by nick on February 28, 2010
Akamai’s ‘State of the Internet report’ shows the average UK broadband speed is 3.5 Mbps and just one in 12 surfers are achieving 5 Mbps and above. At present, South Koreans can get speeds of up to 100 Mbps and Korea plans on raising the bar further with a tenfold increase in their ultra broadband to 1 Gbps by 2012 (200 times faster than our ‘fast’ 5 Mbps).
Whitehall’s shoot-for-the-stars plan? Well, their Universal Service Commitment wants every postcode in the UK to get a bare minimum of 2Mbps by 2012 (yep, just 2Mbps). In order to install this they’re talking about a 50p per month tax on landlines (cumulatively that’s around £1billion).
£6 a year to get a fibre optic line everywhere probably sounds like a reasonable deal. But the naysayers point out that the poorest – and least likely to take advantage of it – will be funding the speed and convenience for the wealthier.
It could be argued that if broadband is so important for the future of the UK’s infrastructure then our government should step up and make funding available. But let’s be honest, as our economy’s gone to hell in a hand-basket, the IT slush fund disappeared into RBS long ago. No, those who want to use the infrastructure to become more successful need to take care of things themselves – no body is coming to help (at least not any help worth having).
That’s where I think they’re looking to the wrong group to fund this. There’d be more traction and less voter pushback for a Business Broadband project (that’s my new label for uber-broadband).
UK business should be canvassed to put its hand in its pocket. Granted, now isn’t the best time to ask businesses for a handout, but when is?
Many large businesses operate on leased lines (such as banks) and don’t suffer the same bottleneck problem of demand we do but they too would benefit from faster coverage and the chance of increasing customer interaction.
This is an investment in their future, not a cost. As such, perhaps we could be allowed some accountancy leeway where we could do some fixed asset right down.
Contributing to it could be thought of like a church collection: the plate goes past everyone but only those who wish to partake do so. That said, we’d need the stern, furrowed brow of a priest-like character to make sure we all give fairly and not shirk out of our cumulative responsibility.
That’s where I see some A-list business folk coming in (think Alan Leighton, Alan Sugar, Deborah Meaden etc). These ‘celebs’ could form a steering committee. Their real value would be in persuading CEOs and proprietors to part with cash; they’d push the hard sell by demonstrating an understanding of their difficulties and a vision of the future.
Branches of request:
Peer levy – perhaps by business category e.g. shop keepers donate £500p.a. Perhaps by staff number (e.g. £75 per employee) or by turnover (e.g. £200 per £100k t/over).
Profits – pressure should be levied at those who stand to gain the most. That’s Internet service providers, search engines, telecoms companies and larger multichannel retailers for a start. Get the telecoms guys to dig as deep for this as they did for their 3G licences. Google donated $2 million towards the upkeep of Wikipedia this month because the strength of one affects the other.
Individual – the pot would also take private contributions. If Robbie Williams wants to throw in £100k to get a better Spotify connection it’s ready and willing to accept.
Google launched the Fibre for Communities program this year in the states. Essentially they want to pair up with providers and show the world that super fast broadband can get to the masses. The difference with a partner like Google is they’ll do so much of the heavy lifting. Personally, I’d take my Universal Service Commitment to the shredder and have Mr Mandelson on a plane to California (with his new pot of business money), persuading the Google team that the UK should be the first outside the USA to benefit from their new insight.
Have I got it all wrong here? If not, what would you and your organisation be willing to give over the next three years (if anything)?
by nick on November 28, 2009
On the right -
Prevent search engines from indexing news content and have readers pay through a variety of subscriptions to recoup lost earnings from physical news sales. People have no right to free journalism and aggregator sites (especially Google News) are to news, what Pirate Bay is to music.
On the left –
If you build it they will come. The internet is an unparalleled open space where the common good is freedom of information without class divides. If providers open their content equally the market will ensure the winners are the cream of crop. Revenue will be made through increased attention and trust.
Further right against ‘Don’t be evil’ -
Stop the Google vampire by embracing its largest competitor instead – Microsoft’s Bing.
If Bing courted enough content providers to bed exclusively with them (by paying, say, the world’s top 50 newspapers and top 1,000 magazines) that would be a huge boon. Would it be enough to grab 10 or 15 percent of market share?
Of course it’s all about money for Murdoch, not attention and that’s where he and the digerati are looking at same issue from different ends.
by nick on August 12, 2009
A while ago, I had the pleasure of listening to Google’s Robert Swerling talk saliently about site design. The brief version of his presentation:
- Velocity – give it fast and let them get on with other things
- Visibility – don’t surprise consumers
- Value – provide real value
- Variation – never come out of beta (love that line)
As I find myself saying more often: business is mostly simple; but it’s not easy.
by nick on August 12, 2008
We all know history shows us nothing lasts. The Roman Empire, the Warsaw Pact, the telegram, the Two Ronnies… whatever. You name it and time will show itself to have moved swiftly on. Google had another record month in June performing 7.1 billion searches, but I predict, with a prize-fighter’s confidence, that Google cannot remain the de facto search engine. There, easily said wasn’t it.
Perhaps it’ll be a hostile take over or a merger. Perhaps implosion (though a lack of funds seems very unlikely today). Perhaps huge customer revolt over privacy issues or ‘evil’ infringements. Whatever, but the inventor of the mass-market car couldn’t create a lasting success of things and history will show Sergey and Larry to be no different. However, the guys at Yahoo! aren’t waiting for me to be proven right in 2090. They know they can’t beat Google at their own game so a month ago they started letting others do it for them. Well, that’s one of their strategies to stop the game, set and match scenario they’re staring at today. They’re opening up their search to allow developers to code the final pieces, thus avoiding all the colossal development costs. The Yahoo! blog says:
“our goal with BOSS is to remove as many of the barriers as possible to creating new search products. By providing deep access to Yahoo! Search’s investment in engineering, sciences and core search infrastructure and removing key usage restrictions, we are encouraging a whole new level of innovation in search experiences.”
The more the merrier, eh? Kind of like getting all your friends to help you stand up to the bully in school, but it appears a viable strategy as long as several really do something different from Yahoo! and gain critical mass. I suspect the promotion techniques to come will be far more interesting than the resulting algorithms.
Then there’s Cuil, surely the first of many serious search contenders to come. Serious because its frontline folks are ex-Google, but also serious because it promises different results, not Google regurgitations. They’ve indexed three times more pages than any other engine but “stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency”. Many Google critics cite their heavy reliance on linking as relatively easy to spam (or ‘game’ as it’s known). In a nutshell, Cuil is promising to favour authority over popularity. What will the others promise and will they nibble away enough at Google to actually hurt that dominance? Could it be a death by a thousand engines…?
Akamai’s ‘State of the Internet report’ shows the average UK broadband speed is 3.5 Mbps and just one in 12 surfers are achieving 5 Mbps and above. At present, South Koreans can get speeds of up to 100 Mbps and Korea plans on raising the bar further with a tenfold increase in their ultra broadband to 1 Gbps by 2012 (200 times faster than our ‘fast’ 5 Mbps).
