Netflix in the UK and Net Neutrality

I see Netflix are launching in the UK which is good news for TV and film addicts but is going to cause some headaches at the Internet Service Providers.  Some report put Netflix usage in the US at over 30% of all bandwidth, or to put it another way, it adds half as much again to current Internet traffic volumes.

Whilst this isn't in itself an insurmountable problem for the backbones, the crunch will come when subscribers realise that the £5.99/month Netflix fee doesn't change the contract on their home broadband connection.  Most broadband connections in the UK are provided by BT and their cheaper tariffs have usage limits.

B4RN in focus

 Much as I agree with many of B4RN's goals, I do have some serious concerns about the project - one in which the "innocent public" is being asked to plough a lot of money (£1.5m)

My concerns about B4RN are:

1. there isn't enough detail supporting the published business plan
2. the proposed telephony service is a white elephant
3. the project has single-points-of-failure
4. the finances don't add up
5. there is no promise of openness
6. can B4RN Ltd. deliver the proposed service?

Why don't B4RN want on-line discussion?

I note with interest that the B4RN web site  doesn't seem to have a "feedback" or "comments" section on their web site, which is a shame.  I hope the individuals who are being asked to invest in this appreciate the risk involved and that there are many questions about the project plan which are unasked, let alone unanswered.

A discussion forum directly accessed from the project's marketing page would at least give everyone a chance to debate the project's viability.

It seems odd for a community orientated project, especially one promoting Internet access, not to be publicly engaging with the community in this way.

B4RN: How To Lie With Statistics

Darrell Huff's excellent book How To Lie With Statistics was written over fifty years ago and yet is as applicable today as it was then.

I was reminded of the book when I was surfing the The B4RN project's web site where they have illustrated their progress using a barometer-style graphic.  It is a little deceptive as is it appears to have a non-linear scale, but having being alerted to this kind of skullduggery by Huff, I knew I had to delve deeper.

Rutland Outage

Rutland Telecom had an outage this week which they reported on their web site thus:

Service Status Wednesday 28th September 2011 @ 08:35 (BST)
We are experiencing an outage from our Back-haul provider which is affecting all internet/phone services.

Rutland are one of the leading alternate rural broadband providers in the UK, using BT's copper pairs in Sub Loop Unbundling for VDSL2 Internet access similar to what BT themselves are offering with Infinity but targeting rural locations.

What's worrying about their outage is that it is clear that they are totally reliant on a third party to support their service and they are using their Internet access service to provide telephony, which is much more fragile than the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) that we have grown accustomed to.

Wireless in the community

mobile computing

Prior to the widespread availability of ADSL, wireless Internet access was the viable interim solution for community networking projects to provide Internet access for homes in rural areas.

Now with mobile computing eclipsing fixed Internet access, wireless has changed from being a stop-gap to being a necessary service in it's own right.  Community networks still trying to compete with the big telcos in fibre deployment are running in last year's race, it's time to re-focus on what the community needs.

More "winners" in the "race to infinity"

BT have announced the all of the top ten finishers in their Race to Infinity PR stunt will be enabled for their FTTC service.

Naturally the campaigners are pleased but I worry that they will be missing out in the long-term.  With such high levels of community interest in high-speed broadband, they have missed an opportunity to apply the Big Society solution - commission their own network and get much more than BT will be offering.