Tickets now on sale for The 2008 ISPAs 
Network with CEO’s, CTO’s and managing directors of the Internet industry

New Sponsor Makes Its Mark And A Blazing Return For Another
Two more sponsorship opportunities taken

Online shops for everyone with 123-reg
Easy, quick and powerful ecommerce success with ePages

Get Your PATS In Order And Stay On The Right Side Of The Law
New regulations for VoIP providers

Protecting An Online Nation
Facing the challenges of data protection

Exclusive Promotion For ISPA Finalists
ISPA Finalist logos now available

Tickets now on sale for The 2008 ISPAs 
Network with CEO’s, CTO’s and managing directors of the Internet industry

Tickets for The 2008 ISPAs - the 10th Annual UK Internet Industry Awards – are now on sale. 

Described by The Times as “the awards that could have the most direct bearing on your life”, the coveted awards will be presented at a glittering ceremony on the 14th March 2008 at the Marriott Hotel in London's Grosvenor Square.

The ISPAs offers a unique opportunity to network with senior decision makers in the Internet industry, Government representatives and the media. Tickets include a drinks reception and dinner.

Tickets are priced as follows:

ISPA members can buy tickets at a special rate of £110 per ticket. 

Sponsors: Companies that are sponsoring a category at The 2008 ISPAs can purchase additional tickets at a special rate of £110 per ticket. 

Nominees: Non-ISPA members that are successfully shortlisted for an award can purchase tickets at the nominee rate of £160 per ticket. Shortlists will be announced in mid-January. 

Non-members and non-sponsors can purchase tickets at £250 per ticket 

All prices are exclusive of VAT.

Discount codes will be made available on request for members, sponsors, and nominees interested in attending The 2008 ISPAs.

Tickets are limited. ISPA recommends that companies that are interested in attending the awards should purchase tickets now to avoid disappointment.

Tickets are only available to purchase via The 2008 ISPAs’ website.

Companies cannot be invoiced for tickets. Credit cards must be used to pay for tickets.

More information on The ISPAs is available by visiting The Event page. Here you can take a look at the type of companies and individuals who have attended in previous years, plus a list of companies attending the awards in 2007.

Buy your tickets now from the ticket kiosk.

New Sponsor Makes Its Mark And A Blazing Return For Another
Two more sponsorship opportunities taken

The ISPAs has two new sponsors this month. Cloudmark and Outblaze have both accepted the great marketing opportunities created by The ISPAs sponsorship package and have committed to backing categories at The 2008 ISPAs.

Cloudmark are sponsoring Best Consumer Email to promote their high-performance, scalable platform that protects subscribers from rapidly evolving threats such as spam and viruses.

Leading Internet service providers and mobile operators worldwide count on Cloudmark to secure their infrastructures and subscribers. Cloudmark's Advanced Message Fingerprinting technology and Global Threat Network provide spam, phishing and virus protection at all points of the messaging environment.


The partnership with the Best Dial-Up category has been taken by Outblaze, who return for their third year.

Outblaze operates one of the world’s largest online service platforms providing white label email, collaboration and social media services to service providers, telcoms operators and portals. Outblaze products and services are provided to the customer on a cost per user per month basis allowing clients to maximize revenue and profit per user. 

If you want to promote your business to the leading members in the UK Internet Industry, now is the time to sponsor a category at The 2008 ISPAs. There are only THREE categories still available so secure your own sponsorship package today.

Find out how sponsorship could benefit your company and take a look over the Sponsorship Package or contact the ISPA Press Office (020 7609 1907)

Online shops for everyone with 123-reg
Easy, quick and powerful ecommerce success with ePages

Online commerce has experienced massive growth in recent years. Today, 57 per cent of retailers already sell via the Internet (source: Eurobarometer) and by 2010 a total revenue of 350 billion US dollars is expected for e-business with consumers in Europe (source: eMarketer). 

Internet Service Providers need to enhance their existing services and value-added offerings due to increasing competition within the market. The demand of small and medium sized businesses to start their own online shop is a great opportunity for Internet Service Providers to expand their portfolio and increase their average revenue per user (ARPU). Since August 2007, the UK’s largest domain name registration company 123-reg.co.uk, has successfully offered powerful ecommerce packages based on ePages technology. 

“ePages allows us to enhance our portfolio with comprehensive ecommerce packages at a minimum risk of investment,” states Mark Beyer, sales and marketing director at 123-reg.co.uk. “Our 123-reg ecommerce service comes with customisable shop configuration options, intuitive usability and advanced marketing and sales tools. This ecommerce solution complements our 123-reg product portfolio and allows our customers to get everything they need in one place.” 

ePages software is a powerful standard product that is precisely tailored to the requirements of Internet Service Providers. Retailers get a highly individual and customised shop solution from their Provider and only need a browser to manage the shop. Neither special software nor programming knowledge is required to set up an online business fast and manage a successful, professional-looking online store. 

123-reg offers its customers - with the marketing and consulting support of ePages – powerful shop solutions. Retailers are provided with reliable online shops in three different packages to suit all budgets and business models. The portfolio ranges from a package for customers wanting a profitable part-time hobby to a comprehensive business edition for entrepreneurs. Retailers select the shop type that optimally matches their requirements. By addressing all possible needs, 123-reg reaches the widest target group of future online retailers possible. 

With ePages, 123-reg is able to offer its hosting customers seamless integration to eBay, Kelkoo, shopping.com and other shopping portals. This allows for a wide range of distribution channels for online retailers. 123-reg ecommerce offers trusted SSL encryption, Trusted Shops and Safebuy UK certification with the ability to take secure payments in all three packages through PayPal, Google Checkout, WorldPay and HSBC. The ecommerce packages come with unlimited disk space and bandwidth as well as a free .com or .co.uk domain – completing the comprehensive ecommerce offering by 123-reg.

For more information on ePages and 123-reg please visit www.epages.co.uk and www.123-reg.co.uk.

[ The above article has been produced by ePages and is included in this newsletter as part of the benefits they receive as a sponsor of The 2008 ISPAs. This article does not represent the views of ISPA, the members of ISPA or The 2008 ISPAs. ]

Get Your PATS In Order And Stay On The Right Side Of The Law
New regulations for VoIP providers 

If Barry Norman was presenting a round up of the past year in the telecoms industry, you just KNOW he’d be mentioning regulatory changes… 

With an industry that is evolving as fast as internet telephony, it is accepted that new directives, regulations and guidelines will be required just as quickly, to keep up with the issues that the advancing technology throws up. 

The past year though perhaps more so than in recent years, has seen the telecoms industry under close scrutiny not only from within its own ranks, but a wider public awareness has been raised. For example, when premium rate competition line operators came under fire following the high profile rows over vote rigging in television show phone-ins. 

While this may not have overly affected most VoIP providers as premium rates services is not the mainstay of their business, it has brought telecoms regulation into the forefront of many minds within the industry and some may argue perhaps even become a contentious issue. 

Non geographic number ranges have also come under review with changes being made to 0870 numbers, and the impending review of 0845 number charges. The call charges paid by consumers are being rationalised to fall back in line with the rates for dialling geographic numbers to reflect the price reductions since the numbers were first launched. 

Telecoms providers are also under obligation from statutes initiated outside of the industry, such as EU regulations coming into force stating that call records – although not call content – should be kept for 1 year, for security services to use in the event of investigations. This does not yet apply to VoIP providers because the new regulation does not cover internet activity, but in reality this should make little practical difference when the regulations are extended in March 2009, as this information is already kept for billing in most cases. 

Altogether these additional regulations within the telecoms industry, while appearing to be a daunting task for telecom providers to administer and adhere to at first, will provide far better protection for both the consumer and a move level playing field for the Service Providers. 

However, perhaps the regulation that will require the most changes around the day to day operations for telecom providers stems from the issue of access to the emergency services via internet phone services. 

Traditionally, VoIP had not been included within traditional telephony regulations because internet connectivity issues combined with the way these services were marketed had not made it a strictly comparable alternative to a traditional telephony service. Therefore they not ‘Publicly Available Telephone Service’ (PATS) providers and did not have the requirement to provide access to 999/112 services. However, advances in technology along with focused product marketing mean this is no longer the case. 

New regulation will come into force in September of this year, which will require many VoIP providers to allow access to emergency services. 

From September, Type 2 and Type 4 VoIP providers will be required to provide 999 access, and as a result will be re-defined as PATS services. They will also need to comply with the other obligations; network integrity, emergency planning, operator access and directories, the publishing of prices, tariffs and terms and conditions, accountable billing accuracy, itemised billing and accommodating special measures for end users with disabilities. 

The logistics of compliance with these rulings could prove problematic for many small VoIP providers, and they will be looking for suppliers who can assist them in the changes they will need to bring into force. 

Magrathea Telecommunications Ltd, the UK’s premier supplier of carrier services and managed communication solutions, will be providing a comprehensive package to new and existing clients to help them provide a fully compliant Publicly Available Telephone Service (PATS). 

Linus Surguy, Magrathea’s Technical Director says, “we have been offering many elements of the traditional PATS services to our clients for some time now, so it makes sense to expand this portfolio to make it easier for VoIP providers to become compliant with the minimum of cost and effort, leaving them to concentrate on their core business.”

[ The above article has been produced by Magrathea and is included in this newsletter as part of the benefits they receive as a sponsor of The 2008 ISPAs. This article does not represent the views of ISPA, the members of ISPA or The 2008 ISPAs. ]

Protecting An Online Nation
Facing the challenges of data protection

In a society where 25million child benefit records can disappear in a day it is no wonder data protection is such a hot topic. Almost every day a new story emerges about potential leaks of customer information. 

In December it was reported that 6,500 pensioner records were lost on a cartridge. In the same week headlines informed us that the data for three million people who’d sat driving theory tests had gone missing. 

There is no doubt about the importance of data protection, not just for customers but for businesses that hold important customer details. In line with the Data Protection Act, customer information must be “kept secure with appropriate technical and organisational measures taken to protect the information”. 

As an internet hosting provider, UKFast holds vast amounts of important data on its servers. MD Lawrence Jones believes data protection should be the biggest concern of any business today which is why his primary focus over the last twelve months has been set on network security.

“It’s ridiculous that organisations like the government could possibly lose important client details either in the post or to hackers,” says Jones. 

“With all of the technological advances we have seen in recent years, data should be more secure than ever. However, this is not what we’re seeing across the UK from large and small companies. Businesses need to be extra careful to comply with the Data Protection Act because the consequences of not doing so could be disastrous.”

A deciding factor in choosing your ISP must be its ability to protect the gateway to its network. Sophisticated networks employ both reactive and preventative systems to reduce and ultimately eradicate malicious traffic. The latest IPS (Intrusion Prevention Systems), IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems), Traffic Anomaly Detectors and a wide range of monitoring and reporting techniques are now vital to protect your online environment. 

Employing multi-vendor IPS/IDS protection allows a series of programs to work independently at the edge of a network inspecting traffic and guarding from policy violations and other threats such as vulnerability exploitations.

In addition to these responsive technologies, preventative anomaly detectors and Capacity Threshold Monitoring work in tandem to anticipate malicious attacks, filtering unwanted traffic away from a core network. They assist in the process of Risk Rating and can take preventive action on a broader range of threats without the risk of dropping legitimate traffic.

However, a network’s first line of defence is just the start of the security battle. It’s important to remember when protecting online data that firewalls and patches should be installed and updated regularly. Almost as quickly as new security solutions are created, hackers and viruses attempt to breach them. These threats are increasingly complex and growing in number, while malicious Internet worms and DDoS attacks in particular are on the increase.

Across the World, DDoS attacks grew by 400 per cent last year and they can be incredibly difficult to both identify and block. Successful attacks literally paralyse victims, preventing them from conducting business, which on a global scale costs over a billion pounds each year in lost revenue.

With this in mind, businesses have to protect their online information to the fullest extent. UKFast works very closely with Cisco, testing the best firewalls for individual solutions to ensure hardware is protected to the highest possible standard.

However, it’s not just the loss of important customer details which seriously affects businesses and their customers. The loss of any sort of information can hinder a company’s ability to work to its fullest capacity.

Of companies that have a major loss of computerised records, 43% never reopen, 51% close within two years, and only 6% survive long-term. UKFast’s new Business Continuity Platform looks to solve this problem by making sure important data can never be lost should your business face a disaster.

“Every company needs to have a disaster recovery plan for every eventuality,” says Neil Lathwood, UKFast’s Network Director. “Data loss and disaster don’t just happen to ‘other people’ anymore. We know this is the case and it’s why we offer a catalogue of practical solutions for any level of business. The most variable of these solutions is the Business Continuity Platform.”

The Business Continuity Platform is the first of its kind and effectively eliminates loss of data by duplicating every necessary piece of information through a framework of load balancers, web, database and back-up servers. All server functions are performed by the platform in a disaster situation and clients are guaranteed 100% uptime. Furthermore, the data stored on the platform is protected by a series of high spec firewalls.

“At UKFast we’ve been very focused on data protection because we know how intense the challenges are. You have to sympathise with those in the field whose networks have been seriously compromised in the past and hope that solutions are in place to guard against repeat incidences.” says Jones. 

He believes that it all comes down to vigilance. “Internet security will continue to evolve and as more and more companies move their data online it becomes paramount that UK ISPs work together to keep one step ahead of the threats.” 

[ The above article has been produced by UKFast and is included in this newsletter as part of the benefits they receive as a sponsor of The 2008 ISPAs. This article does not represent the views of ISPA, the members of ISPA or The 2008 ISPAs. ]

Exclusive Promotion For ISPA Finalists
ISPA Finalist logos now available

Finalists of The 2008 ISPAs - the 10th Annual UK Internet Industry Awards- can now take advantage of a superb opportunity to display their achievement by purchasing a high quality logo displaying their award nomination for use online or in print. 

Competition for nomination is fierce and a nominee logo will undoubtedly highlight  the services and products of nominees, potentially creating new business opportunities. 

Logos are priced at £500 per nomination and winner's logos will be available at a later date for £2000. Nominees that purchase their nominee logo and go on to win will only be charged the remaining £1500.

Further info is available on the Nomination page or to purchase your finalist logo please contact the ISPA press office on 020 7609 1907.