Government to allocate £100m to improve urban broadband

The Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday confirmed that an additional £100m of government funding will be allocated to improve the faster broadband infrastructure in 10 of the country's cities - which include London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast. Further target locations will be subsequently named and are likely to include Milton Keynes and Belfast.

George Osborne outlined the government's vision for "new superfast digital networks for companies across our country" and it's fairly safe to say that the big network operators like BT and Virgin Media will be leading the rush to get hold of the monies, perhaps with the likes of Fujitsu also kicking at their heels given their plans for access network rollouts.

In his Autumn statement Osborne added:

"These do not exist today. See what countries like China or Brazil are building, and you'll also see why we risk falling behind the rest of the world.

Our great cities are at the heart of our regional economies. And we will help bring world-leading, superfast broadband and wi-fi connections to 10 of them."

With the advent of 4G technologies - when Ofcom get around to holding the spectrum auction that is - and WiFi Hotspot networks there may also be all kinds of other operators in the bidding for the monies, which are in addition to the £530m (potentially to rise to £830m) that the government has allocated for rural broadband rollouts. Not all that money has been allocated yet though from their Broadband Delivery UK vehicle.

The increased small and medium business focused funding though will help cover some of the so-called 'not spots' in urban areas and they are keen for 'Hubs' to be created where 80Mb-100Mb speeds are available, with 100Mb already being the maximum speed available in many urban areas thanks to Virgin Media's rollout. BT are also working on their own faster broadband rollout.

Reacting to the announcement BT said via a spokesman:

"This is a positive initiative that will help ensure our major cities have the best available super-fast broadband. BT is already upgrading large parts of these cities under its commercial roll out plan and these funds could help us go further. We look forward to working closely with the selected cities to see what can be achieved.

BT is also working hard to ensure that rural areas benefit from faster broadband. Large swathes of the countryside will be able to access super fast broadband as BT continues its roll-out and as funds already lined up by the government become available in the next five years or so.

In addition, we are testing new technologies to improve speeds where fibre won't be available. It is important that as many homes as possible have access to fast broadband and our estimate is that the number of broadband 'slow spots' will fall to less than two per cent of homes in the near future."

The government did not, however, allocate any of the overall £5bn they are going to be spending on infrastructure initiatives in an attempt to stimulate the economy to further rural broadband rollouts - something which it's unsurprising that they have been criticised over by interest groups.

On a brighter note for rural broadband interest groups a £20m government fund to help out the 10% of areas that will be most problematic to get faster broadband rolled out to them opens tomorrow for expressions of interest.

The full Autumn statement can be read here [PDF] if interested and more coverage from the BBC can be found here.

Nokia Siemens hawks off WiMAX unit

Nokia Siemens, who announced 17,000 job losses globally last week as they focus on key strategic business objectives, have disposed of a business unit working on WiMAX technology.

In the first disposal since the cutbacks were announced they have agreed to sell the unit to Californian company NewNet Communication Technologies for an undisclosed sum and 300 staff will transfer to the technology innovation firm as part of the deal.

The deal, which has been announced on the NewNet website here [PDF], should close by the end of the year.

Murdoch survives Sky AGM

As expected, Sky (BSkyB) chairman James Murdoch survived the company's annual general meeting (AGM) yesterday despite dissenting voices about his performance as a leader with sufficient corporate governance performance in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
Murdoch has made a pair of appearances in front of the parliamentary committee investigating the scandal in which he has been shown to be unaware of some of the activities going on at newspapers which he was then a director of (he has since stood down), leading to much criticism from shareholders such as pension funds and Christian groups about his suitability as a leader - but the block vote of News Corporation - who famously withdrew the bid for the remainder of Sky that they do not already own in the wake of the scandal - as a 39% shareholder in the company always ensured that he would not be pushed out at the AGM.

Provisional voting figures show that Murdoch received 81.24% of shares voted at the AGM - but it's also important to note that the 18.76% of shares voted against him were held by 40% of the company's shareholders, which is a very significant proportion of investors unhappy with his performance. Last year Murdoch received 98% of shares voted in his favour.

The level of dissent was recognised by Sky deputy chairman Nick Ferguson who said:

"The board recognises that there have been contrasting views among shareholders on the question of the chairmanship ... [but] a clear majority, including a majority of independent shareholders, have voted for James Murdoch to continue in his role."

EU boss calls for copper price rises to fund Next Gen rollouts

European telecoms commissioner Neelie Kroes has repeated a call for pricing to increase for copper based broadband services in order to encourage providers like BT to invest more in Next Generation Network rollouts.

Speaking in the context of the European target to have broadband access available to all EU residents by 2013 and 30Mb+ speeds available to all by 2020 she believes that the rising of pricing - through European pricing controls if needed - rather than cheaper slower broadband is a potential solution to drive adoption.

Kroes said:

"Our target is to ensure that markets know that NGA [Next Generation Access] investment is profitable for the long term. To hit that target, it seems to me that we will need more than one string to our bow.

So we are exploring whether copper prices could be gradually adjusted after a certain time. While allowing higher wholesale and retail prices for NGA products, and possibly also copper products for a transitional period, if operators commit to invest.

In fact, we should not forget that, in some places, copper and NGA are in a close competitive relationship. Where consumers haven't yet seen what fibre offers, they might still be unwilling to pay a premium. In that case, fibre prices mirror copper prices; and lowering copper access prices would send us in the wrong direction.

That's why we consider that, in places where there is a firm and credible commitment to invest in NGA, it may not be appropriate to reduce copper access prices. Instead they could be an anchor for higher returns on fibre. That is the first plank of the approach we are exploring.

Alongside that, you'll know that I want markets to be competitive. I want fair access for all, certainty for the industry, and the best deal for consumers."

The comments are nothing if not controversial in these tough economic times when some providers are already pushing up pricing - although in BT's case they are also increasing the pricing for their 'Infinity' faster broadband service - and the low cost and access to broadband is a key component of the government's digital inclusion programme.

If such a scheme came into place today you'd have thought that it would lead to some people relinquishing their broadband connection as well as others migrating to faster speeds, but that will really depend on what the graduated price increases looked like.

UK Broadband market overview

With everyone having now published their Q3 financial results and us being in the second half of the last quarter of the financial year (is it really December tomorrow?), it's a good time to review what the broadband market looks like in terms of market share and subscriber size.

Totting up everyone's subscriber numbers the market now sits at 18.5m UK residential broadband connections, which shows a growth of 6% since Q3 2010 - when there were 17.4m residential broadband lines. Net additions in the quarter were up 247k (up 17% on 211k in Q2 2011, down 3% vs 254k in Q3 2010).

Sky's focus on low cost bundles and a 3 months free shout (along with the growth of their own network footprint) led to them being the biggest growing provider for the 6th quarter in a row, adding 150k subscribers in Q3. They're not showing any sign of slowing down in Q4 either as they offer deep discounts, free setup and shell out a fair whack on advertising at present.

At the company's current rate of growth they're set to overtake Virgin Media (who added 19.1k customers themselves to take their overall base to 4.3m) as the UK's second largest provider (although Virgin still dominates in the c55% of the country that is in their cabled areas going by estimates) at some stage in 2012, although they're still a long way off BT's 5m customers (well, 4.992m at the end of Q3 - and this includes at least 783k business users).

BT's customer base grew by 137k in the quarter, and it will be interesting to see what impact (if any) their price increases this quarter has on their customer base. The price increases include a hike for their 'Infinity' faster broadband service and the removal of an e-billing discount for their existing customers along with the customary increase in cost for line rental.

News was less good for other providers with TalkTalk losing a net 43k of customers as they focus on punters in their more profitable LLU network areas (the base of which was up by 26% in the quarter) and on making their existing ones more profitable by upselling them onto the higher tier 'Plus' package (19% of their punters were on that at the end of Q3 vs 9% a year previous).

Orange lost customers as usual with a net reduction in their overall base of 3k - but they have since discovered that they can cross sell broadband into their mobile base and are now reporting a month of net growth in their subscriber base for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the earth (well, for four years anyway). They have, of course, also outsourced the running of their network to BT Wholesale and invested in customer service improvements - although the impact of the latter is waning going by the latest Ofcom customer satisfaction research. Orange are also hiking prices early next year, for their pay monthly mobile customers at least.

O2 reported a reduction in their own customer base (which includes customers on their Be Broadband subsidiary brand) for the third successive quarter.

They lost 28k customers in Q3 to take their overall base to 625k punters despite their attempts to cross sell broadband into their mobile base also with the company promoting a 6 months free proposition amongst others.

Some of that decline may be down to customers looking for faster broadband products moving to BT or Virgin Media for their speedier packages (particularly those on the tecchie focused Be brand) and the (eventual!) announcement of their own fibre trials is going to be key for them to arrest the slide.

Adjusting the BT figure to take into account their business customers the broadband market looks something like this in terms of current market share:That really does emphasise how the UK has a 'big four' that dominate the market with only 8.2% of UK broadband users not on Sky, BT, TalkTalk or Virgin Media as consumer brands - and that proportion shrinks quarter by quarter (was 8.4% last quarter for example) due to the continuously cut throat UK broadband market.

Zynga set for mid-December IPO

Social gaming company Zynga has provisionally scheduled their IPO for mid December according to a source of the Financial Times (paywall).

The company's on-again off-again listing has been a bit of a saga as current market conditions and the performance of other social firms that have listed have floated around as considerations and they have had to counter concerns about their reliance on Facebook for their business model - i.e. if Facebook launched their own versions of Zynga's popular games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars (which run on Facebook) they could potentially seriously damage Zynga's business model overnight.

This is clearly a concern that the company's leadership team are going to have to tackle as they undertake a series of roadshows with potential investors next week - and given how Groupon has tanked since their IPO (and LinkedIn have hardly had a good time recently) it will be an interesting time to list if they do go public before Christmas.

Are you a social business, a social brand, or neither?

The challenge of getting your company's board level senior management to buy into social media and what you can do with it in terms of customer service, brand engagement and product development - amongst other areas! - is a heck of a challenge, as shown in this interesting video that gives some tips on how to tackle that hurdle:
The one that people who are protagonists and enthusiasts of social do need to address is that often the senior teams just want to know what it means in pounds, shillings and pence and that they don't really care themselves as Ecademy's Thomas Power points out well.

Facebook settles US privacy complaint

Facebook have (as expected) agreed a settlement with US consumer protection body the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after the social network was accused of repeatedly allowing private information on the site to be shared with others or made public.

Under the terms of the settlement, which came about because of the 800-million user strong site's 2009 decision to make profiles public by default, Facebook must close access to any deleted accounts within 30 days and have independent privacy audits undertaken every two years for the next two decades.

The site did not admit guilt but has agreed to in future not over-ride any privacy settings without "affirmative express consent".

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg held his hands up in saying "I'm the first to admit that we've made a bunch of mistakes" but defended their overall privacy record.

Europe rules against piracy filtering

A European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling has stated that ISPs cannot be required to put filtering technologies in place to prevent wholesale downloads of pirated content - although this doesn't affect any blocking of individual sites such as the BT/Newzbin2 case and the further site blocking that rights holders are currently pursuing.

A Belgian court had previously ruled that an ISP could be forced to block all such content upon a request from local rights body SABAM but the provider (Scarlet) has managed to get the ruling overturned through the European courts after a senior adviser to the court said that such an order would infringe human rights.

The ECJ agreed, saying in a statement:

"Such an injunction could potentially undermine freedom of information since that system might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications."

The significance of the ruling for the UK has been played down by TalkTalk's regulatory mouthpiece Andrew Heaney though:

"The idea of filtering was talked about in the UK but it came off the table some time ago. This judgement is effectively about an old issue."

Such filtering was originally an idea within the Digital Economy Act (DEA) but it was dropped subsequently in favour of the current system where a court order for individual sites to be blocked can be granted if a rights holder satisfies a court that the site's activities are in breach of UK copyright law.

'Cyber Monday' sees 33% sales hike

Monday was the first working day after many people had received their month end pay and had a chance to look around the shops at the weekend in November and hence it's the day where the highest amount of e-commerce spend tends to go in pre-Christmas ... and I'd have to say I even partook in 'Cyber Monday' myself!

Whilst I'm still waiting to see some UK figures, IBM in the US have tracked over a million transactions to 500 leading e-commerce websites and report that there was a 33% jump in online spend on the day compared to the same comparable day in 2010.

The other trend that the company spotted moving on year-on-year was the increased use of mobile devices such as tablets to make purchases (with clueful sites having now optimised them for tablet and smartphone use) - and there were also plenty of purchases of tablets too.

Scots town to get FTTH

A small town that was one of the winners of BT's questionable 'Race to Infinity' competition in Scotland is to be the first in the country (i.e. in Scotland) to have BT's Openreach access division deploy Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH, or FTTP - Premises) in it.

Innerleithen in the Scots borders will have up to 300Mb speeds rolled out in with the network availability and BT's James McClafferty said:

"This is fantastic news for the people of Innerleithen and the campaigners who have fought hard to win faster broadband for the town.

With a mix of fibre to the cabinet and fibre to the premises technologies, Innerleithen will streak ahead of other Scottish communities and become the best connected place in Scotland.

BT is investing thousands of man hours in this upgrade and installing 112 kilometres of fibre to give Innerleithen one of the highest percentages of fibre coverage to be found anywhere in the UK.

At a time when organisations around the UK are seeking investment partners to bring superfast technologies to their areas and give them a competitive edge, Innerleithen has shot straight to the forefront of Digital Britain."

It's interesting to note his comment that some of the rollout will be FTTC based and hence only able to get speeds of up to 40Mb and that BT have not revealed what the split of the town which will get which technologies powering their broadband lines.

BT hopes to be taking orders by March 2012.

World's stupidest hacker?

A Hungarian man must surely win the award of the world's stupidest hacker after he was arrested upon arrival in America after demanding that Marriott International gave him a job maintaining the company's computers after he demonstrated that he had access to their systems and to gain sensitive information.

The fabulously named 26-year-old Attila Nemeth was flown to the US after he had been exchanging communications with a Secret Service agent posing as a company employee and the agent undertook a mock interview where he demonstrated how he could access the hotel chain's systems - after which he was arrested.

Nemeth has now pleaded guilty in a Maryland court over the intrusion which is said to have cost the company somewhere between USD$400,000 and USD$1m. He will be sentenced on February 3.

How KLM creates super promoters

KLM is a company that really gets social media as shown with their 'live' Twitter responses and this video of their Foursquare/Twitter campaign to find members of the public travelling with and talking about them socially to give them a small gift really shows how the gap between the online and offline worlds can be bridged brilliantly:
Whilst no doubt it was a bit perturbing for some (not shown in the video naturally), it's clearly a great experience from an airline that has been able to successfully execute the use of social media to fix real problems as well - which is a godsend in an industry dominated by appalling customer service.

It certainly makes me want to fly KLM some time.

Twitter - it's all retro

It's been all retro Summer 2008 on Twitter this afternoon as many attempts to access tweets resulted in a return of an old friend - the over capacity 'fail whale':Their status page doesn't include any info on what's been up and ironically that was down when I first attempted to visit it too!

BT's blogging gaffe

BT have made a highly amusing and poorly thought through decision with the title of a blog posting from as far back as July that has only just come to light:Hardly suitable for an international audience, as was pointed out by a Next Generation Broadband industry analyst on Twitter this morning.

Float set to value Facebook at $100bn

The saga of when Facebook are finally going to go public with an IPO has been dragging on and on for ever it seems, but reports this week suggest that their rumoured listing of next Spring will generate USD$10bn of proceeds and value the entire company at USD$100bn.

Either way Facebook are due to by year end hit the threshold of having 500 shareholders - many of them employees - which triggers a SEC threshold meaning that they need to file financial records with the securities regulator.

Whilst Facebook have not declared their financials due to them not needing to as a privately listed company it has been reported that their revenues in the first half of 2011 doubled to USD$1.6bn.

They do declare their UK revenues at Companies House though and their 2010 UK revenues were up 54% to £15.3m.

Financial Times to pass advertising milestone

The Financial Times (FT) is set to pass a significant milestone by year end as subscription revenues and cover price sales will result in them exceeding revenues from advertising sales, reducing their reliance on a particularly volatile part of the media industry in the current financial climate.

The FT has made a success of charging for access to their website with a paywall for PCs as well as for mobile access, tapping into the commuting business traveller market very successfully - and overall 30% of the title's revenues now come from the online space.

FT publisher Pearson's head honcho John Ridding commented:

"It's obviously a rather challenging time for print advertising so these engines of digital subscriptions and content are essential and valuable.

We think this year our content revenues should be pretty much the equivalent, maybe even exceed, print advertising revenues for the first time ever."

The FT is often rumoured to be a takeover target and currently generates 7% of the publisher's overall sales.

Everything Everywhere secures funding for loan paybacks

Everything Everywhere (EE), the company with the "silly" name that runs the UK operations of sub brands Orange and T-Mobile, has announced that they have secured new credit facilities of £875m - which allows them to part refinance the £1.25bn loan that their parent companies Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom extended to the business when it was formed.

Speaking about the widely anticipated agreement the company's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Neal Milson said:

"We are pleased to receive the support of the high quality lenders who are participating in our new bank financing facilities, recognising the strength of Everything Everywhere as the largest mobile network operator in the UK."

The new agreement does not change ownership of the firm, which remains 50/50 owned by their German and French parents.

Facebook and Google dominate UK mobile web

Accessing the web from mobile devices for UK residents is predominantly an experience ruled by Facebook and Google, latest data from web measurement firm comScore shows.

Smartphone and tablet users generated 9.6m and 12.8m unique users respectively in the month of September for Facebook and Google, with operator own portals and news sites also featuring in the top 10: Facebook came out clearly in terms of engagement as users spent much more time on the site from mobile devices, with Google largely just being used as a search signpost.

comScore's Jeremy Copp said:

"The average usage session for Google sites (including YouTube) is 3.2 minutes. This is compared to the average Facebook user who stays for about 9.6 minutes on average for each session."

This is of course unsurprising given the social networking experience on mobiles - you see people on Facebook from their smartphone everywhere!

BT left as only Nex Gen bidder in Highlands & Islands?

A Scots Labour MSP has warned that there is a risk that BT - via their Openreach access division - may become the only bidder for faster broadband rollouts in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland due them being the only provider that can realistically commit to a bid on the scale needed to deploy the faster broadband access to the region.

The warning is of course both pertinent and familiar given the decisions from Geo Networks and Cable & Wireless to cease bidding from any further projects to get hold of government funding from the Broadband Delivery UK vehicle that has been set up to distribute funding for faster broadband rollout projects in areas where they would not be otherwise economically viable.

Local MSP Rhoda Grant cautioned that BT were the only bidder with the withdrawal of other contenders:

"I am deeply concerned to learn than a second bidder, Cable & Wireless, has withdrawn its tender for the Highlands & Islands broadband pilot. This follows Fujitsu backing out last week due to the lack of public money being invested in the project.

This pilot is of vital importance to every community throughout the Highlands & Islands and it is essential that more public money is invested in this project – so far only 10% of the estimated costs have been secured.

Westminster is presently investing more in broadband in Scotland than our own Scottish government is and this needs to change. That said, I am appealing again to Westminster to release the remaining money it has set aside for rural broadband (£167m) but I am also calling on our government at Holyrood not only to introduce its broadband action plan with immediate effect but also to urgently increase the amount it is investing in Scotland's digital future."

For their part Fujitsu said in a statement:

"It is only the Highlands and Islands bid that we have withdrawn from as the sums simply did not stack up."

Fujitsu are of course trying to get hold of BDUK funding for their own FTTH faster broadband rollouts and BT have said previously that the solution for faster broadband access in the UK is for them to be given all of the government funding available for projects.

Vevo seeks Google ad-share renegotiation

Music industry owned music video site Vevo is apparently in discussions with Google about improving their share of advertising revenue for the YouTube hosted site.

At present YouTube takes 35% of ad revenue from the site with Vevo raking in the other 65% (see, I can add to 100) and agreeing a new deal is said to be a vital pre-requisite to Vevo going public with any potential IPO.

Google are of course pushing ahead with their own music offering which changes the dynamic between the company and the labels yet further. Vevo is expected to go public within 18 months.

Google tightening web property security

Google have beefed up the security on their suite of web based applications Gmail, Google+ and Google Docs by deploying a feature called forward security.

Whilst plenty of tecchie details if course always available on how this works from Wikipedia, in short it means that data sent from a user's connection that is private remains private in future by the use of cryptographic keys.

It works within the Firefox and Chrome browsers now and Google hopes their deployment will work with Internet Explorer in the future.

Orange to hike mobile pricing

Orange has announced that they are to hike pricing for their pay monthly mobile customers from the January 8 by 4.34%, an increase that they have attributed to "20-year high inflation".

The price hike will, for example, see customers on their £30 per month plan having the price increased by an odd amount (given that providers would normally round figures in such circumstances) to £31.28 - but call, data and text charges are not going up for the Everything Everywhere (EE) owned brand's customers.

In what is a particularly controversial move the company has said that they will not allow anyone who doesn't like the increase to get out of their contract as inflation related charges are permitted in the contract, but it's very unclear how that would stack up if challenged given that Ofcom expects providers to let consumers out of contracts if they do not agree to price rises if they are likely to be of 'material detriment', even with the appropriate levels of notice.

Speaking of the controversy, consumer champion Martin Lewis said:

"This isn't a clear-cut case – so predicting the outcome of any complaint is tough.

However, for those who want to escape their contract, it is worth formally contacting Orange and telling it you believe the price hike is of 'material detriment' and you want to leave.

There is a slight chance the company will prefer to let some people go on an ad hoc, goodwill basis rather than risk having lots of people complain to Ofcom.

If the company doesn't wilt, call Ofcom as if enough people complain it will investigate, which would see a firm have to answer on the whole thing.

However, this is about hoping it may work, but not planning your finances on it happening."

At this point it's unclear whether the increases also apply to their fixed line broadband service - although clearly many of the customers are the same people given the savings from bundling - and pricing is not planned to go up at EE stablemate T-Mobile.

ISPA criticises domain removal proposals, Nominet delays plans

The Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) has come out to criticise the proposals from UK domain registrar Nominet over deregistering domain names that are being used for criminal purposes without having received a court order beforehand.

Under the proposals Nominet would suspend domains - in other words removing the site from the web - upon receiving a takedown request from SOCA before any legal action was taken, hence speeding up what could otherwise be a slow and cumbersome process of taking down the website before further victims are affected.

Some have come up with conspiracy theories about these powers being used for piracy related websites, which is of course not going to happen given that there is now very clear legal precedent on what rights holders need to do about any such websites - but ISPA have joined others such as the rent-a-quote privacy mob in raising concerns about the removal of such sites without a court order.

As a result Nominet have now delayed the implementation of the proposals. A spokesman said:

"We had hoped to submit a proposed policy to our board in the December time-frame but following some recent public feedback it is clear that there are issues that require further discussion.

Our approach from the outset has been to seek consensus where possible."

Further talks are to be held in January.

Microsoft highlights Xbox phishing scam

Microsoft are bringing to the attention of thousands of subscribers of Xbox Live that their accounts have fallen victim to a phishing scam and that, in some cases, credit card details have been able to be access by the scammers in question.

Whilst Xbox Live as a service has not been "hacked or breached" the company emphasises, some accounts have been compromised due to users not being diligent enough when challenged by a fraudulent website - and it's understood that the accounts compromised by suspected Russian or Chinese hackers is less than a million globally.

Microsoft are refunding some consumers where they are able to and the company said in a statement:

"We take the security of the Xbox Live service seriously and work to improve it against evolving threats. Very occasionally, though, we are contacted by members regarding alleged unauthorised access to their accounts by outside individuals. We can confirm that only a small percentage of Xbox Live customers have been affected here in the UK.

We work closely with impacted members directly to resolve any unauthorised changes to their accounts and, as always, highly recommend all Xbox Live users follow our account security guidance in order to protect their account details."

Those affected are naturally being advised to change their account passwords too.

Murdoch to survive resignation calls

Today's annual general meeting of BSkyB (Sky) is set to see calls for the resignation of chairman James Murdoch in the wake of the phone hacking scandal and News Corporation's subsequent failure to acquire the 61% of the company that they don't already own.

Murdoch is, however, expected to survive the calls from a number of other shareholders including some pension funds and Christian groups thanks to News Corp's stake in the firm - but either way it is set to be a particularly feisty AGM, something that the appointment of a pair of independent directors ahead of the meeting was widely interpreted as being an attempt to diffuse.

Ignoring the actual stake that News Corp holds in Sky, a vote of 31% of shares against Murdoch's continuation in the role would actually mean that more than half of the company's shareholders want him out - and the question is as to how high the anti Murdoch vote needs to be before his position is in the longer term untenable.

Murdoch has recently stood down as a director at a number of newspapers.

Microsoft admits file hosting experience is ropey

Microsoft have coughed to a poor user experience for users of their Windows Live SkyDrive cloud based file hosting service, which they say has been too limited in terms of functionality and complex for many years.

Admissions like this are, of course, only made in conjunction with news of service improvements and Microsoft have announced that they plan a swathe of these.

SkyDrive program manager Omar Shahine blogged:

"We know we have a ways to go to deliver a cloud that seamlessly connects today's files with tomorrow's modern device and app experiences.

We will measure our progress in meaningful releases that address feedback and bring us closer to our vision."

Being Microsoft they also took the time out to have a dig about offerings from rival providers rather than rise above such pettiness.

Groupon shares continue to slide

After confidence in daily deals site Groupon was thought to be high with the company's public listing their share price has been largely declining ever since as investors and analysts how question their massive marketing costs and low barriers to entry (despite their notorious "competitive moats") to the market will impact the company's profitability.

The company's shares (OK, 'stock') is now below the IPO price less than a month after they went public and have tanked a further 9% in latest trading:As one fund manager told Bloomberg:

"There was a lot of skepticism to begin with about Groupon's model, its margins, its growth rate, but now you throw on a world economy that's very unpredictable and shaky, and I think people are doing a flight to safety again."

No matter what Groupon says they really can't convince me that they shouldn't have taken the money and ran when it was on the table from Google so good luck in convincing investors of it!

Given the news it's of little surprise that the company has stepped back from plans to locate their UK base in the so-called 'Silicon Roundabout' area around Old Street in the East End of Central London. They instead plan to base themselves around Monument in the Square Mile.

Groupon currently has around 750 employees in London but are still based in temporary accommodation at present and a source made it clear that cost was the basis of their decision.

Update @1807: The Register has - of course! - reminded us that yesterday was the supposed Cyber Monday, the predicted busiest day of the year for online shopping. Oh the irony ...

Former F1 boss suing Google

In the ongoing Leveson Inquiry into the British press in the wake of the phone hacking scandal it has been revealed that former Formula 1 boss Max Mosley is suing Google in a bid to have them remove videos about his private life from their search results.

Mosley has of course campaigned for privacy causes since the revelations about his private life in the News of the World led him to having to quit as the president of the governing body of F1 due to the media circus it was causing along with disapproval's from some governments in countries that host races.

Mosley is suing Google in Germany and France to have them remove the 'orgy' related search results and said to the Inquiry:

"The fundamental thing is that Google could stop this appearing but they don't or won't as a matter of principle."

He went on to call the Internet "a sort of wild west with its own rules which the courts cannot touch" and added:

"This is a fallacy.

The internet and those that use it are clearly subject to the law like everyone else. It may sometimes be difficult to enforce the law because of the international nature of the internet. But that is a separate question."

In a characteristically staunch defence of their stance on censorship Google said via a spokesman in response:

"Google's search results reflect the information available on billions of web pages on the internet. We don't, and can't, control what others post online, but when we're told that a specific page is illegal under a court order, then we move quickly to remove it from our search results."

It's understood that Google have removed hundreds of such references after requests from Mosley's solicitors but he is calling for more than that - that they are forced to monitor search results in order for the material to never appear on their search results.

Free Scouseband

A £1m project that has put in place a fibre ring around the city of Liverpool has gone live and businesses in the city are being enticed to sign up to the up to 1Gb speeds that are available with the carrot of being able to sign up to a 12 month free pilot.

The government backed FibreNet project also involves Virgin Media Business and local businesses are being encouraged to join up to the network, which will eventually be able to deliver up to 10Gb speeds to meet the needs of Scouse businesses.

The network piggbacks the one already in place for the local City Council.

Similar commercially focused initiatives are also popping up in other cities of the UK.

Twitter opens chequebook for mobile security firm

Twitter have opened their chequebook to acquire mobile security startup Whisper Systems for an undisclosed sum, the company has announced.

Whisper produces software to improve security and privacy on smartphones and other mobile devices and is a clear strategic fit for Twitter, for which something like 80% of all updates are made from mobile devices.

Their software scrambles data, voice and text traffic for Android devices and Twitter also pick up Whisper's founders and security experts Moxie Marlinspike and Stuart Anderson.

In an e-mailed statement Twitter said:

"The Whisper Systems team is joining Twitter starting today.

As part of our fast-growing engineering team, they will be bringing their technology and security expertise to Twitter's products and services. We're happy to have Moxie and Stuart onboard."

What will happen with Whisper's current products as a result of the move is as of yet unclear.

China now world's largest smartphone market

Not content with being the place where most of them are manufactured, China is now the world's leading market for sales of smartphones also.

Having now overtaken US nationals, Chinese citizens can't get enough of that smartphone goodness with 23.9 million units sold to Chinese residents in the third quarter according to data from Strategy Analytics - sales being up 58% in the country. In contrast US sales fell away by 7% to 23.2m units.

Smartphones are usually sold for a much lower price in China though so they still have a long way to catch up with the American market in terms of revenues.

Spotify's revenues climb

Spotify have announced their year end numbers for 2010 (FT version behind paywall here) and in the year the firm saw revenues climb to £63m (£11.3m in the previous year) as they focused on driving consumers towards their paid for tiers of service - and of course they've done plenty more this year with curbing their free tiers, launches in more countries (the US launch in particular driving huge subscriber numbers for them), tie-ups with ISPs like Virgin Media and their tight integration to Facebook ... all of which have helped them pass 2.5 million paying subscribers on either their 'Unlimited' or 'Premium' paid for tiers.

Of the revenue figures £45m came from subscriptions and £18m from advertising - but losses widened from £16m to £26.5m as a result of royalties they need to fork out to rights holders. However, with revenues on the climb, they're well on the way to achieving a sustainable business model.

Virgin launches Spotify TiVo app

A software update to the company's TiVo connected TV boxes has resulted in the launch of the Spotify app for Virgin Media's customers.

The app has been trailed for some time and has now been rolled out to the 220+ customers that Virgin has already got onto their TiVo platform, with it being available to the company's customers who are on the Spotify Premium paid for tier - which they are dangling as a 6 month free carrot for both new customers and existing ones who re-contract with the provider.

Speaking about the TiVo app Virgin Media's executive director of digital entertainment Cindy Rose said:

"The world of digital entertainment is continually changing and we're always looking at ways we can bring our customers the best entertainment for their whole families. Our goal to deliver a truly unique experience for our customers and we're really excited about bringing Spotify to our TiVo service as part of our ongoing initiatives to develop the platform further with new features, applications and content."

Spotify's global head honcho of telecoms business development Andreas Liffgarden added:

"TV is now totally interactive."

Since we like our users to enjoy the world's best music under the best possible conditions, it made perfect sense for us to develop this great Spotify app for Virgin Media TiVo."

The app has appeared automatically in the Apps and Games section of the TV interface and there is more information about it on Virgin's dedicated TiVo microsite.

Update 29/11: Virgin Media have formally announced the launch and included a screenshot of the TiVo interface:

Google: We're just getting started on Google+

Google have classed reports of the death of their Google+ social network (or not, if you believe them) as being premature despite some saying that it is in fact already dead.

The search giant is adding new features to the site all the time - such as the recent launch of product/brand pages and trending topics - and Google have made it very clear that they are determined to make a success of the social network with Larry Page having made the successful execution of their social media strategy a big part of the staff bonus scheme.

Traffic to Google+ has spiked after major events such as its initial launch and then it coming out of beta mode, but has dropped back each time as users are confused with some of the features and as a result of their friends being on Facebook. Trying stunts like the big arrow on the front page of Google are bound to be used more though, given the impact that they have had.

Google+ vice president Bradley Horowitz made the company's commitment to the project clear:

"Google+ is a foundational element for identity, relationship, interest across all we're doing at Google.

Everything we do is going to be informed by this sense of person and interest and relationship, so that all users' data can be used in their interest at their discretion.

So the concept of Google+ dying, it's a misunderstanding of what we're doing.

We have not even begun, let alone these reports of premature demise."

With the cash riches at Google's disposal and their sheer scale you have to think that Google will find a way to achieve their target.

Aussies outline piracy regime

A proposal by a cabal of Australian ISPs outlines a potential anti piracy regime based on a similar educational message focus that is seen elsewhere in the world.

Under the scheme, which is proposed to run as an 18-month trial, rights holders would send to ISPs the IP Addresses and timestamps of suspected pirated activity after which the providers would trace the customer paying for that Internet connection and then write to them with educational messages about online piracy.

Like similar regimes elsewhere this is of course subject to the flaw that the Internet connection could have been hijacked (for example, down to an unsecured WiFi network) by someone who is not the paying customer or the IP Address is spoofed - but presumably by opening a dialogue with the account holder the providers are hoping to limit the impact of these issues.

Should a user continue to infringe a graduated system will ensure that users get up to three educational messages before the ISPs would then propose co-operating with the rights holders so that court action can be taken against repeat offenders.

Each ISP would only be obliged to process 100 such notices per month - so you can expect the rights holders to target who they think are the worst offenders (i.e. with the most piracy going on from sole IP Addresses), who will also be sent 'evidence' of the infringement as part of the communications.

ISP cabal head honcho John Stanton said of the scheme:

"We believe the notice scheme can greatly reduce online copyright infringement in Australia while protecting consumer rights, educating consumers about how to access legal online content, and helping rights holders to protect their rights.

Equally important is the need for rights holders to ensure that consumers have access to legal and affordable content online, to reduce the motivation to source content in ways that might be illegal."

It's likely - as one commenter points out - that changes to the law would be needed by the time any cases were to go to court, and that won't happen before the country's parliament reports back for service next year.

The country's neighbours (and everybody needs good neighbours) in New Zealand recently implemented their own anti online piracy law.

How Internet addicted are Brits?

Some research commissioned by Sky has revealed the level of Internet addiction from modern day Brits in a world where we're always connected and devices such as smartphones are continuously promoting you with an e-mail or a social networking update of some sort or another.

They have coined a phrase of "e-anxiety" (clearly in an attempt to get some column inches for their press release) to cover the 51% of the 2,000 adults they surveyed who have a feeling of worry if they are unable to check their e-mail. In London the figure is even higher at 57%, which is perhaps due to higher levels of smartphone penetration amongst the population of the capital.

In PR bumf to push their broadband service's unlimited nature (on their higher tiers) the company's Jon Blumberg said:

"Our results reveal that this demand for unlimited broadband has turned much of the nation into Gigabyte Britain; addicted to their emails and social media accounts without worrying about knowing how stuff works or who built it in the first place. They just want good value and reliable internet access whether they are at home, in the office, or on the move."

Naturally their release didn't mention the increasingly tenuous limits on their 'free' broadband tier.

Sky's research also suggests that 32% of adults check their e-mail at least 6 times daily outside of working hours, although this is much easier nowadays with auto notifications on smartphones and services such as Gmail highlighting when new messages are available. 14% check their social networks as frequently.

Rural Norfolk provider launches

When the government started forking out reddies for the rollout of Next Generation faster broadband services and for the covering of so called 'not spots' so that half decent broadband speeds were available in areas where it was otherwise economically unviable to do so, much was spoken about a 'mesh' of different companies and technologies being used to provide services.

With many companies now pulling out of some of the faster broadband rollout projects due to their inability to compete with the scale of the likes of BT, some will be comforted that a project in rural Norfolk to provide broadband access via a local wireless provider has launched with the first 200 customers getting a free installation.

ThinkingWisp promotes themselves as 'fast, local broadband' and offers a 3Mb (downstream) package with a 10GB monthly limit for £15.99 per month as well as a 10Mb (downstream, 3Mb upstream) offering for a more pricey £50.99 per month. Both services are subject to a fair use policy, which seems to do its best to forbid P2P file sharing - something that has the risk of seriously harming the technology economics of such services.

The WISP is a local council supported project that has been part funded by UK and European government grants. It has not received any of the £15m from the BDUK funding that has been allocated to Norfolk and appears to have avoided any problems from luddites.

T-Mobile cuts mobile broadband pricing

T-Mobile, a subsidiary brand of Everything Everywhere in the UK, has slashed the pricing of their mobile broadband dongles to £9.99 in a push to increase sales of mobile broadband connections.

The company has also reduced the pricing of their 'pay up front' proposition which offers a dongle and three months Internet access (1GB usage per month) by a tenner to £29.99.