Oracle in extraordinary dig at Autonomy

The tech industry is often fill of firms having digs at each other, and they're usually the big players in tech stratosphere like Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Often the digs are entertaining and sly, and they're very rarely bitter sounding attacks.

So here's an exception.

Oracle have published a press release (and yes, this is a link to their own website) in which they launch a stinging attack on Autonomy's chief executive Mike Lynch, the man who has brokered the £7.1bn sale of his software business to Hewlett Packard:

After HP agreed to acquire Autonomy for over $11.7 billion dollars, Oracle commented that Autonomy had been 'shopped' to Oracle as well, but Oracle wasn't interested because the price was way too high. Mike Lynch, Autonomy CEO, then publically denied that his company had been shopped to Oracle. Specifically, Mr. Lynch said, "If some bank happened to come with us on a list, that is nothing to do with us." Mr. Lynch then accused of Oracle of being 'inaccurate'. Either Mr. Lynch has a very poor memory or he's lying. 'Some bank' did not just happen to come to Oracle with Autonomy 'on a list.' The truth is that Mr. Lynch came to Oracle, along with his investment banker, Frank Quattrone, and met with Oracle's head of M&A, Douglas Kehring and Oracle President Mark Hurd at 11 am on April 1, 2011. After listening to Mr. Lynch's PowerPoint slide sales pitch to sell Autonomy to Oracle, Mr. Kehring and Mr. Hurd told Mr. Lynch that with a current market value of $6 billion, Autonomy was already extremely over-priced. The Lynch shopping visit to Oracle is easy to verify. We still have his PowerPoint slides.

Even if they are defending their position, to accuse an exec at another big firm of lying is quite a staggering thing to say at all, let alone in a company's own press release.

TalkTalk blocking new gaming service

TalkTalk customers are being prevented from playing the newly launched OnLive streamed gaming service's titles by the firms traffic management policy during peak hours, ISP Review has revealed.

The bandwidth hungry service falls foul of the company's peak restrictions on P2P traffic, and those attempting to play games between 6pm and midnight on TalkTalk are shown the following message:TalkTalk's traffic management policy explains their approach to managing P2P traffic:

"A very small number of customers use an excessive amount of the network bandwidth at peak times, to the extent it can impair the performance for others. For this reason we have a fair usage policy designed to ensure your service stays fast and reliable 24 hours a day – it involves monitoring the amount customers download and managing non-time critical traffic on our network, such as Peer-to-Peer sharing.

If a customer's usage is continually excessive, unfair, affects other users enjoyment of our broadband service, or is not consistent with the usage we would typically expect on that customers current package, we reserve the right to upgrade customers to a package more suited for their usage. In extreme cases we may suspend or terminate the customers ability to access TalkTalk's broadband service."

Even BT's own usage levels exception for OnLive users is only in place until early January (after which usage of the service will count towards a customer's monthly cap) and BT are both the launch partner of OnLive and a 2.6% shareholder in the firm.

TalkTalk have had to previously make exceptions to their traffic management policy, which is deliberately restrictive so that they can keep their costs down as a 'value' (i.e. cheap) broadband provider that doesn't bring in as much revenue per broadband user as many of their competitors.

It is expected that TalkTalk will also put in place an OnLive exception as the company has said that they are working on a fix for the problem.

Broadband advertising - a look into the future?

In the same week that the results of the ASA-led review into the way that broadband speeds are advertised an advertisement from BT in The Daily Telegraph yesterday shows some insight into what the future of broadband advertising is when providers can no longer promote headline speeds that 90% of their customers actually cannot get.

The advertisement uses an age old advertising practice of listing lots of things you get in order to make a consumer think what great value a package has in it - but in no place (not even the small print) does it have any reference whatsoever to what broadband speeds a customer is being sold or will receive:Click on the image for a larger version.

We will see more of this, and the other tactic that will probably happen is that providers will start to bandy around generic terms like 'fibre' rather than setting a speed expectation within their marketing materials. This is unlikely to apply to the cable guys at Virgin Media though, whose customers can achieve the headline speeds because of cable's technological superiority.

ASA tightens broadband advertising practice

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) or, more accurately, the ASA's Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) has published their new rules on how broadband speeds must be advertised in the UK, and as expected they are requiring significant change in the way that the country's ISPs push their wares.

From April 2012 providers will no longer be able to advertise maximum speeds unless 10% of their customer base can achieve them with actual throughput, and ThinkBroadband has estimated what newly advertised speeds could look like from the various providers from April:Providers could - and perhaps more likely they will - switch their advertising approach to become more 'lifestyle' based instead of promoting their speeds instead of course.

So, as expected, the cable guys at Virgin Media look to be the big winners from the new guidance - and their broadband executive director Jon James said:

"This is a much needed and long awaited victory for consumers. The new rules are a big step in the right direction and the greater transparency will ensure people can make more informed choices.

ISPs will no longer be able to hide behind generic terms or catch-all claims which they simply cannot deliver."

As the second comment eludes to, CAP also looked at the problem of services being advertised as 'unlimited' when data caps are in place and customers can be charged additional fees or even disconnected if they continue to be heavy users.

The CAP's report on this issue said:

"Unlimited" are likely to be acceptable provided that:

• The legitimate user incurs no additional charge or suspension of service as a consequence of exceeding any usage threshold associated with an FUP, traffic management policy or the like, and
• Provider-imposed limitations that affect the speed or usage of the service are moderate only and are clearly explained in the marketing communication.

The element of the service to which the "unlimited" claim relates is a key consideration in this assessment.

• A general claim, "Unlimited Broadband", for instance, will require a provider to demonstrate that their whole broadband service meets the criteria above.
• A claim relating to a specific element (i.e. a defined activity or protocol) of a service, for instance, "unlimited web browsing", would only require the provider to show that element of service meets the criteria listed above. Broadband consumers are likely to assume that a claim related to "unlimited web browsing" will allow them unlimited use of the services such as You Tube, BBC iPlayer or another based streaming service. If an online activity like streaming is excluded from the "unlimited" aspect of the service this should be stated prominently.

So, while it stopped short of what some called for (banning use of 'unlimited' unless there were no restrictions whatsoever on heavy use), the guidance at least clarifies the advertising position for providers - they can't hawk their services as 'unlimited' if they then charge customers for incremental usage over and above a fair use limit or suspend/disconnect their services for aggressive use. No doubt ISPs were running around changing their suspension programmes at a pace yesterday accordingly!

Some were disappointed at this though, consumer group Which? leading the way in quoting their dissatisfaction:

"Unlimited should mean unlimited at your normal broadband speed, but internet service providers will be allowed to slow down a supposedly 'unlimited' connection once a customer goes over a certain threshold.

Ofcom should step in where the advertising regulators have failed, and make sure consumers can't be misled about the broadband service they're paying for."

Amazon launches iPad competitor

Amazon this week have backed up the runaway success of their Kindle e-reader by launching a tablet computer to rival the market dominant Apple iPad, and the Kindle Fire comes with a 7in screen, 8GB of storage and is priced at USD$199 - and it's only available in the US at the moment.

The device is WiFi only and Amazon have introduced it with the commercial below:

Branson buys into Tumblr

Virgin Group founder and chairman Sir Richard Branson is amongst those who have chipped in to an investment round that values blogging platform Tumblr at USD$800m.

The USD$85m funding round includes venture capital as well and declares the confidence of the investors in a site that hosts 30 million blogs and generates 13 billion page views per month, up from just 2 billion at the start of this year - although Tumblr have struggled to monetise themselves as a business.

New York-based Tumblr currently has 50 employees.

Groupon remains committed to go public

Coupon buying site Groupon maintain their commitment to go public via an IPO in the wake of stories that they had put their plans on hold due to current stock market volatility, according to sources of The Wall Street Journal.

The company, whose chief operating officer is returning to her former employer Google after only 5 months in the job, is apparently still uncertain of when they will be going public - and many (this author included) think that their decision to turn down a USD$6bn offer from Google last year is looking crazier by the day.

There are some serious questions about their financial credibility as a firm also, which are not helped by the company amending their offer documents last week to reduce their first half sales figure down from USD$1.52bn to USD$688m, perhaps reinforcing the view from one analyst that only a "fool" would invest in Groupon.

Groupon were not available for comment when approached on the rumour.

Google buys new London offices (or not, see update below)

The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones has just confirmed on Twitter that Google have purchased a 7-storey new office block in East London in the area that Boris Johnson is trying to establish as London's 'silicon roundabout' base for technology firms.

While there are no details yet on what jobs this will bring to the city, it is both indicative of the company's investment in London and of how cash rich they are - in practice firms usually lease office space rather than buy buildings outright for financial management reasons.

Google, who have been criticised for minimising their UK tax outlay by channeling funds through other countries with lower corporation tax, have their current London base near Victoria station and presumably their staff will relocate to the Old Street base.

Update @0706: The Guardian has published some more information about the Bonhill Street office, suggesting it will be a shared space. The offices will open next year.

Update @0909: Rory has tweeted again to say that Google have been in touch to inform him that they're leasing the offices until 2022 and have not bought them.

Update @1529: The BBC (Rory again) is reporting that Google's existing staff will not be moving to the new location. Any more updates and I might have to just delete this news story and start afresh!

London warned of Olympics data meltdown

Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett has warned London that the city faces a mobile capacity meltdown if they do not roll out a WiFi Hotspot network ahead of the Olympics, which is expected to result in massive data demand on mobile networks.

Berkett is worried that it is taking too long to decide on a supplier for the proposed London network - and that it may be a "missed opportunity" if the process does not go faster.

He spelled out what the Olympic experience could be if action is not taken faster:

"The mobile networks are already facing a capacity crunch that, without widespread, consistent wi-fi, will leave people unable to do the most basic things such as keeping up to date with the latest travel situation and getting directions while out and about."

Berkett's company is amongst the bidders - the others being BT, The Cloud (Sky), O2 and two smaller providers - for a contract with Westminster council to build and maintain a WiFi Hotspot network, and it is thought that both Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham are set to use the same vendor that is selected to ensure a London-wide solution. Westminster are set to announce the bid winner in November.

WiFi Hotspot networks become flavour of the month for mobile companies looking to reduce their 3G network running costs, but solutions like this also mean that consumers would get a good service too - a true 'win-win' as a marketeer might put it.

Berkett's firm is also launching a new loyalty campaign framework for their customers, with the theme being that they are offering customers their own 'tickle' as a reward for their loyalty to the company.

Spotify requires new users to have a Facebook account

In what was quite a significant move that came out yesterday, new users to music streaming service Spotify are now required to have a Facebook account before they can sign up, it has been revealed.

Those attempting to sign up to Spotify, who were of course one of the digital media partners that helped Facebook launch their newly integrated and updated website last week, are presented with the following screen requiring them to link a Facebook account when signing up:When the reasons for this were queried on customer service site Get Satisfaction one of the company's staffers posted in response:

"Hey Guys thanks for your question, Unfortunately you will need a Facebook account to access Spotify from now on, unless you already have an account set up. This does not stop you creating the Facebook account adding nothing to it and making it totally private as the Facebook account does not have to be actively used."

With Facebook of course having 750m+ users most new users to Spotify will already have a Facebook account and are hence social media active, a point made by Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek on his Twitter feed yesterday:Naturally as you would expect though, many are less than pleased with the additional step in the process - and others object to using Facebook, usually citing privacy concerns given the number of privacy incidents Facebook have had in recent years.

The big question though is whether the need to link the two will now be rolled out to existing Spotify users too, if so that would create even more ructions ... not the least for the fact that my Facebook account is already getting plastered all over the place with details of music my friends are listening to, making it hard to follow anything else going on.

In other news the company has killed off their advertising supported Spotify Open tier of service for all new users. People signing up to the service will now just get a 'Spotify' account, which gives them 6 months unlimited (but still advertising funded) listening to tracks, after which they will be limited to 10 hours of streaming per month and a 5 play limit on each track unless they sign up to one of their paid for tiers.

The changes are presumably as a result of feedback about their curbing their free tiers earlier in the year in order to be able to satisfy rights holders enough to be able to launch in the US.

Update @2045: Ek has responded to speculation about what this might mean for existing users, again via his Twitter feed:

Sky grows Hotspots, trials data offload with O2

The Cloud, the WiFi Hotspot provider owned by Sky, have said that they plan to invest millions in adding an additional 10,000 new hotspots to their network and upgrading the 8,000 UK locations (they also have 14,000 in Europe) they already have access points in over the next few years.

The Cloud is key to the company's Sky Go proposition where consumers can watch their Sky TV content while on the go and Sky had already said that they intended to grow their hotspot volumes to 10,000 by the end of this year.

Big money is to be made in coming years from WiFi Hotspot networks being used to offload massively expensive data traffic from 3G and 4G mobile networks, and it has also been reported that The Cloud is working with O2 - who remember are spending an incremental £2m per day just to keep their current 3G network operating - on trials of offloading data from their cellular network, which presumably could lead to a deal between the two if the tests are successful. O2 are also working on their own hotspot network rollout.

So, who regulates telcos again?

There's a plethora of technology 'news' sites that seem to be little more than content farms driving web users towards price comparison deals, and the cunningly named 'Money Expert' (cunning in that it's similar enough to Martin Lewis' Money Saving Expert to make you double take when you see the name) seems to be showing some of the variable quality writing that you see on them in a story about Ofcom recently revealing that TalkTalk are still the most complained about fixed line provider in the UK:While you can click on the above for a larger version, the paragraph that is of particular interest is as follows:

"TalkTalk are leading the way in complaints across two categories: landline and broadband in Ofgem's latest report."

Ofgem are of course the gas & electricity regulator. Ofcom regulates telcos. Oops!

ASA to crack down on "misleading" broadband advertising

The Indedpendent says they have seen a copy of the preliminary results of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) investigation into the way that broadband is advertised in the UK, with the final version of their report supposedly still on track to be delivered by the end of this month - in other words, this Friday (to be fair they appear to have been woolly enough in their initial wording to allow for some delay if it does happen).

The long awaited report comes after they have undertaken an extensive 9 month investigation, and the headline (pardon the pun) of their guidance seems to be that providers will not be able to advertise a speed as being 'up to' a particular number unless at least 10% of customers on that particular ISP can actually achieve those speeds, which signals the end of such claims being made within the market amongst ADSL providers.

The ruling is set to apply to the ADSL style of broadband delivery that makes up 75% of all UK broadband connections rather than cable from Virgin Media or the VDSL solution being implemented by BT Openreach to support faster broadband speeds over telephony networks - and at best it is thought that ISPs would have to advertise a typical speed range that 20% to 80% of their customers would receive should the 10% figure not be what they finalise as a measure.

Ofcom's independent speedtest reporting platform has been a key input to the decision, with their regular reporting finding that consumers are at best receiving less than half of their advertised headline speed as a whole in the UK broadband market.

Final results from the ASA could be published as soon as tomorrow, and the regulator is set to declare their new policy as being a "significant tightening" of their rules so that advertisements do not "mislead, including by the omission of important information".

They are also expected to state that the current standard for the advertisement of broadband speeds could result in "the omission of important information may cause the average consumer to make a transactional decision he would not otherwise have taken".

While the final results of the ASA's investigation are still to be published, should they follow the initial recommendations they are set to be a significant fillip to cable company Virgin Media and may expedite DSL providers (other than those running off Openreach's faster broadband network) to change their approach to not advertise speeds at all - perhaps changing to more lifestyle based advertising or even bandying around terminology like 'fibre' without tying it down to any speed measure to manage consumer expectations.

BT man advocates mobile consolidation

BT's man in charge of the company's strategy, policy and portfolio is advocating mergers within the UK mobile space, suggesting that increased costs of operating services due to infrastructure needs and tight revenue margins make market consolidation inevitable.

Sean Williams, a former Ofcom staffer and now a director at BT, told the Financial Times (paywall):

"The number of operators in the UK mobile market is an artificial construct of regulation. Left alone, that market would probably head towards just two operators. You certainly do not want to be the fourth player in that market. Regulation of the mobile market needs to reflect the fundamental economics of that market."

With massive investments needed to pick up 4G/LTE spectrum and just to keep current networks running - O2 are spending an incremental £2m a day just to keep their current 3G network above water - some consolidation is no doubt likely, and perhaps examples like the coming together of the UK divisions of T-Mobile and Orange are the most likely model to come.

Sky set to selectively invest in fibre rollouts

Whilst BT and Virgin Media heavily market their faster broadband services using fibre technology deeper in the network than 'regular' DSL technology as deployed across the majority of UK ISPs, one provider that has been quiet in the faster broadband space is Sky.

Other than limited trials they have done alongside TalkTalk to understand the customer experience and the network economics of running faster broadband services they have not really entered the space, preferring instead to focus on cross selling broadband to their existing 10m TV customer base - which to be fair they have been doing very well at, leading the way most quarters in terms of net additions to their broadband base.

In a meeting with analysts Goldman Sachs last week, however, they signalled a slight change of approach going by the summary note that Goldman Sachs' Lisa Yang issued:

Fibre – BSkyB has no plans to make a substantial capital investment in fiber and see no need to lay a third national fibre network. They do not exclude however investing in selective exchanges should it make more sense for them economically to do so. They flag that BT and VMED have been marketing fiber aggressively but Sky has still been able to gain share. Sky has done trials with TalkTalk to learn about customer experience and about the cost of BT to deliver fibre to the customer. Any investment will need to have a high IRR.

Wholesaling fibre will cost an extra £8 to BT per month – as such it will be a low margin business just as LLU was initially.

Presumably any place they did decide to launch in would be in highly populated areas where they already have plenty of high spending customers, such as some of the more affluent areas of London.

News of the £8 per month charge to BT suggests that TalkTalk are only generating £2 per customer per month in terms of revenue for their FTTC customers, which when their costs are covered will be leaving them with very little profit margin indeed ... which also shows why they're not heavily marketing their offering.

Sky had previously said that they intended to enter the faster broadband market over the next year or so, and the comments made to the Goldman Sachs team suggest it will be a very limited entry indeed.

TWC's $3bn cable buy approved

US regulator the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has given approval for Time Warner Cable (TWC) to spend USD$3bn to acquire smaller rival Insight Communications.

The deal, first announced last month, will result in TWC picking up the US's 10th largest cable provider and increase their presence in the Midwest. Insight has 750,000 customers across TV, telephony and broadband services.

Software may make wireless smarter

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with an invention that may solve the problem of congested wireless networks, software that detects interference from other devices interfering with a wireless access point and automatically taking counter measures to mitigate the problem and maximise wireless performance.

The software, called Airshark, can detect devices at between a 91.23% and 100% accuracy depending on signal strength and uses the known signatures of the devices to identify what they are, then telling the access point what it needs to do in order to provide maximum coverage.

More detail on how it works can be found in their research paper here [PDF].

Netscape founder hawks off Ning

Marc Andressen is one of the famous names of the technology industry, having founded Netscape - which for a long time dominated the web browser market.

His latest venture has been Ning, the site that enables users to create their own social networks - and it has been popular with some particular niches of the online community without ever achieving mass user appeal.

As with any other firm in the tech industry apart from the big boys it's always been a question as to when they will be acquired by or merge with something else, and the answer has come with news that Ning is to be bought out advertising network Glam Media.

The deal is estimated to have cost Glam Media something in the region of USD$150m-200m and the combined companies will have 240 million users, 40 million of which will come from Ning. They will also have around 500 employees between them, 100 of which are Ning staffers.

Andressen joins Glam Media's board as a result of the transaction.

French launch 100Mb DSL technology

French company Alcatel-Lucent have launched technology that will enable DSL connections to run as fast as 100Mb by using similar technology to what is used by noise cancellation headphones.

Their VDSL2 Vectoring technology goes to the next step from the moves that BT are already planning in the taking their VDSL based faster broadband network (what their Retail division runs their 'Infinity' faster broadband services over) to up to 80Mb speeds, which the company has pencilled in for next year.

The French vendor's solution cancels out background noise and can hence increase speeds by a further 25% to 100% without consumers needing to install any addtional hardware in their homes, and a graphical representation shows the potential of the technology in locations close to the consumer's local exchange:BT's speed increase to 'up to' 80Mb next year will be implemented through the allocation of additional spectrum to their FTTC based network.

Other vendors are said to be working on VDSL2 Vectoring technology but Alcatel-Lucent have got the steal by being first to market.

The guide to social media engagement

Many companies do social media well, and those who do also make the effort to effectively communicate with their staff the do's and don'ts of it in what is a medium that cannot be controlled - but that both staff and companies can get a huge amount out of if they use it wisely.

One company that is very good at social media is Australian telco Telstra, who have produced an excellent social media engagement guide for their circa 45,000 staff:The 2009 guide does look a little dated now (note the reference to MySpace!) but its cartoon format is a great way of engaging staff in a way that is helpful and fun and gets the message across excellently.

Everything Everywhere to undertake own funding round

Everything Everywhere (EE), the oddly named conglomerate that forms the UK divisions of France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom under the Orange and T-mobile brands respectively, is to go out in the market for a funding round independent of their parent companies for the first time (paywall - some of the content can be found here).

The fundraising round will fund the company's bid for spectrum in next year's 4G/LTE spectrum auction, with the technology to be used to drive faster mobile broadband services - but it will come at a cost, with some thinking that the Ofcom-run process will result in spectrum costing as much as £800m.

Company chief executive Olaf Swantee was relatively coy in saying:

"A company the size of Everything Everywhere reviews all finance options, particularly given the potential spectrum options [such as] a separate financing or a financing through the shareholders."

Swantee also floated the idea (paywall again) of having some of his company's staff help with the groundwork ahead of the auction in order to speed it up and added:

"LTE is an important tool. Data is the growth engine. We only have 30% of customers on smartphones, which is pretty much the average, but a lot of room to grow. Access to lower-end spectrums is really important as we have a competitive disadvantage compared to O2 and Vodafone."

The slowest street in the UK ... is it really?

Price comparison site uSwitch last week issued a press release summarising their speedtest results and declaring a street in Suffolk as the slowest in the UK, in what was clearly an attempt to attract attention and get their site name checked in leading news sources both on and offline.

And it's fair to say it worked, with Mount Pleasant in Hasleworth being mentioned in many numerous news stories.

ThinkBroadband has, however, dissected the claim and suggested it is unreliable in being based on a very limited number of test results - and hinted at questioning the integrity of the speedtest they used also.

As their analysis says:

If we look more closely at the slowest street in the entire UK based on this data (Mount Pleasant in Hasleworth, Suffolk), this is less than 300 metres away from the telephone exhange based on uSwitch's own data and a nearby result 380 metres away is 5.9Mbps—We would very much like to see why the speed variation is so large if uSwitch believe this is the slowest street in the country.

uSwitch's map result looks like this:In response to the criticism uSwitch said in a statement:

"[...] the data is based on more than 1,500,000 speed tests were conducted through the uSwitch.com website between March and August 2011. The reason the map may have different results is because we do not show all results on the map - just the most recent tests for each postcode. However, all tests are logged, which is why we have such extensive data. The calculations are based on a uSwitch methodology, which uses our own data."

Either way they've now got the coverage and no doubt driven plenty of additional traffic to their own website so I expect the people at uSwitch won't be too bothered by the criticism from ThinkBroadband, who to their credit did point out that they run their own speedtester and are normally loath to criticise competitive sites accordingly.

Up for sale Hulu hits year end customer target

Hulu, the online video provider, has reported that they have already hit their year end target of having a million paying users - a number that the for sale site hopes will help attract suitors all the more.

Hulu initially built their user base through the free broadcasting of catchup TV programming for popular shows in the US shortly after their initial playout and has now made a success in converting users into paying punters - a step they clearly needed to make given that they are to invest USD$375m in content acquisition this year alone.

Jason Kilar, who is at the helm of the company that has a USD$2bn price tag on it, added that he was "cautiously optimistic" that they will be able to sign up content partners who have so far not licensed content to the site, which is owned by News Corporation, Disney, NBC Universal and private equity firm Providence Equity Partners.

Facebook revenues to top $4bn

Facebook's full year revenues have been forecast to hit a whopping USD$4.27bn by eMarketer as the site has become the place to advertise other than Google for companies looking to reach end consumers online and is finding more and more solutions to generate cash outside of advertising proceeds.

Should that number be hit it would mark a more than doubling of last year's 2010 figure and be a major fillip to the company ahead of their plans to go public next year.

eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson:

"Facebook's revenue streams will continue to diversify, with ads representing a decreasing proportion of total revenue while other sources such as Facebook Credits will grow."

Facebook now has in excess of 750 million users and last week reported that in the previous week over half a billion users had logged in during one 24 hour period.

Telecity spends £11.7m in datacentre buy

Hot on the heels of spending £87.6m on an Irish competitor data centre provider Telecity has forked out £11.7m for Manchester based data centre operator UK Grid.

As a result of the deal Telecity's Europe wide network of data centres will grow from 27 to 31, with UK Grid operating 3 centres in Manchester along with another in London.

Telecity's UK head honcho Adriaan Oosthoek:

"This acquisition is about accelerating our growth in the North West.

We've not just acquired great assets but a great team, all of whom will be moving to TelecityGroup to drive our growth in the region."

Kingston connects first fibre customer

Hull-based local fixed line telco monopoly Kingston Communications/KCom has connected the first customer to their FTTH based faster broadband network and 'lit up' the connection to make their service live.

The customer has been connected to an up to 100Mb broadband service and has already curiously said that she is experiencing better performance using the BBC iPlayer and YouTube - curious because the services work fine on much slower speeds, which might suggest that any speed improvement is actually down to any tweaking of her machine(s) that engineers might have done when configuring the service in her home.

Woodmansey resident 'Abigail' added:

"It took a couple of hours to download a music album."

Sky and BT first up for Promoted Tweets in the UK

Twitter launched paid for advertising on their service in the UK last week, with Sky and BT being founder members of their 'Promoted Tweets' advertising programme.

The market opportunity is clear with Twitter's active user base in the UK having grown 95% since the start of this year, and Sky's campaign for the 'Glee' television programme gained much attention across Twitter - no doubt meaning they will be back for more.

Twitter opened a UK office last year and have expanded their workforce since - including the staff they picked up when they acquired TweetDeck.

54% of mobile broadband users affected by slow speeds

Over half - in fact 54% - of mobile broadband users have been affected by slow speeds according to mobile data solutions firm Acision, who naturally offer services that can help operators optimise their networks to ensure better performance (using traffic management techniques in their case by the looks of it).

A YouGov survey they commissioned found that 77% of users of mobile broadband experienced some kind of service quality problem on mobile broadband (down from 84% in 2010) and also that 42% of users suffered from connection problems.

As with fixed line broadband providers, it is common for mobile broadband companies to quote the theoretical maximum of the technology when selling services - with users even less likely to get them than they are on many fixed line services.

Some providers have claimed that their technology can support speeds of 21Mb or more, but Ofcom's independent benchmarking of mobile broadband providers earlier in the year found that average speeds were just 1.5Mb - rising to 2.1Mb in areas of good 3G coverage.

BT's copper worth more than the business

BT as a company has a market capitalisation of £20bn, but a recent statement made by them about cable theft reveals that they have 75 million miles of copper cable in their network - which is worth £30bn at today's prices.

While the company themselves naturally points out that the costs of extracting the copper from their network for sale would be massive, it does highlight the potential value of an asset they are sitting on as they deploy more fibre into their network in the years to come - particularly in the few cases where their Openreach access division will be deploying fibre all the way to homes.

As The Register says though, buying them to close the company down and sell off the copper would be the ultimate form of asset stripping however!

Cable theft has been on the increase generally as copper prices soar, and there have even been cases when thieves have ripped up Virgin Media's fibre optic cable - which carries no resale value for them.

O2 ditches caps on higher tier fixed line services

O2 have ditched the usage limits on their two top end fixed line broadband packages which they entitle 'The All Rounder' and 'The Works'.

Announcing the change in a statement the company said:

"We're enhancing two of our Home Broadband packages, The All Rounder and The Works, to give customers truly unlimited downloads.

Truly unlimited downloads means that O2 customers have complete peace of mind that they won't incur any extra charges or changes to their broadband package no matter how much they use it.

The two packages have been updated to give customers on these services the best customer experience. The move to truly unlimited downloads follows a review of customers' activity and responds to customer needs and usage habits."

The packages come from £7.50 per month when bundled with the company's home phone product but are still subject to their Fair Use Policy (FUP) which can result in customers having their service suspended or terminated if their usage hits an unspecified level that the company considers to be excessive, which is something that the ASA are looking at as a practice in their current review of how broadband is advertised in the UK - the results of which are imminent.

Alibaba investment to value Yahoo stake at $14bn

Stories abound that a USD$1.6bn investment in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has been made by notorious Russian investment vehicle Digital Sky Technologies along with Californian private equity firm Silver Lake.

The monies will pay for a 5% stake in Alibaba and value the whole business at USD$32bn - hence making Yahoo!'s stake in the company that they have often had a fractious relationship with worth a whopping USD$14bn. In case you can't use a calculator Yahoo! owns 40% of Alibaba.

Yahoo! have said that they are "delighted" with the implied value of their stake, which is no surprise given the turmoil they are going through as they decide what to do with their own business strategically.

Faster broadband defined as faster than 24Mb

Some eagle eyed observation from ThinkBroadband must be congratulated with their spotting of an apparent error on the website of the government's next generation broadband public funding body Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) suggesting that they were defining superfast broadband as consisting of an access speed of at least 20Mb.

After fellow site ISP Review questioned this with BDUK they changed their site to reflect that the actual definition of the access speed the government was working to in order to define next generation speeds was at least 24Mb, in other words greater than what is available using standard ADSL technology.

It seems like it was a genuine mistake rather than an attempt to fudge any figures, which they could otherwise have been accused of in the attempt to meet the government's goal of at least 90% of the UK having access to faster speeds by 2015.

In other news there are also rumours that the government will undertake a £5bn public works spending programme in order to stimulate the economy - some of which could be used to bring faster broadband rollouts forward.

Boris applies for .london domain

After ICANN went open season on all domain suffixes in the wake of the tortuous process to approve the .xxx top level domain (TLD) for porn sites, many of the world's largest cities have applied for their own TLD having spotted the obvious commercial opportunities.

The latest of which is London, which in a Mayor Boris Johnson backed scheme is set to apply for approval for the .london suffix that the city's promotional agency would operate for a decade should it be approved.

London & Partners chief executive Gordon Innes:

"London has always been seen as a city that leads on digital innovation and our interest in applying for dot London demonstrates our commitment to maintaining this position.

We believe that owning the dot London gTLD will not only generate increased opportunities for the promotion of the capital, but will achieve benefits for businesses and organisations across the capital."

ICANN's application window runs from January 12 to April 12 next year and Johnson has initiated a consultative period where the opinions of the public and of local businesses will be canvassed in the meantime.

BT goes four months free

BT have launched the first of their 'Autumn Deals' as the company continues to use a seasonal theme for their headline acquisition propositions.

New customers joining the country's largest retail ISP get four month's free broadband when taking a calls package and signing up online, saving £13 per month for the introductory offer period.

The up to 20Mb broadband (10GB monthly cap) deal comes with the usual bells and whistles and naturally a customer needs to take line rental, which they advertise at £10 per month.

That price is only available if a customer pays a whole year's line rental up front though (which is good for BT's working capital as well as being able to make marketing shouts) - most customers will be paying £14.60 per month for it from December 3 (£13.90 now).

HP replaces head honcho

Hewlett-Packard (HP) have replaced their chief executive Léo Apotheker after less than a year at the helm that had a disastrous impact on their stock price as they lurched from crisis to crisis:
Under Apotheker's tenure they announced a massive restructuring of their business in which they intend to spin off or sell their PC business as well as close down their WebOS tablet and smartphone division. They also announced the intention to spend £7.1bn on UK software group Autonomy at the same time.

Apotheker was moved on at the company's board meeting on Thursday after weeks of speculation about his future and was immediately replaced by former eBay head Meg Whitman, on a permanent basis rather than in an acting capacity.

Whitman confirmed her intention to go ahead with the restructure announced under Apotheker's reign.

Google forecasts massive growth in India

Search behemoth Google believes that Internet penetration in India will treble in the next three years, taking the number of people online in the country from 100m to 300m.

The company's country head Rajan Anandan cited investment in high speed wireless networks and smartphone affordability in making his prediction - and he also believes that cricket and Bollywood film content on YouTube will take the site's active user base in the country from 20 million to 25 to 30 million in the same time period.

Online advertising in India is still low with the whole market reportedly being worth only USD$200m per annum, but that will grow very quickly if the online population skyrockets.

ISPs agree approach to pirate site blocking

The Register has revealed that ISPs are moving closer to working with rights holders on blocking sites that facilitate piracy from being easily accessed by their customers (although there are many ways around such censorship regimes) in the wake of a court ruling that Newzbin2 must be blocked from being accessed by BT customers (although the actual implementation of that is awaiting a further ruling on how the work to do this is paid for).

In a meeting with communications minister Ed Vaizey last week the ISP industry had apparently notably softened their stance in the wake of the ruling and conceded that they will need to work on blocking such sites, although they are still insisting that court orders will be needed before they will implement any blocks. However, they did concede that they will need to speed up the process.

Speeding up the process will of course reduce the cost, and that is still one of many things needing a resolution for before an approach can be finalised between ISPs, rights holders and government - of which one source told El Reg:

"Don't expect a signing ceremony or even a public announcement, it's going to be more of a voluntary solution through accretion."

ISPA maintain concerns about the cost impact on smaller ISPs, but it's clear that most piracy is happening on the larger providers.

The regime will replace the sections of the Digital Economy Act (DEA) related to site blocking, which Vince Cable confirmed last month they will not enforce.

Facebook launches media streaming

In a major overhaul to their ubiquitous social network last week Facebook announced (and indeed implemented) the integration of media sharing across the site, with many users of music streaming services such as Spotify already taking advantage of them and filling my timeline with some of the dodgy music they listen to.

The updates revealed at the company's annual F8 developer conference also included tight integration of music streaming service Netflix and with news sites like The Guardian as Facebook expands their strategy of being the home of its users on the web.

Gushing at the announcement - which Spotify's Daniel Ek joined him in making - Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said:

"Being able to click on someone's music is a great experience, but knowing you helped a friend discover something new and they liked your taste in music, and that you now have that in common is awesome."

Whilst the site's new look has gone down badly with some - many of whom are partaking in unprecedented levels of slacktivism - Zuck also said that he wants to create "real time serendipity".

Nope, nor me either.

Update @1219: At the same conference Facebook revealed via a tweet that half a billion users were on the site in one day the week before last: