Especially for Somerset - Google tests uber super dooper fibre

Tweet

Read more! Google have now installed part of their fibre network at Stanford, and the rollout continues apace.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Dear Somerset,

Perhaps you would care to ask some of those on Stanford Campus what on earth they might need such connectivity for and why on earth a company (who should know better according to your arguments) such as Google would pay for it?!

Read more!

Google New

Tweet

Read more! Am expanding the blog a little because I feel so few people (who need to) understand what consumers need a decent connection for, nor what those who are online are already doing.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com

Tweet

Matt Cutts (if you don't know who he is, google him!) just announced on Twitter a few minutes ago that Google are trying to keep everyone up to date with their new products with Google New.

For those who aren't the early adopters of the products that Google et al then adopt (read: buys up), this will at least get you into the loop before the majority of the world adopts it and hammers your networks! Some of us were using Youtube long before Google acquired it or most people had even heard of it, but were ignored when we said video was coming to the masses. Youtube is now known to possibly the vast majority of the globe.

You may not have looked up FourSquare, Facebook Places, ipadio etc yet. You may never have tried Skype video, ichat, Qik, Livestream, crowdsourcing, mashups, real time search or any one of 1000 other apps and services that are now on the go, but you can take it as read that these are the types of services which will achieve mass appeal and drive NGA take up.

And they all have one thing in common. When I said I think the killer app is here with social networking, I realised afterwards that you may have thought I meant Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn. I don't. I mean 'user created content, sharing, conversations, etc' exactly as social networking meant prior to t'Interweb.

The least you can do is follow Google's new product streams and be there just in front of the majority of your consumers......Or you can watch the apps that Google has its eye on, and then you won't be taken by surprise when Google purchases an already highly popular app you actually know about.

And you should not be doing this by deep packet sniffing, or employing hardcore analytics to spy on your users/customers, or nodding sagely when people talk to you about things you are completely unaware of, but by doing exactly what the rest of us are - talking, conversing, sharing, asking, responding, interacting, experimenting etc.
Read more!

Mbps means nowt

Tweet

Read more! If you don't already know, the EU contingent (apart from Benoit who paid for the cloud to move!) missed Fiberfete in Louisiana. However, what FF showed was the world has moved on. And the EU contingent were there in spirit to absorb the knowledge.

This blog post can be read at http://5tth.blogspot.com

The Gigabit Society was just one of the talks that should have left UK politicians rewriting their manifestos.

Sadly, none of them seemed to be tuned in....out on the road campaigning, where of course all connectivity is minimal. Trouble is, this is the stuff they need to know. But they can't connect...so, for them, it still doesn't exist. Ho Hum.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, RDAs (Regional Development Agencies) are under siege from utility companies trying to get smart metering funding, FTTN=Fibre To The Nobody, ISPA took BT out at the knees for BET's roll out (that'll be a wholesale NO) and the electioneers failed to use Twitter, social media etc to engage with the people.

If you don't know where the links are for those stories, I strongly suggest you try Google. (It's a search engine.) Meanwhile, Google are digging up their own parking lot to avoid planning issues to discover innovative methods of laying fibre. Go every single private company and community who can find a route round bureaucracy to JFDI so we finally get FTTH (Home) or FTTB (Business).

This country is now in the top ahem 30 - woot, not - and unless we stymie the incumbents and ignorant ministers etc, there we will stay.

My favourite, favourite bit of the last two days has to be Lafayette's Truth Squads. Having spent a blissfully happy week there a mere two months ago, I think this blog may now become a Truth Squad Evangelist. Incumbents - put out your press releases.....we will respond.
Read more!

Think big with a gig

Tweet

Read more! It had to come and many of us have been awaiting today. Google are stepping into the FTTH space. Telcos and ISPS around the world should start quaking in their boots, if they didn't when Google ran a very fat pipe across the Pacific. Communities and consumers should cheer.

This may well be called an experiment, but in reality, it's pure and total disruption. Allow me to WOOP!

If Google were running in the up and coming election, I think they'd be hard-pushed not to take a massive number of votes!

Open access model - perfect.

Nominate your own community - that's where community champions come in, as we have all been saying all along, but many in the industry and government, including local government, have chosen to ignore.

Encouraging innovation - at last!! Without the right infrastructure none of the possible advances which will come from bedrooms and home offices around the country. And in the countryside.

Discovering what the actual problems are, instead of what the telcos claim them to be - great. And knowing Google, these will be shared with the world.

What does this mean for the UK?

I prophesy that BT will be putting out an announcement or two in the very near future that they are upping their battle plan for FTTH in the UK. We all know that Google has close ties with the UK and Ireland, and there is no way Google are unaware of the problems in the UK with 21st century comms, nor how to get around them.

Google getting a few networks in by the time of the London Olympics....that's also a possible.

Is Google taking over the world? Who cares if it gets FTTH to rural communities, finally.

I suspect this will definitely be one the agenda for the colloquium now - book your place today.

Read more!

Is Don Tapscott right?

Tweet

Read more! I listened to him speak in Copenhagen at the FTTH Council event and have to admit I have more notes from that session than any other. This week he has taken on the music industry.

Whilst Murdoch and Google battle it out over news access by us mere mortals, the music industry has been applying undue pressure, particularly in the UK, in order to protect an outdated business model.

Don has decided to point out to the music industry several options available for their survival. I personally would not want anything to do with the billing engine responsible for ensuring each person was credited the appropriate amounts, but hey, jobs for the boys there in his suggestions!

What many people are endeavouring to achieve is to change the scarcity model into that of abundance. The problem is that the "protectionists" apparently didn't see this abundance lark coming. So, not having considered solutions prior to its arrival, they now feel threatened. Instead of embracing it, they are panicking like mad and endeavouring to hang on to the olde worlde models.

Won't work. It is that simple. And the telcos are in a similar kerfuffle.

If someone comes along, doesn't play the game, and instead of offering an 'up to', unlimited connection by the current definitions of unlimited etc, makes available a connection that is, "Really, all you can eat. No, honestly, it is, try and break it if you want, we want you using bits", what will we hear from the telcos? Certainly, no more of Benoit's hunting the mythical bandwidth hog, because our all-new 'use it or lose it' telco will be celebrating having found the people who really USE their network. It should be in transporting bits that telcos are making money, not in throttling and restricting the movement of bits.

Several years ago at a conference, I had a chat with Steve Kennedy (previously of Thus) over lunch about data transport costs approaching zero. That is even more the case now. If you have built your network on an assumption that by moving bits around, you stand to make ever more money as the costs of doing so approach zero, then what you want is people USING your network. You want them sharing videos, video conferencing, using VoIP, uploading, downloading, you name it.

You need to make it easy for those users. Not hassle them as the top 5% bandwidth hogs. Don't frighten them into not downloading a film or music track in case it might prove illegal with threats that their kids will suddenly be cut off in the middle of career-affecting school work.

Let everyone have access to what they want. Solve the billing engine problems by collaborating across sectors eg news, music, video etc and charge a flat rate that is supported by similar reductions in access costs because those running the access networks will see their usage go through the roof.

Stop trying to be all things to all men. Focus on what you are good at, and do it well. Make your money from a penny (or a fraction of a penny_ made for each of millions of transactions, instead of trying to find the single million penny/pound deal. Make a little from lots and lots and lots of people doing things. Because by making everything abundant, you will be far better off than now.








Read more!

UK opt-out villages plan?

Tweet

Read more! In light of the growing frustration from rural areas about current broadband connections, is there a bigger plan we know nothing about ....

Could it be that the plan is to remove rural areas entirely from the NGA agenda by filling them with the digitally reluctant and internet paranoid who Martha Lane-Fox fails to convert? Thereby diluting yet further the rural voices of those desperate to get a 21st century communications connection.

This Google opt-out village video may explain everything.....

We think there could be yet more social issues that could be dealt with in this way after the 2010 election...what do you think?!

Read more!

making FiWi happen: Google espouse white spaces

Tweet

Read more! When arguing for the use of the digital dividend for affordable wireless broadband on the panel last year at the Oxford new media event (as against for HDTV or mobile use) some of the attendees questioned whether such a thing would be possible. Nice to see Google advocating it too but in a more ubiquitous way - of course!This is precisely the level of tech and thinking that could help make FiWi happen deep into rural areas in the UK. And use some of the unused spectrum.

I seem to remember that not too many years ago, James Stephens of Consume.net came back from an event in Copenhagen talking about how use of the white noise spectrum could extend wifi networks' capacity substantially. This seems to me to be similar thinking and a potential solution to consider for FiWi. Read more!