News - Digital Britain: how the government plans to make Britain the digital capital

[HEXUS]

The highly-anticipated 245-page Digital Britain report has been published, here are some of the highlights.

Read more.

[aidanjt]

Every time I see/hear "Britain is going to lead the world", and "technology" in the same publication/press release, I just know it's going to suck, hard.

[Lyall3s1]

Universal access to broadband (as in every house in the UK) by 2012? I doubt it. Although if they did manage it I'd be glad to get over my rubbish 1.5mbps . Also reducing illegal file sharing by 70% in the next 12 months is extremely unrealistic.

[father smurf]

Also reducing illegal file sharing by 70% in the next 12 months is extremely unrealistic.

Let me guess ... using imported Chinese software technology?

[Crevan]

Universal access to broadband (as in every house in the UK) by 2012? I doubt it. Although if they did manage it I'd be glad to get over my rubbish 1.5mbps .

Don't forget that by "universal" they mean 2mbps Not exactly a world leading speed, eh? It's not even close to average in Europe, mind you. And Japan's probably gonna have the whole country covered in fibre before that time

[Jay]

Let me guess ... using imported Chinese software technology?

that it self is a pirated and hacked version of another bit of software.

[father smurf]

that it self is a pirated and hacked version of another bit of software.

And includes some Opensource code with the license removed - which is verry naughty as well

[Barry]

lead the world, thats a bold and frankly complete bs claim concidering how far behind this country is to others

As for 50Mbps by 2017, why so long, adsl and cable has been in the UK (for most) since 2002 and most still cant get more than they did 5 years ago, infact if anything the quality of connections have gotten worse due to more and more traffic and the lines not being able to cope with so much data.

[McPhee]

The one single thing I'd have hoped for in this is an end to this "Fair Use Policy" bull. I'm currently locked in to an AOL contract being billed £28/month and my connection is constantly capped for going over the 10GB limit they introduced in Feb. I've got to wait til December to get out, until then i get to download files at 15kbps and play games with 300ms+ ping. There's 5 people in this house, there's no way we'll ever be below the 10GB mark, even with these speed limits in place. Sadly i don't think anyone gives a hoot in that regard.

The 100% 2Mbps coverage thing is good news though. It's not exactly going to move this country forward in terms of what is possible but 2Mbps is plenty for general internet use.

[GaryRW]

I'm currently locked in to an AOL contract being billed £28/month and my connection is constantly capped for going over the 10GB limit they introduced in Feb. I've got to wait til December to get out...

I'm no expert on this, but if they have introduced a cap which has materially affect the service you receive, you should be able to argue strongly that they should release you from the contract.

Others may jump in and say the ISP's don't let it work like that, but strikes me it's a material change in the contract/service, and any contract term saying they can do things like that to you as a consumer without giving you a get out should be seen as unfair under unfair contract terms act.

In the time it's taken me to type this, I've realised it may be that they had a pre-existing "fair use" policy, but have only recently changed the exact implementation. I'd still argue it was a material change to the service, and so the above should still apply.

[Noxvayl]

Digital Capital of the world... wtf? Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden will more than likely have fully fibre networks before 2012... half of those nations are at 70% fibre coverage already and Britain are banging on about ADSL still, that is the most ridiculous claim this government has made right next to the eradication of terrorists by fighting them. Yeah violence leads to less violence, teaching the world such a valuable lesson there numpties.

I also love the fact that they want to reduce illegal file sharing by giving Ofcom more powers for prosecution... when have threats ever reduced anything? Even if they take people to court and fine them heavily it's not going to reduce file sharing. All it will ever achieve is stopping people from viewing the media because they would rather do without the media than buy it, so nothing they do will get file sharers to purchase over priced goods.

In my opinion Virgin's idea of a subscription service with unlimited downloads and no DRM is the right idea, although it would need to give you good prices. The industry gets its money although less of it than they are used to and customers are happy with the return they get from it. A far more effective deterrent to file sharing than prosecution because negativity can only lead to more negativity and unfortunately for them they loose out more than file sharers do.

Another major failure by the labour government in my opinion.

[Andeh13]

As i said in the thread in General Discussion;

I wonder if we get a cut of the profits when Virgin Media, Sky, BT etc etc make a fortune charging for the services that will use the lines we are paying to install! Seems only fair tbh!

[alsenior]

The BPI claim P2P
file-sharing costs the UK music industry £180m pa (2008) while IPSOS gives a
loss in the UK for TV and films of £152m (2007).

I like how here they have taken the figures for Pro-IP Groups at face value with out doing any research into there figures.Although they do counterbalance it with this.

A recent study in Scandinavia has shown
that the biggest users of unlawful peer-to-peer material are also the biggest
paid-for consumers of music.

Also they do say that what is really needed is for the music industry is to work to fit there business model into the new market rather than the other way around.

But what i really don't understand is that how they are going implement this

We are therefore setting out
in this report a clear path to addressing this problem which we believe needs to
result in a reduction of the order of 70-80% in the incidence of unlawful filesharing.

who they are going to enforce this i don't know. because to my knowledge no-one has ever Successfully measured the amount of certain types of data on decentralised networks. and even then how are they going Put a £ figure on this.An i can just imagine that lord carter is sat there thinking that there is some sort of switch that isp's can throw to stop file sharing. this is just not the case.

[amdavies]

McPhee, Ring up the Citizen's Advice Bureau and tell them what's happening with AOL and what they would suggest given the change in the contract.

The BPI claim P2P file-sharing costs the UK music industry £180m pa (2008) while IPSOS gives a
loss in the UK for TV and films of £152m (2007)

I don't think that this is in anyway accurate.
First, they assume that anyone infringing copyright on music, TV and film would have actually gone out and purchased it if they didn't get it for free.
Second, according to Hollywood, no film actually makes a profit. Go ask David Prowse how much his percentage profit deal has made him from his Star Wars roles. Hollywood Accounting means that the original Star Wars trilogy supposedly made no money whatsoever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting


When we can match South Korea for internet speed penetration, let alone surpass it, then we can start throwing around meaningless soundbites that look good in paper but have no basis in reality. That isn't going to happen unless we lay out a huge amount of money and, given the current financial condition, that's not going to happen for a long time, if ever.

[99Flake]

DAB radio by 2015 and ceasing analogue???

This is utter lunacy, what about cars? I know many people with new cars, high end cars, that don't have dab radios, my car doesn't have a dab radio and it is a well know fact that DAB + cars really doesn't work all that well.

Someone needs to shoot the person with that idea!

[chrestomanci]

DAB radio by 2015 and ceasing analogue???

This is utter lunacy, what about cars? I know many people with new cars, high end cars, that don't have dab radios, my car doesn't have a dab radio and it is a well know fact that DAB + cars really doesn't work all that well.

I am with you there.

I brought a new car about 3 years ago, and at the time I was an avid 6-music listener (Digital only), so I asked at car dealers about getting a digital radio fitted. I just got blank stares, and was then told that the radio receiver was a sensitive one and should pick up all stations just fine.

I have since got myself a Pure Highway in car DAB radio. Even that does not work very well. I sometimes get interference from other users of similar devices, and in some towns it cannot get a good enough signal to work.

I don't think it will be possible to phase out the analogue FM signals any time soon because the situation is not like digital TV. Unlike Televisions, Radios are not bulky, and are often built into other devices (cars, mobile phones, TVs, clocks etc). They are also cheap, which means that a typical household could easily contain dozens. For these two reasons, it is just not practical to ask people to buy any sort of ‘add on box’ like set top boxes for TV, to convert old devices.

Also, the current weak signal problems that freeview is suffering from are in part due to the fact that they share a frequency allocation with analogue TV, so the power is being kept low to prevent interference with analogue. When people complain about weak freeview reception, Ofcom say that it will be better after analogue switch off, and they are probably correct.

DAB uses a completely different frequency allocation at 174 – 240 MHz (formely used by old 405 line TV), so there is no reason not to broadcast on maximum power. This means that weak reception areas will always be weak unless more transmitters are built, which will be expensive.

Finally, I can’t see much point in switching off FM transmissions. I dare say that the government want to make some money by re-selling the band to other commercial users, but I doubt that they will get much for it, as it will never be possible to build mainstream devices using the band, as it will always be in use for FM radio in other parts of the world.

Someone needs to shoot the person with that idea!

To be fair to the government, they where interviewing the minister on the radio last night, and he said that if they don’t manage to convert enough listeners by 2012 they won’t switch off analogue.