I saw an interesting article in The Times yesterday. Space Data, an American firm, has started attaching mini telephone masts to the weather balloons it launches in order to provide wireless broadband to rural and remote areas.

The service has been running successfully for four years, and is expected to become profitable this year. They are looking to expand, having patented its services in 41 countries, and the UK is a market they are looking at.

Space Data estimate that there is potentially a $10bn market in rural Internet access that is largely untapped by traditional Internet service providers.

Aside from the ingenuity of the idea, this model is another example of how fluid and rapidly changing the broadband marketplace is. In the UK recently H2O announced that they would be running fibre through the sewers in some parts of the UK. In other countries, utility companies have been involved in laying fibre networks and providing wholesale access to service providers.

In this constantly evolving market new entrants are emerging, new models are being developed and new services are becoming available. The emerging landscape is difficult to predict, and it will be interesting to see what part weather balloons, sewers, and other as yet unknown concepts play in the development of NGA in the UK.

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG

The 9pm watershed has long been the bastion of parental control when viewing content: if it was on after the watershed, then it probably wasn’t suitable for younger viewers (or those with a nervous or squeamish disposition, or the easily offended).

In a converged world, however, content provision is no longer just the preserve of television. A range of suppliers now provides content over the Internet, and on mobile phones. Further, this content is often on-demand (as are new TV services), being viewable at all times of the day.

So, how to identify what is appropriate content to view? If it is no longer as simple as a watershed, information about the content needs to be provided to viewers so that they can make an informed choice. This is particularly important for protecting children from potentially harmful content.

This is why the BSG coordinated the production of Good Practice Principles for the provision of information about commercially created content. The work drew on all existing practices to bring together the underlying principles.

The launch of these principles this week showed the commitment of the industry to ensuring information about content is appropriately provided. Good content information will help consumers, particularly parents, make informed choices for themselves and their families.

The BSG will review the impact and effectiveness of the principles in 2009. For more information regarding the principles, see www.audiovisualcontent.org

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG

Recently a colleague and I joined a UK delegation to visit a fibre to the home network built in the town of Nuenen in the Netherlands by a broadband cooperative. The network has connected almost the entire town of 8,500 households, and provides a 100mbps service. Close to 90% of the households are signed up and paying for the service. A full report on the project will soon be available on the BSG website (www.broadbanduk.org), but for now I’d like to talk about what Nuenen means for the UK.

Although it is unlikely that the Nuenen model can be replicated in the UK (as it involved a significant government subsidy and made use of the affluent, technology-literate make-up of Nuenen’s population), Nuenen could still have a significant impact in the UK as a source of inspiration to other towns and cities with similar aims.

On our visit were a delegation from Walsall, along with representatives from Wolverhampton, Ashford and Anglia. It is unlikely that any of these areas will have the same characteristics that allowed the Nuenen project to flourish. But some on the trip will have begun to think about what a fibre network could do for their community, both socially and economically. Residents and local businesses have begun to use the network in a variety of ways that begin to highlight the economic and social benefits that such an NGA network can bring. Those behind the Nuenen project demonstrate how, with strong local leadership, such a project can be possible.

Nuenen has received six such delegations to date, four of which are from the UK. According to them, they could receive a delegation a week if they had the time, such is the interest in the project. In the UK we have the Digital Region project in South Yorkshire, which is local authority led. Will we see community-led NGA projects in the UK? Time will tell, but Nuenen is certainly food for thought.

Peter Shearman, Policy Manager, BSG