The US Department of Justice has hit out at the growth of voice over IP (VoIP) communications services because they make surveillance and wiretapping difficult. Not being able to listen in so easily could foster “drug trafficking, organised crime and terrorism.”The VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act
Category: Regulation
Ofcom’s Media Literacy Strategy
Centring around the principles of research, partnering and labelling, Ofcom have published a report outlining a strategy for media literacy in the UK.
Ofcom recognise that the public are now faced with a huge choice of media, and that familiarity and media awareness are essential to managing this choice, protecting children and understanding the world around us. The regulator wishes to promote media literacy as “A media literate person will have the potential to be an efficient worker, an informed consumer and an active citizen. People who are not able to use effectively the new communications technologies will not be able to take full advantage of the benefits they bring and may become marginalised in society.”
Ofcom’s strategy is based around three main work strands:
“Research. Key to the success of our early work and in defining future priorities is to develop an evidence-base of research. This will help us to identify the issues, to direct our work and inform progress towards achieving our goals.
Connecting, partnering & signposting. We aim to add value to existing media literacy activity, to stimulate new work and to promote and direct people to advice and guidance concerning new communications technologies.
Labelling. Viewers and listeners need to have clear, accurate and timely information about the nature of content so that they can make informed choices. Our prime concern is to ensure consistency in the presentation of information related to possible harm and offence, in particular to help protect young and vulnerable people from inappropriate material. This advice can be effectively delivered using a content labelling framework. Ofcom will work with industry players to explore the possibility of creating a common content labelling (information) scheme for electronic audiovisual material.”
Of primary interest to many, the call for a universal e-content label covering TV, internet, mobile products and games presents a considerable challenge to industry. Ofcom isn’t even sure it can be done – and of course the regulator has no remit when it comes to internet content.
Ofcom’s strategy and priorities for the promotion of media literacy
Cable and Wireless Buy Bulldog – What’s the Threat to BT?
Cable and Wireless’ recent purchase of Bulldog means that they acquire four years of local loop unbundling experience, 38 ready-equipped exchanges and a number of well-marketed, innovative products. All for the bargain price of UK£18.6 million (€28 million) – though Bulldog’s net assets at the end of 2003 were only UK£1.6 million (€2.4 million). This puts C&W in a position to offer unique services, and not just resell products from BT Wholesale.
Bulldog have long been critical of BT, and have said some fairly dramatic things over the last few months. My own personal favourite quote was from Richard Greco, when talking to The Register in 2001: “Oftel needs to force BT to move. And if BT doesn’t, then Oftel should point the gun – and pull the trigger.” However, he was quite gushing about BT when agreed to carry their SDSL products some months later: “It really is a powerful combination.”
Bulldog’s frustration at BT stemmed from the glacial pace that the communications giant was unbundling the local loop. Bulldog have installed their own equipment into 38 exchanges, a figure that C&W now want to raise to 200. They will doubtless use this position to tempt more ISPs to jump from bitstream services to LLU – as C&W chief Francesco Caio said in a statement: “The acquisition of Bulldog will accelerate our ability to deliver directly connected DSL solutions for our existing and potential customers with an experienced team specialising in LLU services.”
Bear in mind that it’s not just BT that is causing frustration with LLU – across Europe the entire process has been slow and as yet only a small percentage of lines have been unbundled.
BT has already demonstrated that it’s worried about complaints about its LLU conduct and progress by making huge cuts to wholesale prices and promising faster progress. With C&W breathing down its neck even more, expect those exchanges to be unbundled faster than ever before.
Japanese Consumers Protest at Broadcast Flag
Japanese television viewers have begun complaining to broadcasters over the sudden removal of editing and copying freedoms they’re experiencing now that the country’s version of the broadcast flag has been rolled out on digital terrestrial and cable channels.
NHK and and the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters launched the broadcast flag on 5 April, limiting viewers to a single copy of programmes carrying the signal. As programmes can only be copied once, no editing can be performed either. Within a week NHK and other broadcasters had received 15,000 complaints and enquiries.
This move also means that Japanese consumers will not be able to remove adverts from programmes they have recorded for archiving, or make a backup in case an offline recording is destroyed.
Furthermore, viewers have to insert a user identification card, B-CAS (from the company who manufactures them, BS Conditional Access Systems), into their digital televisions in order to watch broadcasts.
It’ll be interesting to see the scale of protest when America’s broadcast flag system rolls out in just over a year and a month – whilst not requiring an ID card to access broadcasts, the flag will tell all new television sets what can and can’t be done to a signal – right down to preventing any copying whatsoever.
Ofcom’s LLU Proposals
UK regulator Ofcom have published proposals intended to open up competition in broadband provision for data, content and voice services.
As predicted, Ofcom have announced a market review consultation of local loop unbundling (LLU) – it was the threat of this review that many believe prompted BT to make huge cuts in its charges for LLU. BT hopes to avoid regulatory intervention by improving access to the local loop and charging fairer rates.
To help with local loop unbundling Ofcom are also proposing the establishment of a Telecoms Adjudicator, who will be entirely independent of Ofcom and the industry.
Ofcom Chief Executive Stephen Carter said: “These proposals, combined with the recent proposals on migration charges, mark an opportunity to accelerate the prospects for sustainably competitive investment in Broaderband Britain. Furthermore, Ofcom particularly welcomes BT’s commitment to both price and process improvements in these key wholesale products.”
Data-over-DAB: GWR/BT partnership announced
The widespread understanding of DAB is in its use to provide the next generation of radio and many have found the advantages that the CD-quality audio broadcast bring.
We at Digital-Lifestyles have been excited about using DAB to broadcast data efficiently to many devices since 2002 when it first came to our attention. DAB has a theoretical total output of up to 1.7 Mbits per second and has the major advantage that is broadcast. The costs of distribution of content is fixed, no matter how many people receive it, – the opposite to other data delivery channels such as GRPS or 3G.
Last year we saw a number of devices being demonstrated at IBC2003, some which used GSM and DAB, others combined GPRS and DAB, all featured the receipt of data over DAB and the provision of a back channel over the cellular services.
A number of trials have also been run. There was a six month trial in the UK which started in October 2003, run by Capital Radio PLC, NTL Broadcast and RadioScape Ltd which delivered Dolby 5.1 surround sound over live Internet Protocol (IP) datacasting using the Windows Media 9 Pro CoDec.
Today we are pleased to see that UK broadcaster GWR and BT wholesale have come together to create a new digital multi-media UK broadcast operation. The new entity will create mobile broadcast services to deliver multi-media content such as news, sports and entertainment. They plan to launch a London-wdie service during 2005, and expand across the Uk in 2006.
The new venture will utilise Digital One’s digital broadcasting capacity, running alongside eight national digital radio stations. Digital One is 63% owned by GWR. The rest of details for the deal are fairly complex and we would suggest reading the press release to get a full understanding, but GWR are confident of additonal earnings from it with an estimated £5m in the year ending March 2008.
Data over DAB sounds like a great idea – it is but sadly there are currently a couple of obstacles to everyone receiving broadband-type delivery speeds of content to portable handsets.
The most significant is that enshrined in UK law is a restriction on the balance between the bandwidth that must be used audio broadcast and that for data. The original 1996 Broadcasting Act specified that data must take up no more that 10% but in a 1998 review by the Secretary of State this was changed 20% of the multiplex over a 24 hours period. Glyn Jones, Operations Director of Digital One told Digital-Lifestyles that through negotiation with the UK regulator OFCOM they have agreed to alter their licence by changing two of the radio services original included Digital One’s licence – a rolling news service from ITN and a financial information service from Bloomberg – which were withdrawn in 2002. They will be replaced with the GWR/BT wholesale service and Digital One is confident that this will not exceed their 20% data allocation.
DAB receiver cards have been developed as add-ons for portable devices, but there will be a delay before it becomes mass market as the DAB chipsets need to be incorporated into mobile phones and devices before it can really fly.
Keep your eye on this one. We feel it is still a very exciting means of wide spread delivery of content.
Examples of possible services provided by GWR/BT:
News and sport: – There would be no need to dial-up to find out the news & sport. Every time the user picks up the device the very latest information will be available to browse. It is similar to having a news portal on the phone without the need to pay each time the user wants to look at it nor the wait to dial-up and down load information. It is already there and can be used 24/7 for a low fixed fee.
Traffic congestion: – Breaking traffic and travel updates would be always available on the phone or PDA, ready to be checked when the user is on the move. There would be no need to dial-up each time to discover delays, the information is constantly pushed onto the phone memory and can be accessed for a low fixed cost. The latest information replaces out of date information automatically making it very efficient and simple to use.
Live entertainment device – the mobile phone or PDA becomes a live entertainment device as it will automatically receive games downloads and movie previews to be played at any time. Games can be played at any time with others using the mobile phone connection as well as movie clips forwarded.
Stock market information – the PDA could have a stock market ticker and share updates constantly refreshing. There is no need to dial-up for the latest business and financial information as it is directly broadcast to the device.
GWR Press release – GWR and BT create mobile digital datacasting operation
EU challenges EU-wide music royalty structure
The European Commission has sent a shot across the bows of the EU royalty collection agencies, saying they fear by them working closely together across the EU, but bound within their own territories, they will extended the national monopolies the societies current hold in the off-line world, to the Internet, potentially in breach of EU competition rules.
The EU executive said it sent a ‘statement of objections’ detailing its regulatory concerns to the organisations over their so-called ‘Santiago Agreement’ – a pan-EU system that allows national organisations to collect music authors’ copyright proceeds.
In 2001 the collecting societies of the UK (PRS), France (SACEM), Germany (GEMA) and the Netherlands (BUMA) notified the Commission of the ‘Santiago Agreement’. Since then, all other societies from the European Economic Area, with the exception of the Portuguese society (SPA), have signed up. They were also joing by the Swiss society (SUISA).
While strongly supporting the “one-stop shop” portion of the Agreement, and acknowledging adequate copyright protection and enforcement, the Commission “considers that such crucial developments in online-related activities must be accompanied by an increasing freedom of choice by consumers and commercial users throughout Europe as regards their service providers, such as to achieve a genuine European single market. “. The EU wants to encourage competition between the agencies, not consolidation, in their words,
“The Commission considers that the territorial exclusivity afforded by the Santiago Agreement to each of the participating societies is not justified by technical reasons and is irreconcilable with the world-wide reach of the Internet”.
Coming on the heels of the EU record fine of Microsoft Media player, we feel this shows that the EU Commission is serious about protecting the rights of the public to the fair and reasonable access to media in a digital age.
The collecting societies have two and a half months to reply to the Commission’s objections.
EU Press release – Commission opens proceedings into collective licensing of music copyrights for online use
UK’s Progress Towards Digital Switch-over “Astonishing”
The UK’s culture secretary, Tessa Jowell described the country’s progress towards digital Switch-over as “astonishing”. The statement was prompted by a new BBC report, “Towards Achieving Digital Switch-over” which confirmed that the country could switch over to digital broadcasting by 2010. The new BBC report has similar findings and recommendations to the Ofcom paper we covered last month.
There are some caveats contained in the BBC document, as there are several issues that need to be straightened out – but if the industry and the Government work together, then the 2010 date should be achievable. If left to market forces, it may take until 2013 for 95% of the country to be ready.
Issues that need to be addressed cover areas like ease of recording from digital broadcasts, telling unconverted households about digital television and simplicity of use for new services.
Tessa Jowell said in a statement responding to the report:
“This Government is absolutely committed to working with the industry to achieve digital switchover. The potential rewards, including more choice for consumers and more space for new services, are too great for us not to be.
“The fact that half of homes in the UK now have access to digital TV shows there is a considerable appetite for the product out there. This provides a solid foundation for continuing the drive towards full switchover.
“Of course there are obstacles along the way, many of which are highlighted in this report. We are working closely with stakeholders to determine the actions needed to overcome these in the journey to switchover. This report will help us focus on the challenges ahead.”
Ofcom’s Digital Switch Over Report
“Driving Digital Switchover”, Ofcom’s report to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, contains 30 findings and recommendations for the UK’s move to digital broadcasting, and the decommissioning of analogue signals.
- Ofcom are recommending that the switch, due to be completed by the end of 2010, should be phased in region by region, shutting down analogue channels one at a time. They believe that a firm timetable will encourage the adoption of digital broadcasting between 2007 and 2010.
- Additionally, they suggest that the UK Government review the BBC’s obligations to digital and add further requirements, including: obligations on rolling-out digital transmission nationwide, providing public information, continuing to provide its channels on the free-to-view satellite platform, and providing on-air marketing of digital TV on a platform-neutral basis.
- Importantly, Ofcom believe that free-to-view digital satellite will play an important part in increasing adoption of digital viewing, particularly with those who do not wish to subscribe to services such as Sky. Ofcom is considering regulatory intervention “to secure a viable free-to-view satellite proposition.”
- SwitchCo is the body that Ofcom are suggesting is created to be responsible for managing the switch-over by the agreed date. The suggest that the body is entirely independent and not run by the government, any broadcaster or even Ofcom.
South African Telco Declares Voice Over IP Illegal
South African telecommunications provider Telekom has threatened to lodge a formal complain with the country’s regulator over programs such as Skype, which it claims are used as “network bypass software”.
Telkom have stated that VoiP does not have any impact on its revenues, but will file a complaint with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa if necessary.