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Learning to live without the net

July 22nd, 2009 | No Comments

Man in a park using a laptop

Bill Thompson feels the pain of the digitally dispossessed.

I have just endured a week of limited connectivity and it has given me a salutary lesson in what life is like for the digitally dispossessed here in the UK and around the world.

I have been driven to searching for open wireless access points so that I can download my e-mail, sometimes wandering the beach looking for elusive 3G signals just to get my Facebook status updated.

It was my own fault, of course. I spent a few days on the Norfolk coast with my son and some of his friends in a wifi-less cottage in an area that had poor 3G coverage, though I was probably less frustrated with lack of connectivity than he was, as he wanted to keep in touch with his mates back home while I was mostly on holiday.

Then I spent the weekend at the lovely Latitude Festival in deepest Suffolk, there to represent Writers’ Centre Norwich as we had supported some of the poets in the Poetry Tent.

No wireless there, at least none that I could get connected to – there did seem to be a private network for the tech crew to use – and the phone networks were clearly swamped as text messages were taking two or three hours to be delivered while my 3G dongle repeatedly failed to connect.

Photos of the beach sat on my hard drive because I didn’t have the bandwidth to upload them to Flickr, while my ambitious plans to deluge the world with AudioBoos from Latitude came to naught after the first one took twenty minutes to upload over the slowest phone connection I have experienced for at least five years.

In between the Norfolk beach and the muddy fields of Latitude I had my third experience of life offline when I came into London to chair a conference organised by Arts Council England for arts organisations that want to explore the potential of new technologies to reach audiences or just work more effectively.

Network crash

"The real benefits of the online revolution will only come when net access is seamless, pervasive and guaranteed."

Bill Thompson

Bill Thompson

The conference took place in the Lilian Baylis Theatre at Sadler’s Wells, a wonderful space that works really well for conferences because the acoustics and lighting are designed for performance. Most conference centres are so soulless and dispiriting it takes all your energy to stand up at the lectern, so it was a pleasant contrast to be in an inspiring space.

We had wifi access inside the theatre as the conference included tutorials on social networks and online engagement, and the audience were encouraged to contribute questions online so they could be displayed on the screen behind the speakers.

Unfortunately the wifi stopped working about half-way through the first session of the day, and those of us with smartphones and laptop dongles were forced to resort to slower 3G connections.

It appeared that we had overwhelmed the capacity of the wireless network that the venue had set up for us. I talked to the IT support engineer and he asked me how many of us were trying to connect, and I told him I estimated that thirty to forty people were using laptops and probably the same number had wifi-enabled smartphones.

Wider lesson

After he had recovered from the shock he explained that the wifi router they had installed could only support twenty simultaneous connections and had crashed when we all tried to log on.

He was very efficient once he realised the problem and sorted out a second network and higher-capacity kit by lunchtime, but it was interesting that twenty network connections were originally seen as adequate to support one hundred and fifty people at a conference about technology.

I go to many technology events now where the ratio of online devices to people is greater than one, as many of us have a laptop and a phone or two, and conference organisers are going to have to adapt pretty fast to this new reality or they will quickly lose custom.

But I think there’s a wider lesson here.

Finding myself intermittently online this week was a mild inconvenience for me, and I managed to get connected when I needed to so that urgent business could be dealt with.

However slow, unreliable connections are a fact of life for millions of people in the UK, and most of the world’s internet-using population, and experiencing it again myself made me realise that the real benefits of the online revolution will only come when net access is seamless, pervasive and guaranteed.

Slow down

Digital Britain logo, DCMS

The rhythm of my life now depends on easy and fast online access in the way that the driving beat of drummer Suren de Saram supports the frenetic guitar sound of Bombay Bicycle Club – one of the best acts at Latitude, by the way.

I have grown accustomed to being able to respond quickly and easily to people, to having much of the world’s information at my fingertips, to being able to share my thoughts and observations with my online friends and those who have chosen to listen as I think out loud.

Without it I slow down. Things get lost or forgotten, ideas go nowhere and trains of thought are shuffled into the sidings and are neglected. An unreliable network is worse than no network at all, and forces me to limit my imagination to those things that don’t rely on being online all the time.

Although the recent Digital Britain report was criticised for proposing that we should aim to offer universal access to a relatively slow 2Mbps (megabits per second) network connection by 2012, on reflection I think that a reliable and pervasive two megabits might be enough to kick-start the next stage of the network revolution, because it will allow everyone to begin to embed online access into their lives.

Once we do that, then the demand for faster access will grow, but it will also be possible for commercial operators to see the benefits on offering next generation access, creating a virtuous circle that will benefit us all.

Being offline has been a learning experience, but it’s nice to be home to my twenty megabits. I just hope that there’s some connectivity at the Port Eliot festival, where I’ll be next weekend!

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Engaging with the net

June 16th, 2009 | No Comments

The Digital Britain report offers a lot to work with, says Bill Thompson.

"We live in a largely digitised country, so in one sense the Digital Britain report is an exercise in ensuring that the legal and regulatory system catches up with the lived reality for most of the UK population rather than a visionary document describing a far-distant future.

As such it is a serious attempt to ensure that government makes the best possible use of the network in serving us all, and that businesses offering access to the internet or providing services and content over the network are regulated, rewarded and cajoled as necessary to ensure that the UK does not fall even further behind the rest of the industrialised world.

READ THE DIGITAL BRITAIN REPORT

Digital Britain report(3MB)
Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader.

I criticised the interim report when it was published in January because it had been written behind closed doors and offered few opportunities for consultation and engagement for those outside the charmed circle of invited experts.

But it is clear that Stephen Carter and his team have listened to and taken notice of the extensive debate around their initial proposals. The result, though far from perfect, offers a good basis for work on the detail of implementation and legislation, and there are clear signs that those who want to engage will be able to do so.

There are suggestions on how to liberalise and improve access to wireless infrastructure, with potentially transformative proposals to shake up spectrum allocation to build a next generation mobile network offering 50Mpbs in cities and 5Mpbs in rural areas.

There is a confirmed commitment to delivering a universal 2Mbps (megabits per second) fixed-line broadband service to the whole country by 2012, and a six pound a year levy on existing copper telephone lines to pay for the ‘final third’ next generation coverage if the market cannot deliver. Two megabits per second is too slow for me, but universal service offers so many opportunities for engagement that it’s definitely worth having.

And there may even be ‘cultural tax relief’ for games developers and distributors, on the lines of the model that has made Canada such an attractive place for UK developers to move to.

The report comes on a day when the importance of the internet and the services it supports has been drawn to the attention of the whole world.

"Unfortunately the proposals to limit file-sharing are less well considered and seem to be hopelessly optimistic, or perhaps to betray a naivety about how the internet works. "

Bill Thompson

Bill Thompson The protests over the election results in Iran have depended on Facebook, YouTube and of course Twitter to get their message to the world, put pressure on their own government and organise their activities.

Just last week the French Constitutional Council of France halted the government’s plans to give a new authority the ability to cut the network access of internet users accused of copyright violations because "the internet is a component of the freedom of expression".

In the UK the Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote in the The Times today that "a fast internet connection is now seen by most of the public as an essential service, as indispensable as electricity, gas and water."

Locking content

The view of the network as a utility and as a tool for expression is a very different one from that put forward by the dominant players in the so-called ‘content industry’.

Record companies, film studios, newspapers and the TV broadcasters have all lobbied hard for the UK government to shape its internet policy around their interests.

They want copyright laws to be strengthened so they can lock up any and all content. They want anyone who dares to challenge their business to be kicked offline, fined and locked up. They want a world in which they control what can happen.

Fortunately that pressure seems largely to have been resisted, and the real thrust of the proposals is about getting everyone online and ensuring that the network is there to be used in ways that support creative expression, new forms of industry and new models of engagement.

Funding news

The Digital Britain of the report is one in which all have access, not one where we try to preserve old industrial models.

When it comes to newspapers the report notes that ‘Digital Britain is at the beginning of a new and possibly disruptive wave of local news, generated by communities for communities using free online media’. It recognises that ‘government and business will need collaboratively to devise new ways of funding the news’ without simply promising subsidies to the existing players who have failed to adapt to the network reality and have sought protection and subsidy.

The debate about the future of public service broadcasting includes many progressive ideas, and both the decision to make Channel 4 more than just a broadcaster but turn it into ‘the open new media authority providing the seed-corn for creative innovation in the multi-media world’, and the message to the BBC that the license fee does not belong to it are all good ones.

Unfortunately the proposals to limit file-sharing are less well considered and seem to be hopelessly optimistic, or perhaps to betray a naivety about how the internet works.
Ofcom is to be asked to oversee efforts by UK ISPs to reduce what they term ‘illegal file-sharing’ by 70%, initially through notifying those accused of downloading material or revealing their names and addresses to rights holders so that they can be prosecuted.

If this doesn’t work then Ofcom may then be granted power to oblige ISPs to limit bandwidth or block specific protocols, presumably in the hope that doing this will deter or stop downloads. But this proposal ignores the fact that work is already going on to develop new file sharing technologies that are encrypted or disguise addresses more effectively. Ofcom might well hit its 70% target just because everyone moves away from BitTorrent without actually reducing the number of files shared over the net.

However the fact that the BPI boss Geoff Taylor found it necessary to accuse the government of ‘digital dithering’ for refusing to allow rights holders to have internet users cut off – the same proposals that have just been thrown out in France – is a good sign indeed.

In the end public service broadcasting and the protection of the content industries matter far less than the promotion of universal access and the creation of tools and services that encourage everyone online to demonstrate their own creative potential.

Networked world

Children watching TV

A digital Britain is not one in which we are all sitting glued to our screens watching the same sort of television programming that we could have had on a cathode-ray set in the 1970′s, downloading blockbuster movies or listening to more dull music made by rich popstars whose only real interest is their property portfolio.

It is one in which universal access allows us all to be fully-fledged citizens of a networked world that offers opportunities for creative expression and communication instead of the passive consumption of packaged content. There’s a glimpse of that world through the Digital Britain report, and it is one that those of us who already live a networked life need to clarify, share and work to build.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.</p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

The digital age of rights

May 26th, 2009 | No Comments

World map

The digitally deprived have rights too, says regular columnist Bill Thompson

"President Sarkozy of France recently managed to get his Création et Internet law passed by the National Assembly, and if all goes well in the Senate then French internet users will soon find their activities being supervised by HADOPI, the grandly named ‘Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet.’

The rights it is concerned with are not those of ordinary net users but of copyright owners, and especially the large entertainment companies that have lobbied so hard and so successfully for the power to force internet service providers to terminate the accounts of those accused of downloading unlicensed copies of music, films and software.

Once HADOPI is up and running rights holders will be able to go to it with evidence of illegal downloading, and it will issue banning orders to ISPs without any need for tiresome court proceedings.

The agency is deeply controversial, and may in fact be illegal under European law as proposed changes to EU telecommunications regulations seem likely to require the involvement of the courts in any disconnection.

But even if it is legal, it is still a bad idea and must be one of the most foolish, regressive and potentially damaging moves by a government that claims to want to capitalise on the internet’s potential to transform society.

"It’s not that computers matter more than water, food, shelter and healthcare, but that the network and PCs can be used to ensure that those other things are available"
Bill Thompson

Bill Thompson

The new law treats the internet as if it was simply a conduit for delivering the sort of mindless entertainment provided by most films, TV programmes and popular music and proposes to cut people off because their actions might damage the business model of one tiny sector of the economy.

But the net is far more than television with added e-mail. As digital rights campaigner Cory Doctorow put it in an impassioned article on this issue in The Guardian last year:

"The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press in a single connection. It’s only vital to the livelihood, social lives, health, civic engagement, education and leisure of hundreds of millions of people (and growing every day)."

Cory is not alone in believing that net access is too important to be regulated solely in the interests of the entertainment industry.

Earlier this month Vivian Reding, the European Commissioner responsible for Information Society and Media, spoke of "a right to Internet access" and pointed out that the EU’s new telecommunications rules "recognise explicitly that Internet access is a fundamental right such as the freedom of expression and the freedom to access information".

BILL’S LINKS

HADOPI on Wikipedia

Cory Doctorow on net access

Cnet: Is net access a human right

But if the argument against extra-judicial disconnection is so strong then surely a policy that lets network service providers keep millions of people from having a usable, fast and reliable connection to the internet must also be morally indefensible

If it is unacceptable to cut people off from the network because their actions are commercially damaging to the record companies, why is it acceptable to offer them poor or no access to broadband and mobile internet just because providing the service is commercially unattractive to ISPs or network operators

BROADBAND WORLD

MAP: BBC reporters talk broadband

World map

And if we are to be encouraged to think of access to the internet as a fundamental human right, a prerequisite of having freedom of expression, should we not be prosecuting ISPs over the ‘notspots’ in their mobile or wi-fi coverage, the communities with no access to ADSL because of the telephone network was repaired with aluminium instead of copper, or the areas bypassed by the cable providers

As a long-time contributor to Digital Planet, the BBC World Service programme about the impact of digital technology on people’s lives, I’ve seen the growing awareness within the developing world that computers and connectivity matter and can be useful. It’s not that computers matter more than water, food, shelter and healthcare, but that the network and PCs can be used to ensure that those other things are available.

Satellite imagery sent to a local computer can help villages find fresh water, mobile phones can tell farmers the prices at market so they know when to harvest.

The same arguments apply in the UK, but those of use who have easy, affordable and fast connectivity tend not to think of the plight of those who can’t get online, just as we so often fail to notice the homeless people in our towns or let our eyes glide over deprived housing estates as we sit on the train.

Of course once the kids on the local council estate start using their new-found power to create mash-ups of their favourite bands or add soundtracks to the videos they upload onto the web we’re sure to hear calls for their net access to be restricted in some way.

But at least they’ll be able to organise a Facebook campaign for themselves, and get some attention from the rest of us. At the moment the offline masses lack a voice as well as an internet connection.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.</p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.