UK net is "not ready" for future

18 October 2010 Last updated at 03:25 ET

The UK is slowly climbing up the broadband world rankings, but is still not "ready for tomorrow," according to a global study of net services.

The annual report, commissioned by network giant Cisco, looks at how well countries are doing in terms of both quality and penetration of net services.

The UK is now ranked 18th out of 72 countries, up from 25th place last year.

South Korea is once again ranked first.

The annual study, conducted by the University of Oxford's Said Business School and the University of Oviedo in Spain looks at a range of factors, including both the number of homes to have broadband and the quality of the services.

Quality, for the purposes of the study, encompasses the speed of the connection and the latency - the amount of time it takes data to arrive at a machine.

It put 14countries in the elite category of being ready for the "applications of tomorrow", including the obvious; Korea, Japan and Sweden and the less obvious; Latvia, Bulgaria and Portugal.

In 2008, when the first study was commissioned, only one country - Japan - was judged ready for tomorrow.

The applications ascribed to tomorrow's internet include high definition internet TV and high-quality video communications.

The report found that such applications would require an average download speed of 11Mbps and an upload speed of 5Mbps.

The average global upload speed currently is just 1.7Mbps.

In this year's report the UK is categorised as "comfortably enjoying today's applications", alongside 19 others including the USA, France, Canada, Greece and Poland.

A further 19 countries - including Vietnam, Egypt, China and India, are characterised as being "below today's application threshold" while five countries - Algeria, Peru, Nigeria, Kenya and Angola - are viewed as having only the most basic of services.

The report finds that average broadband speeds in the UK now stand at 6.4Mbps (megabits per second), which is more than double that in 2008, when the first report was compiled.

It is also above the global average of 5.9Mbps.

"The UK is not on average ready for tomorrow but there has been significant improvements in the last two years," said Fernando Gil de Bernabe, a senior director at Cisco.

Mr de Bernabe said the UK was likely to experience a "step-change" in its broadband footprint over the next 12 months, because of increased fibre optic roll-outs from BT and extensions of Virgin Media's cable network.

"Where similar fibre roll-outs have happened the download speeds improved by 50 or 60% in just one year," he said.

Those countries which are categorised as ready for tomorrow in the report have one thing in common, according to Mr de Bernabe.

"There is a clear digital strategy. These countries have placed a bet on broadband and think it will have the same impact on their economies as the infrastructures of the past. They want a society that is based on knowledge," he said.

The UK government has ambitions to be the best broadband economy in Europe by 2015, although it has so far only committed to the rollout of basic 2Mbps broadband by that date.

That decision could mean the UK falls foul of European legislation. The European Union wants member states to provide citizens with a minimum of 30Mbps broadband by 2020, with all nations offering basic broadband - generally regarded as 2Mbps - for all by 2013.

Mr de Bernabe said the UK needed to put its pledge into practise.

"What I hear repeatedly is the question about who is going to pay for it. The leadership countries aren't asking those questions," he said.

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Cyber crime among top UK threats

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Home Secretary Theresa May: International terrorism and cyber attacks are key threats

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Attacks on computer networks are among the biggest threats to the UK, Theresa May has said ahead of the publication of a new National Security Strategy.

Cyber terrorism was a "new and growing" danger, the home secretary said.

The BBC has learned there will be new money to bolster cyber security, focused on protecting critical infrastructure and defence assets.

The strategy will form the background for Tuesday's Strategic Defence Review, with defence cuts of 8% expected.

The National Security Council, set up by David Cameron in May, is publishing an updated approach to national security which identifies 16 threats to the UK.

The most serious - which they are calling "Tier 1" - comprises acts of international terrorism, hostile computer attacks on UK cyberspace, a major accident or natural hazard such as a flu pandemic, or an international military crisis between states that draws in the UK and its allies.

Intelligence priority

Speaking ahead of the strategy's launch in the Commons on Monday afternoon, Mrs May said she was not prepared to rank these in order of gravity but acknowledged they were of a "different nature" to other potential threats.

On terrorism, she said the threat level to the UK had been at severe - which means an attack is likely - for "some time".

"We are facing a very serious threat from international terrorism... we must all be vigilant," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Rather than focusing on different areas in isolation, she said the security strategy had looked at the overall picture "in the round" and as part of the exercise, officials had identified attacks on government and business IT systems as as a "new and growing threat".

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner said ministers were likely to announce �500m of new money to bolster cyber security, amid evidence that hundreds of malicious e-mails were already being aimed at government computer networks each month.

This would combat concerns that terrorist groups might be able to hack into critical infrastructure such as air traffic control networks and over cases of "cyber espionage" where rogue groups or even foreign states seek to break into computer systems to obtain top secret information.

There would also be extra protection for online business transactions from fraud and theft.

Ahead of Wednesday's Spending Review, Mrs May said the Home Office had to "play its part" in cutting spending to deal with the deficit, stressing that the police could make savings without hitting officers on the beat by cutting bureaucracy and increased collaboration between forces.

While welcoming efforts to tackle cyber attacks, Labour - which developed the first national security strategy in 2008 - said the plan offered little new.

"The government seem to be producing a reheated security strategy to provide cover for a rushed defence review rather that producing a renewed and careful consideration of the UK's defence and security priorities," said shadow foreign secretary Yvette Cooper.

'Re-do' defence?

Two days away from the spending review, Defence Secretary Liam Fox has said personnel numbers in the armed forces will "fall a bit" in future but there would be no weakening of the UK's strategic position.

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Bill Gates: ''People depend on the reliability of the internet''

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The Treasury had wanted cuts of between 10% and 20% to the Ministry of Defence's budget, but it is understood that Mr Fox has negotiated this down to 8%.

The Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, who is chairman of the Commons Public Administration Committee, said it was difficult to see how an effective National Security Strategy could be developed against the backdrop of cuts.

"We seem to be operating under the imperative of deficit reduction," he said.

"But, there's very little in what's being done now that reflects deep and sustained analysis about what sort of country we want to be in 10 or 20 years time."

In a new report, the cross-party committee said there was a lack of strategic thinking at the heart of government over security, defence and foreign policy and a tendency to "muddle through" rather than be forward thinking.

"And the SDSR [strategic defence and security review] is a case in point because the Ministry of Defence should have done the work, saying 'look, if we are going to have to live within a much smaller envelope, how do we completely re-do the way we do defence?'.

"Instead it's just been about 'what do we have to cut? What do we hang on to and what do we cut?'."

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Satellite to demonstrate UK tech

18 October 2010 Last updated at 04:51 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

The UK is going to develop a satellite to trial innovative space technologies.

It is hoped the components and instruments flying on TechDemoSat (TDS) can prove their worth and go on to win substantial international business.

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) will lead the project.

Payload participants are likely to include a novel instrument to measure the state of the sea, another to track ships from orbit, and even one to destroy TDS at the end of its life.

The latter is a "sail" that would be deployed from the satellite to force it out of the sky to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. Efficient technologies to retire defunct spacecraft are expected to have big markets in the future.

The core mission design of TDM is being funded with a grant of �770,000 from the UK government's Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA).

Assuming that all goes well, a further �2,730,000 will be released to move the project into the build and test phase.

"One of our key philosophies is to help companies overcome barriers to market," said the TSB's Michael Lawrence.

"There are a number of British-based space companies out there that have great technology but they need to demonstrate it in orbit. Hopefully, this initiative will help them prove the technology works and that will open up commercial markets for them," he told BBC News.

Reflected GPS signals

TechDemoSat will have a challenging timetable. SSTL wants to be able to ship the satellite to the launch pad in 18 months' time.

All the companies and academic institutions hoping to fly payloads must pay their own costs.

The participants, while still under final selection, are expected to include Com Dev Europe, SSTL, Selex Galileo, Qinetiq, Aero Sekur, RAL Space, Oxford University, University of Surrey, Leicester University, MSSL and the Langton Star Centre (which will be providing a UK schools experiment).

One of the biggest proposed payloads at 7.5kg is SSTL's own - an Earth observation instrument designed to measure the state of the ocean.

"It makes use of the fact that there are a lot of GPS signals coming down from space and these get reflected off the ocean's surface. The instrument can intercept them to infer things about the sea state. So depending on whether the water is choppy or smooth, you get a different type of return signal," explained Doug Liddle, SSTL's head of science.

One of the smallest payloads, weighing just 750g, is being provided by Selex Galileo. This is a sugar-cube-sized gyroscope that can sense the orientation of the spacecraft.

Aero Sekur is behind the space sail. It takes the form of a deployable membrane. Residual air molecules still present in the spacecraft's low-Earth orbit will catch the sheet and pull TDS out of the sky much faster than would normally be the case - certainly, within the international 25-year-guideline recommended for redundant space hardware.

It is hoped the TechDemoSat project can emulate the Mosaic (Micro Satellite Applications in Collaboration) programme of a decade ago.

Then, �11m of public investment in spacecraft projects led by SSTL ultimately resulted in the company winning almost �300m in export business.

Launch funds

It is just the sort of initiative recommended by the recent Space Innovation and Growth Strategy (Space-IGS) which set out a 20-year plan to maximise the potential of the UK's highly successful space sector.

There are more payload ideas in British industry and academia than can be accommodated on the demonstrator, and Michael Lawrence said it was possible the opportunity could be repeated in the future.

"We'll need to see how this one works - if it delivers to time, to budget," he said. "There will be many factors to consider, but if this goes the way we want it to then I would hope there will be a TechDemoSat-2."

One matter which still needs to be resolved is how TDS-1 gets into orbit.

With the TSB/SEEDA funding and the payload participants carrying their own costs, there is sufficient cash to get the satellite built - but not launched.

The cost of a ride to space for a 150kg spacecraft like TDS can be about �2.5m if the spacecraft shares the rocket with a group of other satellites. This is an issue the UK Space Agency will have to address in due course.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Internet use campaign under way

17 October 2010 Last updated at 21:20 ET

A major drive to get more people to use the internet has started, with the aim of persuading reluctant users that the web can save them money and time.

The BBC will be involved in the Get Online campaign, which will see some celebrities going online for the first time.

More than nine million Britons have never used the internet, and they tend to be more elderly and less well-off.

Events promoting web use will take place across the UK.

Web training

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones says the campaign will hammer home a simple message, that the internet can save you money.

Research by UK Online Centres, which was set up by the government to provide public access to computers, found that a third of new internet users reckoned they had already saved more than �100 by being online.

Among the events, companies including Google and McDonalds will descend on Bridlington in Yorkshire to offer free web training in a town where one in four people are not online.

BBC programmes will also take part, with Sir Terry Wogan acting as a web ambassador and a character in Radio 4's The Archers having their first computer lesson.

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