EU acts to cut mobile phone costs

Europe's telecoms watchdogs aims to make mobile phone calls cheaper

The European Commission plans to cut the cost of mobile phone calls by reducing the fees operators charge each other for using their networks.

Europe's telecoms watchdog published guidelines for laws to harmonise so-called call termination fees across the European Union by 2011.

Currently, 27 national authorities regulate fees charged by an operator for handling calls from another.

Brussels said consumers ended up paying for variations in cross-border fees.

Calling for change

The consumer pays the price for these gaps between national regulatory policies Viviane Reding, EU telecoms commissioner

According to EU figures, call termination charges range from 2 euro cents per minute in Cyprus to 18 euro cents in Bulgaria.

The fees that operators levy for switching callers between each other's networks are, on average, nine times higher than those on fixed-line networks.

The Commission said it was these charges that were, in part, to blame for mobile calls being more expensive than fixed-line calls in the EU.

EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said: "The consumer pays the price for these gaps between national regulatory policies."

Operators have until 2011 to abide by the new regulations, which the Commision estimated would make calls 70% cheaper.

Last year, Ms Reding set limits on roaming charges for mobile phone calls across the EU, and the industry has a 1 July deadline to slash the cost of texts across the EU.

But the industry body, the GSM Association, opposed the move.

It claimed operators would struggle to absorb the cut in termination charges and consumers might end up paying for more for a mobile phone as a result.

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UK criticises phone fee shake-up

Reducing mobile phone fees may not mean cheaper costs for customers

A shake-up in mobile phone charges by the European Commission (EC) may have unintended consequences for consumers, according to the UK telecoms regulator.

European plans to cut phone bills could hurt those on low incomes, particularly people on pay-as-you go tariffs, Ofcom and the UK Government said.

Brussels wants the fees that mobile phone operators charge for handling each other's calls to be cut by 70%.

But regulators said phone firms may recoup lost income from customers.

Ofcom and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) published the joint statement in response to the EC's proposals.

They said the aim of cutting the price of calls for consumers should be applauded.

However, it warned that plans to change the tariff structure could result in lower bills for the caller, but higher costs for the person receiving the call.

"The Commission has been unduly optimistic in assuming that the fundamental changes it has proposed should take effect by 2011" Joint statement, Ofcom and BERR

This could disadvantage lower spending customers, it argued, particularly those on pay-as-you-go tariffs.

In June, EU telecoms commissioner Viviane Reding said the current disparity in call termination rates between different countries meant that consumers were being ripped off.

'Regulatory plumber'

She said call termination markets in the EU needed a "regulatory plumber" to increase competition.

The UK regulator also said that it has already agreed mobile phone termination rates in the UK until March 2011, and it is reluctant to alter those rates now.

"It therefore appears that the Commission has been unduly optimistic in assuming that the fundamental changes it has proposed should take effect by 2011," it said.

Mobile firms, for whom termination fees account for up to 20% of annual revenues, are lobbying for more gradual reductions.

Earlier this month, Vodafone said it accepted the cost of termination rates would continue to fall, but took issue with the speed at which Brussels was seeking the cuts.

On Tuesday, the EC is expected to announce further measures to cut the cost of using a mobile phone abroad.

The proposals are thought to include a reduction in the cost of text messaging and a price cap on downloading data such as TV shows.

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Apple made to drop iPhone advert

The advert compared the iPhone's 3G and 2G models

An Apple iPhone advert has been banned by the advertising standards watchdog for exaggerating the phone's speed.

The advert boasted the new 3G model was "really fast" and showed it loading internet pages in under a second.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld complaints by 17 people who said the TV advert had misled them as to its speed.

Apple UK said it was comparing the 3G model with its 2G predecessor and its claims were "relative not absolute".

The advert repeatedly stated that the phone was "really fast" and showed news pages and the Google maps service taking just fractions of a second to appear.

Text on the screen said: "Network performance will vary by location."

After upholding the viewers' complaints, the ASA said the advert must not appear again in the same form.

It said the advert was likely to lead viewers to believe that the device actually operated at or near to the speeds shown in the advert.

The watchdog concluded: "Because we understood that it did not, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead."

Apple said its claims were "relative rather than absolute in nature" - implying the 3G iPhone was "really fast" in comparison to the previous generation - and therefore the advert was not misleading.

The company also said the average consumer would realise the phone's performance would vary - a point they said was made clear by the text stating "network performance will vary by location".

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Virtual hospitals - the NHS's future

VIEWPOINT Professor Nick Bosanquet Health policy expert

Doctors can already make diagnoses over the web

The future of NHS care does not lie in bricks-and-mortar hospitals, according to policy expert Nick Bosanquet.

In this week's Scrubbing Up Professor Bosanquet, a director of the centre-right think-tank Reform - predicts we could one day be texting in test results day and night to doctors who could give an instant verdict.

The NHS has a powerful fixation on hospital treatment - even though it does not have the staff on many wards to deliver a reliable quality of care or basic information on outcomes.

Instead of tinkering with the existing system, perhaps it is time to start on more radical changes.

The NHS should establish virtual hospitals that can provide 24-hour cover.

Patients could be sitting at home and could send in data on their condition. They could get in touch with doctors very easily, perhaps by text.

The NHS is building the wrong hospitals in the wrong places

And there are recorders now which can send back pulse rates, or even take a blood sample to monitor things like blood glucose levels.

Instead of thinking about how they are going to get to hospital, patients could get immediate answers and immediate help for their problems.

Hospitals would become communication and day treatment hubs.

Wrong hospital - wrong place

The concept of virtual medicine is gaining a following, particularly in rural areas such as Cornwall and in Kent.

And there are projects such as the one that actually works at Kingston Hospital where young people can go for sexual health checks - and get the results texted back to them.

That's something that would have been unheard of a few years ago.

Too often priorities in the NHS have been set not by customer needs but by a trinity of providers - big government, monopoly professions and big contractors.

SCRUBBING UP The BBC News website is launching the "Scrubbing Up" weekly column, where leading clinicians and experts give their perspectives on issues in health Each week, you will be able to have your say

The NHS is building the wrong hospitals in the wrong places - a kind of health Maginot Line.

The losers have been the patients who have lost out on better care.

But the new spending limits placed on the NHS could trigger a rethink.

Funding increases are predicted by the government to fall from 9-10% a year to 3-4%.

That's no reason for gloom. It could spur a redesign over the next decade to more personal, more effective services.

Obsolete services

There has been little incentive to invest in a new kind of health service while the easy option of continued growth in high spending in the old one remains.

But even during the high-funding period, many of the most effective programmes have been low-cost - such as the National Service Framework for coronary heart disease which identifies and treats high-risk patients.

And the quality agenda set out by health minister and surgeon Lord Darzi recently showed how quality does not need big spending.

Rural areas in particular could benefit.

We should put the advances in communication technology which have revolutionised services such as air travel to better use, through locally driven investment programmes which create powerful incentives for fast results.

Above all we must give the local health agencies the power and the responsibility to develop new kinds of links with users and offer them a greater range of providers.

Local teams must be empowered to invest in new ways of providing care financed by savings on obsolete services.

This new agenda faces up to the fiscal and labour market consequences of an ageing population.

With fewer younger tax-payers or healthcare workers and more older service-users, we have to look at ways of producing more value for the health pound.

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Virtual worlds with real purposes

20km of Berlin has been faithfully replicated in bits

By Dan Simmons Reporter, BBC Click

The idea of having a virtual you following the real you around may seem rather strange - for those of us used to having our feet firmly on the ground.

But the creation of a virtual Berlin lets people be in two places at the same time - as 20km of the city has been faithfully replicated into an online world.

By the end of 2008, 50,000 buildings in the German capital are expected to have been copied into the virtual world.

"While Second Life and others worlds offer some stylised versions of cities - Twinity uses the 3D mapping data currently used for things like satnav and Google Earth," said Jochen Hummel, the chief executive of Metaversum - owner of Twinity.

"One by one each building is then made to look as it would in the real world," he said.

Twinity hopes to offer a space for "virtual tourism"

Twinity's Berlin, which it calls a "metaverse" has been created by taking pictures of the city and using them to build 3D facades.

Volunteer developers may soon be encouraged to add their own or adapt existing ones, like users updating and adding entries in Wikipedia.

Emphasis on realism

While many online worlds are put to frivolous uses, Metaversum sees Twinity as a step beyond gaming.

"It's a space for virtual tourism," said Mr von Hardenberg. "The realism of this platform could help you plan a trip here, or just help you get your bearings before you arrive."

So far the closest many come to wandering around the globe is through 3D-mapping applications such as Google Earth that provide a snapshot of places.

Twinity emphasises realism, but the mantra for the virtual world is "be nice".

Mr Hardenberg hopes the platform will gain an audience beyond the core male gamers and attract more women.

"It's a social environment for meeting people, visiting galleries, or online shopping. Users are encouraged to create avatars that look just like them so they'll be recognised and to use their real names," he said.

Twinity has one advantage over reality when it comes to transport because there are no cars and visitors simply teleport to key locations.

Near Global are launching their virtual London next year

Virtual Yellow Pages

Joining Berlin soon is London where another company is re-creating the city not just based on reality, but mapping it by inch-for-inch.

Near Global is launching in 2009 with the promise to offer the most accurate 3D version of a city ever produced as a virtual world.

While Twinity allows any company to buy its shops other than landmark stores, Near Global will offer a faithful copy of what users would find in reality.

GPS phones could be used to map actual movements to this virtual space, or phones could be used to go online into the virtual London to see what's ahead before getting there.

Londoners will also be able to know where to find anything they want by travelling there virtually - if it were to become popular, it might work as a Yellow Pages of its day.

"We don't search for stuff on a day-to-day level, we discover things," said Alex Wrottesley, the founder of Near Global. "Yes some people go out to buy a pair of socks but lots of people go out to look and see what's available.

"Information is not organised like that online and there's nowhere where that's all put together, and certainly not on an interface that's so intuitive to explore," he said.

At the moment only a few streets of the city are rendered.

But he firm hopes once the virtual London is complete real companies will get involved and offer services through "channels" on its website.

These could be free or require subscription, for instance, for entertainment companies offering live coverage of events or London's tourist board offering a Victorian experience of the capital.

Money maker

User will be able to visit galleries in the online London

All users will access virtual London and have the option to visit galleries or clubs like in real life, by paying to get access to the extra layers or "channels".

Companies might then be able to commercialise the opportunities offered by such a detailed virtual world.

Rather than using avatars, virtual London is turning to shards of coloured light.

"If you give people a physical presence in a world, you are asking them to make some very big statements on day one. I don't really want to do that. I don't really want to dress up to go to the shops.

"I want to feel I'm there, not that's I'm creating an alternative persona to inhabit there," said Mr Wrottesley.

Like Twinity where there are no cars and users can teleport to key locations.

Breaking away from reality further, there is no litter on the London streets, although there are litter bins, and again no weapons or traffic - beyond the occasional red bus.

Mr Wrottesley said it took around six months to properly re-create a city centre, and his company's next target was likely to be Moscow.

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Who polices Facebook?

Who polices Facebook?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 28 Nov 08, 16:42 GMT

A young producer on Radio 4's Today programme got a shock the other day when he logged onto Facebook. In his newsfeed was an item posted by a friend linking to a photo, allegedly of the mother of Baby P, the child killed in the recent notorious case. Various obscene and threatening comments were then posted next to the photo. Facebook is removing the picture and other details when notified by members, but new groups keep popping up.

The names of the baby's parents are also being distributed via text, and presumably on other web outlets. A court order protects the identity of these people and no mainstream media outlet would even consider breaking that ruling. So what are the responsibilities of social networks when their members break the law in this manner - and how carefully should they police the material that is generated by their users?

It all comes down to how you see the likes of Facebook and MySpace - are they just technology platforms, playgrounds for their users to exploit as they will? Or are they now becoming major media businesses facing the same regulatory demands as a broadcaster or a newspaper? The networks would like to be treated much the same as telecoms businesses - after all nobody is suggesting that the mobile network on which that text about Baby P's parents was sent should have any responsibility to stop that happening.

But there is growing pressure from politicians and regulators, who, as the online child safety expert John Carr told me, "are getting more self-confident, more assertive, about the internet, and are no longer convinced it's lawless and ungovernable." Mr Carr, who acts as an advisor to Facebook's rival MySpace, pointed out that MPs on the Culture Select Committee had ordered social networks to be more proactive in their policing of their members.

Nicholas Lansmann, chief executive of the Internet Service Providers Association said on the Today Programme that sites like Facebook are "not the police of the internet" and worked under the "notice and take-down regulations", which required them to remove illegal content once notified about it. He said that system was working well but that it was very difficult to tackle what were in effect millions of self-publishers particualrly given the cross-border nature of the internet.

Which bring us back to Facebook, a California-based company, which is now a major force in the UK, and boasts of its ambitions here. The company did give us a statement about the Baby P issue,detailing out all the actions it has taken to remove content that violates its terms of use, and pointing out that the network is a "highly self regulating comunity". But despite being given 36 hours notice, the company refused to provide anyone in California or London to speak about the issue. It has also been less forthcoming than other networks when asked to comment more generally on privacy and security issues.

Facebook is becoming the place where millions of British people get news, views, and all sorts of media content, and that means it will be under the spotlight more and more. It has a perfectly decent case to argue when it comes to its self-regulatory model - so shouldn't it be out there making that case?

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Can Stephen Fry kill a gadget?

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 27 Nov 08, 17:51 GMT

Who or what decides whether a new gadget flies - or fails? Is it the quality and quantity of the advertising? The reviews in newspapers and magazines? Word of mouth among consumers? Or, in the UK at least, could it be the views of Stephen Fry?

In the old days, any new product launched by a major consumer brand was accompanied by a marketing blitz that would almost guarantee decent early sales. Then eventually the reviews in newspapers and specialist magazines and word-of-mouth from happy or disgruntled consumers would determine whether a new car, camera - or mobile phone - would be a long-term hit or miss.

Now the whole process has been accelerated by the web and is far more difficult for companies to control, with early pictures and opinions emerging online before the real "specialists" have had a chance to deliver their judgment. But with so many different views of products - from technology blogs, from specialist online forums, from any old Facebook friend - it becomes difficult for consumers to filter the noise and get a clear view. That is where a "trusted guide" like Stephen Fry comes in.

As well as being a much-loved entertainer, Mr Fry has built a reputation as one of Britain's most knowledgeable gadget lovers - though as the second person in the UK to buy a Mac (after Douglas Adams), his passion for anything made by Apple is pretty clear. He is particularly keen on smartphones and has written at length about the various delights and disappointments of using them.

So along comes the Blackberry Storm, with an avalanche of advertising from Vodafone - which has the exclusive contract in Britain - and plenty of excitable speculation amongst the kind of people who really, really care about whether a new mobile phone has wi-fi, and whether it can turn the bath on before they get home.

Then on Twitter, where he has quickly built an audience of more than 20,000 followers, came this series of messages from Stephen Fry:

"Been playing with the BB Storm. Shockingly bad. I mean embarrassingly awful. Such a disappointment. Rushed out unfinished. What a pity."

"Yes, I blame n'works more than RIM. Problems are terrible lag: inaccurate t'screen, awful, slow and fiddly text input. I SO wanted to like it."

"Plus the GPS maps won't work - issue with BIS connections. I see from forums postings this is widespread in the UK. iPhone killer? Ha!"

Those short bursts of instant reaction were then recycled and passed on by other Twitter users. As the "Twitterati" tend to be early adopters who are likely customers for new smartphones, this is a more important audience than its numbers might suggest.

Mr Fry was by no means the only expert to be deeply unimpressed by BlackBerry's new baby. David Pogue of the New York Times, another very influential technology pundit, has also given it a stinker, and his views are now racing around networks like Twitter.

I'm sure there will still be some decent sales figures for the Storm in the early weeks - unless that advertising blitz has been completely misdirected - but what a high-end product like this need is a buzz of anticipation and that's been silenced by Messrs Fry and Pogue.

So a couple of "trusted guides" - or "super-advocates" as someone else described them - could have sealed the fate of a product of huge importance to both RIM and Vodafone. What's the lesson for the gadget-makers? Maybe they need to spend more time hanging out on social networks and listening to what is being said. Or perhaps they should get their products thoroughly tested by Stephen Fry and David Pogue before they are launched - rather than sit and watch their damning views go viral.

And having had my say, what does Stephen Fry himself think? I asked him - this was his response:

Crumbs Rory! Do I have the power to kill a gadget? Of course, like all pusillanimous people I enjoy the idea that I could make a gadget - but break one?
If I really thought my influence was that great it might make me a little wary of being quite so definite and it would probably force me to be more specific about all the features/pricing/services, as a responsible tech journalist should be. As it is, I hope people know I am no more than an enthusiastic, passionate amateur (I'm including the French sense of the word amateur - lover). It gives me no pleasure to be negative about the BB Storm and I know that many people have been looking forward to receipt of theirs and were very disheartened to hear my loud disappointment. But, honestly: play with the Storm for two days as I have and you will admire my patience at not throwing it out of the window... I do like the Bold though. Could live with that. But to return to your point. The net should make us all equal in our influence. Okay - more equal.

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Online fraudsters 'steal £3.3bn'

Credit card numbers and bank details are big sellers among hi-tech thieves

Hi-tech thieves who specialise in card fraud have a credit line in excess of $5bn (£3.35bn), research suggests.

Security firm Symantec calculated the figure to quantify the scale of fraud it found during a year-long look at the net's underground economy.

Credit card numbers were the most popular item on sale and made up 31% of all the goods on offer.

Coming in second were bank details which made up 20% of the items being offered on criminal chat channels.

The $5.3bn figure was reached by multiplying the average amount of fraud perpetrated on a stolen card, $350 (£234), by the many millions Symantec observed being offered for sale.

Similarly, the report said, if hi-tech thieves plundered all the bank accounts offered for sale they could net up to $1.7bn.

Closed accounts

Symantec said it was likely that many of the cards offered for sale were invalid or cancelled and bank accounts closed but it added: "These figures are indicative of the value of the underground economy and the potential worth of the market."

MOST POPULAR ITEMS 1) Credit card information - 31% 2) Financial accounts - 20% 3)Spam and phishing information - 19% 4) Withdrawal service - 7% 5) Identity theft information - 7% 6) Server accounts - 5% 7) Compromised computers - 4% 8) Website accounts - 3% 9) Malicious applications - 2% 10) Retail accounts - 1%

Credit card numbers have proved so popular among hi-tech thieves because they are easy to obtain and use for fraudulent purposes.

Many of the methods favoured by cyber criminals, such as phishing schemes, database attacks and magnetic strip skimmers, are designed to steal credit card information, it said.

The existence of a ready market for any stolen data and the growing use of credit cards also helped maintain their popularity, it said.

"High frequency use and the range of available methods for capturing credit card data would generate more opportunities for theft and compromise and, thus, lead to an increased supply on underground economy servers," said the report.

The price card thieves can expect for the numbers they offer for sale also varied by the country of origin. US card numbers were the cheapest because they were so ubiquitous - 74% of all cards offered for sale were from the US.

By contrast numbers from cards issued in Europe and the Middle East commanded a premium because they were relatively rare.

Criminal alliances

The year-long look at the underground economy confirmed to Symantec how serious and organised cyber thieves have become.

Via the covert chat channels and invitation-only discussion forums hi-tech thieves form loose alliances, contact those who specialise in one technique or find individuals who can extract cash from particular credit cards or financial institutions.

Russian and Eastern European gangs seem to be among the most well-organised and, said the report, have the ability to mass-produce credit and debit cards. By contrast thieves in the US are much more loosely aligned.

But, it said, all the criminals were happy to work together to steal money from credit cards and bank accounts. This was because card numbers stolen in one country can only be "cashed out" in their home nation - necessitating contact across borders.

"Symantec research indicates that there is a certain amount of collaboration and organisation occurring on these forums, especially at the administrative level," it said.

"Moreover, considerable evidence exists that organised crime is involved in many cases."

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Compulsive gamers 'not addicts'

By Paddy Maguire BBC News, Amsterdam

Keith Bakker (right) regularly takes time to meet and talk to gamers.

Ninety per cent of the young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted.

So says Keith Bakker the founder and head of Europe's first and only clinic to treat gaming addicts.

The Smith & Jones Centre in Amsterdam has treated hundreds of young gamers since the clinic opened in 2006.

But the clinic is changing its treatment as it realises that compulsive gaming is a social rather than a psychological problem.

Using traditional abstinence-based treatment models the clinic has had very high success rates treating people who also show other addictive behaviours such as drug taking and excessive drinking.

But Mr Bakker believes that this kind of cross-addiction affects only 10% of gamers. For the other 90% who may spend four hours a day or more playing games such as World of Warcraft, he no longer thinks addiction counselling is the way to treat these people.

"These kids come in showing some kind of symptoms that are similar to other addictions and chemical dependencies," he says.

"But the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem."

In response the clinic has changed its treatment programme for gamers to focus more on developing activity-based social and communications skills to help them rejoin society.

Social ties

"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today," Mr Bakker told BBC News. "Eighty per cent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated. Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old fashioned communication."

In most cases of compulsive gaming, it is not addiction and in that case, the solution lies elsewhere Keith Bakker

By offering compulsive gamers a place where they feel accepted and where their voice will be heard, the clinic has found that the vast majority have been able to leave gaming behind and rebuild their lives.

For Mr Bakker the root cause of the huge growth in excessive gaming lies with parents who have failed in their duty of care.

But he is quick to point out that 87% of online gamers are over the age of 18 - and once they cross that line, help is something they need to seek for themselves because parents no longer have the legal right to intervene.

For younger gamers, intervention may be the only way to break the cycle. That means stepping in and sometimes literally taking a child away from a computer, removing them from the game for a period of time until they become aware of their habits and begin to see there are other choices.

"It's a choice," he says. "These kids know exactly what they are doing and they just don't want to change. If no one is there to help them, then nothing will ever happen."

Alone together

George [not his real name] is an 18-year-old gamer being treated at the clinic in Amsterdam. He was spending at least 10 hours a day playing Call of Duty 4 until he sought help at the centre.

"Call of Duty was somewhere I felt accepted for the first time in my life," he says. "I was never helped by my parents or my school. At the clinic I also feel accepted and have come out of myself."

'George' used to spend hours every day playing Call of Duty 4

George kept his gaming problem a secret as much as he could but when he did tell people, he says that no-one offered him help.

"I liked gaming because people couldn't see me, they accepted me as my online character - I could be good at something and feel part of a group."

Underlying that new sense of belonging was a young man who felt powerless and neglected in real life.

"I was aware that I played too much but I didn't know what to do. But it helped me because I could be aggressive and get my anger and frustration out online," he says.

This kind of aggression is not uncommon in young gamers who feel frustrated with their real lives. Besides addiction, aggression and violence form part of the ongoing debate about the influence of gaming on impressionable minds.

When two students killed twelve pupils and a teacher in the Columbine High School shooting in the US in 1999, many believed that their common interest in playing violent games had helped to trigger the massacre.

Research at Smith & Jones seems to imply that feelings of anger and powerlessness often pre-exist a compulsion to play violent games. In some cases these people find each other in the gaming world and form a bond based on those feelings of alienation and anger.

Mr Bakker believes that if there was more commitment from parents and other care givers to listen to what their children are saying then these issues of isolation and frustration could be dealt with at source and bring many young people out of the virtual world and back into real life.

"If I continue to call gaming an addiction it takes away the element of choice these people have," he says. "It's a complete shift in my thinking and also a shift in the thinking of my clinic and the way it treats these people."

Mr Bakker sees a time when addiction centres like Smith & Jones could close down if parents and adults in the community took more responsibility for the habits of their children.

"In most cases of compulsive gaming, it is not addiction and in that case, the solution lies elsewhere."

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Code-cracking and computers

By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

By the end of WWII, 11 Colossus machines were in use

Bletchley Park is best known for the work done on cracking the German codes and helping to bring World War II to a close far sooner than might have happened without those code breakers.

But many believe Bletchley should be celebrated not just for what it ended but also for what it started - namely the computer age.

The pioneering machines at Bletchley were created to help codebreakers cope with the enormous volume of enciphered material the Allies managed to intercept.

The machine that arguably had the greatest influence in those early days of computing was Colossus - a re-built version of which now resides in the National Museum of Computing which is also on the Bletchley site.

Men and machine

The Enigma machines were used by the field units of the German Army, Navy and Airforce. But the communications between Hitler and his generals were protected by different machines: The Lorenz SZ40 and SZ42.

The German High Command used the Lorenz machine because it was so much faster than the Enigma, making it much easier to send large amounts of text.

"For about 500 words Enigma was reasonable but for a whole report it was hopeless," said Jack Copeland, professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, director of the Turing Archive and a man with a passionate interest in the Bletchley Park computers.

Bletchley employed thousands of code breakers during wartime

The Allies first picked up the stream of enciphered traffic, dubbed Tunny, in 1940. The importance of the material it contained soon became apparent.

Like Enigma, the Lorenz machines enciphered text by mixing it with characters generated by a series of pinwheels.

"We broke wheel patterns for a whole year before Colossus came in," said Captain Jerry Roberts, one of the codebreakers who deciphered Tunny traffic at Bletchley.

"Because of the rapid expansion in the use of Tunny, our efforts were no longer enough and we had to have the machines in to do a better job."

The man who made Colossus was Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers, who had instantly impressed Alan Turing when asked by the maverick mathematician to design a machine to help him in his war work.

But, said Capt Roberts, Flowers could not have built his machine without the astonishing work of Cambridge mathematician Bill Tutte.

"I remember seeing him staring into the middle distance and twiddling his pencil and I wondered if he was earning his corn," said Capt Roberts.

But it soon became apparent that he was.

"He figured out how the Lorenz machine worked without ever having seen one and he worked out the algorithm that broke the traffic on a day-to-day basis," said Capt Roberts.

"If there had not been Bill Tutte, there would not have been any need for Tommy Flowers," he said. "The computer would have happened later. Much later."

Valve trouble

Prof Copeland said Tommy Flowers faced scepticism from Bletchley Park staff and others that his idea for a high-speed computer employing thousands of valves would ever work.

Colossus kept valves lit to ensure they kept on working

"Flowers was very much swimming against the current as valves were only being used in small units," he said. "But the idea of using large numbers of valves reliably was Tommy Flowers' big thing. He'd experimented and knew how to control the parameters."

And work it did.

The close co-operation between the human translators and the machines meant that the Allies got a close look at the intimate thoughts of the German High Command.

Information gleaned from Tunny was passed to the Russians and was instrumental in helping it defeat the Germans at Kursk - widely seen as one of the turning points of WWII.

The greater legacy is the influence of Colossus on the origins of the computer age.

"Tommy Flowers was the key figure for everything that happened subsequently in British computers," said Prof Copeland.

After the war Bletchley veterans Alan Turing and Max Newman separately did more work on computers using the basic designs and plans seen in Colossus.

Turing worked on the Automatic Computing Engine for the British government and Newman helped to bring to life the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine - widely acknowledged as the first stored program computer.

The work that went into Colossus also shaped the thinking of others such as Maurice Wilkes, Freddie Williams, Tom Kilburn and many others - essentially the whole cast of characters from whom early British computing arose.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

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How do you spot a tool bag in space?

WHO, WHAT, WHY? The Magazine answers...

Track the tool bag Enlarge Image

A tool bag which floated away from an astronaut during a space walk will be visible in the sky over Britain this week, but how do you spot it?

Losing a tool bag can be inconvenient, but when you're 212 miles above the Earth it's a whole different matter.

Last week American astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper was forced to watch her tools - reportedly worth £70,000 - float off when the backpack-sized bag slipped out of her grip.

The accident happened as she was cleaning grease off her gloves while fixing a gummed-up joint on the International Space Station's solar panel. The bag went into orbit and has become a "must see" among some competitive stargazers in recent days.

You can calculate precisely where something will be in space at any given time thanks in part to Newton's first law of motion. It states that any object moving in a straight line tends to remain in such a state unless acted upon by an external force.

This also applies in space, the only difference being objects move in orbit - the bag circles the Earth due to its gravitational pull. And because space is so vast and empty, it is unlikely to be knocked off its course by anything else.

THE ANSWER Location plotted using Newton's first law of motion Size of space means it's unlikely to be hit by anything else - or be anything else Calculate when to spot tool bag BBC Radio 5Live Lost in Space

As scientists know information like the size of the tool bag and where it was lost, it is possible to do the orbital calculations to determine where it will be and when.

A computer model has been developed for the tool bag (see link below answer box, right). But finding its exact location in the sky depends on your location on Earth. For example, it will appear lower in the sky in the north of England and Scotland than the south.

Equipped with latitude and longitude coordinates, the model will calculate the time to see the tool bag, the altitude it will be at and the magnitude, which specifies its brightness compared with stars.

Usually the bag is below 6th magnitude, which is naked-eye visibility. This means you will need the right equipment to see it - binoculars or a telescope. Even with these it will be difficult to see, says Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Burn up

But the typically large distances between things in space also means it's unlikely anything else will be in the same position at the same time, says Robin Scagell, of the Society for Popular Astronomy. So what you track will almost certainly be the tool kit.

"Most people have been playing too many computer games and think space is full of chunks of rock and debris, but it isn't," he says.

"There are things out there, but they are likely to be meteors the size of a grain of coffee and many miles apart. Even if they did hit the tool bag they would have little impact."

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What you will see is another matter. The bag will have no structure or shape but will look like a faint star whizzing through the sky. But it will be easily distinguishable from a plane because it won't have red and green navigation lights.

"It will be a speck of light which will not be visible to the naked eye," says Dr Massey. "I wouldn't waste too much time looking out for it. Looking at the actual space station where the bag was lost is far more interesting."

Eventually very faint traces of atmosphere will act on the tool bag to slow it down and it will come out of orbit, says Mr Scagell. But this could take years and when it does happen the bag will be burned up in the Earth's atmosphere.

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