through BTs response, that many of BBS's accusations were incorrect. Apparently BT only supplies the ports, nothing more, as BBS proclaimed so loudly.

Today BBS has made another service update, as mentioned in our BBS forum this afternoon:

News Update - 12:45 17/07/01
The bigbluesky is currently engaged in an industrial dispute with BT and have ceased offering 0800 access. We will be live again from 25 Aug. registered users will not need to register again, simply log-on using the 0845 numbers to be posted on the site. Until our dispute with BT is resolved we will not be offering 0800 services.

We do appologise, with regard to refunds - The bigbluesky as per its terms and conditions cannot be held liable for loss of services due to an industrial dispute. BBS have lodged complaints against BT with OFT and OFTEL which may take some time to resolve.

Contrary to the rumors, I am stiil in my office but due to the volume of calls and the tremendous workload will not be available to accept calls until September.

The Directors

Sadly this will do little to appease already angry and frustrated customers, seeming more like an 'excuse' filled update. We were unable to get any real details out of Oftel regarding the dispute; indeed the person we spoke to had no such knowledge.

Typically the real victims here are the customers, forced to stand and wait until things finally get resolved.

RADSL Goes Live Tomorrow

By:mark.j @ 3:54:PM - Comments (2) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Thanks to Andrew from ADSLGuide for reminding us that tomorrow is the 18th July 2001, the day RADSL services will replace ADSL in 90% of the UKs ISPs:

As of the 18th July (Wednesday) BTignite are able to confirm that all orders received by them for the BTipstream 500 service - (USB product) will be provided using the Rate Adaptive profile and acceptance tests.

However not all providers, even those making use of RADSL, will take full advantage of the extra 5.5KM vs 3.5KM coverage extension. Most will adopt it for their USB services, although many will retain the 3.5KM for business offers (stability reasons?).

BTOpenworld in particular won't be making 'complete' use of RADSL:

You want to order from BTopenworld - they at present appear to be the only ISP doing this, but until such time as their order system accepts orders beyond 3.5km they will be only placing orders for users with less than 3.5km of phone line. It is hoped that BTopenworld will start to take orders around the end of the month.

Sadly if your exchange isn't already enabled for ADSL then don't expect RADSL to be your miracle cure. It'll only reach those with a previously 'out-of-reach' and enabled exchange.

London Gets Pre-Pay Internet Scratch Cards

By:mark.j @ 3:43:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Born from the ideals of a pre-paid mobile phone, Alpha Telecom hopes that the same principals can be successfully applied to Internet access when they trial a very special service in London next month:

From 1 August, Londoners will be able to purchase the £10 scratch card from newsagents or supermarkets. Unlike subscription-based services such as BT, AOL and Freeserve, the Alpha service will require no contracts or credit card details.

The phone-card company claims that customers will only need to type in a user name and password, and have 30 days' unlimited Internet access. If the trial proves successful, the service will soon be rolled out on a national scale.

"The popularity that we've seen with mobile pay-as-you-go packages, suggests that there is a sizeable UK market looking for simple ways to pay upfront for Internet access," said Caroline Sceats, analyst at Forrester. "But it's a more complex proposition having the same concept on a computer."

The ZDNet item proposes an interesting idea with just one minor question, where are you supposed to use the cards? We'd guess this is for use with 'ANY' computer, although why bother unless you happen to be a traveller from out of town? Seems like some important info. is missing.