The TalkTalk Blog

Today is my first opportunity to blog in my role as senior director of media services at TalkTalk, and what better way to kick things off than to talk about one of my great passions, and I’m sure one of yours too – music. I caught the bug back in my teenage years, my first ever live gig was The Scorpions and the first LP I bought was Devo. Thankfully my musical taste has evolved and I now have a collection of over 2000 CDs and 17,448 tracks on my iPod!

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We're dismayed to learn that Lord Mandelson is to press ahead with his ill-conceived plans to allow content providers to force ISPs to disconnect people suspected of illegal filesharing (speaking today at the Cabinet Forum event).

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It’s a fact of modern parenting that kids start using computers from a very young age.

As a parent myself, I know how children love to press buttons and play around with machines. I also know they seem amazingly adept at understanding and using technology, even from as young as three years old.

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Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw is reported to have announced that the Government has 'watered down' its filesharing proposals. "Rights holders will have to obtain a court order before punishing persistent offenders by reducing or cutting off their internet connections," he told the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday. Great. A victory for common sense. A Government U-Turn. Well, maybe not.

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Today is Get Online Day. As its name suggests, it’s a day of activities aimed at encouraging those who’ve never used the internet before, or only used it infrequently, to get online and begin experiencing everything that the web has to offer.

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We’ve blogged more than once before on just why the Government’s proposals to crack down on filesharing are so hopelessly misguided and I make no apology for doing so again.

There are plenty of other people who agree with us and oppose Lord Mandelson’s plans – including consumer rights organisations and MPs. We hope to provide a single online forum which draws all that opposition together.

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There’s just one week to go until votes close for the TalkTalk Digital Heroes Awards. We’ve had a fantastic response so far, with more than 20,000 votes from people all over the UK.

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We’ve consistently opposed Lord Mandelson’s filesharing proposals since they were announced in August. As we’ve said before, the proposals mean the Government has done a U-turn and rejected the largely sensible and considered ideas put forward in Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report. It would put in place a principle of "guilty until proven innocent" that contradicts fundamental human rights. But moreover the proposals will be totally unworkable – and today we’ve proved why.

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The TalkTalk Blog goes 60 seconds with Alex Buttle, Marketing Director at Top10 Broadband. Top10 is a broadband comparison site that claims to be the most popular dedicated comparison site in the UK, with over 12 million visitors a year. The award-winning website offers a range of comparison tools and customer reviews, allowing users to make quick and easy broadband buying decisions.

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This morning we’ve launched the first ever Digital Anthropology Report – a comprehensive insight into how British people use the internet.

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Just a quick update on our fibre-optic broadband trial. After a few false starts, we managed to enable the Muswell Hill exchange in North London this week and connect our first fibre-optic customer.

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I attended a conference last week on customer experience in telecoms put on by the Telecom Executive Network. I participated in a panel discussion with peers from Yahoo, Best Buy and Orange on how companies are using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to communicate with customers. However, the discussion also uncovered a number of examples of consumers using the same tools to connect directly with one another and help each other out.

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