This post looks at the response to the Digital Britain Report, as well as asking how this effects us in our region. Hull Digital was interviewed on the BBC Radio Humberside breakfast show which you can listen to below:

Earlier in the week, the final Digital Britain report was released to an expectant Great Britain. It has generated a huge amount of coverage, which unsurprisingly, is very mixed. Rory Cellan Jones from the bbc (http://twitter.com/ruskin147) has posted on the their technology blog here, and has attracted a huge number of comments, universally negative towards the Government’s report.

What really stood out was this:

This morning, as he visited the Crystal Palace digital television transmitter, the Prime Minister made an extraordinary promise. Just hours before the publication of Digital Britain, he said this:

“Britain’s going to lead the world. This is us taking the next step into the future, being the digital capital of the world, making the necessary investment.”

This is categorically a BLATANT lie and more evidence that this report is woefully inadequate and 10 years too late. How we (the UK) can expect to be the “digital capital of the world” with the target of 2mb broadband is not only misguided, but frankly, plain rude, arrogant and misjudged.

Do they, the Government, really think that the UK population are that stupid to believe this?

Adam Westbrook, a local media journalism commentator and reporter summed it up very well on his recent post here:

The Promise: 2Mbps broadband for everyone (and “action separately to address the issue of next generation broadband”)

Result?: epic fail. While broadband for everyone is great, 2Mbps [...buffering...] broadband is inadequate for [...buffering...] the growing needs of digital journalism including [...buffering...] the huge demand for [...buffering...] video on demand. Separate action to [...buffering...] investigate faster broadband looks like [...buffering...] the buck being well and truly passed.

With the icing on the cake being that we, the public are being asked to fund this next generation broadband with a £6 per year tax levy. The £6 amount is neither here or there, but it is the fundamental principle that WE are being asked to pay for something that Governments should have done 10 years ago.

Finances, the jaw dropping truth

It has been estimated that it would cost around £27bn to install fibre country-wide. That you might say is a whole lot of cash.

But, to put this in perspective, we spend around £1bn per year just in Iraq.

Yes, £27bn is a big figure, but surely, a necessary one? Just think of the business benefits that it would bring? Anyway, as mentioned before,  4 words come to mind. Too little, too late.

So what do the Digital Britain measures include?

• A three-year National Plan to improve Digital Participation
• Universal Access to today’s broadband services by 2012
• Next Generation fund for investment in tomorrow’s broadband services
• Digital radio upgrade by the end of 2015
• mobile spectrum liberalisation, enhancing 3G coverage and accelerating Next Generation mobile services
• robust legal and regulatory framework to combat Digital Piracy
• support for public service content partnerships
• a revised digital remit for Channel 4
• consultation on funding options for national, regional and local news

There are lots of worthwhile areas of focus here, but it still comes back to what the vast majority of people relate to, and that is broadband speed.

How does this effect us here in Hull?

The simple answer is that we just don’t know yet. There are many questions to be asked, one being do we need to pay the £6 tax / levy for NGN (next generation network) investment? Being in a unique, and frankly, very unpopular positon here in Hull, with our local ISP / teleco, Kingston Communications / Karoo there would need to be written and concrete assurance that something was also being done here to catapult us onto NGNs.

What is certain that with Digital Region and NYnet, there is an understanding that something MUST change and soon.

It is also hugely encouraging that there seems to be a real groundswell in feeling, people-power, and concern in the area, with Hull Digital and Humber Mud starting to become noticed, and actively participating with the Council and Hull Forward to ensure that we are not left behind.

Your say

The Digital Britain report is a cornerstone in our future, not only personally but also for business.

We want to hear your views, not only about our region and how the report effects us, but what you think about the country, and is it enough?

What is certain, it remains very controversial, and it is clear that Gordon Brown is still using a 56K modem.

On Monday, having twittered that we were going to be meeting Steve Jagger from Quickline Communications to test a Wimax signal, we were surprised and pleased to get a tweet from @mrwilliam, the BBC Radio Lincolnshire’s drive time host! You can see the tweeting that went on in the picture above…. It ended up with a short interview conducted from the garden! We’ve put it together into a short first podcast – many more to come!

William was good enough to get in touch the next day to say thanks, and he very kindly gave Radio Humberside our details too, so this led to a call from Tim Johns, the breakfast show producer, and ended up with an early morning trip to the BBC studios in central Hull.

We were made very welcome, and at around 7.50am, we were ushered into the studio and met Phil White the host, and here is the interview!

A big thanks for the opportunity to talk about Hull Digital and broadband in the area. For those of you who may be interested, we are on Radio Lincolnshire again on Monday 2nd March at around 6.30pm talking about email, how to make sure it doesn’t take over your life, and how to use it effectively for marketing. Tune on in!

Jon has some frustration (source: Twitter)

…I’m guessing that this is a common scenario for many people? The fact is that it doesn’t really matter how much bandwidth is available between your home network and the Internet when somebody on the network is dominating the bandwidth. If somebody on your network is downloading a file or watching a streaming video then, as long as the bandwidth between the machine that is serving content to the Internet exceeds the speed of your Internet connection for receiving it, all other users on the network will have rather unsatisfying performance as their download or video will consume all available bandwidth. Bummer!

This is frustrating, and can lead to some interesting “discussions” with the bandwidth hogs that you share a network with. In my house the question “ARE YOU DOWNLOADING???!!!” is painfully howled between rooms and users with alarming frequency… What is needed is prioritisation of traffic on the home network, and between the home network and the Internet.

Businesses have faced this challenge since they first connected their networks to the Internet, and they use different techniques to control user behaviour, including:

1. Blocking bandwidth hungry applications from employee computers
2. Blocking bandwidth hungry applications from the network
3. Prioritising traffic by application on the network

Businesses often pay a small fortune for this kind of management of their systems, employing specialists to define their user policies and enforce these on the network, often using expensive equipment and software. For a home user it’s probably not going to be cost efficient to make this kind of provision… or is it?

If you’re a typical 2009 person with DSL based broadband and a home network then your home network probably consists of a few basic elements:

1. A broadband Internet access connection from an ISP (Internet Service Provider)
2. A device that negotiates a broadband connection between your home and the Internet, via your ISP
3. A device that creates and manages the LAN (Local Area Network) or WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) in your home, typically using Ethernet, WiFi or homeplug.

A means to connect each device (could be a laptop or desktop computer, a printer or a games console… these are generically referred to as “hosts” in networking terms) to the LAN or WLAN

Within this kit of parts let’s focus on number 2, the device that negotiates the broadband connection. This is a DSL modem or router, or a combination modem and router in one. If you live in an area where you can get cable service from a provider such as Virgin Media then you may alternatively have a set top box, also called a cable modem, supplied by the cable operator. It’s quite common now for one box to take care of both your connection to the Internet and your network, and the majority of home broadband customers will typically this kind of device. It is also this device, or a replacement for this device that can unlock the bandwidth management woes.

The basic device that your ISP shipped to you, or the device that you picked up yourself takes care of a couple of important jobs:

1. Negotiating the connection with the ISP (the modem part)
2. Negotiating and managing connections with hosts that want to connect to the home network to either access each other or the Internet (the router part)

To connect your home to the Internet through an ISP you need to ensure that you have a device capable of negotiating with the ISP in the correct way. If you’re a Karoo customer then you need to be especially vigilant when choosing a DSL modem router as Karoo makes its connections using a technology called PPoA, rather than the more common PPoE, and not all of the routers available on the market in the UK support this. Everything that we discuss in the next section needs to work slightly differently if you’re a Karoo customer (surprise!), but it’s not an insurmountable amount of hassle.

So, the device, this modem-y router-y thing… this can be configured allow you to take full control of your network traffic. A working group has taken specific DSL routers and re-engineered the firmware of the routers, replacing the standard stuff with open source firmware that includes new functionality that the hardware can easily handle but that the manufacturer chose not to include.

There are a few open source firmware / router hardware combinations that can be created, however the most popular router for modification is the Linksys WRT54G series, which is available from both online and offline stores in the UK. The open source firmware itself is available from a variety of developers, and one of the easiest to work with is Tomato.

Tomato is a good example as not only is it relatively easy to understand but it also supports a traffic management technique called QoS (Quality of Service) that allows network traffic to manage the allocation of bandwidth among users and their applications:

Tomato QoS interface (source: Wikipedia)

QoS allows the flexibility to make policy decisions to put your traffic into “classes of service“. These determine the relative priority of traffic on the network, and control the maximum percentage of the total available bandwidth that can be made available to that “class” of traffic, during times when demand for bandwidth from users on the network exceeds Internet bandwidth available from the broadband connection.

Tomato can be made to work on a number of different routers, but the Linksys WRT54G is probably the most popular of these and is available in the UK for many DSL and cable modem connections. Coming back to that Karoo issue though, Karoo users need to use PPoA for their connections, which the WRT54G does not support. The most simple way to take advantage of the open source firmware is going to be to continue to use a Karoo compatible DSL modem, such as the Netgear DG834G for establishing the connection to the Internet but to then hardwire a router such as the Linksys WRT54G into one of the Ethernet ports of the Netgear and use the Linksys to create and manage the local network in the home.

This article is not intended to provide a walkthrough or a comprehensive reference guide, just to illustrate that there are solutions out there for the things that frustrate us, if we’re willing to think outside of the user manual. QoS is considered quite an advanced traffic management technique and you’d need to spend quite a lot of money to buy a router that has it listed as a feature by the manufacturer. Thanks to the ingenuity of hackers and the open source community we can now invest a very small amount of money in hardware, and a little effort and time overwriting and configuring firmware to bring this feature to our home networks.

Could the writing be on the wall for spousal bandwidth wars?

Of particular note in the comments on the article is this one post by Hull Gold which seems to perfectly sum up the situation:

This was because like all proper cities Manchester has a vibrant, competitive market economy,.Unlike the outmoded, antiquated…& lets not forget… notorious, monopoly capitalist system of telephone & IT services which exists in Hull with KC.

This would simply NOT be tolerated anywhere else…and indeed it isn’t.

Hull will NEVER achieve top ten status as a city because aspiring new IT companies look at the system KC provides in Hull, have a good laugh ,and set up in another town or city that has moved forward into the 21st century.

Likewise, despite having a city of over 200,000 ,only a few thousand customers even bothered to sign the recent Downing Street on-line petition concerning KC monopoly’s.

The bold is our emphasis, as it rings very , very true – Hull is sadly lacking any really big corporate companies, bar Smith & Nephew and Reckitts and the city is in desperate need for them. With new business comes new people, with jobs who will drive the economy and local business. Without this, the city continues to struggle.

We are very keen to start making a lot more noise about this in 2009, and so do come along to the monthly MeetUp >> sign up now!

With no choice, and essentially a monopoly, the people of Hull, normal familes and web gurus, are stuck with this ISP, leadng to a vocal volume of dissent. Their 8mb service is far from 8mb, although it is not the only ISP with this advertising standards issue.

Most people would not mind paying £15 for a real 4mb service, but at £30 for the ’8mb’ package, it is clear that overcharging is an issue.

So, there are of negatives towards Karoo, but are they unfounded? A recent report has shown Karoo in rather a good light.

Everyone at KC is celebrating following the publication of two independent service comparisons. The results, one of which covers telephony and the other relates to broadband speed, place KC as one of the top performers in the industry.

Not only are Karoo placed at the top of the speed tables in the UK for October:

KC’s Karoo broadband service has topped the speed league table of leading broadband comparison site BroadbandChoices.co.uk for the sixth time this year – making it the fastest broadband provider in the UK for October according to the Broadbandchoices website. It previously took the top spot in the tables in January, April, June, July and September this year.

But also for their telephony service:

Best provision of telephone services according to Ofcom

The company also ranked top of the tables for its direct residential service in Ofcom’s Quality of Service scheme, TopComm, for the provision of lines within specific timescales, service restoration and bill accuracy.

From hull digital’s perspective, it is not the telephony service which we have issue with. It is with the lack of choice, and also the nationwide practice of advertising misleading speeds:

Karoo (www.karoo.co.uk) was ranked the fastest service in their medium 8Mbps^* category – the UK’s most popular category – during October, with customers enjoying an average of 4.5 Mbps. Other companies in the list include O2 (4.0Mbps) and SKY (3.2Mbps).

Surely advertising the ‘expected’ speed is better for all? Under promise and overdeliver is the phrase which comes to mind. With the imminent investment from BT and Virgin, Karoo looks like it could be left behind. There IS an opportunity to really make a name for themselves with high speed web access. A small area, much less investment needed, great PR opportunities and get much needed business investment in the area.

What do you think? Is Karoo helping the region? Should they invest? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.