Usefully Useless

Answer? They’re all repressive power-mad regimes and they all want to censor Google. Wait, Australia?

Oh yes. Australia continues to hurtle along the line of a government approved Internet only. Clueless Communications Minister Stephen Conroy wants mandatory ISP censorship of any content ‘refused classification’ by the government and recently set his sights on dissenters on YouTube.

Wanting Google to filter YouTube of any comments critical to the rulers, Conroy stated in the state-filtered media “Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government,” moments after trying to justify it with “in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws” where it’s clear that Conroy admires the Great Firewall of China and wants to build his own Great Internet Barrier Reef.

Google, naturally, told the repressive regime to go screw itself. Conroy’s comments come just days after Google’s spat with the Chinese authorities and Google’s decision to stop self-censorship in China.

The idea is that the Australian govermnent wants to block anything it doesn’t like the smell of using the Australian movie, video games and entertainment ratings board. If the government gives out a “Refused Classification” notice, said content disappears from the Internet.

Australia, you are a tiny economy and a negligible player on the world stage – Any prestige you may have was inherited from us. If you want a policy of isolation, don’t be surprised when people treat you as the totalitarian hell hole without respect for basic human rights that you are. You’re already facing huge skills shortages and let’s face it, a land which is variously deadly venomous or on fire isn’t an attractive target for skilled workers. Adding a power-obsessed regime into the mix makes it not just unattractive, but a place to avoid.

Click here. It’s a video clip which you’re not allowed to view due to a copyright claim from BBC Worldwide. The clip is Top Gear related stuff, as far as I’m aware it was never shown on the show.

Since as a UK resident and licence fee payer, I have automatic right to view BBC content, I’m wondering what the hell they’re playing at.

To follow up from my coverage of the Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report, SamKnows and BBC News are reporting that three million homes do not have access at 2 Mbps or above.

What worries me, however, is that many homes which should have greater than 2 Mbps do not and it’s their own fault. I do broadband installation as part of my whole freelance techie thing as well as troubleshooting problems with it. It’s amazing how many people don’t wire their systems properly. One home I was at just a few weeks ago was achieving 1.5 Mbps and disconnecting often. Actual throughput was less than 1 Mbps.

When the actual throughput is less than the sync rate would predict (divide the sync by 9 to get the usable data rate, then multiply by 8 to get megabytes per second) it means a lot of errors on the line cause retransmission, thus slowing down the observed data rate. In this case, the DSL microfilter was plugged into the phone hookup for the Sky satellite TV box, so placing a phone device before the DSL device, absolutely verboten.

After I reorganised the wiring, the sync rate shot up to 6.2 Mbps with an actual data rate of 590 KB/sec. Service providers need to educate people better so that these elementary mistakes aren’t made. The DSL filter should be on the master socket or a filtered NTE-5 faceplate should be provided. Extensions done “properly” (that is, from the back of the master socket) are bad for DSL since they’re not filtered and so to make the best of a bad situation they should be filtered immediately on their socket.

Ask your neighbours how fast their Internet is or use the SamKnows Mapping Engine to query an average for your immediate locality. Remember that the average includes people who’re set up badly so you should be well above the average. My average is 3 Mbps, I get 4.5 – 5.2 . The average at the example I gave above was 5.0, they get 6.2 – 6.5.

If you’re significantly below what you should be getting, check your wiring. All lines are bundled so any problems with lines will be affecting your neighbours and the rest of your street too, too many people have said “Oh, my line is just bad” when it wasn’t. If the line really is bad, get a BT engineer out to sort it out. Be warned, however, that if the problem is with your wiring inside your home, you’ll be charged about £200. Make sure all your wiring is flawless first!

A report by Lord Carter recommends that “baseline broadband”, that is the minimum speed which can be called “broadband” be set to 2 Mbps. In the ancient times, when DSL was first being rolled out, it was set to 512 kbps. This meant BT had to sync users at 576 kbps (ATM overhead eats the difference and isn’t counted) or suffer.

Nowadays, we’re talking differently. Plans are afoot for a Universal Service Obligation of broadband, for which Lord Carter prepared his report. USOs guarantee that providers, regardless of the expense, will provide service. They exist for electricity, telephone and water (some very remote rural communities have exceptions) and Lord Carter’s report recommends that the broadband USO be set to a minimum of 2 Mbps, defined as 2048 kbps or an ADSL rate of 2248 kbps.

Reaction has been mixed. User groups have applauded the report, though some fear it doesn’t go far enough in guaranteeing universal availability. Infrastructure managers, led by BT, have criticised it. Much of their infrastructure, up to 30% of all households, cannot achieve 2 Mbps via ADSL and if they do, it’s a very unstable service with frequent dropouts.

Around half of the village I live in is unable to sync at more than 2 Mbps. I’m a freelance tech and installing broadband is a common job. My own runs at 4 Mbps to 5 Mbps down and 0.9-1 Mbps up, whereas the more common speeds are between 1.5 and 3.5 Mbps. Some users are STILL on IPStream 500, a 576/288 kbps service which was meant to be discontinued.

Two villages around me struggle to even achieve half a megabit.

BT’s “21CN” plan to roll out fibre to the line cabinet (those green boxes on street corners) with ADSL2 technology is looking increasingly dated. Planned for rollout between 2010 and 2012, other providers are already offering ADSL2+ Annex M offering over 20 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up, BT’s “21CN” will offer only 12/2.

My prediction is that the coming decade will see BT lose its stranglehold on telecommunications. Already services such as Virgin Media and TalkTalk are becoming sizable minority players and, what was unthinkable just a decade ago, many households have no connection to BT whatsoever.