ISPs face broadband ad overhaul

29 September 2011 Last updated at 07:01 ET

ISPs face changes to the way they advertise broadband services.

From April next year, providers will no longer be able to advertise maximum speeds for net packages unless 10% of customers can actually get them.

The new rules come from the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP), the body responsible for writing advertising codes.

But Which?, one of the main campaigners for change, said the new rulings do not go far enough.

Typical speeds

There has been huge pressure from industry and consumer groups for changes in the way broadband services are marketed with many feeling current campaigns are misleading consumers.

"This new guidance directly responds to consumer concerns by setting an appropriately high bar for advertisers who want to make speed and unlimited claims in ads," said CAP chairman James Best.

"Advertising is only effective if consumers trust the messages they see and hear," he added.

The new rules state that services cannot be advertised with a headline speed, unless 10% of customers can achieve that. It also calls on ISPs to be clearer about the data caps they set for services.

Which did not think the guidelines went far enough.

"Broadband providers have just been given the green light to mislead consumers. The rules say that providers don't have to state what range of speeds most of their customers experience," it said in a statement.

"That means advertising campaigns can now be based on the experience of a privileged few. If just one in 10 customers get access to the top speeds advertised, that's within the guidelines," it said in a statement.

A recent study by Ofcom found that many services marketed as up to 20Mbps actually achieved an average of just 6.8Mbps.

It recommended that ISPs advertise "typical" speeds so that consumers would have a clearer idea of what they were getting.

"We are disappointed that it appears not to be possible to establish a single, clear and consistent 'Typical Speed Range'. Our view is that this is the best way to ensure that consumers are able to compare the wide range of packages that are available," it said in response to the new guidelines.

CAP also looked at the way ISPs advertise services as unlimited even though they impose data thresholds.

It ruled that broadband providers could still impose limits on the amount of data that users could download, but they must explain the thresholds more clearly.

Catch-all claims

Which? was unimpressed.

"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," it said.

"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," it added.

Virgin, which has campaigned for changes in the way its rival advertise services, said it was pleased with the new codes.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, 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."

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Bio-inspired plastic self-heals

29 September 2011 Last updated at 04:29 ET By Leila Battison Science reporter

The development of self-healing materials has surged forward as scientists have taken inspiration from biological systems.

Researchers at the University of Illinois in the US have found a way to pump healing fluids around a material like the circulation of animal's blood.

Materials that could repair themselves as they crack would have uses in civil engineering and construction.

Their results are published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Self-healing materials have been researched for nearly a decade, with a view to reducing the risks and costs of cracking and damage in a wide range of materials.

Different approaches have been taken to creating such materials, depending on the kind of material that needs to be repaired: metals, plastics, or carbon composites.

These methods include creating materials which have micro-capsules containing a healing agent embedded within them, which are broken open when the material is damaged, releasing the healing fluid that hardens and fills the crack.

While effective, this method and others are limited by the small amount of healing agent that can be contained within the material without weakening it.

But new developments in self-healing technology have been pioneered by Prof Nancy Sottos and her team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, involving the impregnation of plastics with a fine network of channels, each less than 100 millionths of a metre in diameter, that can be filled with liquid resins.

These "micro-vascular" networks penetrate the material like an animal's circulation system, supplying healing agent to all areas, ready to be released whenever and wherever a crack appears.

Limitations still blight this technology however, as the healing process relies on the slow wicking action and diffusion of the healing agent into a crack.

The researchers have therefore taken another lesson from biology to improve on the self-healing material's performance.

Cracking experiment

"In a biological system, fluids are pumping and flowing," said Prof Sottos, so they have devised a way to actively pump fluids into their micro-vascular networks.

Syringes on the outside of the material put healing fluids under pressure so that when a crack appears, a constant pressure drives the fluid into the cracks.

In the experiments that Prof Sottos' team carried out, two parallel channels are created in a plastic and pumped with a liquid resin and a hardening chemical that triggers the resin to solidify.

When a crack forms, both micro-channels are breached and the two liquids are pumped into the damaged area.

The researchers experimented with pumping the liquids in pulses so that first the resin was pushed into the crack, and then the hardener, in repeating cycles.

This, they found, was the most efficient way of filling large cracks and ensuring the widest spread of the healing agents.

"Micro-capsule technology will enable damaged openings around 50-100 [millionths of a metre] to be filled, whereas pumping healing agents through a micro-vascular network can fill major cracks up to a millimetre across," said Prof Sottos.

Double duty

Having demonstrated the improved repair that an actively pressurised system provides, the researchers hope that the technology can be utilised in engineering and construction applications with a little further development.

The method of constructing the materials is already well refined, using 3-D scaffolds of "sacrificial fibres" that mould the network of channels within a synthetic material, that are then destroyed in the final stage of production.

In the experimental work that Prof Sottos and her group have carried out, the pumps have been on the outside of the material, but she explained: "We would like to incorporate pumps into the material itself, perhaps pressure or magnetically driven."

Many large-scale structures where self-healing materials would be most useful, for example in aeroplanes and spacecraft, already have hydraulic systems built into them.

Prof Sottos envisaged these hydraulic systems being harnessed to perform a "double duty" in providing pressure for their self-healing materials.

The team are next looking into how the self-healing system can be integrated seamlessly into large-scale civil infrastructures, and how it can be optimised to provide the most healing potential.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials