Month: December 2009

Categories
Business internet

predictions for the second decade

In 1978 at school the computer studies class had to send punch cards off to Manchester University for their computer to process. It was one of the few in the world! There was no internet or any electronic means of sending the data. The output of the computer programs were returned as thick wodges of paper printout – by snail mail of course. The programs themselves were probably running simple arithmetic problems.

Between 1980 and 1983 I studied Electronic Engineering at University. We used DEC PDP machines – more than one class online brought it to a halt, especially when half of them were running programs with infinite loops. No internet.

In 1990 the first website was created at CERN. I worked for Marconi. We had no internet though around this time I got my first email mailbox. It was at our Long Island subsidiary and I considered myself to be super cool.

Circa 1996 I remember taking Tom, my oldest child, then five, into the office and showing him “the internet”. So for me the internet arrived sometime in the early to mid nineties and I was probably a relatively early adopter thanks to my employer.

Earlier this year Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign Inc suggested that by the first quarter 2009 there were as many as 183 million domain names. By the end of the second quarter 2009 it was estimated that the World Wide Web contained at least 25.21 billion pages on over 109.5 million websites.

Wikipedia shows the following spam statistics with the caveat that the numbers are unreliable:
• 1978 – An e-mail spam advertising a DEC product presentation is sent by Gary Thuerk to 600 addresses, which was all the users of that time’s ARPANET, though software limitations meant only slightly more than half of the intended recipients actually received it
• 2002 – 2.4 billion per day
• 2004 – 11 billion per day
• 2005 – (June) 30 billion per day
• 2006 – (June) 55 billion per day
• 2007 – (February) 90 billion per day
• 2007 – (June) 100 billion per day
Bill Gates is said to receive 4 million emails a year, mostly spam.

WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICS

internetusers

Source: Table data obtained from www.internetworldstats.com.

The top websites according to Alexa.com are:

  1. google.com  (Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company’s focus is developing search technology.)
  2. facebook.com (A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos)
  3. yahoo.com (Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager)
  4. youtube.com (YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide!)
  5. live.com (Search engine from Microsoft)
  6. wikipedia.org (An online collaborative encyclopedia)
  7. blogger.com (Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP)
  8. baidu.com (Music search engine and free MP3 & video streaming for all kind of topics)
  9. msn.com (Dialup access and content provider)
  10. Yahoo!カテゴリ (Yahoo Japan)
  11. trefor.net (World’s leading communications blog (only joking 🙂 )

I am a regular user of Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube. I am clearly not entirely with it because I’ve never heard of baidu.com!

Facebook publishes its user stats online. You should check them out. They have 350 million active users half of whom log on every  day. With only 25% of the world with internet access there is still a long way to grow for the likes of Facebook and that’s before they have saturated their existing Serviceable Available Market.

I use email. I have three email addresses – timico, trefor.net and google. I am however increasingly using other means of communications – Instant Messaging is the norm between teams at work. When you send someone an IM you generally get a real time (ish) response.  You know they are online before sending. Socially mostly I use Facebook to communicate, either by writing on someone’s wall, sending a Direct Message or via IM though the latter is hit and miss because people tend to dip in and out of Facebook and are therefore not particularly online for any length of time.  Although I have an account I am not yet a regular Google Wave user.

I use twitter as a broadcast marketing tool and not as a personal social networking tool.  For me it is not going to replace Facebook.  Also I don’t get spammed on Facebook 🙂

Almost 20% of Facebook’s active users also access the site via a mobile device. The O2 data network in London failed to cope with demand in the run up to Christmas. They are adding more capacity. They will need to because the use of the internet from mobile devices is probably going to outpace the growth in fixed internet access which in itself is racing forward (50% year on year growth in usage per user at Timico). Much of the growth in mobile network revenue is coming from data.

So where are my predictions for 2010 and beyond?  I have no idea. If bankers on exorbitant salaries can’t get it right what hope us mere mortals that drive around in N reg Peugeot 406s (other N reg cars are available though decreasingly so).  Internet usage is going to continue to grow massively and mobile internet will play an increasingly important part. Costs will come down, speeds will go up and by the end of the decade the top ten site rankings will have changed beyond all recognition. Hopefully I won’t be driving the same car!

There you go.  Let’s review this on New Years Eve 2019 and see if I was right.

Categories
broadband End User

Holiday (Broadband Browsing) Traffic – Internet Style

Holiday broadband browsing traffic, nice and fluid.

Thought you might be interested to see the traffic patterns for holiday broadband browsing habits.  Bear in mind that Timico is a primarily B2B ISP so when offices are closed or almost empty it is reasonable to think that internet usage will drop off.  This is quite possibly the converse of the situation for a consumer ISP.  All those workers sat at home with nothing better to do than gorge on chocolates, drink beer and watch iPlayer.

 

xmastraffic1You can see quite clearly how the Bank Holiday broadband browsing traffic resembles that of a weekend. Christmas Eve also show a dramatic ramp-down. Not surprising really. It is a dream driving into the office on these days with no cars on the road.  Someone has to keep the internet going 🙂 .

Categories
Business internet Regs

Review of 2009

If you have managed to keep a job in 2009 it has probably not been a bad year for you. For consumers, fuel apart, costs have by and large come down as vendors compete more aggressively in the tough market conditions. In the UK we haven’t started paying for it yet. If you have been out of work in 2009 I guess it will have been a different story.

At work Timico continued to grow both in sales and profitability. It hasn’t been easy but the year end looks as if it will be significantly up on last year.

Highlights in the year include decommissioning our last 155Mbps ATM connections to BT, followed later in the year by our 622Mbps pipes. They have been replaced by resilient Gigabit Ethernet Hostlinks.

We also set up our new Network Operations Centre in Newark and saw the successful move of the NetOps team up to Nottinghamshire from Ipswich.

One of the big success stories of the year is the growth in the high bandwidth leased line business. Uncontended (ie dedicated connectivity) leased lines are becoming more affordable and companies are increasing offloading (at least some) corporate resources into the ”cloud”. We have similarly seen a growth in our MPLS estate with some customers signing up for hundreds of connected sites.

2009 also saw some major technology introductions. ADSL2+ was introduced early in the year. The technology is capable of “up to 24Mbps” though we only quote 16Mbps to our customers – most users will not get the max performance and I think it is better to manage expectations in this way rather than have unhappy customers.

Timico was the second ISP in the country to sell Ethernet in the First Mile and have also been participants in the BT Fibre To The Cabinet  (FTTC) trials, the early stage of the much promoted £1.5Bn investment in Next Generation Access technology.

“Digital Britain” was also a much used “buzzword” during the year. It is easy for me to criticise and I realise it is a lot harder when you are making the actual decisions but I am afraid that we will look back and decide that the present Government did not do a good job on this one. The first 4 months of 2010 are going to be very important with laws being passed or not passed that will potentially adversely affect every internet user in the UK.

Don’t get me wrong though. 2010 is going to be an exciting year with lots happening. More tomorrow.

Categories
End User media

have you paid your TV license?

I pay mine on direct debit

click here

Just a bit of fun between Christmas and New Year. Thanks to Ian P. Christian for the link.

Categories
Business internet media video

BBC piles the pressure on ISPs with internet TV

Channel 4 and Talk Talk have joined Project  Canvas, the BBC’s set top box standardisation effort that already includes the BBC, ITV, BT, Five.

The end goal is to connect the internet to your TV and allow programmes to be streamed over your broadband connection.  The BBC press announcement doesn’t go into schedules but it does talk about offering services that include:

Linear TV (eg Freeview, Freesat) with HD and storage (pause, rewind, record)
Video-on-demand services (eg BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 40D)
Other internet-based content or services (eg Flickr, Amazon, NHS Direct)

My only point in regurgitating this BBC news is that the time is not so very far away when consumers will have to start factoring the cost of all this downloading.  What is perceived to be a free TV programme is effectively going to become Pay As You Go and the cost of an hour’s watching will be something known to all. I can see kids being given an allocation by their parents just in the same way that they have pre paid mobile phones.

As a footnote my kids have been trying to persuade me to buy them a new 42″ flatscreen LCD TV for the “den”.  I’ve beaten off the assault by saying that we don’t actually have a source of HD video other than their own laptops and PCs.  Even this line of defence looks as if it will only be shortlived.

More TV related stuff:

Sony 4K Ultra HD TV

TV detector vans – the truth

Boring TV & better things to do.

Categories
End User internet social networking

Internet, the Christmas Number 1 and Climate Change

Those of you in the UK watching the Christmas Number 1 music chart battle between the X Factor winner Joe McElderry and Rage Against The Machine may or may not have realised they were watching the power of the internet in action.

Hundreds of thousands of people signed up to various Facebook Groups supporting Rage Against The Machine and have been hugely proactive in getting people to buy their song to keep the X Factor out of the top slot. My son Tom for example was regularly posting on the subject. There were active strategy decisions going on to discuss optimum methods of hitting number 1. How many times to buy the song from where? This is teenagers spending their (parents’ hard earned) pocket money.

Of course this is a fairly frivolous and trivial use of the internet. A bit of fun. It did strike me though that there were other far more deserving causes that could hugely benefit. Global warming for example. The world’s politicians appear to have been letting their voters down at the Climate Change Talks in Copenahagen, regardless of what spin we might be getting from them after the event.

I even thought about starting a Facebook Group on the subject. Then it occurred to me that there might already be one so I took a look. There already is one.

These are the results of a Facebook search for “Rage Against the Machine” followed by those for “Climate Change”

You can see for yourself which is the most popular.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE FOR CHRISTMAS NO.1 476,980 fans
rage against the machine – RATM 466,612 fans
Rage Against The Xfactor 326 fans
YES…Jedward has gone!-lets get rage against the machine no.1 😀 326,991 members
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE FOR CHRISTMAS NO.1 – BACKUP GROUP 176,737 members
Rage Against The Machine 49,165 members

Slow Climate Change 55,599 members
COP15 – Climate Change – JOIN AND INVITE ALL 49,826 members
Climate Change 1,634 members
Climate Change 407 fans

The biggest challenge I think is how to get the Facebook Generation tuned into issues such as climate change so that they can make politicians sit up and listen.

PS I didn’t buy either of the singles myself. I imagine we have enough copies around hte house now though for me to legitimately have one if I chose to 🙂

Categories
Business fun stuff

What Santa does after a hard day’s present delivering!

Post present delivery massage for Santa
Post present delivery massage for Santa

When Santa has finished for the day (night) he goes in for some well deserved relaxation. In this case Timico was pleased to be able to offer him a massage. We had a team of therapists, masseuses and beauticians in yesterday to give the staff a bit of a Christmas treat and luckily for Santa it happened on the same day as his visit. It’s a tough old game.

Note part of his outfit visible on the chair.

Categories
Business fun stuff

What Santa does after a hard day's present delivering!

Post present delivery massage for Santa
Post present delivery massage for Santa

When Santa has finished for the day (night) he goes in for some well deserved relaxation. In this case Timico was pleased to be able to offer him a massage. We had a team of therapists, masseuses and beauticians in yesterday to give the staff a bit of a Christmas treat and luckily for Santa it happened on the same day as his visit. It’s a tough old game.

Note part of his outfit visible on the chair.

Categories
Business fun stuff

Santa pays a visit

Santa made it to Timico early this year – some vids below include him meeting some of the staff – they have all been good boys and girls in 2009.

Santa visits the sales floor

Santa visits the Network Operations team

Categories
Engineer internet

First 100Gbps commercially available optical network rolled out by Nortel and Verizon

Nortel yesterday announced that Verizon had implemented the first commercially available 100Gbps network on a 893km link between Paris and Frankfurt.

There are several significant (or at least  I think they are interesting) points to be made regarding this milestone.

First of all Nortel is clearly a leader in Optical technology, as it is in a number of its other areas of business. 100Gbps has been discussed at the last few meetings of the London Internet Exchange (LINX) but largely in terms of the fact that 100Gbps equipment has only been achieving 40Gbps, an interim step.

It is a crying shame that the mismanagement of the business during the earlier parts of the decade resulted in the Chapter 11 situation we now see today and the break up of the business. From Timico’s perspective this is at least focussing minds at Nortel and we have seen a significant improvement in responsiveness and keeness to get things done. Good I suppose.

The 10Gbps standard was ratified in 2002 and, doing a quick trawl the first network rollouts seem to be around 2005 –  this is the case at LINX who tend to be up there amongst the leaders. Truth be told it was probably earlier than this.

The 100Gbps standard has not yet been ratified so there are clearly commercial pressures and advantages to running with the technology for a commercial operator to push ahead with it. Historically this has been 4x the cost for 10x the throughput. So it is clear that the cost of bandwidth is going to continue on a downward trend the more people use it, which they are doing.

This is an interesting wave for ISPs and network operators (surfers) to be riding.  We have to be nimble atop the big rollers making sure that we keep our network costs down quickly enough to match the competitive pricing pressures of the market place.

Categories
Business Cloud internet UC

2010 is “Year of the Home Worker”

At Leicester Tigers’ Welford Road rugby ground on Thursday Timico launched “Meet Me Now”, a brand new Web Collaboration and video conferencing service with Presence and IM.

I missed it due to ITSPA prize awarding duties at the House of Commons. I also had to miss out on a long planned trip to watch the annual Oxford v Cambridge varsity match at Twickenham which was also on the same day. You might say that this was very poor diary management!

I’m told that all events went really well. I can vouch for the ITSPA one of course because I was there. Timico was a finalist in two categories (SMB and Enterprise).

Anyway this is not the point of this blog post. We have been reviewing the year at Timico HQ today. The business has grown. Considering the market conditions in 2009 and that the interim results of some of our competitors show shrinkage this has to be taken as extremely positive news.

Next year is I believe going to be another tough one for business. We ain’t though this recession yet. This means that customers are still going to be looking for cost savings and productivity improvements. More so probably.

In 2009 Timico very much saw a trend towards home/distributed working. This, for example, saw one hosted VoIP customer shut their office and set their six employees working from home. There was no disruption to their comms as a result – they were on hosted VoIP.

Clearly for 2010 a product that makes it easier for people to work from home makes a lot of sense. Enter “Meet Me Now”.

Meet Me Now is a multimedia Meet Me Voice Video and Web Collaboration service. It can be used in stand alone mode or for customers using the Timico VoIP For Business service it can also be integrated with your existing voice communications.

Our (home working) sales force has been playing with Meet Me Now for some months and using the service the channel team in particular can sit at home churning through 8 or 10 online Business Partner meetings in a day. It is hugely productive and in fact has encouraged a high number of channel partners to take up the product from day 1. They have already seen the power.

There’s also been a lot of talk about “The Cloud” in 2009. For ease of support reasons home worker solutions are largely going to be “cloudy” if that is the right adjective and certainly this is the case for Meet Me Now.

Quite exciting really. Semi sales pitch over.

Categories
Engineer voip

VoIP MOS test results are at least as good as PSTN – it's official

The official ITSPA Awards test results make for very interesting reading. All entrants for the Best ITSP, consumer and SMB categories had their services independently tested by Epitiro.

There were 16 entrants for these two categories. On average Epitiro made 400 calls per company and then took over 50,000 technical measurements. Calls were all made over the same broadband connection.

All bar one company tested reached the ITU-T P.862 PESQ MOS Quality rating in excess of 4.0 thus meeting the ITU-T P.800 subjective rating of ‘Excellent’. The one that didn’t met the subjective rating of “Good”.

Consumer VoIP MOS downstream average = 4.3
Consumer VoIP MOS upstream average = 4.25

Business ITSP (SMEs) MOS downstream average = 4.25
Business ITSP (SMEs) MOS upstream average = 4.25

There is no real reason why there should be a difference between consumer and business downstream MOS.

Packet Loss was very minimal. Only three companies experienced any packet loss (minimal – 1.3% was the highest loss)

Call set up times were in general on a par to the PSTN standard of 2.5 seconds and better than mobiles.. The customer would experience no difference.

These are great results and are a serious independent endorsement of VoIP as a mainstream communications technology that can replace traditional PSTN services.

PS MOS = Mean Opinion Score and represents perceived quality of a telephone call.

Categories
Engineer voip

VoIP MOS test results are at least as good as PSTN – it’s official

The official ITSPA Awards test results make for very interesting reading. All entrants for the Best ITSP, consumer and SMB categories had their services independently tested by Epitiro.

There were 16 entrants for these two categories. On average Epitiro made 400 calls per company and then took over 50,000 technical measurements. Calls were all made over the same broadband connection.

All bar one company tested reached the ITU-T P.862 PESQ MOS Quality rating in excess of 4.0 thus meeting the ITU-T P.800 subjective rating of ‘Excellent’. The one that didn’t met the subjective rating of “Good”.

Consumer VoIP MOS downstream average = 4.3
Consumer VoIP MOS upstream average = 4.25

Business ITSP (SMEs) MOS downstream average = 4.25
Business ITSP (SMEs) MOS upstream average = 4.25

There is no real reason why there should be a difference between consumer and business downstream MOS.

Packet Loss was very minimal. Only three companies experienced any packet loss (minimal – 1.3% was the highest loss)

Call set up times were in general on a par to the PSTN standard of 2.5 seconds and better than mobiles.. The customer would experience no difference.

These are great results and are a serious independent endorsement of VoIP as a mainstream communications technology that can replace traditional PSTN services.

PS MOS = Mean Opinion Score and represents perceived quality of a telephone call.

Categories
End User internet

internet stats

check this out:
A Day in the Internet
Created by Online Education

Categories
End User fun stuff

The youth of today… iTunes and LPs

The youth of today doesn’t know how to put an LP on a record deck.  That isn’t entirely fair.  It is pretty obvious that you take the vinyl disc out of its sleeve and slot it over the little nipple in the middle of the deck.

The only thing is on my old “music centre” in the attic you have to select tape, CD, phono or tuner and to someone who just downloads from iTunes it isn’t altogether clear that phono means record player.

I also had to show him how to press “start” to get start the deck revolving and move the arm over.

My 12 year old needed to write a review on a jazz record for his homework and Duke Ellington fitted the bill perfectly.  Problem is it was on 12 inch LP and in the attic.  I sometime retire to the attic on a Sunday afternoon with my pal Terry and a few beers to play with the train set and listen to some of the 250 albums and hundreds of singles that live up there.

Just for the record 12inches = 30cms and LP = Long Playing record. Happy days.

Categories
Business piracy Regs

Canadian Recording Industry sued for $6Bn in musician class-action lawsuit for copyright infringement

In Canada the recording industry has allegedly been witholding payments to musicians for use of copyrighted material and is the subject of a class action (BakerSOC ) that could cost them up to $6Bn.

The problem goes back decades and appears to be the result of a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as “exploit now, pay later if at all.”

It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute, and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences.

The defendants in the case are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada, the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

The CRIA members were hit with the lawsuit in October 2008, after artists decided to turn to the courts following decades of frustration with the rampant infringement.

It would be interesting to see if the same practice was going on in the UK. If it was it would make a mockery of the attempts of the Music Industry here to drive through the Digital Economy Bill which seeks to cut off the internet connections of people involved in copyright infringement (or “illegal music downloading”).

There’s a lot more detail on the Canadian case in Michael Geist’s blog here.

Categories
Business online safety

UKCCIS Summit today

UKCCIS was launched last year by the Government following the Byron Report and to an excited fanfare. Today sees the first UKCCIS annual summit and on the BBC news this morning is the announcement that lessons in using the internet safely are set to become a compulsory part of the curriculum for primary school children in England from 2011.

There’s nothing on the UKCCIS website as yet but I’m sure it will emerge during the day. We should watch these proceedings carefully because this committee represents an important step in the evolution of how our society copes with the move away from the streets and onto the internet.

There has been a concern that during its first year of operation progress has been very slow and dominated more by the desire of Government to be seen to get quick PR wins rather than achieving anything of substance.  This would be a huge shame as this is important work.

Lets see what the day brings.

Categories
Business piracy Regs

Digital Economy Bill Second Reading

The Second Reading of the Digital Economy Bill was held yesterday in the House of Lords. All sections of the Bill were considered, although the main focus was on clauses 4-17 that address copyright infringement. A brief summary is provided below:

  • Lord Mandelson presented the Bill, outlining the two initial obligations on ISPs and explaining the rationale behind the reserve power to impose technical sanctions. He described the clauses as proportionate. Former Cabinet Minister Lord Fowler, responding on behalf of the Conservatives, described the step-by-step process outlined in the Bill as ‘correct’, subject to RHs taking action to make their products legally accessible.
  • On behalf of the Lib Dems, Lord Razzall welcomed the Bill. He did, however, cite a number of sections that the Lib Dems were unhappy with. He requested that clause 6.5(b), which provides for retrospective penalties, be removed. He also questioned the lack of details on the apportioning of costs and the inclusion of clause 17.  He further underlined the need to honour the principles of natural justice.
  • Support for the Bill was voiced by Lord Birt, Lord Puttnam, Baroness Morris (all of whom declared rightsholder interests in this area) and Baroness Howe.
  • Baroness Miller voiced strong opposition to a number of clauses in the Bill. She suggested that the Bill would protect the old model of content distribution rather than encourage new models. She also criticised the decision to make one industry pay for the protection of another and questioned clause 15, which outlines the role of the Secretary of State in defining the level of cost recovery. The Baroness further asked the Government about the effect that increased encryption, which the Bill could cause, would have on the work of law enforcement and cited the threat that the Bill posed to open wif-fi connections.
  • Conservative peer Lord Lucas voiced a number of strong arguments against the Bill. He first questioned the motivation for legislation, explaining that this was protecting music companies rather than artists, and lamented the inability of music companies to offer legal alternatives. He also suggested that it should be compulsory for rightsholders to pursue legal action through the notification system, called for due process for consumers and requested that the Conservative front bench vote against clause 17.
  • Lord Whitty also outlined his opposition to the proposals, questioning the suggested cost to the rightsholder industry, the potential of the user to breach users’ human rights and the lack of focus on education and alternative models of content distribution.
  • Lib Dem Culture Media and Sport Spokesperson Lord Clement-Jones expressed concerns around the power that the Bill granted to the Secretary of State. Conservative Shadow Culture Media and Sport Minister Lord Howard agreed that there would have to be close scrutiny of clause 11 to understand the power being given to the Secretary of State.

At this stage of the game it is difficult to tell how this Digital Economy Bill will pan out because it seems to be getting some degree of qualifed support from all parties at the Second Reading stage.

The debate in full is available here. I understand that the Committee Stage of the Bill will begin on January 6th.  Also I am indebted to the ISPA Secretariat for this input which is mostly a plagiarism of their report.  It is a full time job keeping an eye on this stuff.

Categories
Business voip

ISDN problem & what to do about it

I love it when our ISDN line develops a fault, as it seems to do once a year with the month chosen at random. It’s happened to day. The reason I love it of course is we also have SIP trunks coming into the office so normal service doesn’t have to be resumed – it doesn’t stop in the first place. Hooray for ISDN faults 🙂  (hooray for SIP trunks).

I don’t have access to the numbers but it would be interesting to see the BT Openreach figures for exchange line faults. As reported last week the equipment is getting fairly mature.

Categories
Business voip

ISDN problem & what to do about it

I love it when our ISDN line develops a fault, as it seems to do once a year with the month chosen at random. It’s happened to day. The reason I love it of course is we also have SIP trunks coming into the office so normal service doesn’t have to be resumed – it doesn’t stop in the first place. Hooray for ISDN faults 🙂  (hooray for SIP trunks).

I don’t have access to the numbers but it would be interesting to see the BT Openreach figures for exchange line faults. As reported last week the equipment is getting fairly mature.

Categories
broadband End User internet voip

FTTC Broadband 10Meg Up Install

We did our first FTTC broadband 10Mbps uplink trial installation yesterday in Muswell Hill in North London. The customer is very happy with the performance. It will take 10 days to bed down but I’ll take a look after then and report back on speeds.

The installation itself, once the Openreach modem has been put in, is simplicity itself and takes only five minutes. We are using the Thomson Gateway TG789vn kit in our trials and have to say are very impressed with what you can get in a small piece of plastic these days.

I’ll be looking at productising some homeworker services using our VoIP platform, based potentially on the Thomson range. We have been very impressed with their responsiveness as a supplier.

Categories
End User internet

slow down – it's all going to explode!

Worth watching. Blows my mind.

Categories
End User internet

slow down – it’s all going to explode!

Worth watching. Blows my mind.

Categories
End User engineering

"error 30"

I was doing some interviewing this afternoon and one candidate came up with “error 30” – a great Tech Support Ticketing error resolution code that is used at one company he had worked at.

Error 30 is down to the entity 30cms from the PC screen. Basically if you don’t understand you are probably part of the problem 🙂 . I thought it was good enough to write down. I got back to the NOC and related this to the team and got a few others thrown my way:

PEBKAC – Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

PICNIC – Problem In Chair Not In Computer.

I’m obviously easily entertained!

Categories
End User engineering

“error 30”

I was doing some interviewing this afternoon and one candidate came up with “error 30” – a great Tech Support Ticketing error resolution code that is used at one company he had worked at.

Error 30 is down to the entity 30cms from the PC screen. Basically if you don’t understand you are probably part of the problem 🙂 . I thought it was good enough to write down. I got back to the NOC and related this to the team and got a few others thrown my way:

PEBKAC – Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

PICNIC – Problem In Chair Not In Computer.

I’m obviously easily entertained!

Categories
Business voip

Timico is double ITSPA Awards Finalist

I’m pleased to tell the world that Timico has been shortlisted as a finalist in the ITSPA Awards again this year.  Last year we won the Unified Comms category. 

This year we don’t have that category but we are down to the last few in both the Best Business ITSP (SME) and Best Business ITSP (Enterprise) slots.  The awards are being presented at the House of Commons on Thursday 10th December.

Last year it was actually a great evening.  Parliament itself provides an exciting backdrop for the event which attracts a high number of attendees. Afterwards many of us adjourned to the nearest hostelry to celebrate.  I had to carry the award around with me which made me paranoind about losing it.  I felt a little like that FA Cup team way back when they went out to celebrate and took the cup with them and dented it in the process.

Our ITSPA trophy now rests in pride of place in our reception in Newark, hopefully to be joined by others – wish us luck.

ITSPA Awards Finalist Best ITSP (Enterprise) logo
ITSPA Awards Finalist Best ITSP (Enterprise) logo
ITSPA Finalist Best Business ITSP (SME) logo
ITSPA Finalist Best Business ITSP (SME) logo

Categories
Business piracy

Timesonline market research shows music artists revenues on the up.

Timesonline Labs blog published some interesting market research in November suggesting that revenues that musicians receive from non record label sources is on the rise.  The increases seem to more than compensate for the decrease in their incomes from record label contracts.

Record label revenues though are shown to be hugely in decline which says a lot about why they are making such a fuss over Music Piracy. I don’t think anyone should criticise the labels for their efforts.  However in considering the Digital Economy Bill Government should take a 60,000 foot view and recognise that business models are changing and the old record label way might well have to change with the times.

Bob Dylan foresaw this in “The Times They Are A Changing” -you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changing.  I think the labels are just swimming in the wrong direction.

Link to the Timesonline article here.

Thanks to boggits for the link.