Topic: Internet [General]

This week we have seen the larger broadband providers such as BT, BskyB and Orange, release their results from the last quarter of 2007.

While Virgin and Tiscali have yet to post their results the figures revealed can show the trends in the marketplace and where things are going in the industry.

BT proudly announced that it retained its title of the 'UK’s biggest broadband supplier' after gaining the largest amount of new connections at the end of the year. This allowed it to have a 35 percent share of all new broadband connections, the extra 177,000 new punters swelled it's number of customers to 4.25 million and netted it a very nice £1.46bn promptly overtaking rival Virgin Media.

BskyB, or just Sky to most of us, also saw rapid growth seeing an extra 260,000 new faces giving it an increase of 28 percent, this allows it to become the UK’s fastest growing broadband provider. The figure of 47 percent for the number of customers who take another service from them shows that it's bundling strategy must be working, this is an increase of 17 percent on last year.

With the good news for some there has to be losers and Orange reported disappointing results. Although they added 75,000 new subscribers they also lost another 4,000 between October and December. This growth for a provider 1,138,000 customers will surely disappoint the board.

Speaking on the trends in the industry Ciaron Dunne, from comparison site  Broadband Genie, commented.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which is basically the RIAA for the rest of the world, has criticised European ISPs for not doing enough to prevent piracy.

It has called on them to police their users in order to stem the growing traffic in 'infringing materials', outlining the means which ISPs should use, including port throttling and content filtering. One means they ask ISPs to employ is bound to get the internet rights in arms, as they want providers to block certain websites, even mentioning The Pirate Bay.

Although there have been no response from any providers their reply is not likely to be enthusiastic to the demands. Once filtering on this level starts then it calls into question any providers motives. Would they start to block a rival ISP? Or maybe websites who criticised them? It would be the start of an Orwellian internet, similar to that provided by China.

The full memo of the IFPI's recommendations can be found on the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) website (PDF).

LINX, the London Internet EXchange which connects the networks of more than 280 ISP's so that traffic may flow more efficiently between has seen a sharp increase of traffic.

Five years ago member numbers stood at just 120 with peak traffic at 13.5 Gigabits per second, this means that while membership numbers have doubled, it's seen an incredible 1500% increase in traffic highlighting the growth in bandwidth hungry applications.

While LINX started out as a UK operation it now has members in over 40 countries with a large proportion of members come from the traditional LINX heartland of Europe. Nearly a quarter of all members are now based outside Europe with those in North America equating to 14.7% with a further 7.5% coming from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania.

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) recently published the results of a survey on security and anti-spam measures implemented by European ISPs.

The good news is that nearly 90 per cent of ISPs offer free spam filtering for it's customers, handy indeed as recent reports show that there are 20 billion spam email messages received in the UK every day, which equates to 300 for every man, woman and child in the country.
Backing this fact up, UK ISP Eclipse said that during October it blocked 513 million spam e-mails using it's latest software installation developed by IronPort Systems.

Customers are urged to check which, if any, security measures that an ISP provides before signing up to a lengthy contract, picking the right provider could save you up to £60 by not having to fork out for a security package.

A new report from uSwitch predicts that there will be 21 million homes connected to the internet by 2010, but only one million of these will use dial-up.

These figures reflect the recent news that nearly nine out of ten current internet users use broadband. uSwitch have predicted this figure based to the fact that in 2002 only 1.3 million internet users were connected via broadband, yet this soared to 14.5 million in 2007.

It's not the end of dial-up though, as it will continue in very limited number of connections, much the same as ISDN has disappeared from residential premises in recent years.

Just after it had announced that over half wireless networks were unsecured, the governments Get Safe Online campaign has come in for some flack.

Analyst company Ovum has said that the scheme has 'limitations' and wondered if the people involved with the campaign really knew what they were talking about. They highlighted the fact that at the launch there were seven questions put to the panel from observers and only one got a relevant answer.

While not saying that the scheme was without merits, they questioned where it was relevant and could capture the interest of young people.

Dial-up is really on it's last legs now with an estimated 1.4 million UK homes dumping broadband slow cousin in the last six months.

According to Topic Point this leaves only 2.2 million narrowband users and it claims that in 2008 this number will dwindle to 700,000 and by 2010 dial-up will have all but disappeared.

Point Topic estimates that Orange has about 580,000 dial-up homes, which is as a result of customers flocking to Freeserve at the end of the millennium, but BT, Carphone Warehouse (with it's ex-AOL users), Virgin Media and Tiscali all retain substantial numbers.

Will dial-up every die? We suspect not totally as where there is no Wi-Fi access then users on the move have limited options available to connect to the internet, but for residential dial-up users it seems that they will soon be a thing of the past.

Internet usage grew by a hefty ten percent last year, but worryingly for ISPs in the UK we only managed to grow by  a paltry one percent which seems like the UK is reaching saturation point.

The figures are from a report by Comscore, who are a 'Global Internet Information Provider' which sounds like a nice title for data analysts. The increases are, as you would expect, in the developing countries, with India leading the way with a whopping 33 percent increase over last year, with China and Russia seeing good increases.

When it comes to the time we spend online it seems that we spend 31.2 hours each month surfing, with the figure increasing to 35.6 for broadband users. The top of the list was Canadians who spend over 39 hours online each month, possibly due to the cold dark nights over there!

The site also includes the most visited websites for the last year, with no surprises in the list. Although figures on website popularity are quite often a bone of contention Microsoft comes out unsurprisingly top of the list (all those Windows updates?) followed by Google and Yahoo.

If you fancy a peep at the tables the pop over to Comscore.

As we all know shopping online has always been cheaper than popping out to the local shops. But now a survey by comparison site uSwitch suggests that the UK's average broadband price is now so cheap that it's worth doing all of our shopping online rather than braving it out in the real world.

They recon that an average shopper can save £42 per month shopping online, with an average price of a broadband connection around the £15 mark customers can save around £27 a month...and that doesn't include reduced travel and transport costs.

Now while that might sound like a good deal for most of us blokes, the thought of not having to visit Tesco's again does sound appealing, we're not so sure 'online shoe shopping' with catch on with the fairer sex.

"Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information."

The descriptions above may not be familiar to UK Internet users, but to users in countries like China, use of the Internet is, shall we say a more restricted experience that it could (should?) be. Human Rights group Amnesty International agrees.

Expected to speak out at the forthcoming ISPA Awards Ceremony this week, Amnesty International UK Campaigns Director Tim Hancock will call on both users, and ISPs alike to "keep alive the things that have made the internet great - its democracy, its freedom and the way it gives people access to knowledge and the opportunity to participate and be heard ... Businesses whose operations impact on freedom of speech bear no less responsibility for upholding human rights standards than other industries."

More information available at the Amnesty Internation's irrepressible.info compaign website.