A new index of average global broadband speeds makes for pretty depressing reading if you happen to be Ed Vaizey, the newly appointed Minister for Broadband in the coalition government. Hotfoot from listening to Her Madge The Queen bigging up support for the broadband nation at the state opening of Parliament earlier in the week, Vaizey will have been brought back down to Earth with a very real world bump as the Ookla Netindex places the UK at, erm, well, 33rd in the global broadband download speed charts.

To put that into some perspective, Europe as a whole can muster an average broadband speed of 10.03 Mbps according to the index but good old Britain manages a meagre 7.69 Mbps. So while we may expect to find ourselves behind the Gods of Broadband, South Korea on a massive average speed of 34.19 Mbps, ending up way behind the likes of Latvia (24.30 Mbps), The Aland Islands (18.80 Mbps), Romania (18.56 Mbps), Bulgaria (17.55 Mbps), Lithuania (16.70 Mbps), Andorra (16.24 Mbps) and even flipping Belgium (11.24 Mbps) for crying out loud.

Even if Ed Vaizey tried to shift the focus by looking at the upload speed charts instead, he would have found no reasons to be cheerful. In that list the UK sits at number 66 in the world with a truly poor 0.91 Mbps. Heck, even the Republic of Moldova can manage to find an average upload broadband speed of 7.17 Mbps although once again South Korea makes me wince with that 18.45 Mbps chart topping number.

Geoff Bennett, Director of Strategy at Infinera UK, reckons that “the roll out of superfast broadband in the UK continues to lag behind some of our key economic competitors in Europe, and the rest of the world” as these Nsetindex figures would tend to confirm. “We would urge Ed Vaizey to look at investment not just in the last mile but also in the core of the network” Bennett continues, concluding “There are new technologies that have been widely deployed elsewhere that increase the capacity of the network while reducing capital and operating costs and a leap forward to wide deployment of these technologies would be beneficial for education, health care, business, and consumers.” Technologies such as Photonic integration, for example, which has been deployed to good effect by operators in the UK such as Carphone Warehouse…

I’m sad to say that I’m way below average here in my country pad, with an average download speed of 3.5 Mbps and uploads maxing out at 0.75 Mbps.

How fast is your broadband? Now is the time to let us know if size really does matter…

Who better to fight cybercrime than the Silver Surfer? According to Marvel this superhero has the power cosmic and can absorb and manipulate ambient cosmic energies from the universe to fight off any foe. But forget the Fantastic Four where Silver Surfer first appeared over forty years ago, this time we have Prime Minister Cameron and Sidekick Clegg to thank.

To thank, that is, for bringing the crime fighting superheroine to our attention. Ah yes, did I mention that the silver surfer in question is not the Marvel Comics cartoon character but rather a 70 year old woman?

The new security minister with responsibility for online security, the so called cybersecurity czar, is Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones. Sitting in on meetings of the National Security Council, the former diplomat and member of Government defence spin-off outfit Qinetiq which provides technology-based services and solutions to the defence and security markets, Baroness Neville-Jones has plenty of experience in the national security area although her hands-on knowledge of matters cybersecurity are less clear. Indeed, a quick look at the make up of the National Security Council, which Baroness Neville-Jones helped to create, reveals a distinct lack of cybersecurity expertise and a tipping of the balance of power very much in the direction of the physical aspects of military security instead.

Still, it’s undeniably cool to be able to lay claim (albeit a little tenuously) to having the Silver Surfer fighting online crime all the same…

Newly published research from Ofcom reveals many things: 80 percent of adults in the UK will only share social networking data with friends and family, only 30 percent think that Internet information is reliable compared to 50 percent for TV and radio, and the Scottish are pretty crap when it comes to online security stuff.

The Adult Media Literacy report is encouraging in many respects, not least as it does show a trend towards security awareness amongst most UK Internet users. That 80 percent of adults being happy to share their social networking account data with friends and family only figure, for example, is way up from the 48 percent who said the same in 2007.

It’s not all good news though, with a quarter of Internet users admitting that they lacked confidence when it came to installing filtering software and configuring security features. This despite the security vendors going flat out to develop more user friendly fire-and-forget products. Obviously a lot more work needs to be done to make security solutions truly user friendly, and I suspect that much of that work needs to be at the educational rather than interface level. The trade off between usability and security is such that users have to make the defence granularity choice themselves, leaving it to software inevitably leads to a broken online experience in some way, shape or form. If the user doesn’t properly understand the implications of the choices they make then they will never get that balance right. Simply telling someone to default to ‘allow nothing’ is about as useful as scaffolding made from jelly.

However, I digress, back to the ‘it is not all good news’ thing: while the UK national trend for understanding online security issues is up nicely, one part of the country does seem to be lagging behind somewhat. Yes, I’m talking about you Scotland.

The report reveals that adults in Scotland are the least likely overall to worry about entering their personal data online, and some fifty percent of Scots are happy to enter their home address details on the Internet compared to just 23 percent in Wales and Northern Ireland for example. Yet this despite Scottish adults being the biggest home users of the Internet in the UK on 10.6 hours per week each on average, compared to 8.3 hours in England and 6.8 hours in Wales. Scottish users also account for the biggest percentage of social networking users on 49 percent with such profiles compared to 46 percent in Wales, 44 percent in England and just 31 percent in Northern Ireland.

So there you have it, proof that the Scottish are crap when it comes to online security - at least in comparison to the rest of the UK.

I guess I had better batten down the hatches now then and await a virtual Glasgow kiss or three…

Sadly I cannot vote online yet here in the UK, but that hasn’t stopped me from exploiting all the online world has had to offer me during the run up to the polling stations opening this morning, nor will it stop me from following what happens after they close at 10pm tonight.

For me the TV debates were just a bit of media fluff and nothing more, a chance to see what colour ties the party leaders would go for and little else. Let’s face it, if you try and turn political debate into a presidential popularity contest then you cannot be surprised when substance surrenders to style, or lack of it. Sure, I watched like everyone else, but only so that I could participate in the Twitter discussion that accompanied it online using the #leadersdebate hashtag. While not going as far as those who suggest that an on-screen twitterfall of live comment would have been useful to the debates, I certainly think that the Twitter stream made it a much more lively affair. It didn’t really add much to the political substance argument though, being more akin to a drunken airing of partisan views down the pub on the most part.

Twitter has been worth keeping an eye on, in particular for attempting to measure the political temperature of that part of the electorate which is most likely to be using it: the tech-savvy 20 to 40 year old crowd in other words. By reading the various postings grouped together by the #ge2010 and #ukvote hashtags it has been possible to see the initial fascination with the Liberal Democrats as a real force for change peak early on and then fall back a little, but not to pre-debate levels, as the election date drew closer. Indeed, in many ways the Twitter election experience has mirrored that of mainstream media reporting of public political feeling, with one vital difference: unlike the mainstream media which often comes complete with an owner-inspired agenda, Twitter was not scared to cover the stories that the newspapers tried to ignore. For this reason, if no other, I do actually feel that I came out of the process better informed by being on Twitter.

Better informed, also, thanks to my iPhone which is used not only to participate on Twitter but to access the political party apps. Be it the Liberal Democrat manifesto on the iPhone, the official Conservative party ‘Obama did it so we’ve had a go’ iPhone information app (love the inclinometer driven swingometer showing how much of a swing the Tories need to escape hung parliament territory it has to be said) or the official Labour Party app with the as expected highly spun news story feature. All of these apps add something to the process, and that something is information in my pocket. Talking of which, like most of the people I know, the only newspapers I read are those which can be accessed on my iPhone by dedicated app or the web. At opposing poles of the political spectrum both Sky News and The Guardian have indispensable apps, and the political coverage has been good on both. The Sky app has a very nifty election feature which lets you see a break down of previous election results and details of every constituency including sitting MP, majority and a brief voting history.

Tonight I will, of course, have the television on to cover the results shows but most of my attention will still be on the web so that I can be sure of getting the fullest picture in the greatest detail and in the shortest order.

Now, about that online voting option chaps…

File under: only in America. The ultimate in teenage sulking has to be taking your Mum to court, and that’s exactly what one 16 year old kid is doing in the US. According to court documents his Mum ‘hacked’ into his Facebook account and posted slanderous comments about him.

A report on the American KATV site that almost passed me by (ironically I only found out about it today when one of the mums on the school run asked for an opinion) the alleged hacking mother says she was just practising sensible parental online monitoring.

In an interview, Denise New insisted that she was within her “legal rights to monitor” her child and “have a conversation with your child on Facebook” no matter who’s account it was. The alleged incident happened after a friend of her sons contacted her about a posting which said he had been driving home at 95 MPH.

Her son, meanwhile, claims that mother (whom he doesn’t actually live with, instead being in the care of his grandmother) posted slanderous remarks about his private life as well as changing his password.

I’m all for parental control and care, being not only a father to four kids but grandfather to two (I know, I don’t look old enough etc) but would much rather talk to my kids about my concerns than go this far. Indeed, I’d no more hack into their social networking accounts (or simply take advantage of the fact that the account had not been logged off since the last time it was used on the family computer) than I would read their email. I certainly wouldn’t start posting messages on a personal account like that.

That said, as a 16 year old I would no more take my mum to court for something such as this as I would for her grounding me, taking away my beer or even clipping me around the ear. So are the prosecutors in this case, as has been suggested by the mother and others, taking away the right of parents to take care of and be responsible for their kids online?

Or is this simply a case of an argument gone too far down the road signposted family disfunctionality?

I was watching an episode of Embarrassing Bodies on Sky+ the other night, you know the one where the unfeasible buff Doctor with the really bad taste in shirts takes great delight in examining folk with truly disgusting things wrong with them. I have yet to understand how someone who has not gone to see his GP with that hugely swollen and oddly coloured testicle because he is ‘too embarrassed’ will happily drop his trousers and reveal the thing to millions in TV land. Then again I don’t understand how so many people cannot use condoms when the levels of sexually transmitted disease are on the rise, if you’ll please excuse the pun, across the UK.

I mention all of this for a couple of reasons which do, if you’ll just bear with me a moment longer, have some bearing on the culture of technology. Firstly, Embarrassing Bodies is what I’d classify as car crash TV: the people it features have things that are so grossly and disgustingly wrong with them that you cannot help but sneak a peek while thanking the deity of your choice it isn’t you. Admit it, you laugh when an old lady falls over in the street, you rubber neck when driving past a motorway pile up and you cannot help but watch a TV show where some fat bloke is revealing his bunch of grapes sized hemorrhoids to the nation.

I’d like to add something tech to my list of car-crash stuff, namely Internet security statistics. You know, the quarterly and yearly ‘Internet Threat’ reports that reveal the ongoing trends regarding how the bad guys are screwing us over at this particular point in time. Car crash because I’m not sure I need a report to tell me that spam is on the up, or the bad guys are making ‘loadsa money’ and yet another botnet has gone ballistic. Yet I cannot help but read them, not only that but go through them with a fine toothcomb looking for the juiciest statistics to pull out and make me feel worse about my chosen pet industry, IT security.

Which brings me to the second reason I’ve been banging on about Embarrassing Bodies, namely sexually transmitted infections. You see the latest Internet Threats Trend Report for Q1 2010 to be published by Commtouch Lab has revealed that not only do sites in the sex education categories top those (along with games) most likely to be hosting hidden phishing pages, but rather worryingly that pornography has ousted business as the web site category whose pages are most infected with malware.

So there you have it, just like in the real world the online world now has sexually transmitted infections. Luckily, just like in the real world, they can be prevented by taking precautions such as wearing a condom (using antivirus and security software) and thinking twice before getting down with something dirty.

Now that the so-called broadband tax has been scrapped (along with the controversial Budget announced tax hike on cider) as Parliament gets ready to dissolve itself in the run up to a General Election, are those of us who follow the politics of technology meant to breathe a sigh of relief and go about our business? I don’t think so.

The Tories were against the 50p per month tax on everyone with a telephone landline, and indeed had said they would scrap it if it were voted in and then Labour was voted out. But for Labour it was a core element worth around £170 million a year towards the funding of that much publicised promise to get super-fast broadband to everyone. Has the broadband tax gone away for good then? The answer to that one would appear to depend on how the country votes on May 6th it would seem, with the Tories having no plans to bring it back while Labour would almost certainly seek to do so as a matter of some urgency.

So why was it scrapped, seeing as the Government could have rushed it through as part of the bundles of laws that are being bullied and hurried through Parliament so as to make the statute books before it dissolves? Now that’s an interesting one, and I suspect the answer can be summed up in three words: Digital Economy Bill. OK, some might suggest it was more to do with getting the Budget passed nice and quick, but I can’t help but wonder if there was an element of distraction involved, a tidbit to feed the geeks and take their mind off the Digital Economy Bill. If it was meant to be a distraction, it didn’t work. Indeed, only MPs appeared to get distracted and do something else other than attend the important second reading of the thing.

After a rather drawn out and tediously lightweight ‘debate’ in the House of Commons last night, the Digital Economy Bill has now passed a second reading and is due to be voted upon this week to determine if it becomes law or not. The debate, and I use that word with a lack of enthusiasm that can only be matched by the lack of enthusiasm shown by the Commons, was nothing short of a shambles. At one point there were only 15 MPs in the chamber, and at the peak of the thing no more than 40, while thousands of people who understand the technology and the impact that this duff bill will have on ordinary users and Internet businesses alike took part in a much more informed and reasoned debate online on Twitter for example.

You might have thought that, post the expenses scandal, MPs would start listening to the electorate and at least look like they give a damn about our opinions.

You might have thought that, with an election just around the corner, the views of the voters would take on a new sense of urgency.

You might have thought that the draconian measures being introduced to supposedly crack down on piracy would be exposed as a sledgehammer to a nut or, to put it in the perspective of other ill-judged knee jerk legislation rushed through Parliament, the erosion of our personal freedoms in order to calm irrational fears about domestic terrorism.

But, alas, no. It was the same old, same old. With very few, and as it turned out rather honourable mentions (Tom Watson MP take a bow) MPs just took the opportunity to stand up and rant about something they know precious little, and in some cases apparently absolutely bugger all, about. Even those such as Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary, who appeared to understand that the Bill was flawed stood and declared it should be passed anyway. WTF?

No wonder MPs are despised more than traffic wardens and tax inspectors these days…

Could tomorrow’s Budget be the most broadband friendly in history? The odds are looking good for some pre-Election bribery in the form of Super-Fast Broadband for All it would seem. Gordon Brown has already announced plans for every citizen to get a government services web page of their very own, accessed by super-fast broadband which the PM refers to as the electricity of the digital age.

Of course, there’s the small matter of how you pay for all of this. Which is where the Budget on Wednesday comes in. It looks likely that there will be an element of taxation in the form of a land line levy of around £6 for every land line, which is already being referred to as the broadband tax. It’s also expected that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair ‘eyebrows’ Darling, will announce that savings of billions made by closing down existing government offices will contribute to the funding purse, along with the creation of some 250,000 new jobs over the next 10 years as a result of the speedy web access.

But how do the main political parties in England view the Digital Britain road map, and how their plans to deliver that digital economy vary? Thinkbroadband has been analysing the different approaches and come up with the following:

Labour

A ‘Universal Service Commitment’ of 2Mbps by 2012 to virtually everyone in UK funded by surplus money from the Digital Switchover fund.

Next Generation Broadband available to 90 percent of UK by 2017 funded by 50p +VAT per month levy on fixed phone lines which is expected to raise £1bn over seven years. This will fund next gen broadband to the final third where the market is unlikely to deliver a service without some intervention.

In his speech, Gordon Brown said that proposals for online delivery of government services “depend on reaching 100 per cent” coverage of next generation broadband and that by 2020 he expects “to make Britain the leading superfast broadband digital power creating 100 per cent access to every home”.

Conservative

Supports the 2 Mbps universal access by 2012 funded by surplus from that Digital Switchover fund.

Next Generation Broadband of 100Mbps to majority of homes by 2017 funded possibly by using a proportion of BBC license fee at any point beyond 2012. Funds would be used as loans or on a matched funding basis.

Thinks that BT should open up access to underground ducts and overground telegraph poles so competitors can lay their own fibre like they do in France and Singapore for example.

Wants a change to the rating system for fibre networks to remove all current disadvantages suffered by new operators.

Believes intervention may be necessary in due course for next-generation broadband, but market should be given a chance first.

Liberal Democrats

Supportive of government USC plans for 2Mbps by 2012 funded by digital switch over surplus, essential to have a minimum standard of service but 2Mbps is an unambitious target.

Thinks universal service funding should be combined with a project for rollout of next generation broadband, so those who can’t get broadband would get next generation broadband sooner.

Thinks that mobile broadband could have a role to play in hard-to-reach areas. Effective use of spectrum is important.

Would like to see vast majority of the country being able to access 40Mbps+ by 2017.

Wants immediate intervention to target areas unlikely to be reached by next generation broadband by the market, the final third. Would adopt an outside in approach (start funding the most rural of areas first) but admits “it won’t be possible for absolutely everyone to receive next generation access” immediately.

Opposes the Conservative policy to top-slice the BBC license fee.

Supports 50p/month levy “if applied properly and with exemptions for the least well off”

Welcomes BT decision to open up ducts.

Sees a need to encourage more services that make use of high speed broadband, including national and local government services, to drive demand.

Thinkbroadband, however, believes therefore that the key question will be what percentage of homes and businesses will have access to 100Mbps by 2017? The challenging target will be in the 80-100 per cent range. “The main political parties all accept the importance of securing a strong digital future with super-fast broadband, but each has made vague promises, leaving out some crucial factors that would allow us to hold them to account if they form part of the next government” says Sebastien Lahtinen, co-founder of Thinkbroadband, concluding “we see some differences in the plans for how next generation broadband will be funded, in particular the level and timing of government intervention, but we don’t have clarity from any party on both the question of what ‘next generation’ broadband means in terms of speeds, and how universal will access to this high speed broadband be? In other words, will they guarantee that every single household will get it?”

With a general election just weeks away now, I’ve been wondering just what part Twitter will play in electing the next government? A new poll by Lewis Communications has revealed that 24 percent of the 1000 people consulted thought that Twitter was an essential communication tool in a democracy such as ours. That said, only 27 percent said they might be encouraged to vote for an MP who contacted them through their social networking service compared to 48 percent who would not be so minded. Mind you, one in six of those asked also thought that the barman in The Simpsons, Moe Szyslak, was a political blogger so maybe we shouldn’t take these figures too seriously.

A couple of numbers that did jump out at me from that survey though were related to online voting and political websites: 77 percent wanted to vote online this year, and 56 percent had visited a political website already in the run up to the General Election. Eb Adeyeri, Digital PR Director at LEWIS Communications, reckons that many people believe this will be “the UK’s first “Internet election” with politicians exploiting channels such as Facebook and Twitter to convey their message” but warns that a “badly-focused social media campaign could do more harm than good as Gordon Brown discovered with his infamous YouTube appearance”.

The Labour Party is taking Twitter seriously enough to have appointed a ‘Twitter Tsar’ in Kerry McCarthy MP, while Tory leader David Cameron famously dismissed Twitter users on a radio show by saying that “too many twits make a twat”.

Certainly there are more MPs, and would be MPs, using Facebook and Twitter than ever before it seems to me. Of course, the cynical side of me does accept that the rise of the micro-blogging and socially networked MP and the forthcoming election may be linked. There’s even less doubting that Twitter has become politicised to a degree, and loosely organised Tweet campaigns can be more effective as a lobbying tool than many other avenues when it comes to getting massive media attention in the shortest timescale. We’ve already seen many such groundswell campaigns on Twitter, and as the election draws ever closer I expect we will see many more. Of course, with that election looming we’ll have to expect less of these campaigns to be true feelings of the people events and more of them to have the hand of The Party pushing them.

But how can you track and analyse party political activity on Twitter? Sense Internet reckons it has the answer with the newly released the Tweetlection tool which
claims to track comments about political parties on Twitter, providing a picture of those politically motivated keywords that are most active at any given time.

“While all parties engage in tweeting, until now it has been hard to get a real-time picture of what is being said on key issues, and by whom,” says Sense MD Aidan Cook. “Previously it was difficult to get an accurate view of just how much excitement or interest a specific event or issue was generating”. Cook reckons that users will be able to get at a glance overviews of “the frequency of tweets over time for each party and the common themes in those tweets” which could help political parties modify existing themes and messages, or even create new ones.

Get this: developers of ’second-tier’ web browsers are moaning about how unfair it is that Microsoft is advertising their products for free. Sheesh!

You can, I do believe, file this one firmly under WTF? Apparently, forcing Microsoft into displaying the ballot screen and effectively giving them free advertising is not enough. Now six of the seven clients which do not make it onto the first screen of browser software choices, the so called second-tier browsers, are complaining to the European Commission for what they consider an even fairer slice of the pie as it were.

While the developers of the Avant, Flock, GreenBrowser, Maxthon, Sleipnir and SlimBrowser browser clients have petitioned EC vice-president Neelie Kroes to get Microsoft to change the ballot screen so that their somewhat obscure browsers are given a bit more prominence. The argument being that users only see five browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer itself) by default without scrolling to reveal the less popular choices. What the moaning minnies want is an indication that they actually exist, encouraging users to scroll right and reveal them.

The petition states that the design “leaves the vast majority of users unaware that there are more than five browsers to choose from” and complains that the browser developers “did not have the opportunity to offer any Browser Choice screen design feedback”. Well duh, why should they have had? Indeed, the petition suggests quite rightly that Microsoft has no intention of making any changes.

If I were those second-tier browser developers I’d be keeping quiet on this one. Heck it’s a pretty massive publicity boost that they have been included at all, considering that most users will not have a clue as to their existence and be even less bothered about using them. the way that the Internet works is such that if they were really that worthy then surely they would have floated like cream to the top, although still underneath the silver foil cap that it Internet Explorer of course. While you might argue that Chrome only made the impact it did on market share courtesy of being developed by Google, you’d be wrong. Sure, that did it no harm but if it were not for the fact that it’s so fast and fabulous (yes I’m an ex-Firefox convert in danger of becoming a Chrome fanboy) it would have sunk without trace in the market share stakes. And the argument falls apart entirely when you consider the share that Firefox managed to carve out on word of mouth alone.

So my advice would be to Shut The Flip Up and worry less about Microsoft being a big pile of poo pants for not giving your second-tier clients more prominence in this free advertising jamboree and worry more about improving those clients so that they become first-tier through functional merit.