Posts Tagged ‘bt’

Jabra Stone to bring ‘new shape’ to Bluetooth headset field

C'mon, cut us some slack here. We're suckers for teasers, and our intuition says that you are too. Jabra, who has definitely done a thing or two for the Bluetooth headset realm, is apparently looking to reveal a "new shape" on October 20th, though it'll only be sold through AT&T (at least initially). Heck, there's even a countdown timer over on the outfit's teaser page for those who'd like to watch every second from now till then tick away, not to mention a brief video that tersely details the forthcoming excellence. So, got any bright ideas about what this thing could be? The second coming of the BT headset? Just another tchotchke?

[Via Electricpig]

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Jabra Stone to bring 'new shape' to Bluetooth headset field originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASA bans BSkyB ad’s broadband claims

BSkyB campaign criticising peak-time broadband speeds on BT and Virgin Media deemed misleading by advertising watchdog

An advert by BSkyB attacking the broadband speeds of its rivals BT and Virgin Media has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.

The press advert claimed: "If you're in a Sky network area, we don't slow your broadband speed down at peak times – unlike Virgin Media and BT."

But the ASA upheld complaints by BT and a member of the public that only "very heavy" users would be affected by slower speeds during peak times.

BSkyB said all BT or Virgin Media customers could potentially be affected by their fair use or traffic management policies.

These meant broadband speeds could be reduced for those who exceeded "fair use" during busy periods, BSkyB claimed. The ASA found that the two companies did have practices in place which resulted in slower speeds for those using popular applications with very large bandwidths during peak hours.

However, the regulator added: "We considered that consumers would infer from the claim, 'If you're in a Sky network area, we don't slow your broadband speed down at peak times – unlike Virgin Media and BT', that BT and Virgin slowed down broadband speeds in peak times for all their customers, including those who used web browsing services with low bandwidths. We concluded that the claim was likely to mislead."

The ASA ruled that the Sky ad breached guidelines on substantiation, truthfulness and comparisons with competitors and said it should not be used again.

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Ofcom allows BT’s cheaper phone, TV and broadband

Telecoms watchdog lifts restrictions on BT bundling services at discounted rates

BT's 14 million landline customers could see their telephone, broadband and pay-TV bills reduced after a watchdog's ruling paved the way for more competition between telecoms companies.

Ofcom has lifted restrictions placed on BT when it was privatised in the mid-1980s which prevented it from bundling together services such as broadband and a landline in a discount package.

The change means that BT will be able to introduce new packages this autumn, joining a bundling trend that its rivals have been driving for years.

BT enjoyed a 4.4% jump in its share price to 135.5p on the news – making it the biggest riser on the FTSE100 index.

BT's competitors, such as Virgin Media and BSkyB, have been able to package together two or more services and sell the bundle for less than the services would cost individually. Previously, because of rules designed to stop the former telecoms monopoly busing a dominant position in the landline market, BT has been able to sell such packages only for a price equal to the sum of the parts.

But Ofcom now believes competition is healthy and BT no longer has "significant market power" in the majority of retail landline markets. The regulator says more than 12m UK households and small businesses use a telecoms provider other than BT, so it is safe to remove one of the last pieces of regulation in the fixed-line market.

"This is an important step in deregulating telecoms, where competition can be relied upon to serve the consumer interest," said Ofcom's chief executive, Ed Richards.

BT Retail's chief executive, Gavin Patterson, said: "It means that BT will be competing on a more level playing field than previously.

It's good news for consumers and businesses, as this will allow BT to offer more targeted discounts on products and services, and more attractive bundles at better prices – something we have been unable to offer widely to date."

Ofcom's decision also means the company will no longer have to inform competitors in advance on its prices.

For customers, it means that when any of their BT contracts come up for renewal they can choose from a wider range of packages.

By fostering greater competition between telecoms providers, Ofcom's decision is also likely to cut prices throughout the market. "We think there might be a bit of a battle of the bundles here, because customers are very interested these days in taking a package," said a BT source.

According to Ofcom's latest figures, in 2008 nearly half (46%) of UK consumers bought a bundle of communication services, up from 29% in 2005. While bundles have increased, calls have become cheaper. The cost of residential calls from a landline has fallen to £21.57 a month in 2008 from £25.04 in 2003.


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Labels eye filesharing law ‘by next year’

The proposed legislation from Peter Mandelson has provoked a fierce debate, with support from record labels but opposition from musicians and ISP providers

Proposals to suspend the internet connections of people who persist in illegally swapping copyrighted films and music could become law within less than a year despite the fierce debate they have sparked, according to Britain's record label lobby group.

The labels, who have long campaigned for tougher action as they struggle with dwindling sales and rampant piracy, also claim there is widespread public support for a government clampdown on filesharers.

Industry group BPI, which represents the four big labels and independent music companies, believes the latest proposals from business secretary Peter Mandelson will significantly change consumer behaviour online and marginalise piracy within years.

"Assuming there is an election in May, then we believe the bill will be in the Queen's speech and that it should go through. It's got the full support of government and we believe the opposition will support it," said BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor.

"There will always be people who seek to work around the system. But the average consumer who pays for their jeans, pays for their car, we believe will be brought back into the legal market."

The recently-revealed decision to consider cutting off peer-to-peer filesharers was unexpected since it was ruled out by the government's own Digital Britain report in June.

Taylor welcomes the rethink.

"Government realised that if you look at a problem of this scale, the measures it was putting forward were not going to be big enough," he said.

"Politicians are beginning to see that the creative industries are absolutely central for the future of the country's economy and that it's an area where we excel."

There has been angry reaction to the proposed law, under which illegal filesharers would get warning letters, but if they continue to swap copyrighted material they could have their internet connection temporarily severed.

An alliance of musicians, songwriters and producers attacked the proposals as expensive, illogical and "extraordinarily negative".

BT chief executive Ian Livingstone, Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse, which owns TalkTalk, and others joined to condemn the plans as threatening broadband consumers' rights and the development of new services because of the money such a clampdown would drain from the industry.

But Taylor argues some internet service providers (ISPs) have "sought to misportray what the proposals involve."

"No one has been proposing criminalising anyone. Government is not talking about disconnecting anyone, the debate is around temporary suspension of internet connections as a last resort," he says.

BPI has completed new research, which it says highlights public support for tougher laws.

Almost three out of five non-filesharers it surveyed believe the government should take stronger action to ensure people do not illegally fileshare. Even a third of filesharers agree with that statement, Taylor says.

Among filesharers, 43% agreed ISPs should make it harder to illegally swap music and more than half agreed filesharing is "wrong, but doesn't hurt anybody".

More than 90% of non-filesharers pay for music because they believe it is fair artists are paid for their work, according to the survey of 4,017 non-filesharers and 1,201 music filesharers conducted earlier this year by Harris Interactive on behalf of BPI.

Digital rights groups predict the public will not be so accepting of the latest proposals.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, has cited opposition to similar proposals in France and said: "The result of these proposals is likely to be protest, challenges and public arguments in the run-up to the general election."

A key sticking point will be the question of who pays to enforce any new law.

A spokesman for BSkyB, whose own music service is rumoured to be launching in coming months, said the latest proposals may "both jeopardise investment in new services and increase overall costs for consumers."

John Petter, managing director of BT's consumer division said: "We believe the creative industries need to play a larger role in tackling copyright infringement and so we will be making our views known to the government."

Taylor argues rights holders already bear the costs of piracy through the damage to their industry.

"ISPs are not being asked to police the internet. It is rights holders who identify web addresses being used illegally," he says.

"Once the ISP knows that their service – for which they are taking money – is being used illegally, they have a responsibility to do something about it."


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The red phone box still has a future

Giles Gilbert Scott's red telephone kiosk is one of the most beautiful pieces of street furniture ever devised. But what to do with it in the age of the mobile?

Some people have fairies at the end of their garden. We have a red telephone kiosk, one of the most beautiful examples of street architecture ever devised. Sadly, it is hardly ever used now – killed by the unstoppable march of the mobile phone. It is for this reason that thousands are being disposed of by BT. It is offering local communities the chance to take them over for £1 if they will maintain them or £300 a year plus VAT if they keep them as a working payphone. This provides a rare opportunity to either keep the kiosks as they are or turn them into a new form of public art. Or both. Designed by the architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1924, the red kiosks were first introduced two years later in London and other parts of the country. Since then, they have become a part of Britain's heritage, along with cream teas, warm beer and the Tower of London. But now they are in danger of becoming a mausoleum for the analogue age unless something creative is done.

Many kiosks have already been converted to alternative uses and there is no shortage of ideas, as I found when I asked around, including putting out an appeal on Twitter. Here are a few: a shower cubicle, a coffin, an emergency shelter for unpredictable weather, a Doctor Who artefact (though it would have to be bigger on the inside … ), a mini greenhouse, a sales point for newspapers or deliveries from the internet, a kennel for tall dogs, a PhoneBoo (suggested, would you believe it, by the founder of audioboo.fm), a coffee dispenser, an ATM cash machine (but it would be a magnet for robbers), an "island of tranquillity" piping soft music for stressed out people, a local tourist information point, or as one expat American said, just leave them as they are as "the most recognisable symbol to all foreign tourists". One wag suggested that as they were too often used by drunks urinating maybe they should be turned into chemical toilets. Another man has made a business out of restoring booths. Keep the ideas rolling.

One obvious use would be to have solar energy stored during the day to illuminate the kiosks at night as a sculpture or as a beacon for passers by. However, the people at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth tell me their renewable energy powered telephone box was deemed uneconomic by BT. Last month, what is claimed to be the smallest art gallery in the world opened in a phone box in Settle, north Yorkshire. One tweeter, Lisa Devaney, suggested making some of them into a tribute to phones by filling them with discarded mobiles. Or the phones could be made into a sculpture of a person making a call as an ironic comment on the demise of a traditional communication. Or indeed made into any other sculpture.

This month BT has started a competition for alternative uses with a first prize of £5,000 and others of £1,000. It says there are 12,500 kiosks nationwide of which more than 6,700 are "potentially suitable for adoption", which sounds much nicer than saying they are in danger of closure.

A great suggestion came from Phil Slade. He urged that they should be turned into Skype stations or Fon points (or for that matter Truphone or any of the burgeoning internet telephony companies). This is a brilliant idea because it does several things at once. Technologically, it provides a magic bridge for the red kiosks to use their existing copper wires to move from the analogue into the digital age and, socially, it would provide free internet telephone calls for anyone, including the poor (as long as the person at the other end is hooked up to a web telephone). It could also be a base enabling the kiosk to expand into other digital areas – not least to become a base station to get broadband to remote parts of the country. Great idea. But it won't win a competition organised by BT, will it?


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Mandelson web cutoff plan ‘potentially illegal’

• U-turn on disconnecting filesharers surprises many
• Claims minister swayed by film and music industry

Lord Mandelson's plans to cut off the broadband connections of internet users who illegally download copyrighted music and films were attacked by privacy campaigners, internet service providers and Labour MPs yesterday as unworkable, unnecessary and potentially illegal.

The surprise decision to reintroduce the disconnection idea, which was ruled out in the government's own Digital Britain report in June, also sparked accusations that the business secretary has been swayed by secret meetings with senior figures from the music and film industry.

Tom Watson, the former cabinet minister who until recently was in charge of the government's internet policy, said the plan "will lead to accusations that the government has been captured by the big lobby operations of powerful rightsholders."

TalkTalk, Britain's largest consumer broadband provider, warned that innocent web users could be disconnected after having their connections hijacked by pirates looking to circumvent the new rules. It added that the move "will likely breach fundamental human rights".

A spokesman said: "Barely two months after the publication of largely sensible and pragmatic measures to tackle the problem Lord Mandelson has, it seems, caved in under pressure from powerful lobbyists in the content industry."

Earlier this month it emerged that the business secretary dined with Hollywood mogul David Geffen at a Corfu holiday villa owned by the Rothschild banking dynasty. Mandelson's advisers deny that this meeting included talk about how to stem the industry's losses caused by illegal filesharing. But Whitehall insiders believe the U-turn is more likely to have been caused by a prior meeting with one of the most powerful figures in the British music business, Lucian Grainge, the chairman of Universal Music, home to Lady Gaga and Rihanna.

Grainge is a fierce opponent of illegal file-sharing and is one of the government's chief industry advisers and part of the so-called C&binet – a group of executives who advise ministerial departments on fostering the creative industries in the UK.

He was consulted during the compilation of Lord Carter's Digital Britain report as part of an ad hoc "gang of five'' that included BSkyB's Jeremy Darroch, Channel 4's Andy Duncan and the Premier League's Richard Scudamore. Before the report was published he told an audience at the British Library, which included representatives of Mandelson's department: "The creators and the investors [in music] cannot exist with illegal filesharing, period. It will decimate the industry."

But the report stopped short of disconnecting the pirates, instead recommending that illegal filesharers should receive letters warning them their activities could leave them open to prosecution.

Believing that the government should have gone further, Grainge is understood to have had further meetings with Mandelson to push for tougher measures.

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the business secretary had met many representatives of the creative industries and the government's change of stance was not the result of any single conversation.

But the music and film industry has been lobbying hard for tougher measures and Stephen Timms, who replaced Lord Carter's replacement as communications minister said: "It's become clear there are widespread concerns that the plans as they stand could delay action, impacting unfairly on rights holders."

As a result, Timms proposed that persistent illegal sharers of copyrighted material should have their broadband connections temporarily disconnected and the power to introduce this measure, if warning letters failed to have an impact on levels of piracy, should rest with the government, not Ofcom. The government hopes to have its plans for dealing with online piracy included in the autumn's digital economy bill.

But privacy campaigners say the government's new proposals could fall foul of the law — as they did in France earlier this year. Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, warned: "This proposal fundamentally reverses the onus of proof. It establishes systemic accusation. It is fraught with technical impossibility, it invites circumvention and creates a major online conflict between rights holders and users. And these are fundamental rights that are being violated.""Cutting people off the internet for allegedly infringing copyright is disproportionate," added Larry Whitty, chairman of Consumer Focus. "And to do so without giving consumers the right to challenge the evidence against them undermines fundamental rights to a fair trial."

John Petter, head of BT's consumer business, meanwhile, expressed his disappointment at the government's change of direction. "We were broadly supportive of the original plans but these changes run the risk of penalising customers unfairly."

A spokesperson for Virgin Media, meanwhile, added "persuasion not coercion is the key to changing consumer behaviour as a heavy-handed, punitive regime will simply alienate mainstream consumers. The government should be ensuring a balance of action against repeat infringers and the rapid development of new legitimate services that provide a compelling alternative to illegal filesharing."


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BT dismisses O2 call fee warning

• Mobile phone company charged with scaremongering over Ofcom submission
• 'Sky won't fall' if termination rates are scrapped

BT has attacked as scaremongering a warning from O2, the UK's largest mobile phone company and formerly part of the telecommunications operator, that proposed cuts to the cost of calling a mobile phone could price users from low-income households out of the market.

In its submission to regulator Ofcom, which is examining the thorny issue of mobile termination rates – the charge levied by the networks on each other and fixed-line operators, such as BT, to connect calls – O2 warned that the mobile phone companies would have to raise prices and potentially introduce "use by" dates on top-up credit. This would be particularly painful for low-income households and younger consumers as many rely solely on pre-pay mobile phones and do not have a BT line.

In a letter to the Guardian, however, John Petter, managing director of BT's consumer division, said "we have been here before".

"In 2002 when Ofcom first proposed to impose controls on mobile termination rates O2 warned that this would 'severely damage or even put to an end the prepaid customer sector on which many vulnerable customers, particularly less well-off customers, relied... potentially resulting in the loss of many millions of existing and potential mobile subscribers'."

"In the end the sky did not fall in and mobile penetration and usage continued to rise. O2's predictions are no better a guide to the future now than they were in 2002."

"When mobile termination rates were first controlled BT made a voluntary undertaking that it would pass on the value of the reduction to its customers in lower prices and we demonstrated to Ofcom's satisfaction that we did do so. For the future we would like to offer our customers lower-priced calling plans in which the cost of calling mobile phones was capped or included in unmetered bundles, but the current level of mobile termination rates makes this impossible."

BT and the UK's newest mobile phone network 3 have joined forces to call for a scrapping of mobile termination rates through their "terminate the rate" campaign. More than 70,000 people have already signed their petition and 198 MPs have expressed their support for an early day motion calling for rates to be axed.

"They know that excessive mobile termination rates are unfair, distort competition and prevent us and other fixed phone companies from offering low-priced calls to mobile," Petter said in his letter. "It's no wonder that O2 and the other mobile operators want to hang on to the current regime and are resisting change. But the sky won't fall."

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BT: mobile users should share the pain of broadband tax

BT has called for the government's proposed £6-a-year broadband tax to be extended to mobile phone users in a move that could reduce the size of the tax.

In his Digital Britain report last month, the communications minister, Lord Carter, proposed a 50p-a-month levy on every fixed-line phone to meet the bill for getting the next generation of super-fast broadband networks to 90% of UK households by 2017.

But it is not only fixed-line companies that would be able to bid for some of the estimated £1.5bn that would be raised by the tax. Mobile phone operators would also be able to use the money. As a result, BT's director of industry policy and regulation, Emma Gilthorpe, said yesterday that if mobile, wireless-based operators did go through that bid process then "the government should consider the opportunity to widen the base for the tax and possibly reduce the amount that each individual household pays".

BT reckons it is incongruous that the levy only applies to fixed-line phones even though mobile phone companies and other businesses that want to use wireless solutions can bid for the cash for next-generation networks.

Carter proposed the new broadband tax because there is little chance of the market being able to make an economic case for pushing fibre-optic networks and other super-fast broadband services beyond about 60% of the population. With the Treasury unwilling to make any money available from general taxation, the telephone levy aims to plug the funding gap.

BT has already announced plans to invest £1.5bn over the next three years on a super-fast network but it will only reach four of every 10 homes. Virgin Media, meanwhile, is already offering broadband at 50Mb a second – the sort of speed expected from next-generation networks – but it covers only about half of the country.

Gilthorpe's comments, at a Westminster Media Forum debate on Digital Britain, came as BT announced that it is speeding up the rollout of its next-generation network.

Having originally planned to have about half a million homes connected by next March, it yesterday said it would have 1.5m homes connected by next summer. By the end of this summer Virgin Media will have completed its next-generation network plan, putting its 50Mb a second service within reach of 12.5m homes.

But there are fears within the industry that Carter's broadband tax could fail as it would require a new finance bill, which is unlikely to appear before next March. By then the government will be focused on a forthcoming general election and a new tax on consumers is unlikely to be a vote-winner.

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Phorm blow as TalkTalk drops Webwise

• TalkTalk joins BT in ruling out Phorm technology
• Phorm's Webwise platform criticised as online snooping

Phorm's ambitions to launch its controversial online advertising technology in the UK appeared doomed today as Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk admitted it had joined BT in mothballing plans to roll out the service and Virgin Media looked set to follow suit.

The Aim-listed Phorm signed a deal with the three internet service providers (ISPs) over a year ago but on Monday its shares plunged as it emerged that BT had no immediate plans to launch the technology, which tracks the internet habits of customers and has been attacked as online snooping by privacy campaigners.

Carphone Warehouse then said today that it had never wanted its TalkTalk business to go it alone with Phorm's platform, called Webwise, and it too had decided not to press ahead with its implementation.

Virgin Media, meanwhile, has decided to review its opportunities in online advertising but is also not expected to implement Phorm's technology in the near future, having gone cool on the idea after intense criticism from campaigners.

Phorm, whose technology uses information about which sites an internet user visits to target them with relevant advertising on subsequent pages, maintains that the indefinite delay of the launch of its service in the UK is not a crushing blow as it is in talks with other potential partners in 15 other countries. It has already, for instance, clinched a deal with South Korea's largest ISP and another overseas deal is understood to be close to completion. Its share price, however, has more than halved in value since the Guardian revealed on Monday that its key UK customer BT would not be going ahead with Webwise.

Of the three ISPs that signed up with Phorm in February 2008, BT played a lead role in getting Webwise into the UK. Last year it carried out an extensive customer trial of the technology with both TalkTalk and Virgin Media eagerly awaiting the results. Its decision to pull out – ostensibly because it has other financial priorities as it builds out a new super-fast broadband network over the next three years – in effect made the continued involvement of TalkTalk and Virgin Media untenable.

But privately BT is also being blamed by others in the ISP industry for killing the Phorm idea in the UK by secretly testing the technology on its network in 2006 and 2007. When news of these secret trials was revealed by the Register, an IT industry publication, just a few weeks after the deal with BT, TalkTalk and Virgin was signed, campaigners swung into action against Phorm.

Yesterday some of Phorm's most vociferous critics appeared before the all-party parliamentary group on communications, which is investigating the issue of online privacy. Peter John, who runs the Dephormation campaigning website, told MPs that the technology was "mass industrial espionage – the only beneficiaries from this system are the media companies".

However, Phorm's financial, strategic and policy development officer, Sarah Simon, told the meeting that the company's technology conformed with and even exceeded the UK's data protection laws. If the service is launched in the UK, she added, consumers would be very clearly given the choice of "opting in", rather than automatically being included in Webwise, which is more than can be said for many other online advertising platforms.

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BT drops Phorm after customers cry foul over privacy

• Controversial online technology is dumped
• Group behind system in talks with overseas firms

BT has quietly ditched a controversial system that tracks the internet habits of its customers, developed by the technology firm Phorm, which has been attacked as online snooping by privacy campaigners. BT was a key player in the development of Phorm's Webwise system, which uses information about which sites an internet user visits to target them with relevant advertising on subsequent pages.

It carried out secret tests of the technology in 2006 and 2007 which are now the basis of a European commission investigation into the UK government's failure to protect its citizens online. Last year BT carried out a proper consumer trial of Phorm's technology. The results have been keenly awaited, not just by management at Phorm – whose chairman is former chancellor Norman Lamont – but by its other two potential partners, Virgin Media and TalkTalk.

But BT has decided not to proceed with rolling out Webwise to its 4.8 million broadband customers, dealing a heavy blow to AIM-listed Phorm. The company, which has received complaints from customers about Phorm, said the decision was down to its need to conserve resources as it looks to invest £1.5bn in putting a next-generation super-fast broadband network within reach of 10 million homes by 2012. Privately, however, BT bosses have been increasingly concerned about consumer resistance to advertising based on monitoring users' online behaviour and specifically about the backlash against Phorm.

"We continue to believe the interest-based advertising category offers major benefits for consumers and publishers alike," said a spokesman for BT. "However, given our public commitment to developing next-generation broadband and television services in the UK we have decided to weigh up the balance of resources devoted to other opportunities.

"Given these commitments, we don't have immediate plans to deploy Webwise today. However, the interest-based advertising market is extremely dynamic and we intend to monitor Phorm's progress …before finalising our plans."

The news will throw the spotlight on Virgin Media and TalkTalk, which recently snapped up rival internet service provider Tiscali. Between them, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk control about three-quarters of the UK broadband market.

Virgin Media is understood to remain interested in the concept of behavioural targeted advertising, not least for use with its video on demand service, and is in talks with a number of potential technical partners. But the internet service provider is understood to have cooled on the idea of using Phorm's technology.

TalkTalk, meanwhile, has said it is keeping an eye on Webwise but any implementation would have to be done solely on an opt-in basis – customers would not be automatically connected to the service – and the company currently has no time–scale for deployment.

A spokesman for Phorm said BT's decision was not the end of the world, not least because it has been expanding overseas and is now in talks with potential ISP partners in 15 other countries. This year the company announced a trial of its technology with KT, South Korea's largest ISP, and another overseas deal is expected to be announced shortly.

"It is not a great surprise to us, to be honest. It has been a long process and we have never had a definitive date on a launch," said a spokesman. "Phorm is not just dependent on a UK model with one ISP."

But it is the latest in a series of setbacks for Phorm, which has become something of an internet industry bete noire. Amazon recently "opted out" of Webwise, saying it did not want traffic to its websites monitored by ISPs that sign up to use the technology. Google and Bebo are also considering opting out, potentially depriving Phorm of crucial information about internet users' tastes.

The UK government is also understood to have opted its domain names – such as www.direct.gov.uk – out of Webwise amid concerns about privacy. Although ISPs, media companies and even some politicians see Phorm as a way in which UK companies can claw back some share of the internet advertising market from the clutches of Google, the web's creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has criticised it as unjustifiable online snooping.

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