Hokum watch: Safer Internet Day

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

It’s Safer Internet Day! The day on which we’re meant “to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology”, according to the official website. Instead, it seems many companies are using it to peddle irresponsible nonsense. Here’s just a few of those we’ve found – let us know if you find any more on comments below, and we’ll update the blog.

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Britain’s sleepwalking into a net neutrality nightmare

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Imagine that you get home tonight, flick on the TV and BBC1 isn’t there. Not absent because of a strike or a temporary technical fault, but because ITV had paid Sky not to carry BBC1 on its satellite network so that it could gobble up a greater share of the viewing figures.

I suspect it would cause a bit of a stir. The Daily Mail would be apoplectic.  #burnrupertmurdoch would be a trending topic on Twitter in less time than it takes to strike a match.

Yet, Britain’s biggest ISPs and Ofcom are driving us towards exactly this kind of scenario on the internet. At a Westminster eForum last week, TalkTalk’s director of strategy unashamedly admitted that he could foresee a situation where Google paid his company to give YouTube priority bandwidth over the BBC iPlayer. His counterpart from BT said likewise. Both described it as a “legitimate business practice”.

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The radical routers of the future

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

The technology inside routers is forever changing, but the cases themselves have evolved little beyond bland boxes that you shamefacedly tuck away in a corner.

That’s why broadband company TalkTalk teamed up with students from Goldsmiths University of London to create a series of conceptual routers that push the design beyond a black plastic box with obtrusions exploding from the rear.

Here’s what they came up with:

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Why BT might have finished off Phorm

Monday, July 6th, 2009

For months we’ve been wondering who would be the first ISP to take the plunge with Phorm’s technology: now BT’s decision has helped push Phorm off the edge of the cliff.

Make no mistake: BT’s decision to drop Phorm is a cataclysmic blow for the advertising firm (as reflected by the sharp drop in its share price this morning). In one stroke, it’s lost the UK’s single biggest ISP and its closest ally.

Phorm’s three UK ISP partners – BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk – have been playing a cowardly game of chicken over the past 18 months. The service has attracted so much negative publicity that all three have sat on the fence, hoping that one of the others would be brave enough to roll out the service, so they could judge just how much of a PR disaster it would be.

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Excuses, excuses…

Friday, June 13th, 2008

The litany of excuses IT companies conjure up to explain disappointing results never fail to amaze me.

Earlier this year, Canon blamed none other than hapless ex-England manager Steve McClaren for costing it millions of pounds of digital camera sales. Why? Because Canon was one of the official sponsors of Euro 2008 and thanks to the umbrella man’s incompetence, fewer footy fans would stop mid-game, turn to their mate and say: “Sod this penatly shootout, I’m popping down to Dixons and picking up an Ixus” every time the Canon logo appeared on screen.

Now the Carphone Warehouse’s Charles Dunstone is blaming his company’s sliding broadband sales on the property slump. “One of the key times people change broadband provider is when they move house,” he claims in today’s Times. “If you’re not moving house, the catalyst to make you think about changing provider does not exist.”

Hmmm… I’d say the main catalyst for switching broadband provider is shocking service from an ISP. And how did Carphone’s TalkTalk rank for customer service in the most recent PC Pro Awards? A mighty two stars out of six for customer support and one for reliability.

Perhaps Mr Dunstone should be looking a little bit closer to home?

Keep your bloody phone lines, I’m off to cable

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

I moved house a couple of weeks ago. Very spacious actually, although the garden could do with a trim, thanks for asking. Being an IT nerd, the first thing I did when I’d finished unloading boxes was to get the phone line and Internet set up – how hard can it be, right?

The answer, according to those lovely folks over at BT and TalkTalk, appears to be “as difficult as we can possibly make it without sticking two fingers up and suggesting yoghurt pots and a piece of string”.

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