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 When 2 is not 2
Let's begin with the big story to emerge from Lord Carter's Interim Digital Britain report, that of a 'universal' broadband at 2Mbit/s, a speed easily fast enough to stream iPlayer jitter free. The questions of whether it's plausible to deliver this as a base line service across the UK has prompted much head scratching by the experts and this week Broadband thinktank PointTopic said the government faces a "massive challenge" in achieving its goal. They produced a regional breakdown of areas that currently do not have fast access showing that Northern Ireland is most poorly placed, with more than 30 per cent of households out of reach of 2Mbit/s followed by Wales, where 26.9 per cent of homes are unable to get speeds of 2Mbit/s or above. It says a majority of regions in the UK have 10-15 per cent of their population beyond 2Mbit/s reach. Two big questions for Lord Carter and his team: how to reach this underserved demographic, and what level of public intervention is government willing to undertake?
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 No product placement please, we're British..
One intervention government was happy to make last week was on the thorny issue of product placement. Commercial broadcasters believe this may be one of the ways to mitigate the cyclical and structural decline of advertising revenues that is so affecting their business models. No joy for them here though, as Culture Secretary Andy Burnham announced the ban on product placement in UK-originated television programmes will continue to until at least 2012.
The government had been consulting on the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVSD), which included within it consideration of whether to allow the limited introduction of paid for product placement in UK-made television programmes. The fact that several EU member states have already taken up the AMSD's offer of product placement, will undoubtedly rub further salt into the wounds of UK broadcasters.
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 Sky lobbies on 'free-to-air' sport events
And if that wasn't trouble enough for the Minister here comes BSkyB stating their intention to begin lobbying to have the list of sporting events reserved for free-to-air television abolished in an ongoing government review. Chief executive Jeremy Darroch said Sky would argue for a situation where the World Cup or the Olympics could be shown on pay TV, with sports bodies free to decide where to sell their rights with no restrictions. At the moment it appears that Andy Burnham, is minded to expand the list of 'crown jewels' events to include cricket, perhaps in its international Twenty20 form.
Darroch said: "It's not for me to dictate to a rights holder how they should sell their rights. What we want is the chance to pitch and show what we can do to showcase their sport. There is no such thing as free sports coverage. We all pay our licence fee."
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 Half empty or half full?
And now to some gloomy numbers from the economy. The optimists amongst us had hoped that that the technology sector could escape relatively unscathed from the recession, reasoning that businesses were already pretty lean in their use of technology, couldn't operate without it, and that consumers were addicted to their devices. It looks like we'll have to rethink this optimism, particularly after a survey published by the market research company IDC predicted that global shipments of mobile phones will fall by 9.3 per cent during 2009, with the US market experiencing a fall of 14.8 per cent.
According to the survey other mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, are likely to see sales decline within a range of 12.4 per cent to 24.6 per cent during the year. This is the first contraction in this particular sub-sector for many years and expresses the effect that a lack of credit is having on many consumers. It's not all gloom though with evidence of an out-turn in the shape of worldwide sales likely to return to growth by 9.5 per cent in 2010.
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 The price of content in the digital world
And finally to a spat developing nicely between the world's most popular online video site, YouTube, and the Performance Rights Society (PRS), which saw large huge numbers of music videos blocked to UK users in March.
What's the problem then? In this instance YouTube pays a license to the PRS allowing them to stream the music videos from 3 major music labels, and numerous independent ones. A disagreement on pricing levels spilled out when YouTube claimed that a rise in charges meant they actually lost money every time a music video was streamed in the UK, creating an unsustainable commercial situation.
Expect this battle to be resolved soon enough, but the bigger war remains. Just how do you price content in a digital world?
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