Radio and Britain’s digital future
Jack Schofield, writing in the Guardian Technology Blog (1 July 2009), urges us to “Put the boot into DAB, and try to Save FM”. I might just agree… but for a slightly different reason. Here’s the comment I added to the article.
If we are keeping digital radio in its present form, then it certainly makes sense for us to upgrade from current DAB’s antiquated MP2 technology to DAB+/DMB‑A, which allow the use of modern codecs and thus higher quality (current DAB stations are abysmal compared to good FM) on a far smaller bandwidth.
Yes, of course the vast majority of existing DAB radios will be obsolete at some point, but they do not have an enormously long life anyway, and we are all used to hardware going out of date in today’s world, aren’t we? It’s a fact of life. We get new gadgets because we want to, and because they do so much more than the old ones: there isn’t time for them to become technically obsolete.
However, there is a real question in my mind whether we shouldn’t simply skip all that and go to an IP-based system for the “radio space”.
Radio in the UK is obviously extremely popular — possibly more popular than ever, apparently paradoxically, But whether “the space occupied by radio”, to use Bill Thompson’s excellent phrase, has to be carried on a multiplex terrestrial broadcast structure for the foreseeable future is another matter, because carrying it via IP networks would make more sense.
Integrating the radio space into a national network infrastructure would make the current Band III and L‑Band spaces available for other services — but only if that IP-based infrastructure exists. It would require true broadband of the fibre-to-the-home variety supplied on a universal service basis — one <i>single</i> network in which the installation of cheaper urban infrastructure would subsidise the hard-to-reach rural environments — and would thus need to be laid down by a national service provider (even if it subcontracts installation to existing private companies).
An FTTH infrastructure would be backed up by large-scale WiMax-style wireless network provision to allow mobile listening to internet radio stations and much more, including coverage of really difficult areas.
Given that, then of course you can have all kinds of ‘ultra-local’ ‘broadcasters’ — but they could be heard all over the country (and beyond). Given symmetrical broadband we can all be content providers, even if, like most blogs, the vast majority only have a tiny audience. At the same time, the network can carry all existing radio broadcasters and you no longer need to think of the “airwaves” as a scarce resource to which only the privileged few can have access — “here comes everybody”.
If a true Digital Britain were in our future, then a sensible approach would be to hang on to FM until it’s in place. But copper-based 2Mb/s is not what this requires.
July 1, 2009 Comments Off on Radio and Britain’s digital future
The Digital Britain report and what it means
I haven’t had the opportunity yet to read through the entire Digital Britain report, but someone who has is leading tech journalist Bill Thompson, with whom I worked on the Cambridge Digital Britain Unconference that he organised.
Bill’s report, Engaging with the Internet, is well worth a read and covers the topic admirably. And, nice to hear, it’s hopeful rather than gloomy. Check it out.
June 23, 2009 Comments Off on The Digital Britain report and what it means
Digital Britain Unconferences Report released: Please sign up!
The Digital Britain Unconferences Report is now available. There’s an Executive Summary and the full Report itself, and you can read them both below. Most important of all, assuming that you agree with the content, I would encourage you to put your name to the document by adding a comment on the web site with your full name.
The whole process by which this Report came together is almost as amazing as the final document itself. February saw the release of the official interim Digital Britain report and the Digital Britain Summit, both of which seemed to many to leave a great deal of questions unanswered and not go nearly far enough. Comments were sought in advance of the release of the final official report later in the year.
Given virtually no time, a groundswell of popular activism around the country led groups and “Unconferences” to be set up to explore and collect comments to submit for consideration, using all the latest internet technologies and social media systems to organise, publicise, and allow live participation in meetings all over the country. From rooms full of people in some locations to a handful of participants in another, we all came together and thrashed out our ideas for how Britain should move forward into a digital future of universal high-speed symmetrical Internet access in which we can all participate. We all added our contributions to what we felt “Digital Britain” should really mean.
Then came the remarkable efforts of a small team of editors to collate the reports from the individual meetings and bring them together to create the final Report and Summary. Everyone involved is to be heartily congratulated for a tremendous job.
I was mildly (though happily) surprised that my personal account of the Cambridge meeting ended up as the Cambridge group’s submission to the report. Inevitably I didn’t cover every nuance of the discussion, but I hope other attendees feel that I presented it fairly and effectively. My personal thanks to Bill Thompson for conceiving the Cambridge meeting and helping to bring the entire effort together.
Now the Digital Britain Unconferences Report is out there – and is being considered by those preparing the official Government Digital Britain report for publication in just a short time – and I am very happy to put my name to it. I would like to thank everyone who helped put the Unconferences and the resulting Report together, for all their hard work assembled in a remarkably short time. I am very pleased to have been able to contribute a small part to the process.
I am more than happy to endorse the final Digital Britain Unconferences Report and the recommendations contained therein. I sincerely hope it positively impacts the Government’s plans and decisions in this vitally important aspect of the country’s future.
May 29, 2009 Comments Off on Digital Britain Unconferences Report released: Please sign up!
Blue-Sky Thoughts on Digital Britain
Bill Thompson arranged a “Digital Britain Unconference” in Cambridge on May 7th, which I attended. It was a small affair, with a total of around half a dozen people involved over the course of the meeting. We observed that it being so easy to get to London, many people from the area would have gone to the London meeting at the ICA the night before.
Here are some musings around what we discussed. [The following became essentially the bulk of the Cambridge contribution to the Digital Britain Unconference Report.]
We started the gathering next to the lamp-post in the centre of Parker’s Piece in Cambridge and ultimately adjourned to the PictureHouse café nearby.
On the agenda were three main areas: which we identified as core concerns and restricted ourselves essentially to those areas: Infrastructure, Broadcasting and Rights.
We began by noting that we were aware that there was a difference between “blue sky” thinking and what was actually regarded as practical to achieve, but inevitably as we did adopt a fairly expansive view as far as infrastructure is concerned, that fed over into other areas of the discussion.
Infrastructure
Both Bill and I have journalistic and broadcast backgrounds (he being more accomplished than I am) but one thing we have in common is that we are in several senses not only content providers but also used to working with content providers. As a result it’s perhaps inevitable that we are going to assume (and I think rightly) that if not everyone, then at least a great many more people than are currently able, would like to become content providers themselves, whether they want to podcast, videocast or even run TV or radio channels. All of that means that whatever network infrastructure we might see being made available, it had to be symmetrical: it had to have equal up- and download speeds.
And inevitably those speeds would want to be substantial, especially if we want to do HDTV on demand, for example. We did not feel that the suggested 2Mb/s universal broadband service, delivered by running fibre to a cabinet at the end of the road and something like normal copper wire from there to the house, was sufficient, and favoured a solution bringing fibre to the individual home or business.
There are likely to be some objections to this. Fibre to the individual router is probably ten times more expensive than running it to the cabinet. Symmetrical routers mean expensive high-speed transmitters. And in addition, there’s an argument that says that what is being done here is the equivalent of bringing basic mains water or electricity supply to the most remote parts of the UK. A colleague of mine points out that there is a village in South Wales that got mains electricity after he got broadband in his Cambridgeshire village. And anyway, what would everyone do with all that bandwidth?
We, I think, would take the view that if South Korea can aim high then so can we, and we really ought to offer people something in the order of 200Mb/s even if you or I can’t think of the things that others might want to do with it all…yet. Just as we can think of possibilities, so can other people: we are a creative lot in this country. Look at how popular innovative, simple-to-use technologies like AudioBoo, which enables people to record short audio segments on their mobile phones and share them with the world, have caught on. Videoboo is on its way, and apps like this are just the beginning. Look out: “Here comes everybody”, to quote Clay Shirky.
It’s quite likely that some parts of the country would simply be impossible to access directly with fibre. In some cases a point-to-point microwave link could be used to carry a data feed out to a remote village, for example, with land-based distribution at the far end.
In addition we would envisage the establishment of an extensive wireless network, using WiMax or similar technology. This would provide high-speed mobile access, backup in the case of a pickaxe through a cable, and distribution within rural areas. Indeed, the idea would be that you could travel around the country while listening to internet radio or even watching a TV channel.
Broadcasting
Which brings us on to broadcasting. Bill Thompson used a phrase on BBC World Service’s Digital Planet recently which I think is very apt. He noted that whatever distribution medium was in use in the future, “the space occupied by radio” would always be there (indeed, despite all the other options available today, radio listening in the UK is at a 10-year high). And the space occupied by television. And so on. If you have high-speed internet access all over the country, at home or on the move, then you have obviated the entire existing broadcast infrastructure (and the cellphone networks, while we’re at it), but you have not obviated the provision of content — although the possibilities are immediately a great deal broader. Not only can existing broadcasters be carried via the network but entirely new ones too — and increasingly, “broadcasters” can be anywhere on a continuüm from an individual to a large corporation, and their listeners can number a handful of friends or millions across the world.
In addition, the carrying of broadcasting via the internet means that on the one hand the physical layer that carries the network is immaterial (it’s whatever gets the internet to the subscribers): it’s all the same kind of signal; and on the other, every communications device you have will essentially have the same front end: an IP-based communication module. At the other end it might look like a TV or a radio or a phone.
How’s it done?
It’s quite obvious that a high-speed National Network Infrastructure is not going to be built by private companies on their own. Even with Government support it could be difficult. Everyone would want to focus on the easy and thus profitable urban and inter-urban paths and nobody would be up for the rural areas. When the telephone system was installed, it was a national public monopoly. As a result, the profitable and easy urban routings were able to subsidise the difficult and thus expensive rural ones.
In the same way, the NNI should be a publicly-owned monopoly so that such a system of easy subsidising difficult can exist. Of course the project will involve subcontracting to private corporations, but the project would be managed and operated on a national basis. The NNI would be responsible for bringing the pipe into the house and maintaining the service to that point; beyond that the user would install, or have installed, their own routers and other equipment, and could employ specialist providers to handle this along with maintenance and other facilities.
An analogy I presented via the online link to the Yorkshire and Humberside DBUC a few days before was that the NNI is like Network Rail and the rest of us either run the trains or travel on them. Of course the analogy went down like a lead balloon, but you can easily grasp what I am getting at. It should also be remembered that we had over 30 years of running national enterprises, by and large successfully, under Governments of either colour and we would be better at it today than we were then: we know how to subdivide and localise organisations to maximise their efficiency, for example.
In addition, community efforts could help reduce effective costs, and — for example — subscribers could help make access easier as in this Norwegian experience.
If people have direct access to the internet at high speed, what does an ISP do? Basically, the traditional role disappears, and instead ISPs become “Internet Services Providers”, providing the web, email and data management services that people cannot, or choose not to, operate themselves. In addition, with the NNI’s responsibility ending at the doorstep, there would be plenty of room for independent contractors as well as larger organisations to supply, install, configure and maintain the routers and other on-site infrastructure required by subscribers to access the system.
How would it be paid for?
The system would be most easily covered by direct taxation, making the individual contribution relatively small. It seems that “spare” digital switchover funds have already been spoken for at least twice so I would not expect those to be available, and in any event, this is a rather larger project than 2Mb/s.
Digital Rights
If we are going to let a million broadcasters bloom and make it possible to download an HD movie in a matter of minutes, people need to have the rights to handle copyright material legally. The obvious answer is a form of blanket licensing, where for an annual fee, you can do what you like. Averaged out over the online population this would be a relatively small amount.
Distribution initially could be via a “black box” system in which all the income goes into a fund which would be distributed proportionally to artists etc in the same proportion as other rights. However there would be a cap, as with the Public Lending Right, or a sliding scale, so the income for an extremely popular artist would level off somewhat, while still remaining substantial. A fund would be set up, administered by the royalty collection societies, to earmark a proportion of this income for developing new talent.
If necessary a distinction could be made between consumers, creators and distributors of copyright material so, for example, there might be a blanket fee for enjoying copyright material and an additional fee for running a music radio station. The principle should be to encourage user-generated content and rely on the fact that lots of people paying a small amount will probably generate a great deal more money than a few paying a lot.
In the long term a “black box” system would become unworkable as the royalties generated by NNI usage would become the most significant source, and thus there would be no reference against which to distribute them proportionally. At this point there would be the need to introduce an automatic logging system in which each media usage was recorded and used to calculate royalty payments.
Regarding copyright in more general terms, the principle should be established that no public-domain work should ever be taken out of the public domain: changes of copyright legislation could not be retroactive as a matter of principle.
And that about rounds up my thoughts following the Digital Britain Cambridge Unconference Part 1. Thanks to Bill for organising the event and to Ellie and the others who dropped in for a chat during this informal meeting.
May 11, 2009 Comments Off on Blue-Sky Thoughts on Digital Britain