Around the Industry:
UK ISP reconnects cut-off customers for free
Fiber-to-home roll-out stalls in Europe; surpasses DSL in Japan
Breaking the mobile carriers’ walled gardens
Executive chairman of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited urges Aussie Govt investment in broadband
UK ISP mislays domains beginning with 'C'
Commentary: BPL best for small businesses?
SecurityBits:
RSA crypto attack poses threat to DRM
Annual charges hard to stop as AV Vendors shift to automatic fees
TidBytes:
Apple may put Blu-ray in Macs from February 2007
You Can Now Unlock Your Mobile Phone, Legally
Perspective: How GPL fits in with the future of antitrust regulation
Wii DVD player planned
Podcast numbers show 'few hooked'
More broadband bytes inside...

Around The Industry:
•UK ISP reconnects cut off customers for free:
UK broadband wholesaler NetServices has agreed to provide a connection free of charge to former customers of V21, the retail ISP it cut off as part of a financial dispute. NetServices will bear the cost of connections until Friday, when a "bulk cease" will be requested to unplug V21 users from its network. Once BT applies the cease they will be able to sign up to a new provider. The long-running and obscure dispute, over "burst bandwidth charges" was carried over from V21 when it was acquired by fellow retail ISP Biscit earlier this year. Customers have been confused by their lack of rights in the dispute. Biscit, which acquired V21 earlier this year, has been saying they should apply to NetServices for their MACs. The wholesaler says it is unable to provide MACs as it would be in breach of its contract with V21.
•Fiber-to-home roll-out stalls in Europe; surpasses DSL in Japan:
Although news of city-wide municipal fiber networks in the works in Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna surely generate industry buzz. Some analysts say that in reality they may have merely marginal effects on Europe's broadband market in the near term. According to a report released by research firm Strategy Analytics, incumbent telecoms operators and other commercial providers will remain the dominant broadband players in Europe amid the new FTTH hype. Asia, however, has been touted as a rapid adopter of FTTH; according to one recent report, in Japan, the number of FTTH subscribers has surpassed new DSL subscribers.
•Breaking the mobile carriers’ walled gardens:
MuniWireless points to a blog post by David Isenberg on the trends that spell doom for walled gardens: OpenMoko (open-source Linux-based mobile computing platform, the Apple iPhone (if it ever gets to market) and Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones. "I expect that Wi-Fi soon will be a popular requirement. I strongly suspect that mobile platforms with two radios, Wi-Fi and GSM, will host the really cool apps and outsell the others. If I were a cellco addicted to the vertical value chain, I'd be worried. (But they're unlikely to feel the threat . . . until the new apps are so popular they're uncontrovertably killing the cellcos' "traditional" revenue stream.) If I were a handset maker, I'd be doing what Nokia does -- building Wi-Fi into all(?) their unlocked devices, and I'd be a very close observer of emerging challengers like OpenMoko. The wall is starting to show cracks. Do the folks with sledge hammers arrive in 2007?"
•Executive chairman of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited urges Aussie Govt investment in broadband:
The executive chairman of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited, James Packer, has called on the Government to help Telstra make an investment in infrastructure which will deliver faster broadband. Mr Packer has echoed the views of News Corporation chief, Rupert Murdoch, who has criticized broadband speeds in Australia. He says it is the responsibility of the Government, and not Telstra, to ensure Australia has best practice broadband infrastructure in place. "To the extent that the Government wants, as the Government should want, a best practice broadband infrastructure, the Government has got to do something to help Telstra get a commercial return, then that's what the Government has got to do," Mr Packer said.
•UK ISP mislays domains beginning with 'C':
UK ISP Legend Communications has been suffering an alphabetical technical problem over the past couple of days apparently affecting its Designer Servers customers; it is unable to resolve domains that begin with the letter "C." Mercifully, Legend is now part of THUS plc which boasts a "state-of-the-art next-generation network." This development would explain why the latest network status report declares the issue has "now been located and the problem eradicated." Indeed, Legend customers should note that merely mislaying domains beginning with "C" is a great improvement on previous performance. Back in September, the ISP's email, IP telephony and domain name servers were smitten by a catastrophic power outage at Legend's Docklands IP House, resulting in much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
•Commentary: BPL best for small businesses?:
Jack Kapica of the Globe & Mail comments, "BPL is not a new technology, but it is just beginning to reach the North American home-user market. Bell calls their service HomePlug, and they're promoting it as a consumer product, which is underselling it — this technology would be perfect for small businesses. The system works far better than a WiFi network, which often can't reach all the corners of the house or office and is much slower. The standard also supports multiple streams of HDTV, set-top boxes and IPTV. And it works with Macs too, and even with wireless access points. All this makes PlugLink especially useful for small offices. The HomePlug technology has been successful in Europe, it is better adapted to 220-volt lines. As a result, it has taken some time for North America, with its 110 volt lines, to catch on."
•UK lifts ban on MP3 transmitters:
UK regulator Ofcom is legalizing the use of FM transmitters that allow iPods and other MP3 players to play through car radios. The use of such devices was banned in the UK as their transmissions can interfere with broadcasts by legal radio stations. The devices fell foul of the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1949, which forbids the use of radio equipment without a licence or an exemption. But strong consumer demand for the devices led Ofcom to rethink the legislation.
•Ericsson to expand ties with Sony to mobile TV:
Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson and Japan's electronics giant Sony will expand their cooperation beyond cell phones to mobile and broadband TV, an Ericsson official said. "We see a mass market for mobile TV within two years," said Ericsson's director of product strategy and portfolio management, defining a mass market as 30% of users regularly watching television on their cell phones. Ericsson believes telecom operators will also have to offer television through their broadband networks. "Broadband TV will be an important factor. Most telecom operators realize they will have to offer TV in order not to lose customers."
•Australian Communications and Media Authority approves 2.5Mbps upload speeds, Internode leads the way:
Internode's push to increase broadband upload speeds by more than double has finally In the process, it becomes the first ISP offering upload speeds at 2.5Mbps. Until now, the issue for service providers seeking to push from the current 1Mbps-peak upload speed towards higher speeds was the increased interference caused. The new ACIF C559:2006 code is intended to minimize the risk of interference between systems using separate Unconditioned Local Loop Service's and to ensure network integrity.
•NZ ISPs mad about outages; focus blame on Telecom:
The Internet Service Providers Association says increasingly frequent and severe outages are causing real problems for many NZ broadband users. The group claims ongoing Telecom faults are causing disruption by disconnecting people for no apparent reason. The group says many ISPs are finding the failures increasingly common in the past few weeks. President David Diprose claims it is proof the Telecom broadband network is failing to cope with the growing demand for broadband.

SecurityBits:
•RSA crypto attack poses threat to DRM:
Security researchers have developed a new approach to breaking the RSA algorithm that creates new problems for the development of effective rights management software. The new so-called Branch Prediction Analysis (BPA) attack makes code breaking feasible on commodity PCs instead of expensive high-performance kits. A carefully written spy-process, running alongside the RSA-process, is able to collect almost all the secret bits used in an RSA signing operation by monitoring the states of a CPU. The approach yields far quicker results than statistical analysis, cryptography researchers say. The approach frustrates existing countermeasures according to crypto guru Bruce Schneier. He writes that the approach would be particularly potent if directed against DRM implementations.
•Annual charges hard to stop as AV Vendors shift to automatic fees:
McAfee is on the vanguard of a new trend in the security software industry: selling software as a service that is automatically billed each year. McAfee began automatically renewing customers in 2001. Over the past year, however, the practice has become much more common, as Symantec and Microsoft, with their new Windows Live OneCare products, have adopted the automatic renewals. But complaints about difficulty stopping auto payments may start piling up as more PC users become enrolled in automatic update programs.

Hardware, Software, and other TidBytes:
•Apple may put Blu-ray in Macs from February 2007
•You Can Now Unlock Your Mobile Phone, Legally
•Perspective: How GPL fits in with the future of antitrust regulation
•Wii DVD player planned
•Podcast numbers show 'few hooked'
•iPod users are geeks and socially inept; Moby comes to your defense
•Gates Foundation to provide free access to computers and Internet in Romania
•Vista complies with US antitrust ruling
•Microsoft denies role in Birmingham Linux flop