Blackarrow Consulting

OFCOM with Lord Carter has published the Interim report about the vision for some of the country’s critical digital services and communications issues, and it was readily digested by all and sundry. The press have really dissected the report for its facts which you can via your favourite search engine, readily find out. Alternatively can find many of the reports via the News Headlines in Detail feature.

So why is this post necessary? Well I just wanted to cover off a few of my own brief thoughts about the report. Broadcastnow have the best summaries – Main Objectives and Action Plan. Please review before we go into my own views/comments.

1. The report covers background of the shining lights of technical development that have gotten us to this point – and no mention of Cable at all in that background, all BBC, BT and BSkyB.
2. Stresses the importance of the production of UK content for UK consumers, with an undertone of protectionism. Is Britain really so like France?
3. The BBC is intertwined in the strategy, and is seen as a primary action agent for much of the work that is to be done. This is an extension of the Freeview principles rather than a return to the approaches tried with the initial OnDigital Pay TV approach of 1997/98.
4. A primary driver for a Digital Britain is to provide more public services online, which has a definite undercurrent of not just feature improvement but also Government attempting to cut costs in my view. Whether the service of a fully online Government interface would be more effective is not discussed, and no quantification of the benefits is really made.
5. Much of the efforts are tied to 2012 – which could seem to be an arbitrary date but it is not. This all seems to have been tied to the grandstanding event of the London Olympics.
6. The government is going to do its best to avoid paying for anything, and every digital service provider will be asked in some way to pay but there is no clear view about what ‘every’ means and what ‘how much’ is. This is expected to be worked out in the work of the coming months to product the final report, although there are definite statements about the discrepancy between how much Pay TV has not invested in content production in the UK and how that needs to change. Virgin Media and BSkyB may be unhappy with this.
7. Huge swathes of the countryside will be carpet bombed with connectivity according to the report, but the practicality is low, cost is high and this is indeed hinted at throughout the report – just one of the many contradictory views taken in the report that tries to say everything. Several commentators have already taken the view that 3G/4G wireless services will be those pipes and that placement of infrastructure for this will be made easier. It seems planning laws will be even more swayed towards the operator rather than the people.
8. More bandwidth will be made available to the wireless operators – some more painful or useful than others. Higher frequencies for improved capacity, but only useful in open spaces or short distances, lower frequencies to improve coverage. The lower frequencies will be made available by shifting 2G capacity around and clearing out Analogue TV services, but there will be impacts to this for the current incumbents of the 2G GSM services and those customers who currently are wedded to those older, more capable phone technologies for voice.
9. The spectrum to provide the bandwidth will cost money but nothing like how the 3G auctions went, in fact it may be purely a beauty contest distribution of that spectrum. They have learned the lesson that it is not worth anything unless you have an application for the spectrum and customers who will pay for it.
10. DAB radio is a wonderful crutch for a future Analogue Radio turn off expected to be around 2015 (as long as key criteria are met). The lack of success of DAB is skirted around.
11. No discussion is made of the technology issues that surround transitions to improve the infrastructure and performance of the digital networks in Freeview and DAB. No mention of the technology and environmental cost of migration of DVB-T only STBs to DVB-T2 STBs to allow the new services like HD and more channels, as well as DAB+ to allow more services for Digital radio. Hello, almost every single one of those existing 14 million Freeview STBs and DAB radios cannot receive these new services.
12. Return path and Interactivity on Freeview (and Freesat probably) is lightly mentioned – again features which are just not there right now for all of the existing boxes. Some commentators believed this was reference to the old modem return paths as in the early On Digital boxes, but we are talking here about Ethernet return paths to get at IPTV, something which is directly discussed as well.
13. The government believes that a new set of STBs will need to be produced, with the heavy involvement of the BBC, that are IPTV only boxes running who knows what middleware, with who knows what capability, running over who knows what network, compatible or not compatible with the existing efforts of BT Vision, Freesat and BSkyB. However recent discussions reported in the press hint that the BBC is leading a group in defining common technologies for this.
14. A reference is made to unfortunate delays in some of the spectrum becoming available – but then if you take five years to migrate from Analogue TV to Digital then what do you expect? I know the US is having difficulties with their transition (which is taking the blink of an eye) but a middle ground would have been better and it seems the government is admitting it finally.
15. A great discussion about content is had in the report, which mentions that ‘alternative funding to advertising revenues’ needs to be identified, but with no answers – this is something that currently hard pressed broadcasters are wrestling with in the face of a dead advertising market. Quite a lot of work to be done here.
16. The now famous 2Mbps minimum is mentioned and it seems that people believe that is going to be capable of supporting full IPTV – not. The report also states that the average needs to be 20Mbps. That is a massive ratio of difference between the average and the minimum, particularly when the type of content that the network will need to move, is rapidly increasing in size/bandwidth need.
17. Channel 4 is to be gone in its current form, widely discussed before the report came out. However exactly what it will be is still a long way away.
18. Net neutrality is dead in the UK.
19. Monopolies of service may be allowed to make investment more likely by service providers, whilst at the same time the report implies that opening up networks could drive development also. This is contradictory.
20. Digital Rights Management is a bedrock of content provision according to the report, and it gets completely confused about the fact that music is now transitioning away from DRM – the report thinks that DRM is still in the game there. Also it seems that the report writers think that Apple iTunes is the only music and video service as it is mentioned explicitly rather than saying music or video service.
21. A positive is that there is a drive in the report to say that old business models should not survive unless they are fit for the purpose, however in the same breath that pushes DRM. This is even though the music industry experience is demonstrating that DRM does not work. The report is very light on the issues of content providers who charge as much for a digital copy as for the actual physical delivery, even though costs are lower, as well as the business model of location staged releases and location based cost differentials – both major drivers of piracy.
22. The focus in the report about digital use and piracy is purely from the content provider view and not from the customer view. In other words, focused on current invalid business models and not from the customer view of identifying new business models to supply customers with what they want.
23. It seems also that the government is focused on supporting the prosecution of customers who want innovative products that deliver content in ways they want, and want to make it easier for content owners to prosecute the little people, as opposed to the commercial pirates.
24. Child protection is discussed quite heavily, but ignores the responsibility of the parents and other users of the system – seems to state that ISPs need to take responsibility. This is a very strange view for me, as I understood that this should be between Government who have the police, the courts, and parents.
25. There is discussion about education and training to increase use of Digital technology, however how that will be handled is vague and implies that ISPs and other service providers will have to be responsible for that. This is very strange, pretty much like expecting the local councils to be responsible for how people drive their cars rather than making sure that there are roads for them to drive on.

This has been a fairly long blog post but I needed to get my thoughts out. As the Digital Britain final report is prepared, and more contributions made to it, I hope that more discussion can take place to address some of the strange views in the report, as well as the contradictions, and also resolving the primary technical and funding issues that the interim report has not addressed at all well.