Author: Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

The tangled web of consumer broadband marketing

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 4 August, 2015
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best broadband deals

In the last 10 days I have had approximately fifteen emails from affiliate relationship managers of the big 5 ISPs with notices of changes to their marketing offers. 6 from TalkTalk, 1 from Sky, 4 from BT and 2 from Virgin. Plusnet haven’t been in touch for 3 weeks or so. I’ve also had one or two generic affiliate window ones.

The headlines from these offers include:

fibre flash sale

Netflix promotion

unlimited infinity 1 offer

BT Sports Assist Campaign

12 months free Broadband Unlimited without TV plus a £100 M&S or Tesco e-voucher, pre-paid MasterCard or a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4

Love2shop voucher

Unlimited Superfast Broadband £5 a Month For 18 Months + Free Connection

£75 and £125 Sainsbury’s Vouchers and a £5 Unlimited Broadband

Get a £100 voucher when you take out one of these bundles

Bewildering really innit? These offers tend to change most weeks. They have to to some extent because I think the Advertising Standards Authority otherwise looks at them as the norm – a price crash isn’t a price crash if it is always that price.

These offers make the cost of a broadband line to be deceptively low. You have to look at the price beyond the initial offer or contract stage. This isn’t to say that that subsequent price isn’t competitive. The inducements offered to switch broadband provider are however very tempting.

Last week if you signed up with Sky on an initial 12 month contract you could get a broadband package with unlimited data usage for only £14.18 inc line rental – taking into consideration their cashback deal. Similarly BT Ininity 1 (unlimited) was £19.24 inc line rental when including their Sainsburys £125 voucher offer.

Brutal. These companies have to have deep pockets and huge marketing budgets.

The upshot to the consumer is that they have a bewildering complexity of offers to try and choose from. I guess much of the marketing budget is spend trying to be the “last broadband provider that the consumer saw on TV” on the premise that whichever was the one seen last will be fresher in the mind and more likely to be chosen.

The best broadband deals however do change with bewildering regularity and it makes sense for someone making a switch to bide their time, decide what sort of incentive they want (cash, Sainsburys vouchers etc) and wait for the great offer to return.

All good stuff – it’s how sites such as broadbandrating.com et al make their money.

Oh and btw caveat emptor – it isn’t always just about price is it? Eh?

PS it’s a full time job keeping track of these deals.

End User security

Global village – a world where everyone knows everyone else

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 3 August, 2015
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Online privacy is a thing of the past

My son Tom is currently editing the next broadbandrating.com video. You will have to wait and see what it is all about but if follows on from last week’s pig racing (if you haven’t seen that vid click on the link – it’s very good). The next vid is taking a while because there was lots of footage that included kids faces. Tom, having been on the BBC’s political correctness course, is blurring out the faces one frame at a time!

Anne and I were in London over the weekend. There was a big cycling event going on – thousands of cyclists pedalling around St James’ Park, down The Mall, around Trafalgar Square etc etc. It was a bit of a stop start affair – lots of tourists trying to do the usual touristy stuff – being fleeced by ice cream vendors, buying cheapo tat at top dollar, you know the kind of thing. Oh and crossing the roads which necessarily involved frequent stops to the cycling.

I took a few photos. That’s what made me think about the global village thing. That and the extreme busyness of central London. The time is not very far off where I’ll be able to scan the internet for images of the people in my photos and find out who they are. In fact I can do it now to some extent – searching for similar images. The natural extension of this is real time video streaming from my Google Glass or other wearable device and in real time telling me who it is I am looking at. LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, the lot. Our security forces probably already do this.

The consequences are a bit obvious. If I were to stand videoing the cycle ride for an hour or so I’d capture images of each rider’s face and subsequently be able to identify everybody who took part, including children.

There are many obvious uses to this application, ~~good and bad~~ all bad as far as I can see. One simple one is that advertisers could identify people who liked cycling and push them as for bikes, hemlets etc etc.

As the owner of broadbandrating.com, a site that makes its money by attracting visitors specifically interested in broadband I am keen on the idea of having new ways of targeting prospective customers to the site.

As a prospective punter I am less keen. I’ve decided I don’t like seeing ads eerily pushed to me on subjects that I am interested in. As often as not they are too late anyway – I’ve normally already gone and booked the hotel room etc. It makes me think that “they” know too much about me.

I’ve decided I am ok with finding things online using search but not ok with businesses finding out about me on the basis of those searches. In other words if I stick a page up saying I like baked beans and someone searches for people who like baked beans and finds me then that is ok. It’s not ok for me to know who those searchers are.

I realise this has big implications to the business model of the internet but I’m sorry, that’s what I’ve decided:).

There is another angle to this whole subject. In the good old days (where the average life expectancy was 40 and people lived as serfs in villages working from dawn until dusk for their master and died of cholera, typhoid, rickets, polio etc etc – you know, the good old days) we all lived in villages and every one knew everyone else.

Nowadays there are 7 billion or more of us on the planet and a big chunk of us live out our sad anonymous lives in large urban conurbations where don’t talk to our neighbours. There are in any case far too many people to be able to remember their names.

This will not be a problem in the future. With our new technology we will know who everyone is. People will start talking to others. “Hello Mr Williams/Gladys/Sanjay” you will be able to cheerily say to the neighbour down the corridor as you pass them coming back from Tesco. ~~“How’s the alcohol/problem?”~~

Maybe, maybe not. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

I’ll finish with a scene from our weekend in London. I’m taking a picture of my lovely wife Anne with the Houses of Parliament in the background.

Coincidentally someone else is doing the same thing. It looks almost as if the guy is photo-bombing our shot.

Actually from the second photo you can see that he was having his own photo taken.

I have no idea who he is but if someone can tell me his name I’ll buy them a beer. The technology is out there…

600% increase in BT Wholesale WBC and WBMC FTTC and FTTP Cease charges

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 31 July, 2015
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Notification of changes to WBC and WBMC FTTC and FTTP Cease charges

A reliable industry source has just told me that BT Wholesale are increasing their Cease charges for Market B Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) and Wholesale Broadband Managed connect (WBMC) Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) and Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) products with effect from the 1 September 2015. Market B if I recall correctly is where there is more than one competitive broadband provider or where BT has more than 50% market share.

The pricing for WBC and WBMC FTTC and FTTP End User Access (EUA) Cease charge increases from £5.31 to £31.52. Market B is where most of the business is. The reliable source can’t see any corresponding price increase from Openreach so they say this looks like BTW generating some additional gross margin.

The question is whether this charge gets passed on to end users. It represents a significant chunk of change considering the amount of churn there is in this game – 12% in 2013/14 according to my source. Not surprising churn is this high considering the amount of up front cash being dangled in the biz for new subscribers. I guess this churn must be adding to BTW’s overheads.

It would appear (alt image here) that BT themselves are going to charge £5.50 which would suggest that they are taking a hit – they surely must have to carry the same costs as BTW (or their customers).

I can’t believe the charge does get passed on by most consumer ISPs. There would be uproar. It would surely be anti-competitive. You’d be taking your sign-on bonus from one ISP and handing it to the one you’re just leaving.

This price increase certainly puts a bit more of a squeeze on the customers of BTW. It’s a fine balance they have to strike. BTW will need to show profit and if their costs rise they need to put up their charges. But they also don’t want to stop their customers from growing by being too expensive.

Smaller ISPs can’t keep up with the pricing of the big consumer players and have to sell on service levels. In my time at Timico we bought quite a few small ISPs specifically to bulk up the broadband customer base and gain scale. There are other reasons for doing this – we were able to up sell our other services into the acquired customer base (leverage the base to use a somewhat corny business term).

This increase in Cease charges is certainly an incentive to look after your customers.

Anyway that’s it for now. I’m not sure I’m that interested in this kind of fine business detail – changes to WBC and WBMC FTTC and FTTP Cease charges – but it does have the potential to cause a bit of a stir.

fun stuff Weekend

More tea vicar?

That’s a random blog title. I am not drinking tea and the vicar doesn’t come round to our house since the day a few years back I dropped a hot leg of lamb onto his lap. Not deliberately of course but drop it I did. I also spent the rest of that Sunday afternoon plying him with booze but there came a time when the hand was raised indicating that he had had sufficient. He had to go and set up the ping pong table for youth group later.

I’m at home listening to the cricket. Anne is in the kitchen preparing a delicious paneer curry and the one offspring that currently remains in the house is out somewhere. Or hidden away in the West wing. Anyway he is silent.

The cricket is going very well but I shall refrain from any forecast. That would be unlucky. I’ll be at Trent Bridge for the 4th test next Friday. Look out for me in the crowd. Not the corporate boxes. Nobody invited me to their corporate box. I don’t mind. I go with my mates and we have a great time.

A day out at the cricket goes something like this:

Early train to Nottingham from Lincoln
Breakfast in the Southbank Bar over the road to the ground at 9 – 9.30ish. Full English with a pint of lager. Ash knows the owner and we reserve a table.
Into the ground around 10.30ish. Find our seats. Settle in.
Just before the start of play someone gets a round in. There are 4 of us. Means you don’t have to go too often. The queues are not bad for beer at Trent Bridge. They have separate teams for serving and pulling pints. The queue goes down quickly.
Someone buys the next round. This carries on in a pseudo infinite loop punctuated by a burger at lunchtime and the occasional visit to the loo in between overs.
The pace of the day is self regulating. We settle into a sustainable rate of consumption that may be supplemented by a jug of pimms sometime in the afternoon, especially if it is hot.
At the close of play we tread a weary trail back towards Nottingham train station. En route we call in for a rest and a cold drink. Hooters is one of the stops, conveniently situated half way between the ground and the station.
There is a Sainsburys Local next to Nottingham station. We buy some supplies for consumption on the train.
Back in Lincoln the options are go home, go to the Electric Bar or go for a curry.

I’ll let you know how we get on. Maybe.

Meanwhile the paneer curry has been eaten. Delicious. It is stumps at Edgebaston. Australia lead with 3 wickets remaining. Life ain’t bad… More tea vicar?

broadband Business fun stuff

How to choose the fastest broadband provider – go pig racing

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 30 July, 2015
1 Comment on How to choose the fastest broadband provider – go pig racing

fastest broadband pig race

Fastest broadband pig race brought to you by broadbandrating.com

The video says it all really. This is the latest in a fun filled series of videos by broadbandrating.com which brings a different slant to how to go about choosing a broadband provider.

In this case the fastest broadband provider is represented by the winning pig. The ISP names are all made up in case the losers make a complaint.

The funny thing is that one day you could be eating a bacon sandwich made from our winning pig – Uswine Bolt.

Filmed on location at Piglets Adventure Farm Park in York to whom we are extremely grateful for their enthusiastic cooperation.

Thanks also to Tom Davies of tomandthat.com. If you visit his website you may notice something in the way of a family resemblance. Video production is part of the portfolio of service s offered by trefor.net Marketing Services. If you are looking for your own corporate video or videos please do get in touch.

broadband Business

BT throw £129m back into rural broadband pot

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 30 July, 2015
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BT rural broadband reinvestment

Bit of an announcement from DCMS re performance against budget for BT and the BDUK broadband roll out. I was in conversation with someone about the Lincolnshire project and was told that they were coming in significantly under budget and were expecting the remaining funds to be ploughed back in. That is going to be the subject of a week of posts over on broadbandrating.com but in the mentime the gov has beaten me to it with the news.

At the risk of becoming one of those media outlets that just regurgitate spiel they get sent I’ve pasted the whole press release below. I know that readers of this blog have a wide range of views on this subject so I’ll leave it to you guys to comment and form the debate.

Good morning,

Please find below a joint DCMS/BT statement re: BT to return up to £129m to local authorities to rollout superfast broadband even further.

STATEMENT 30.07.15

The Government welcomes BT’s news today that the company will make up to £129m available to extend the Government led roll-out of superfast broadband.

The funding will be made available to local authorities to reinvest the money in providing further superfast broadband coverage to even more homes and businesses and much earlier than originally planned.

The money is being made available as a result of a clause in the contracts BT agreed with governments and local authorities that allows the funding BT has received to be returned or reinvested into further coverage if take-up is better than the 20 per cent* expected in BT’s original business case. The high take up rate to date has resulted in BT making a new business case assumption of reaching 30 per cent take-up in these areas.

John Whittingdale, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said:

“It’s fantastic to see that the rollout of superfast broadband is delivering for customers and for the taxpayer. The Government was clear from the start that as levels of people taking up superfast broadband went beyond our expectations in areas where we invested public money, BT would reimburse the taxpayer for reinvesting into further coverage across the UK. This now means that BT will be providing up to £129m cashback for some of the most hard to reach areas.

“Our £1.7bn superfast broadband programme is on track to reach at least 95 per cent of the UK by 2017, and it is great to see homes and businesses making the most of everything that superfast speeds have to offer.”
Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT, said:

“Seven years ago, in the depths of recession, we embarked on our multi-billion pound fibre investment to bring faster broadband speeds to the UK.

“BT’s fibre network is accessible to more than 23 million premises. Four out of five UK homes and businesses can access it and 4.6m are now connected. We’ve hit our original take-up assumption and have rolled out ahead of target and on budget. This is a real success story for the UK.

“We are delighted to be able to share that success by making up to £129m available to extend the roll-out to more BDUK homes and businesses, earlier than planned and at no extra cost to the taxpayer.

“BT will work with local bodies over the coming months to identify where these funds can be provided early to enable the local bodies to invest in increased fibre coverage sooner than would previously have been the case.”

ENDS

Notes to editors:

* This 20 percent take-up rate was based on international comparisons and BT’s experience in its own commercial roll-out.

End User fun stuff gadgets

iBeani

iBeani pirate product

Sick and tired of having a cushion on your lap to prop up the iPad or laptop but don’t want to risk radiating your gonads? Look no further. Introducing the iBeani™ – a stylish bean bag, specifically designed to hold tablets or e-readers on any surface at the perfect angle.

Tired of holding your iPad or tablet whilst lying in bed or sitting on the sofa? The iBeani is the perfect solution. Whilst other tablet stands will only work on flat surfaces, the iBeani is able to shift its shape to support and keep your device in the position you want, wherever you are. On the train, on the sofa or on a kitchen worktop, the iBeani works everywhere!

What more can I say. Oh ok then.

The iBeani is ~~manufactured entirely~~ hand made in the UK from carefully selected quality fabrics to ensure customers get the highest quality and durable product possible. There are 16 different variations of the iBeani with different materials and designs such as Harris Tweed tartan, faded blue cord, butterfly, techno black, denim, and many more coming soon to appeal to men, women and children of all ages.

This blurb is lifted from the press release. I’ve started getting ~~millions of~~ them occasionally. The gonads bit is mine. Not the gonads themselves you understand. Just the sentence, though I am a bloke obvs.

I only noticed the release because a) it’s manufactured in Nottinghamshire, just over the county border from my parish, and actually it isn’t a bad idea. I do have a cushion on my lap when using the laptop whilst sat on the settee. There ya go. A market need being fulfilled by a British company. A simple idea that just works.

I liked the iBeani pirate version that you see in the featured image. Goes with the pirate flag we have when we go camping (also see it inset in this post). I’m going to have a week of writing posts in pirate speak in September in the run up to International Talk Like A Pirate day on the 19th of the month. Maybe we will see if we can do a promo and sell the iBeani pirate version that week. Sounds like a plan to me.

PS lets hope they don’t get pirated – we don’t want the market flooded with cheap imitations from China do we? The modern day pirates!

PPS there are over 20 designs to choose from if Piracy isn’t your game, or it’s a bit frightening.

Business business applications ecommerce

Slightly confused of Lincoln

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 29 July, 2015
No Comments on Slightly confused of Lincoln

HP printer delivery either 09.13 or 13.56

You see before you a bewildered bloke. One where there is a risk of extremes of emotions on this, a pleasant if slightly breezy English summer’s day. My HP printer delivery is either going to be at 09.13 or 13.56.

Coming out of the pool changing room this morning my pocket vibrated. It was a text message from DPD saying that my HP printer delivery will be executed (word chosen to startle, albeit momentarily) by Ian between 09.13 and 10.13 this morning. Impressivo I thought. Just time to get home and eat my banana.

Munching away at said banana at the breakfast table I logged on to the DPD website to see if I could physically see where Ian was. Confusingly the website told me that it wasn’t Ian coming but Dean. Wosgoinon I thought! The next minute second text came in confirming that indeed Dean was the logistics operative entrusted with the delivery of my new printer. Not use of word delivery instead of execute. Gotta mix it up.

Now there are a number of possible scenarios that could explain this sitch:

DPD, on behalf of HP may have made a simple mistake in allocating the job to Ian. Ian may not actually be in today – annual leave or maybe even off sick. For Ian’s sake lets hope it isn’t the latter. Ian may also have enthusiastically shot off leaving the HP parcel behind. He may even have said “That’s too heavy for me with my bad back. Let Dean take it”.

It may also be that HP have erroneously shipped two printers and they have been shipped separately. In this case I’d probably be able to sell one of them on eBay. Result.

doorbell rings

That was Ian at the door with my part shipment. Everything but the printer itself! Ian enquired as to my puzzled expression (DPD drivers are known for their empathy – it’s in their training) and I was able to explain the events of the morning thus far, as conveyed to me by sms and to you in the copy above.

You need to know that the conveyor belt at DPD in Lincoln broke down this morning so when the four delivery lorries (big business this) arrived at the depot all the parcels had to be manually handled. Manual intervention, as I’m sure you all know, leads to mistakes and the two packages didn’t end up in the same cage.

The upshot is that Dean himself is bringing the actual printer this afternoon. “Funnily enough” said Ian “I have just seen Dean driving down Wragby Road in the opposite direction” I live on Wragby Road. Funnily enough I didn’t laugh.

Ah well (said in a somewhat sanguine voice). I’ll pop into the office now then and come back for lunch.

In case you didn’t read it the HP printer delivery was for this bit of kit wot I wrote about yesterday. The HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw printer. Does double sided printing you know?

Business business applications gadgets

I bought a printer

HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw

Good news – Your order for the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw has been accepted and we will start processing it now. We will send you an email once your order has been dispatched.

You can track to your order online at any time by signing in to your account and then in the top right hand corner of the page hover over “Your Account“ and select “My orders” from the drop down menu.

If you provided a mobile telephone number you will receive a text message* the night before your order is delivered giving you the option to:

Select an alternative delivery date
Opt for delivery to a nominated neighbour
Collect the parcel from your local depot

You’ll also receive a text message on the delivery day giving you a 1 hour delivery window so there’s no need for you to wait in all day*.

I bought a printer. It’s the first one I’ve bought in 3 1/2 years. When I bought the last one I took out a 3 year warranty and it died on e earlier this week. It wasn’t in fact the printer that I originally bought that died but the fourth incarnation of the original. None of em lasted a year.

The warranty is up now so I figured I’d invest in something a little better. I bought a HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw. Still took a 3 year warranty though. Good value if you ask me.

In some respect this is a small admission of failure. I’ve been working as a paperless business. It isn’t totally possible to do that as legal documents often need printing. Moreover the family has specific needs. Printing boarding passes, homework etc I know boarding passes can be electronic but it isn’t always practical especially with a youngster flying to Madrid quite soon. Youngsters don’t always have phones suitable for airline apps/electronic boarding passes.

I am now strangely excited by the fact that I am about to be the owner of a HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw laser printer. This printer has a NFC interface so I should be able to tap it with my droid and print off a doc/photo/something else. Good eh?

None of this is what prompted me to write this post. It’s just the fact that I am going to get a 1 hour delivery window. Simple innit? Why can’t other vendors do the same? So do I know but not all. My daughter is about to return home from her year abroad and is sending a suitcase by courier in advance (so her mum can get a load of washing done probs). Mum, or someone has to wait in all day because we don’t get a delivery window. We do get a tracker on that one but not a 1 hour window.

I’m even tempted to “collect the parcel from a local depot”. Fwiw. I’ll let you have an update on the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw printer once I get it installed. Does double sided printing you know? 🙂

Business social networking

LinkedIn invite strategy

LinkedIn invite – do you really wanna be my friend?

I haven’t got a LinkedIn invite strategy. I don’t collect contacts as such. They just happen as and when. On occasion LinkedIn shoves me some. Sticks em in my face and says “how about this one Tref”. Sometimes I connect.

The other day I sat looking at my list of broadband exec contacts. There were a few ISPs where I didn’t have their CEO names. I figured I’d try LinkedIn. Wasn’t that easy. Before connecting it wanted to know how I knew them. I didn’t necessarily know their email address.

So I ditched that line of enquiry. Then LinkedIn wouldn’t let me go any further without me agreeing that it could look at my email address and match up contacts on their own database. I assumed. It came up with around 700 contacts for me to choose from.

I began to manually filter through these but then gave up. Sod it. It was easier to just invite all of them to connect. I did this. Now for the last few days I’ve been inundated with notifications of accepted LinkedIn Invite requests (or whatever they are called).

Some of these are with people where I have absolutely no idea how I am hooked up with them. A very brief check has however shown that they are mostly in approximately the right space so maybe there is some method in there. There have been a couple of emails asking how I chose the individuals concerned. These have had honest replies along the same lines of this blog post with a footnote that I wouldn’t in the least bit be offended if they chose to delete my request.

I look forward to seeing what comes of this expansion in contacts. With LinkedIn I no longer care whether I’ve met the person. Mostly for me it’s about whether they are in the right space. The CTO of an ISP is likely to have far more in common with me than a sales person from the pharmaceutical industry (for example) or a social media “guru” (you do get em).

A big part of this exercise is shameless self promotion. LinkedIn is the social networking platform most used for shares on trefor.net. Feels like an increasingly good place to do business, or at least promote your business.

travel Weekend

Ice cream on Llandudno pier

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 28 July, 2015
1 Comment on Ice cream on Llandudno pier

Llandudno pier – all life is there dead on a wet Sunday night in July

It wasn’t a particularly good ice cream but it was an appropriate use of my time and money. When on holiday it is important to indulge in relaxing holiday pastimes such as strolling on piers and licking ice creams.

This one had “raspberry blood” on it. Clearly marketing lingo pitched at customers of four foot height or less. I went for the raspberry blood. I opted out of the flake.

We enjoyed the sunshine whilst we could. The next day the weather returned to type and it chucked it down. That’s Wales for you.

Llandudno pier has all the usual seaside attractions for what it’s worth. Hook a duck, darts, slides, slot machines. The prizes were of course all total crap. We returned to the pier in the rain on the Sunday evening and even caught a glimpse of an entertainer twanging his electric guitar, banging out some old favourites (I imagine – wasn’t allowed to step inside for a beer).

See Facebook album here taken on the fine Saturday afternoon. Photo of Llandudno pier on a wet Sunday evening in July below.

Back to the subject of ice creams I am quite fussy about this foodstuff. It all stems from growing up in the Isle of Man where they had the fantastic Manx Ices. Used to buy wafers from an ice cream van. They don’t do them any more. Nowadays I think the company has morphed into Davisons but the product is equally good despite the lack of a wafer.

This post btw is another in the summer series along the lines of “where did I go on holiday”. Expect many more and if you would like to post your own then just get in touch. Delay not. I’m in and out of the office until the end of the first week in September.

fun stuff travel Weekend

Chllan-did-noh and the hot wax treatment

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 26 July, 2015
No Comments on Chllan-did-noh and the hot wax treatment

hot wax treatment – has to be experienced

Sat in the period luxury of the lounge of the Dunoon Hotel in Llandudno. That’s Chllan-did-noh, not landudnoe. The Dunoon Hotel it all its finery is however not the subject of this post. This afternoon I had my first experience of the hot wax treatment.

This was at a Turkish barbers in Chllan-did-noh. I am here for some quality time with my wife, 81 year old mother in law and my wife’s sister Sarah. Such a Chllan-did-noh excursion to is not something to be taken lightly. It involves the amassing of a giant container full of brownie points but they have to be paid for.

On this occasion payment was of the following kind:

Stroll to cafe for coffee. In this case it was somewhere called Cafe Ba. I wondered about the name and was intending to ask, when I realised it was actually Cafe Bar but the r had fallen off. Chllan-did-noh has probably seen better days although it was heaving yesterday in the sun.

From the Coffee Ba we saw a couple of casualties from the Scooter gathering we had seen yesterday. I missed the first photo opportunity but ran out to catch the second.

Stroll from coffee shop to shopping arcade. En route I bought a Ddraig Goch. I’ve already said there will be more mentions of flags in due course. Rushing to catch up with the ladies I used the last of my mobile phone battery to pinpoint their location. Auntie Sarah wanted the loo so they disappeared from the precinct for a short diversion.

I spent the time chatting to the bloke at the Sky stand. Busman’s holiday. He told me what the best pub was in Chllan-did-noh. I’ll be heading there later for a pre prandial pint, or whatever they call it in Chllan-did-noh.

Lunch at non-descript cafe in shopping precinct. I had a ploughman’s lunch, fwiw. Something to keep me going between the full blown breakfast this morning and the 5 course meal dished up at the hotel in the evening.
Stroll round M&S ladies wear department.

At this point I sat down next to some bloke in the same predicament as me and had a bit of a chat about the game of golf he was planning for later this pm. His wife eventually came to fetch him and i contented myself with making a start on the new translation of The Mabinogion (Google it) newly purchased from Waterstones en route from the non-descript cafe.

I didn’t get very far. The ladies returned and we began a gentle meander back in the general direction of the hotel, stopping to gaze in at every shop window and 70% off reduced sale bargain we came across, which was in pretty much every shop.

It came to a point where a further sit down was called for and I managed to slip the leash and head for the Red One Turkish Barber Shop for a trim and a shave. Seemed reasonable.

Skipping gaily, if somewhat damply into the shop I conveyed my requirements to Adnan the barber. He pointed out that for just a little bit more I could get the full works. The works included hot wax treatment on my nostrils, burning off any hair around the ears, a wax trim of my eyebrows, head and neck massage, a cut throat shave with all the towels and steam treatment and of course a number 3 back and sides with a bit off the top.

The whole process must have taken a good hour. I’ve reached the tender age of 53 and never before had a Turkish barber. It will not be the last time. The guy was not only professional hair artiste but had pro conversation skills. He found out that I was a director of an internet exchange. I always have to think with hat to put on when asked what I do for a living because I have a few.

Back at the hotel I was given 5 mins to turn around before heading back out again to the amusements on the pier. As we approached they looked closed for the day – a wet Sunday afternoon in Chllan-did-noh does not see the crowds rushing onto the pier. Rushing back to Liverpool and Brum more like.

So there we have it. Chllan-did-noh and the hot wax treatment. Not too painful and it certainly clears out the nostril hair.

I’d recommend Adnan at Red One Turkish Barber in Chllan-did-noh any day of the week and they are open every one of them. Something for the weekend sir? Hot wax treatment:) End result below:

broadband End User

Oops something went wrong

On a wet Friday afternoon in July – oops something went wrong with the broadband order

I’ve procrastinated long enough. I’m ordering Virgin Media’s 152Mbps broadband only service. At least I’m trying to. As you can see from the featured image without too much success so far.

My logic in choosing Virgin is simple. I want the fastest broadband I can get. With Virgin I will get near to 152Mbps download and 12Mbps up. With FTTC I can only get 30Mbps down and 7Mbps up. Simples.

Also I don’t need a phone line – line rentals are all around £17 and are a rip off. That’s with expensive call charges on top. All I need is a VoIP line that I can use from a dect phone, IP phone or indeed my mobile phone. With the latter I can use it anywhere in the world. Also I don’t trust the mainstream telephony providers’ call charges. They are around 10p for a geographic number cf near to 1p for VoIP and their non geo pricing is not at all transparent. This has been made worse by Ofcom’s recent dictat on non geo number charges.

There are some tempting offers for bundles that include other services such as TV. To be honest there is rarely anything on worth watching on the telly. I don’t feel deprived by not taking up any of these offers.

All I need is a connection. The rest is all an Over The Top service somewhere on the internet.

I do have misgivings with signing up with Virgin. Non UK call centre is a big one. That really is crap. Bufferbloat is another, equally crap. I don’t think I’m likely to be caught by their upload limits and trigger traffic management/throttling. We shall see.

The Virgin contract is 12 months. I’ll be keeping you updated re progress which at the moment is pretty non existent because as I’ve already mentioned, oops something went wrong!!!

See previous post on how to choose a broadband provider here.

… bit later – Virgin clearly have some problem with the broadband bits on their website – see screenshot below. Can’t even get onto the product pages now.

travel Weekend

Chuffed to bits

travel tech - view from scottish bedroom

Retiring University of Lincoln PR lecturer Jane Crofts writes the first of this season’s guest posts that talk mainly about their holidays. If you knew Jane she is far from retiring btw:)

Retirement is now imminent, today being the last actual day of work and the last day on the books is looming large at the end of the summer.

Many of the wise people I know have said to me ‘you are far too young to retire’ but that is delightfully not true, you are never too young to retire! It is a lifestyle choice made by my husband and I (spoken suitably regally if you please). We have never been rich, but we have never had to worry about paying our bills and putting food in the table. We have always been, and plan to continue to be, modestly comfortable. Most importantly, to us, we are planning to be stress free; as far as my natural inclination will allow.

So, for our summer hols; the last one before each day is a holiday, we decided to try a ‘trip’ much favoured by the retired. We both love trains, himself the mechanics of the beasts, myself travelling without driving or flying. We both wanted to visit the West Coast of Scotland and see the fabulous views for ourselves so we booked ourselves onto a West Highland Tour.

We left Lincoln by train heading up to Glasgow, first class of course, to meet up with our party. The joy of the East Coast mainline allows easy internet access and charging points for the electronic paraphernalia that follows us around these days – allowing us to check our journey’s progress, weather predictions and other such obsessions of the Brits on holiday!

We got to Glasgow early to give time to hop on a city tour bus, a great way to look round an unfamiliar place. Fascinating stuff; great buildings, wonderful regeneration projects but for us ‘Lincolnites’ frighteningly busy!

The next morning the party assembled to head to the station for the journey up the West Highland Line to Morar (our base for the next few days). We expected the party to be an interesting mix of people beyond their first flush of youth but it is fair to say we brought the average age down quite considerably! But it was not a problem at all; every group, whatever their age has bores, moaners, entertainers and educators; by far the best informed, most mischievous member of the party was the eldest at 91 years, definitely, young.

The difference in connectivity on this journey from the day before was immediately apparent as the signal dropped down to weak or nothing regularly and as our poor, exhausted smartphones struggled the batteries drained but there were no charging points to be had. The hotel in Morar offered the opportunity to charge up the umbilical cords but the signal there was not any better so we were forced to go cold turkey!

The next three days we travelled by rail and coach enjoying some of the most spectacular scenery the UK can offer. Lochs, Viaducts, Steam Trains, Monuments, Sea, Silver Sands, Mountains and Hills. – stunning, absolutely stunning. The stamina required on the hottest July day in years to sit on a Victorian Steam Train and chug along is considerable, we all made it several pounds lighter I suspect! The line followed much of the route seen in the Harry Potter films, across the Glenfinnan Viaduct and past the island where ‘Dumbledore is buried’. The coach tour took us to visit Spean Bridge where we were able to contemplate the sacrifices made by our commandos at the monument to their honour and enjoy spectacular views of the snow-capped Ben Nevis, it might have been hot at our level but up there was a different story.

Skye was a bit of disappointment as it was one of the days that played to its reputation as the misty isle; but it did afford and amazing view of a hill doing an impersonation of Mount Fuji. But not a Cuillin in sight.

What fascinated me about our group was the different attitudes to ‘smartphone world’. It was no different from any other random group of people, regardless of age folks loved being connected or hated it. Most had their paper maps out to follow the various routes but many had their smartphones at the ready when a signal was available. The 91 year old spent a fair bit of time talking apps with my hubby.

Travel tech was a challenge on the holiday as I have already observed. In these remote parts internet connections were slow and phone signals generally non-existent; 4G – more like minus 4G! We had taken the decision not to post our travels to Facebook and the like because our house was sitting empty. So I tried a break from the incessant communication that normally fills my day; OK, I confess I did use Messenger to chat to the odd student when I could get a connection, especially as final results were announced on that very hot day!

We travelled with Rail Discoveries, not sure if we will do so again for another few years but it has certainly given me a taste for investigating Inter Rail and the like so I can head further afield without getting on a plane. And of course, we will have the time to take a leisurely pace from now on without any pressure to be always connected.

fun stuff Weekend

Summertime and the Avon SSS has arrived

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 23 July, 2015
No Comments on Summertime and the Avon SSS has arrived

Avon SSS sung to the tune of Summertime

The Avon SSS has arrived. Avon Skin So Soft, the ultimate in midge repellant. No ~~boy scout~~ serious beach surfin’ camper should be without. As used by the Royal Marines in jungle warfare training, apparently. And perfect for going to Hillend campsite in the Gower.

We aren’t going for another month but it doesn’t stop me from getting excited and starting the preparations.

You can’t buy Avon SSS in the shops but don’t worry. I have for your convenience provided a link direct to the right page on the Avon website. Voila http://avonshop.co.uk/product/skin-so-soft-original-dry-oil-body-spray.html

Note the two bottles – better safe than sorry.

This is one of a series of summer holiday posts. The next one, if I remember will be all about flags and flagpoles with a specific mention of Uganda.

Stay tuned to trefor.net to find out more. You heard it first etc etc etc…

travel Weekend

The dress code is Cape Cod Beer

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 22 July, 2015
No Comments on The dress code is Cape Cod Beer

school’s out for summer

Feel as if I should be throwing off my school blazer, flinging my tie over the settee leaving it all for mum to sort out and running out into the back garden to mess about in the paddling pool. It’s the last day of term for the last Davies of school age.

We have ahead of us the long summer vacation, six weeks or so and many of you out there will be getting ready to hook up the caravan, load the tent in the trailer or packing your suitcase for a slightly posher and more exotic holiday in the sun. Hopefully the queues at the airport will be kind to you and the traffic en route to the beaches surprisingly absent.

I’m not on holiday, yet, though the dress code in the trefor.net office has relaxed further to a pair of rugby shorts, deck shoes and a Cape Cod Beer tshirt. If you’re young enough or old enough not to be taking kids on holiday you will already have had your summer break and have to suffer the excitement of the rest of us as we look forward to ours.

I like to take my summer holiday towards the end of the period as it really does give me something to look forward to. This year we are off surfing at Hillend campsite, Rhossili beach in the Gower followed by the Flashback festival in Clumber Park and then the Isle of Man. I’ve pushed the boat out and bought valet parking at Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

One of the great things about Rhossili beach in Llangennith is its total absence of mobile phone coverage. It’s a proper holiday characterised by variants of bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning, robust sandwiches with crusty baguettes for lunch and a bbq every evening washed down with copious quantities of red wine.

The Clumber Park Flashback Festival involves a camper van, or in our case the Jeep with all the back seats down and a double blow up mattress, a posh picnic and a bop to some of the sounds of the 70’s including Sister Sledge, Boney M, Oddyssey and Hot Chocolate, the latter sadly without their recently deceased lead singer.

We are on the lookout for a camper van as well btw. I feel it is a slow learning process until we decide on what’s right for us but with 3 out of 4 children now out of school the time has come for us to prepare for the day where we will have the freedom to just drop everything and travel.

In the meantime, before our holidays proper begin we have a joyful short break 😉 with the mother in law in Llandudno followed by a night out on the town in da smoke with a crowd of like minded folk hell bent on letting their hair down and having a good time. We also have Jesus Christ Superstar on at Lincoln Cathedral this Thursday evening. Supposed to be a great show with around 200 members of cast!

So there ya go. I may well also fit in a day out at Skegvegas but that in one shortish blog is what I have to look forward to this summer. Although I’ll probably slip in the odd techie post I’m going to major on vacation stuff. If you want to chip in with your own guest post jest lemme know. Have a few already in the pipeline.

School’s out for summer, yay!

Bad Stuff End User security

Fancy a bit of stuff on the side?

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 21 July, 2015
No Comments on Fancy a bit of stuff on the side?

Ashley Madison helps you find other people who want to cheat on their partners

The older I get the more I realise how sheltered I am. I spotted a comment by @ruskin147 on Twitter whilst whiling the time away waiting for a late train to arrive:

PR for Ashley Madison says of the plans for a London IPO "they've had a huge number of meetings and it's going very well". Not after today?

— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) July 20, 2015

Intrigued I looked up Ashley Madison to find a site that arranged extra marital affairs for people and claimed it had millions of customers. Not my kind of thing. What all the attention was about however was the fact that Ashley Madison had been hacked and details of its users nicked.

Notionally the hackers wanted AM to stop charging people to remove their details. I’m not really bothered. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Harsh but hey…

I am more concerned with the concept that these databases can be hacked. Of course they can. Even the Pentagon apparently gets hacked every now and again. Shit happens.

I have lots of personal details held at many locations online – Facebook, Twitter, Google and maybe another hundred other places online where I have an username and password. It’s my choice to give this info to the specific websites.

What I don’t want is someone keeping all sorts of information on me without my consent that ~~could~~ will inevitably be hacked and published online for all to see. The government, in compiling its latest version of the Snoopers Charter would do well to note that no database is safe. They will take no notice.

It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the Prime Minster’s voicemail account was actually hacked by the News of the World and that the information was being suppressed. Merely conjecture, rumour spreading, but entirely plausible. I heard it on good authority from a man in a pub.

The only safe way to stop information from being stolen is not to store it in the first place.

PS note the trusted security award on the Ashley Madison site.

Bad Stuff End User scams spam

HMRC scam spam

HMRC scam spam forwarded to my accountant

Thought you’d appreciate this public service service announcement re HMRC scam spam. Got the following email text notionally off HMRC and with lots of links:

Hello TREFOR.NET,

You can’t afford to miss your payment deadline

If you submitted a self-assessment form in January, your second payment instalment is due on or before 31st July.

Filing your return means you’ll know how much you’ll need to pay, making it easier for you to plan ahead and put money aside.

Here’s a short video clip explaining ‘Paying HMRC – Self Assessment’

Take a look at the following YouTube videos to find out about key dates regarding Self Assessment and details of how charges are calculated. Each is only a couple of minutes long.

Self Assessment: Tax return deadline dates (HMRC YouTube)

Self Assessment: Payment deadline dates (HMRC YouTube)

Self Assessment: Tax return late submission penalties (HMRC YouTube)

Self Assessment: Missed payment charges (HMRC YouTube)

You know it makes sense.

I thought it was a bit odd as I don’t pay my personal tax by instalments so I just forwarded it to my accountant without clicking on anything.

Lo and behold the accountant came back and said trash it it’s a HMRC scam spam (I like that phrase – not sure it accurately describes the email but it rolls poetically off the tongue so it’s in.)

It’s second nature for most people these days to distrust dodgy looking emails but you can get caught out. That unwary moment. The dropped shield etc etc etc.

Anyway gotta go and pick up a hire car as the Jeep is in being mended (again). Tomorrow we are off to York to film some pigs for broadbandrating.com. If you didn’t see the last video you can catch it here. This one’s going to be similar but totally different.

You heard it first on trefor.net…

PS loads of scam stuff on this site – check it out here.

broadband Business

Ofcom Strategic Review and the separation of Openreach from BT

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 17 July, 2015
1 Comment on Ofcom Strategic Review and the separation of Openreach from BT

BTOpenreach engineering visit Install ofcom strategic review

Ofcom Strategic Review – the boys don’t want to see a separate Openreach

The Ofcom Strategic Review happens every 10 years, the last being in September 2005. This week Ofcom announced the consultation for its latest review with a wide range of subjects on the table around the general subject categories of

investment and innovation, delivering widespread availability of services;
sustainable competition, delivering choice, quality and affordable prices;
empowered consumers, able to take advantage of competitive markets; and
targeted regulation where necessary, deregulation elsewhere.

The 2005 review led to the formation of Openreach. The 2015 review includes in the “sustainable competition” section a discussion as to whether Openreach needs to be totally separated from BT. Cast off and left to row its own canoe.

There has recently been a flurry of complaints to Ofcom about Openreach, notably from Sky and TalkTalk. We discussed this at the ITSPA council meeting yesterday and then afterwards at the Summer Forum. The tone of the conversation was that yes there was a problem with Openreach – the number of engineering visit no shows costs the service provider industry a fortune – but no they didn’t see the benefit in separating Openreach from BT.

People would rather Openreach just got its act together and stopped failing the industry with its poor performance. See my own experiences here. The feeling was that the process of separating the Openreach would take years, during which time there would be huge disruption and little or no investment in the infrastructure.

This is a complicated subject on which I’m sure many readers will have their own specific views. I’m beginning to veer away from the idea that separating the two is a good thing. The biggest issue for me is the Openreach cost structure. There doesn’t seem to me to be much incentive for them to reduce their costs. On the other hand Openreach does have a complex bag of worms to manage – the archaic UK copper phone line infrastructure.

Technically the easiest/best thing to do would be to replace the copper with fibre. In the long run it would be by far the best thing. The problem is of course how to fund that. BT certainly isn’t going to do it.

The Ofcom discussion document is 185 pages – read it here. It’s a full time job reading this kind of stuff. You have until October 8th to respond.

End User media

Telegraph reads reach limit

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 16 July, 2015
No Comments on Telegraph reads reach limit

This is your final free article this month

That’s it. I’ve reached my limit on Telegraph reads this month. Henceforth I will have to read telegraph.co.uk in an incognito window. The telegraph doesn’t stop access via incognito window because they depend on cookies to count page reads. Cookies are blocked in incognito mode.

I tend to hop between the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph to home in on what is actually happening with a specific news item. I also read the cartoons on the Telegraph.

Part of me feels bad about this. It isn’t unreasonable to pay the Telegraph for the service they provide. On the other hand this kind of stuff is available free from lots of of places online. It’s the classic online media business model dilemma.

The pop up is somewhat bemusing. It comes up every time you surf the site in incognito mode. I only decided it was a good idea to write this post after I’d dismissed the box the first time so I closed the window and started again. Same box came up innit.

I never read the Times online btw because of the paywall. Dunno how they are getting on.

So there you go. If this is your final free article this month then there is another way…

PS as I write Australia are 104 for 1 in the second Ashes test. You can see from the screenshot that I am interested in this. Not watching it on the Telegraph though, or the BBC for that matter. Cricinfo is the place. Cricinfo is free though I pay for the Beeb through the license fee.

PPS I am happy to make the commitment that trefor.net will probably never implement a paywall. Fill yer boots.

PPPS I’m going to see day 2 of the third ashes test on the Friday at Trent Bridge. See you there?

fun stuff travel Weekend

Holiday season on trefor.net advanced notice and offer to contribute guest posts

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 13 July, 2015
No Comments on Holiday season on trefor.net advanced notice and offer to contribute guest posts

It’s gonna be a fun fun place to be this summer 🙂

Holiday season (if you have kids) is rapidly approaching and it gets pretty dead from a business perspective. So I’m offering slots to people who might fancy writing guest posts on trefor.net about where they have been/are going/are on their holidays.

Feels like the right thing to do. Photos from a beach somewhere (keep em clean – this is a family show), views from atop peaks climbed at great personal risk, blurry photos of drunken nights in tavernas (Greek holidays are being discounted) etc etc etc

If you want to include tech used whilst on holiday that is good. Description of airline upgrades. Anything you like really. It can also be something written during the boring periods in the office whilst the rest of the world is on holiday – someone has to man the phones in case that one customer not on holiday wants to call.

If anyone is interested btw I’m off surfing to the Gower, then the Flashback Festival and thence on to the Isle of Man for a seafood diet.

PS not going for another month mind you.

broadband End User

The future of data storage bandwidth usage

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 13 July, 2015
No Comments on The future of data storage bandwidth usage

Bandwidth usage – the only way is up

I periodically discuss the bandwidth usage on our home broadband and the growth trend in data storage on our NAS box, driven by the number of photos we store. This usually prompts a discussion on home broadband data usage and for your entertainment and delight I’ve put this chart together as an update to the previous post from 2013 on this subject. Clearly we were due an update.

What prompted me to think about this subject, apart from the ongoing decision making process re which broadband provider to use, was the fact that yesterday I copied some video footage off our CCTV. It was of our son’s 18th birthday party and there are memories in that video that will at some stage be overwritten by the CCTV box.

The CCTV records in High Definition and uses 1.7GB per stream per hour. I copied 6 hours from 2 cameras which I make to be 20.4GB of data storage. Add to that the footage from the GoPro used by one of the kids on the night and you have a hefty amount of storage just to record the proceedings of the evening. I don’t yet know how much is on the GoPro – it has a 64GB SD card and can record in 4k format.

The footage from the CCTV is very clear and in great colour (take note burglars). I doubt we will look at it very often or maybe not at all. Maybe it’ll get rolled out every now and again in the same way that we watch our wedding video about once every blue moon. It doesn’t really matter. The NAS box, currently with less than a TB used out of its 2TB capacity is upgradeable to 4TB. The storage is cheap.

Won’t be long before our rate of usage starts to grow significantly. Just as our broadband data usage continues to grow. It looks as if our broadband data usage approximately doubles every two years. This suggests that by 2017 we will be using 600GB a month and 1,200GB, or 1.2TB a month by 2019!! I believe it.

I’m sure I wrote a post sometime about when I expected to have to upgrade my NAS box but I can’t find that. When I get home I’ll take a look at the picture storage data over the last few years and extrapolate – just for you. I’ll add it to this post tonight. I’m betting the trend is going to look just like the broadband usage and with mainstream 4k use not far off (I don’t think it is yet even though it’s readily available) who would bet otherwise.

Business media travel

Another glorious summer day

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 9 July, 2015
No Comments on Another glorious summer day

It’s another glorious summer day in the shire but I am up early and off South to the oven that is London. I have a good day ahead with the first trefor.net Tech Marketing lunch and the Political Intelligence birthday party. 7.30 am train down and 9.30pm t5ain home. Urgh. A long day.

Should be enjoyable though. There will be a gentle stroll from Kings Cross station to Kettners in SoHo, the lunch venue. It is an enforced gentle stroll as the tube workers are once more on strike. It’s a democratic right.

I’ll walk off the lunch with another gentle stroll of around an hour or so to the City for the party. All this exercise…

I employ an element of poetic license in the title of this post as the nearer I get to London the cloudier it gets. This is probably good. A gentle stroll can be onerous in the glare of the midsummer sun, high up above the lowering skyscrapers of the capital. I have not brought a hat.

En route to town it is noticeable that as we race through the countryside the fields, last week totally verdant, are now turning gold. The harvest will soon begin. The larders soon to be stocked up again for another winter ahead. We should feel good about this:)

I am wearing shorts and a Lonap tshirt and have a pair of stout walking shoes to assist my passage through the streets of town. There is a change of clothes in my knapsack (thought I’d use that word instead of “my Osprey day bag” – more in keeping with the flowery nature of this post).

I quite like the odd day out in London and the 7.30 am from Lincoln central gets you off to a good start with a full English breakfast as soon as you leave Lincoln. I’ve usually finished it by the time the train gets to Newark half an hour later – it’s a slow branch line.

The featured image of this post is today’s breakfast. Have a good day and if you are coming to the lunch I look forward to seeing you.

broadband End User

how to choose a broadband provider

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 8 July, 2015
8 Comments on how to choose a broadband provider

Just writing out aloud the process I’m going through of choosing a broadband provider. I currently have an 80/20 line from which I get 35/7 performance, most of the time. It’s an unlimited service. Bandwidth usage is approaching 300GB a month.

My current supplier is Timico a business ISP. As such I get great service from them but the monthly line rentals for broadband and phone are now approaching £80 inc VAT. If I were a business user then I’d probably pay that just to get peace of mind that when i had a problem I could easily contact someone to get it sorted.

Although I have no interest in TV I am interested in seeing what sports packages I can get so I took a look around at the consumer deals available.

I do have a couple or three concerns in looking around:

I am worried about ending up with an offshore call centre – my only real options in this case are to choose Plusnet or Sky
What wil lthe service levels be like – at least I have the broadbandrating.com phone answer statistics to work with here
Currently I am with an ISP that isn’t governed by government decree to monitor my behaviour or filter the websites available to me. This will not be the case if I go to a consumer service

The other consideration in looking is the speed of the connection. FTTC never delivers its headline speeds but the Virgin Cable service does, near enough. However Virgin are notorious for having technical issues such as bufferbloat and they do have a very public traffic management policy whereby they throttle heavy users at busy times. I am a heavy user. Will I be choked in this net?

The Virgin threshold for throttling a service is based on upload usage. If I assume I’m interested in the fastest service then Virgin allow 2.25GB upload in an hour (3GB in 2 hours). My biggest daily upload usages to date have been 10GB in April and 8GB in July (which was when I changed my google photos backup policy). I’m probably just about ok on the upload usage threshold.

The other consideration is availability of IPv6 and AAISP would have been a natural choice for this. AAISP are also fanatical with their support which is one of the reasons they are used by many in the UK internet engineering community. However they don’t do TV and don’t have an unlimited data usage product. They aren’t big enough to be able to cope with a few users maxing out on an unlimited bundle.

I’ve ploughed through the various ISP websites trying to compare their different offerings. It isn’t straightforward as there are lots of variables. All the products in the table below except Virgin are based on BT’s VDSL service. I’ve quoted 80/20 but most of the ISPs probably use 76/18 or some similar marketing variant. We also have to remember that for my house we really mean 35/7 where 80/20 is the stated speed. I would get a better download with any of the three Virgin speed variants but only with the top end one would I get a better upload (although there isn’t much between the 6Megs upload of Virgin’s middle offering and my existing one).

I’ve only quote the regular pricing (some may have been rounded). It is possible to get a great deal in the first contracted year but I’m not planning on hopping ISPs just to get a good deal every time a contract expires. The ongoing cost is more important to me. Where I’ve been able to (remembered) I’ve stated the pricing with weekend calls thrown in.

	Product speed (Mbps)	regular price (with phone line rental)	contract term (months)
Timico	80/20	£77.40	24
BT	80/20 with “free” BT sports	£47.00	12
Sky	80/20	£46.40	12
Virgin	50/3 + weekend calls	£34.50	18
Virgin	100/6	£39.49	18
Virgin	152/12	£46.99	18
Virgin	50/3 broadband only	£28.50	12
Virgin	100/6	£33.50	12
Virgin	152/12	£41.00	12
TalkTalk	80/20	£36.70	12
Plusnet	80/20	£36.00	18
aaisp	80/20 (not unlimited – have assumed pricing for 300GB usage with £10 line rental no voice)	£70.00	6

It may be seen that the FTTC camps are divided into three. There’s the very low cost providers, Plusnet and TalkTalk who come in at around £26 a month. Then there’s the big guys Virgin, BT and Sky who are very similarly priced at £46/£47 (albeit BT bung in sport). Finally there are the business ISPs who are perhaps around £20ish a month more expensive ~~edging towards the £100~~ for a product that comes with better customer support.

Plusnet’s call waiting times are often up around 15 minutes although in their defence their call centre is in Yorkshire (thanows).

What else do I need to take into consideration. How about the cost of making phone calls?

peak time call charges (pence per minute)	voipfone	virgin	sky	BT
uk landline	1.2	10.6	9.5	9.58
uk mobile	12	19.35	12.7	12

I’ve added another variable with this table. Compare the Voipfone call charges with those of BT, Virgin and Sky. Makes the three of them look a real rip off doesn’t it? Voipfone are one of the UK’s longest standing and most successful Internet Telephony Service Providers. You run their service over your broadband line aka Skype but cheaper. There is a scenario where I can go with Virgin’s broadband only package. If I want to transfer and use my existing landline number Voipfone will charge me £2.40 a month including VAT. In the business I’ve spent £40 with them on call charges since October 2014.

I realise that each of these providers will probably sell me a bundle of minutes but the members of our house rarely use the landline. They all have mobile phones with their own bundles. We only really need our local Lincoln number for legacy purposes (mostly for calls from aged parents).

So there is a scenario where I could take the Virgin 152Mbps broadband only service at £41, add £2.40 for a Voipfone landline number and it still would only cost £43.40 a month plus calls a very low rate.

What might be the problems with using Voiphone? In theory their service would work just like our existing home phone line. We use DECT phones around the house and I have a SNOM DECT phone system with a couple of handsets going spare in the office. Obviously the service relies on our always having a broadband and there have from time to time been issues with different variants of Superhub blocking VoIP. They don’t do this deliberately – it’s just incompetence and I don’t think the problems are there right now.

I also use Voipfone using a CSIPSimple client on my android so the whole family could have an alternative means of calling over wifi when abroad (for example).

How about adding TV or more specifically sport?

sports packages
BT Sports on virgin	big kahuna	£66.00
BT & Sky sports (full package)	big kahuna	£93.99
BT	free BT sport	£47.00
	with BT sport & Sky 1&2	£68.99
sky	original bundle & sky sports – no bt sport	£71.90

The numbers change quite dramatically. BT stays the same but adding Sky sports into the picture sport is very expensive. Remember the punter is the one paying for all the big money contracts that Sky have with the Premier League.

The BT offer with just BT sport is dramatically better than the others as long as you remember it isn’t as comprehensive a bundle as having Sky in the deal.

If I went with Virgin I’d effectively be paying and extra £22.60 a month just to get BT sport – remember I’m not really interested in the other TV stuff. The full monty on Virgin is very expensive at £94.

Going with BT and taking both Sky and BT sports would cost me an extra £25.60 over my base Virgin broadband only deal and I’d not have all the Sky Sports.

You can’t get BT Sports on Sky.

This is the interesting set of facts I have to set before the family. I suspect I am not interested in paying a lot of money for the sport and am likely to end up with the Virgin broadband only package plus Voipfone. This really pains me as Virgin have a one of the longest telephone answer times and their call centres are in India. Sigh…

Observations?

Bad Stuff End User fun stuff scams

Stop Press – wonderful LinkedIn invite

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 8 July, 2015
No Comments on Stop Press – wonderful LinkedIn invite

LinkedIn spam

Just seen this wonderful invitation to connect on LinkedIn. See the featured image. As you can see it’s from

ABDULKADIR BALA MOHAMMED – FORMER MINISTER OF FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY ABUJA NIGERIA

I was so excited by it I had to drop writing a post on how I’m going about choosing a new broadband provider and share it with you straight away.

We are back to the old Nigerian General with money to get out of the country scam. I assume so anyway. It’s such a pleasure to have them try it on through this new platform. Taken a while mind you but hey…

I didn’t click on anything or accept the invitation although I am just about to report it. It’s the first scam I’ve seen via LinkedIn. Facebook went through a phase of it whereby gorgeous women with large breasts (apparently) wanted to be my friends. Pained me but I declined them all (yes I did).

When I first saw this invite I thought it was from Wales – Bala is a place in North Wales. Anyway I leave you with a tune in my head – Abdul the BullBull Khadir. Olden but golden 🙂

Back to the other post. Mundane bread and butter stuff but just as important 🙂

Still time to enter the Wimbledon Competition btw.

competitions End User

trefor.net mega Wimbledon Tennis competition – win a fantastic prize

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 7 July, 2015
2 Comments on trefor.net mega Wimbledon Tennis competition – win a fantastic prize

Win a mega prize Wimbledon Ladies Draw Competition

Hey evrybody it’s Wimbledon Fortnight and by gosh it’s hot in the office, dang it. Someone forgot to switch on the air-conditioning unit I bought from Argos last year and I haven’t got the energy to lean over and switch it on.

Instead of working we’re kicking back and watching the Tennis on the good ole internet. Now it’s a long long time since we had a competition on trefor.net so I figured now was as good a time as any. We should have had one before the most recent Royal sprog was born but we missed the chance – probably busy that day. No worries the tennis is here and it’s the Wimbledon Ladies Draw Competition.

It should be noted that the reason we have chosen a Wimbledon Ladies Draw Competition is that on Friday afternoon we are having a party on the balcony here at trefor.net towers. It starts at 4.30pm (you are invited but bring your own tinnies) and we thought we would announce the winner of the competition at the bash.

It is easy therefore to have a competition that involves naming the two ladies finalists – because we will know who they are by then. In theory.

So the competition is to name the two lady finalists at this year’s Wimbledon. To make it a little easier on the grey matter we have replicated the Quarter Final line up below. All you have to do is pick the correct two ladies. Some will already have been knocked out by the time you read this so if you can be bothered to find who they are you can narrow your odds of winning.

In case of the highly probable event of more than one right answer we have a tiebreaker: ~~What’s my favourite flavour of crips~~ What is the total number of games played in both semi-finals – winner is nearest answer.

The prize is a magnificent tin of Heinz Vegetable Soup. It’s been on the office windowsill for a couple of months and we are not likely to want to consume it now until next Autumn, so it goes. There is a very small health warning in that in moving the tin from the windowsill to my desk I noticed a teensy dent in the tin – barely visible but photographed in case you are worried (see inset photo right).

If this is unacceptable then a packet of Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps is available as an alternative. Appropriate packaging will be applied when shipping either prize options.

Quarter-finals

Seed	Player		Player	Seed
1	S Williams (US)	v	Azarenka (BLR)	23
4	Sharapova (RUS)	bt	Vandeweghe (US)
20	Muguruza (SPA)	bt	Bacsinszky (SWI)	15
21	Keys (US)	v	A Radwanska (POL)	13

Note this competition is not governed by any gambling commission type rules and the judges decision is final. Anyone can enter. Even my dad.

Please leave a comment with your answers. The winner will be notified by blog post and email sometime after the party on Friday.

Good luck and happy Wimbledon watching.

Prizes will only be shipped to mainland United Kingdom unless you send a stamped addressed envelope to I can bring it to present to you at a conference at some time in the future.

Wimbledon Ladies Draw Competition — alternative prize

Business olympics UC

Sat in hospital waiting room on the Anniversary of the July 7th London bombings

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 7 July, 2015
No Comments on Sat in hospital waiting room on the Anniversary of the July 7th London bombings

7/7 photo London bombings — image courtesy Tom Bird, Portfast

London bombings – mobile network shut down.

Sat in the waiting room of Lincoln County Hospital. As I wait the media reminds me that it is the 10th anniversary of the July 7th London bombings.

I was in town at the time. The previous day I’d been at the Lloyds of London insurance building. Doing a talk about Unified Communications to IT folk from insurance brokers. IT in the insurance industry in those days mostly involved replacing notebooks – the paper variety. The insurance industry is very conservative in its outlook.

We finished just as the announcement was being made re London winning the 2012 Olympics bid. Naturally a party ensued and later I staggered back (I should point out this was due to me carrying all the AV kit (projector) and pop up booth) to the plush comfort of the Royal Scot Travelodge, nominally in Kings Cross.

We had an office in Camden Town in those days and the next morning it was a toss up whether I hiked to Kings Cross Station with the gear to travel to the office on the one or two tube stops on the Northern Line or wait for a taxi. The Travelodge (I stop short of giving it the accolade of “hotel”) wasn’t in a good spot to find a taxi – they were mostly already full and going away from the train station.

Eventually I caught one and got to the office 10 minutes later to hear the news of the bombing. Had I decided to walk I’d probably have been there just at that time!!!

I had planned to catch a train home sometime that day. Not much chance of that happening. Noticeably the mobile networks stopped working. In the State of Emergency as was the networks close to the public to allow emergency services access only apparently.

By lunchtime there was no point thinking of doing any work. Lots of the staff hadn’t been able to make it in anyway. We hit the pub and I stayed the night with my sister who lived in Bal ham (gateway to the south). Caught the first available train nowf the next day.

I was pitching presence an IM to the insurance community. We never got anywhere with it but it’s the same stuff used by everyone in the world nowadays.

You should know that the 7/7 London bombings were still quite close in memory to the 9/11 tragedy in the USA. On that occasion I was stranded at a SIP Summit in Austin Texas and it took nearly a week to get a plane home. After being affected by both incidents my wife began to believe I was jinxed. Still married mind you 🙂

This Thursday I am in London for the trefor.net Technology Marketing lunch. The transport system will again be in chaos as the tube drivers exercise their democratic right to withhold their labour. I suspect some French influence.

Don’t worry though. The restaurant is only a gentle 30 minute stroll from Kings Cross so it will still go ahead. We have three places left if you want to come. It’s going to be a very useful and informative session.

Featured image courtesy of Tom Bird, Portfast

Apps Business fun stuff

Women in tech week social stats

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 6 July, 2015
No Comments on Women in tech week social stats

Women in tech week on trefor.net attracts high level of social media engagement

It looks as if we will be carrying one or two women in tech week posts over into this week but as of this morning the statistics look very good.

12 posts received a total of 694 shares split as follows:

275 Facebook
245 LinkedIn
133 Twitter
17 Google+
24 Comments

Makes you wonder why anyone bothers with Google+. I certainly only do so on the basis that it may help with SEO rankings. As far as comment numbers go there does appear to be a trend to comment in the social media streams of sharers rather than on the blog itself, particularly on Facebook and Twitter. The number of LinkedIn shares points to a high proportion of business people reading the posts.

Three posts drove the numbers. Chris Conder’s exposition on rural broadband, Liz Fletcher on the acceptability of drinking prosecco for geeks (ok it was about more than that) and Helen Jeffrey on how to be a woman in tech.

Chris Conder stimulated comment and debate from a number of prominent individuals both in the media and the internet industry. The issue of rural broadband still generates a very emotional response from people affected. ie those who can’t get decent internet access.

The common denominator here was I think the size of an individual’s social network. Liz is very well known in both prosecco drinking circles and the internet plumbing industry and Helen is internationally known in the publishing game. She must be because her Facebook posts over the weekend contained views from plush bars in New York where she was celebrating the 4th July.

Regardless of the number of shares received by any individual none of this week could not have happened without the support of contributors who have been very generous with their time and for which I am very grateful. There was a terrific mix of posts covering a range of tech subjects, most of which demonstrated an in depth mastery of their subject.

The themed weeks on this blog are becoming increasingly popular. To call a “women in tech” week a themed week is somewhat unfair labelling, or at least a poor application of a label. It’s not like a week of posts on the Internet of Things, or Cloud Technology. Women in Tech is not a theme per se. However most of the contributors are friends (and hopefully the one or two I didn’t already know are now friends) so perhaps we can call it a female friends of Tref week.

If you have a good idea for a future themed week feel free to drop me a line. I have started to get quite a few unsolicited approaches offering guest posts. These mostly get ditched, especially the ones that begin “Hi there” but some do make it through so don’t worry if we don’t know each other. You do need to be someone working in industry though and not a professional writer placing posts on behalf of clients.

Updated numbers Wednesday morning bring the total to 743 shares and comments split as follows:

279 Facebook
280 LinkedIn
141 Twitter
18 Google+
25 Comments

Engineer peering

Linkedin links to Lonap

LinkedIn LONAP membership announcement

Exciting to announce that LONAP has Linkedin as another new member. This follows on from the recent announcement of Apple hooking up with the IXP.

AS 14414 LinkedIn joins an exciting roll call of members in what is a rapidly growing marketplace.

Not all readers will be familiar with the internet peering model whereby content providers and eyeball networks meet at an Internet Exchange Point (IXP). This is a means of getting content from providers servers (eg Amazon/Apple/LinkedIn) content to your broadband ISP and thence to your laptop/tablet/phone. Connecting via an IXP normally makes for lower cost connectivity and almost more importantly better performing, lower latency (read faster page loads) connectivity.

Membership of an IXP is therefore essential for organisations where quality of their customer experience is very important. VoIP service providers for example. Commercial website owners are also able to express faster page loading in terms of improved profitability – the faster the page load the more likely you are to make a sale.

The LinkedIn LONAP membership is yet another great piece of news for the IXP. The internet industry is just an exciting place to be at the moment. Long may it continue. A full list of LONAP members can be seen here. LONAP is a member owned not for profit organisation.

I should declare an interest as I am on the board of directors of LONAP. It’s a true pleasure to work with Will Hargrave, Andy Davidson and Richard Irving who are time-served veterans of the peering industry.

London, together with Amsterdam and Frankfurt is one of the major meeting points for the worldwide internet community which is very much run on a basis of mutual benefit.

Most recent LONAP post (on growth) here. Loads of other peering related posts can be found here.

Business net neutrality Regs

EC Single Telecoms Package position on roaming charges and Net Neutrality

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 30 June, 2015
No Comments on EC Single Telecoms Package position on roaming charges and Net Neutrality

European Commission plan to end roaming charges and establish net neutrality rules – EC Single Telecoms Package

Hot in from the ITSPA (Internet Telephony Service Providers Association) secretariat is this commentary: Late last night the European Commission, Council and Parliament concluded their final round of negotiations on the Single Telecoms Package. The key parts of this initiative are a plan to end mobile roaming charges and the establishment of net neutrality rules.

With regard to net neutrality, the following principles have been agreed to:

All traffic to be treated equally with no blocking, throttling, degradation or discrimination of Internet traffic and also no paid prioritisation.
There are a limited number of exceptions to the general net neutrality rule:
1. compliance with legislation related to the lawfulness of content or with criminal law;
2. preservation of the security and integrity of the network (malware, DOS);
3. minimising network congestion that is temporary or exceptional; and
4. spam and parental control filters (with prior request, consent and possibility to withdraw consent)
The provision of specialised services is allowed as long as this does not harm general open internet access. Specialised services are services that require technical requirements which cannot be ensured in the best-effort open Internet.
Zero-rating of traffic will be allowed, but regulatory authorities will have to monitor and ensure compliance with net neutrality rules.
National regulatory authorities will be tasked to monitor and enforce open Internet rules and will be empowered to set minimum quality of service requirements on Internet access providers.

ITSPA has published a press release welcoming the news which can be viewed here. In summary, we are pleased with the news and have supported the Latvian Presidency of the European Council’s work on the subject which has found a compromise which balances Open Internet principles with an approach that ensures that the Internet can still be run in an effective manner.

ITSPA has campaigned on this subject – particularly the practice of mobile VoIP applications being blocked by network operators for anti-competitive reasons (which will now be prohibited) – for approximately two years at both EU and UK level. The announcement should be considered a great achievement for ITSPA.

The new rules are expected to come into force in early 2016.

The Council has published a press release and the European Commission has published a fact sheet – the latest agreed text has not yet been published.

PS we can particularly look forward to the end of the mobile data roaming ripoff.