Categories
End User food and drink fun stuff

Happy birthday me

As most of you know I’m normally a quiet, softly spoken kind of guy. I don’t shout out about things like it being my birthday. I’m 53 today.

Not entirely sure what to think or say. It’s either borderline mid fifties or early fifties, or both. I quite like it being my birthday. Fifties feels respectable although you and I both know that is hardly the case, innit.

I’m spending the night of my birthday having a quiet steak and chips in with Mrs Davies and our two youngest. The other two are away. There are enough parties going on to merit not bothering with one for my actual birthday which in any case a school night.

We began the party season last Thursday in Town with the ITSPA Xmas lunch. That was followed by our by now traditional (since at least 25 years ago) Xmas Market Party on the Saturday night of the Lincoln Christmas Market. We sing carols, drink lots and have a jammin’ session afterwards. I’m lucky enough to have musical kids and together with friends we mustered trumpet, piano, sax, geetar and drums.

Sunday night was a similar party at some friends. This week it’s the big one – the #trefbash2014 which in effect lasts two days. Saturday is a 50th birthday party black tie job.

The last week of term I already have local after work party invites on Monday (OpenPlan) and Tuesday (Wright Vigar) . Thursday is my annual carol singing night at The Morning Star in Lincoln followed by Jazz. We also have the LONAP board coming over that night. On the Friday night I have the launch party of The Lincoln A2Z Project. This is something I have been involved with for the last two years, writing 52 creative pieces for radio. Google it.

On the Saturday night we have a party at the Brittains around the corner on Curle Avenue and on Sunday we leave to visit parents and do the Christmas thing. Unfortunately that involves non stop partying until 30th December at which point we return home and immediately go out to a Pylons Gig at the West End Tap.

We don’t do New Year’s Eve so that is pretty much our quiet night in of the whole holiday season. I think Anne would like to do New Year’s Eve but tbh I’m a miserable bugger. Good thing probably.

So that’s it. It’s my birthday and a quiet night in with the kids beckons. I will need to build up my energy in time for #trefbash2014. The featured image gives you a taste of what’s in store!

Early doors anyone?

Categories
broadband Business

Vodafone looking at Virgin Media Acquisition

 

Further UK telecoms consolidation?

It’s all over the tech/comms news that the Big Red is looking at the possibility of buying Virgin Media’s parent company. Google it. There is a fit because both companies have bright red branding so they wouldn’t have to change much.

It was only recently we discussed the fact that Voda was looking into buying TalkTalk.

What’s more other recent rumours have suggested that BT are looking at buying either O2 or EE. BT of course sold off O2 all those years ago – what hindsight can tell you eh?

I think it is inevitable that there will be more consolidation in the UK telecoms landscape. We only have to look at the ISPs we follow in trefor.net brand BROADBANDRating. Of the six we look at, BT, Virgin, Plusnet, TalkTalk, Sky and EE EE has by far the fewer subscribers and this would appear to be reflected in their social media engagement.

If you look at EE’s twitter stream it is very busy. However it is mostly people complaining about/discussing their EE mobile service rather than broadband. So if we thought that the future world was going to revolve around broadband then you wouldn’t bet on EE being one of the winners, even though they are trying to change this with the intro of EE TV (etc).

O2 already gave up on their broadband project. One wonders at which point EE would do the same although you would then think that this would write them off as a long term player.

It feels as there is going to be further consolidation in the UK telecoms market and we are going to end up with just 4 players in the UK, remembering that Plusnet is owned by BT.

I’d guess

BT + O2 (or EE?)

Voda + Virgin

TalkTalk (+EE or O2?)

Sky (Sky could buy 3 for good measure)

This could all be a load of rubbish but there’s no harm in speculating. If I’m right it will make me look good. If I’m wrong I could just delete the post… 🙂

There is an argument that says that even 4 players is too many but I can’t imagine many people would want there to be fewer – the competition has been great for prices and product development in the UK.

Categories
Engineer peering

IXLeeds 4 this Thursday

ixleeds 4 at AQL conf

IXLeeds 4 is on this Thursday – that’s the day after tomorrow

If you’ve been umming and ahing about going umm and ahh no more. The IX Leeds people are a great crowd and they put on terrific meetings. They do of course have the benefit of AQL’s conference centre at Salem Chapel which again, if you haven’t been to you need to go.

These meetings are attended by a wide range of engineering types including people who are real experts in their subject. Their beauty lies in the fact that everyone is very approachable – you could be sat having coffee with someone who turns out to be very handy for advice when it comes to solving your latest problem/pointing you at suitable suppliers etc.

Having spoken at a previous IXLeeds I can tell you that the audience is very receptive and asks highly intelligent questions so you’re going to learn stuff you hadn’t considered before turning up.

The other great aspect of the meetings is the post conference social. These are usually very generously supported and the pubs around the Salem Chapel are great. Moreover they are a short walk from Leeds train station so it is easy to get in and out. IXLeeds 4 is an afternoon job – the agenda is here.

I was last at the Salem Chapel for EuroIX earlier this year. The output was a load of guest posts which can be viewed here:

UK internet history – The Early Days of LONAP by Raza Rizvi
INEX’s IXP Manager – Tools to help manage an Internet Exchange by Barry O’Donovan
Regional Peering in the UK by James Blessing
Co-operation makes internet exchanges future proof by Pauline Hartsuiker
Experience of launching an IXP in North America by Ben Hedges
The evolution of an IXP network engineer by Rob Lister
Why does Scotland need an Internet Exchange? by Charlie Boisseau
IX Manchester – It’s quiet up North by James Blessing

I expect quite a few of the guest authors to be at IXLeeds 4 so tap them on the shoulder and say hello.

That’s the plug for IXLeeds 4 over and done with. I guess we are coming up to the party season with conferences supplemented with socials. I will be at the ITSPA Christmas Lunch this week and of course next week is the culmination of the season with #trefbash2014. If you’re coming see you there. If not there is always next year:)

Ciao amigos.

Categories
food and drink fun stuff

#trefbash2014 SOLD OUT

trefor.net eventAll tix are now SOLD OUT for #trefbash2014. If you are a mate you may be able to still get in – just message me. If you are a Corporate Sponsor you can still buy a ticket. If you have already got a corporate ticket but not yet signed up your guests then I still have the space for them – just let me know. Otherwise thanks for everyone for their continued excellent support.

Don’t forget this year’s bash is a beach party. You are expected to make some sort of effort to fit in with the theme. I’ll leave the detail to you. Looking forward to seeing y’all on the night.

People tend not to schedule much for the Friday after the bash. If this is you join us for breakfast at Silva’s on Shaftesbury Avenue at around 9.30 on the Friday and thence a few pubs around Covent Garden for a hair of the dog.

Catch ya later.

Categories
ecommerce End User

Black Friday stuff

black friday

Black’s Black Friday – 15% off full priced items

I was lying in bed this morning when Black Friday was all over the news. If this blog is the only media you ever take notice of you need to know that Black Friday is an Americun import designed to try and make people rush to spend money by thinking they are getting fantastic deals on stuff.

So I picked up my trusty phone and looked up Tesco online. Not with a view to buying anything you realise. What do I need? Just to see what kind of bargains were available. Oo, Tesco’s website was busy and I couldn’t get on it. At 7.30 in the morning. People need to get a life!

In the interest of research I went on Amazon. I could access Amazon.co.uk. That’s what happens when you own a massively scalable cloud resource. Nothing on there to buy that jumped out of the page though so I visited PC World. The “bargains” on PC World appeared to all have 10% off. Oh.

Now don’t get me wrong. 10% off is a good thing but it doesn’t really seem to be the level of discount that should justify the hype around “Black Friday”. Maybe I’m just an ungrateful sod. Maybe these products are already sold at such competitive prices that it’s difficult to knock the price down any further. No so sure about that when you consider the manufacturing costs of electronics these days must be rock bottom – just look at the components of my dissected Chromebook in yesterday’s post. PC World seems a bloated inefficient organisation to me (allegedly, own opinion etc). Never make the mistake of telling them you are buying something for your business. It takes about 15 minutes to process a credit card when 5 seconds is the norm.

I’m sure that if you shopped around online you would probably find that product you were considering clicking “buy” for available elsewhere at that Black Friday reduced price. Time spent doing due diligence for product purchases online has replaced time spent wandering around the shops. At least in my world it has. Especially when it comes to buying train tickets. Let’s not go there.

Just to round off this somewhat negative post I’d like to share with you the fact that my walk to work takes me by Blacks, the outdoors shop. Their window dressing was using “Cyber weekend” as their promo as opposed to Black Friday. Obvs trying to avoid confusion. I think they missed a trick. They could have called it “Blacks Friday” and demonstrated leadership.

Blacks’ Cyber weekend promo is a perfect example of what I’ve been talking about in this post. They are offering 15% off “full priced” items. Who buys full priced items these days? Maybe I’m just tight…

blacks cyber weekend deals

Categories
broken gear chromebook Engineer google

This Chromebook is Dead

dead chromebook motherboard

Deceased, kaput, no longer of this world – dead Chromebook motherboard

It is with a tinge of no real sadness that I present to you an image of a dead Chromebook motherboard. The Samsung Chromebook too is dead, on account of the non functioning motherboard.

It wasn’t a huge loss because these things are so cheap they are almost disposable. And disposing of it I am indeed doing. The dismembering of the Chromebook, I hesitate to call it a computer because that makes me think Microsoft, has been done for two reasons.

Firstly out of simple curiosity to see what it looks like inside. Secondly although I didn’t keep much data on the 16GB solid state drive there would have been some files of I know not what provenance and so it seemed to make sense to permanently delete this memory. Just what you would have done in the old hard drive days but slightly different.

As you can see the ssd now has a nail in it, driven firmly in by my handy Leatherman Multi-tool. No one should be without one.

The dead Chromebook motherboard itself is worth dwelling on. It’s diminutive nature represents beauty and the plastic shell in which it was mounted, consisting mostly of screen, keyboard and a couple of speakers, evidence of how cheap these things really are to churn out.

It is the future. Low cost, disposable computing resource and User Interface.

I include an earlier photo of the dead Chromebook motherboard for comparison together with

Continue reading “This Chromebook is Dead”
Categories
Business fun stuff

Charity Auction for BBC Children In Need Appeal at #trefbash2014

Charity Auction for BBC Children In Need Appeal at #trefbash2014

Yo all. With #trefbash2014 coming up fast on the rails/looming on the horizon/being just around the corner I thought we’d do something a little different this year with a Charity Auction for BBC Children In Need Appeal.

First of all check out this vid, kindly produced by @TomAndThat of Eyupentertainment and starring Alex Lester of BBC Radio 2 fame.

The palm tree appeared in a video Alex Lester, The Movie – you can check it out here.

The palm tree has been sat in the Radio 2 studios for a few weeks gathering celebrity signatures. It features the likes of John Cleese, Hugh Grant, Mick Jagger and Bono not to mention all the Radio 2 presenters – Chris Evans, Steve Wright, Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Simon Mayo et al (whoever Al is).

Now seeing as #trefbash2014 is a beach party we thought it would be particularly appropriate to use the palm tree (we should give it a name but we haven’t) as an auction lot for charity and because Children in Need is supported by the BBC it is particularly appropriate to let that good cause have the cash.

To make it interesting I’m also going to throw in a month’s sidebar advertising on trefor.net worth £1,400.

So when you come along to #trefbash2014 bring your pencil sharpener/cheque book, raise your arm and get stuck in to the auction action. You will also get some prolonged PR on trefor.net as we will be producing a video of the night which of course will run and run…

Categories
Engineer peering

IXScotland4 meeting Dec 1st

ixscotland4

IXScotland4 is happening on Monday 1st  December, in Scotland. If you’ve never been to Scotland it’s a great time of year to go. Whisky tastes a heck of a lot better when it’s ‘orribly cold and wet out there. Oh and dark.

ixscotland4Only joking. 55 people from 36 organisations have so far registered to attend. Its a good level of interest considering IXScotland’s membership currently numbers 13. It’s also fair going for what is still a nascent operation carrying on average below 40Mbps of traffic. At that level of bandwidth there’s a long way to go.

However go it will. The policy of opening regional exchanges is a good one. What’s the point of hauling traffic hundreds of miles and back again when a short cable under (or over) a corridor will do. Peering exchanges are all about the customer experience. Speed. Adjacency. Networks connecting at IX Scotland will be providing their customers with the best possible internet connections. People do notice these things1.

Traffic will grow and having the exchange there will also encourage this. The UK has a number of regional exchanges, ie those outside of London. IX Leeds is independent  but LINX operates IXPs in Scotland, Cardiff and Manchester. A regional IXP will normally need some kind of support to get it going be it from the membership, local government or as is the case in Scotland, LINX.

The model doesn’t necessarily work everywhere. It really needs a carrier neutral POP. A town where there are lots of independent datacentres would have each datacentre wanting to host the IXP with the others reluctant to participate as it would look as if they were supporting their competitor.

You can find the agenda here. An interesting afternoon in prospect. LINX tell me there will be more on their recent pricing announcement plus “A major provider of anycast DNS services is about to set up a node at IXScotland.” Oo. Wonder who it could be:).

Of particular interest is the panel debate:

How do we improve connectivity in Scotland?
Panel will consist of representatives of Scottish government, commercial and community broadband access provision in Scotland, content provision in Scotland.

This is an universal question that could be the subject of discussion anywhere. Scotland of course probably has a significantly higher proportion of beautiful open countryside that is the root of the problem connectivity problem. It’s a dilemma.

Anyway if you fancy a trip to bonnie Scotland in December this is your chance. See you there? Also read loads of great peering contributions in our peering category here. Och aye.

1I had occasion to look up a website in Liberia recently. Took minutes to load a small 90 seconds promo video. I subsequently found out that the only connectivity in to Liberia were 16E1s vi satellite link. It’s an extreme comparison but people fast connectivity is becoming increasingly important.

Categories
Business security

Theresa May anti terrorist stuff

Government proposing to introduce legislation to make ISPs keep IP address details for customers.

This one periodically raises its head. In order to properly police the growing terrorist threat the Government wants ISPs to keep records of who had which IP address and when.

When this sort of legislation gets  introduced the government normally pays for any work that must be done as a consequence. So if an ISP has to put a lot of effort into developing systems to keep the data Dave Cameron and his gang would stump up the cash.

The problem is that this always comes up against the hard rock of diminishing returns when it comes to smaller ISPs. In other words the implementation of such a system might often be considered to represent a disproportionate amount of work for a company with a small engineering team. If for example an ISP only had a couple of sys admins and a couple of network guys, to have to take on of these engineers away from the day job in order to do government related dev work could be a serious disruption to the normal business operations of the company.

On the other side the government would be paying out to set up a system that might cover a relatively few number of end users. They usually end up just asking the bigger ISPs to adhere to such a law (aka Digital Economy Act where only 7 ISPs are involved). This would then leave a huge gap in the fence for the terrorists to swarm through.

I once had a conversation with someone from the Home Office about this. The HO guy could only say “how would they find out about it”. That’s a pretty naive position. What’s GSoogle for?  Lets hope our security forces have  little more something about them.

One might also be a little concerned about the fact that this legislation, if passed will be another of those rushed through without proper scrutiny. Again remember the DEAct. The election isn’t far off now…

Categories
Business google

Bad links

Google webmaster guidelines

This is an interesting one. I got home last night from London having been to a charity lunch at Lords Cricket Ground as a guest of my friend Mehdi Nezarati of esna. It was a great afternoon and will suffice to tell you that lunch was timetabled to finish at 18.30 for you to understand the nature of the “session”.

Before I hit the hay I noticed an email:

We wish to thank you for linking to our site xxxxxx from trefor.net. Unfortunately, it has come to our attention that this link is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

It is important for us to bring our site into compliance with Google’s terms.

Please remove our link from the following page(s):

I’ve removed the links from this post though not from the blog. The two “offending” posts were one that I had written and one which was a guest post from a senior exec in the VoIP industry who also happens to be an old friend.

I replied to the email with the words “you are talking balderdash” (I actually didn’t use the word balderdash but it did start with b) and left it at that. It’s always a bit of a risk to reply to emails like that having spent the afternoon at a charity lunch that drifts into the evening but hey…

This morning I woke up to an email conversational trail that basically agreed with my statement. There is a story behind it. Names are withheld but basically a competitor to my friend’s company had identified hundreds of links to the company’s website and reported them to Google as not being natural.

Google ranks websites by the number and quality of the links into that website. trefor.net for example gets linked to by the BBC, telegraph guardian and others. This is good in Google’s eyes as these are all highly rated platforms in their own right. I don’t do anything to get these links. They just happen.

Now website owners often pay to generate links. I get many such offers as well as solicitations from people offering free content provided they can insert a link. I turn them all down. If Google were to suspect that trefor.net was indulging in such activity, or that we were trying to artificially generate links in to us it would be looked upon badly and would begin to affect how we feature in search engine results. ie we wouldn’t feature.

This business can get dirty. Some websites have been know to pay to have such bad links into their competitors’ sites and even to get links in from totally inappropriate sites such as those promoting porn and gambling (I’m told these do exist).

Legit business have to then systematically find these bad links and work their way through the hosts asking for the links to be removed. Alternatively they have to ask Google to not recognise the links.

This is the first time I’ve seen this happen “in the wild” but it is interesting. We did discuss naming the companies involved but concluded this would be too high risk. This stuff all happens in a murky internet underworld and doesn’t get seen by the general public.

Getting back to the lunch. Mehdi is a really top bloke and has spoken at a couple of trefor.net events the past. His company esna is doing very interesting things in the Google UC space. His guest list represented a roll call of heavy hitters in the communications world. You should expect to hear more from esna.

The lunch was organised by a company called Superskills Experiences run by former rugby players Will Greenwood and Austin Healey. They raise a tremendous amount of cash for good causes. Yesterday was no exception with some of the lots going for £40k or so! Lots of rugby celebs there including Lawrence Dalaglio, Jonny Wilkinson and Sean Fitzpatrick being interviewed on stage In the featured image.

Wales v All Blacks tomorrow. I’ll be there.

Categories
broadband Engineer engineering

Openreach engineering visit

BTOpenreach engineering visit Install ofcom strategic review

Openreach engineering visit fixes one fault and finds another

The doorbell rang yesterday just after lunch. It was an Openreach engineer. Good news. He had come to fix our phone line. I wasn’t expecting him but there again wasn’t going to turn him away.

Out phone line has been jiggered since Saturday. It’s ok as the broadband was still working fine and the only persons that call us on our home phone are scammers and my mother in law. In one sense that was a bit of a result although funnily enough that was not my wife’s view on the situation.

The fibre to the cabinet connection only needs one wire but the phone needs a pair so it is  quite possible for one to continue working without the other.

openreach engineering visit - up a poleSo the engineer turns up and does a few tests both inside and outside the house and proceeds to find two faults. One is the one on the ticket which turns out to be a short circuit somewhere in the house (hoover bashed the socket!?). We fix that by just disconnecting that socket.

The other, which was a bonus, hasn’t been fixed yet and relates to a mismatch between the impedance profile on the two wires, or something along those lines. I wasn’t totally listening.

Our telephone wiring has been butchered about no end of times over the years so it comes as no surprise that there is a fault. It all started when I got so annoyed with BT that I ordered a second line and had a second ADSL line installed with a different provider. Funnily enough after getting the second line put in I got a sales call from BT trying to sell me broadband.

Having two lines coming in to the house has confused things from time to time especially when one of them was no longer in use. During one Openreach engineering visit a couple of years ago the engineer reused one of the spare wires from the second line to fix a fault in the first. This I think is where this current problem lies.

I’m not getting involved. Just leave it to the Openreach engineers who are actually quite a competent bunch of lads. Their (openly stated) problem lies in the fact that the whole copper network is just a pile of cack and it’s a difficult job to stay on top of the faults.

BT do from time to time make announcements to the fact that they are taking on more engineers (go to BT jobs pages here if you are looking around). The time may well come that the cost of maintaining the ageing network will outweigh the cost of rolling out fibre everywhere.

It’s gonna be a while. The only way I can see it happening short term is if we all go out and steal the copper lines. If the whole network was pinched then it would probably make sense to replace it all with fibre. Glass is cheaper than copper. Please don’t try this one at home though. It was merely a throwaway jocular remark intended to raise a smile. It was not intended to be genuine guidance for the frustrated home owner looking for reliability and genuinely high speeds in their broadband connections. Also it would be illegal. You have been warned!

Anyway back to my outstanding fault and the Openreach Engineering visit. My broadband speeds have been a bit up and down of late. I’ve been reluctant to raise a fault as I’d be getting in to a maze of engineering no shows and the possibility that they wouldn’t find a fault anyway as the problem is intermittent. Also it’s not helped by the fact that whenever I do a speed test using one of the network ports in the kitchen it runs at the correct speed. I just didn’t fancy wasting hours trying to improve the home wifi performance.

So I’ve been burying my head in the sand and avoiding the issue. Now thanks to the inadvertent discovery during my other Openreach engineering visit the problem may get sorted. Yay.

Don’t forget you are all invited to the trefor.net xmas bash. When the tickets are gone they are gone.

Categories
Business Mobile

TalkTalk, Vodafone & Telefonica

Of Mergers and MVNOs

Interesting mix of news this week as TalkTalk ditch Vodafone’s MVNO in favour of Telefonica O2 whilst at the same time Vodafone are rumoured to be looking at buying TalkTalk.

I’m not going to dwell much on the subject. The web will be awash with industry experts analysing the subject, holding it upside down and shaking it.

I’ll just fade momentarily to the Vodafone boardroom (cue ethereal music) …

“Sir, Sir, looks like we lost the TalkTalk MVNO business to O2”

“Hmm bugger, that was incompetent. It’s going to hurt our market share. What’s your answer to the problem?”

“Well Sir we could buy O2…”

Music swirls and brings us back to the present. John Wayne gets on his horse and rides into the sunset. Wrong story.

It does seem clear that the world is moving more and more towards one bill for all communications services. Vodafone need to join the club or lose out. One might consider that O2, in ditching their broadband offer, have already given up on that race.

An MVNO deal whilst good for subscriber numbers can’t be that great for margins and O2 will have had to dive in with a very aggressive offer to tempt TalkTalk away from Voda (don’t know the whole story here – maybe they were getting poor support). Having ported numbers away from an MVNO at Timico I know what a hassle it can be to swap services.

In the communications world it does feel as if mobile is just becoming a bolt on to fixed line services. I wouldn’t have made that statement a year ago and I may be wrong now but that’s certainly how it feels to me.

This is odd as the mobile is increasingly becoming the device of choice for making phone calls. For example our home phone is currently out of action. The broadband still works ok so I’m surmising its a broken bit of kit on the voice path in the exchange. For most of us in the house not having a phone line it isn’t a problem as we all use mobiles.

The only person who can’t call us is the mother in law who at the age of 81 doesn’t want to mess about learning new numbers.

EE have up until now, and since O2 left the game, been the only mobile operator aggressively chasing fixed line services growth, at least in the consumer market. And EE still have a long way to go to catch up with BT, Sky, Virgin and TalkTalk.

I suspect that TalkTalk would be an expensive acquisition for Vodafone. Their management will feel they are doing alright as they are which I very much believe to be the case.

If nothing else it all serves to show that our world is a constantly changing world. It’s what makes it exciting to live in.

Ciao bella:)

Categories
Engineer events food and drink fun stuff

#trefbash2014 – the “accessories” have been ordered

#trefbash2014

With only 24 days to go until #trefbash2014 the excitement is building.

Well it is in the trefor.net offices anyway. #trefbash2014 is the culmination of the business year, after which it is very hard to get much done. Usually the next few days are a write off.

This year we have pro teams on the photography and on video production. We also have a fantastic interactive “facility” which you can only find out about on the night. Sgonna be good though.

We are also for the first time having a fantastic one off charity auction and I hope to be in a position to post a photo of the prize this coming Friday. It’s something you will be proud to have on display in your company reception:) We will also have a special guest star there to present the prize to the winning bidder. Tune in Friday to find out more.

122 people have signed up so far which is roughly par for the course with three and a half weeks to go. Last year we had around 180 turn up. All the Surf Bum tickets have gone. This ticket seemed to strike a chord with people. Cold Beer Billy tickets are about to sell out and then it’s neck and neck between Lifeguard and Coconut Delight. Beach Bartender seems to be least popular. Don’t worry. You won’t be expected to serve drinks.

The accessories have now been ordered. Well it is a beach party. What will the best dressed beach party goer be wearing this year?

If you still want to get your brand up there on the night it is still not too late. We have commissioned a special video that will be running all night, interrupted only by our special interactive feature. Lots of exposure and recognition opportunities.

We now have a menu:

Main Course Hot Fork Buffet
Hot and Spicy Jerk Chicken
Steak and Black Pepper Burger
Vegetable Jambalaya
Creole Fish Curry

Side Dishes
Cornbread
Tomato Relish
Tortilla Chips, Soured Cream & Garlic
Caribbean Salad, Honey & Lime Dressing

Ian the chef at the Phoenix Artist Club is a top operator. Knows that engineers have sophisticated tastes but also like a few carbs to soak up the champagne. I’m ordering the champagne next week. Last year we went though over 80 bottles!

If you are planning on coming but haven’t yet signed up get yer names down here. More deets here on the blog.

#trefbash2014 – a trefor.net production:)

Categories
broadband End User

Calling the fibre broadband rollout team

B4RN broadband BT rural broadband reinvestment B4RN business model broadband vision

Fibre broadband rollout not reaching “parts that other rollouts cannot reach”

My heart goes out Jazz – see tweet below. We hear that metropolitan areas get new tech rollouts because of their population densities make the return on investment faster and more attractive than say rural areas.


Reality is not all city slickers get the fast stuff early. There are many possible explanations for this. For example Jazz could be unfortunate enough to live near an industrial estate.

BT tend not to upgrade cabs next to industrial estates because compared to residential there will be fewer subscribers in a given area. The cynics amongst you will no doubt say the real reason is that BT want to keep selling businesses their more expensive Ethernet services. Come now. Surely not.

Another reason could be purely logistical. There could be a problem with the existing cab., planning permission issues maybe, a blocked duct or insufficient power. It could be that the cost to BT of sorting out the problem was such that they prefer to spend their money elsewhere

Unfortunately for Jazz it isn’t just a question of having a word with the fibre broadband rollout team. BT would have so many people wanting to talk with that fibre broadband rollout team that they would never get any work done.

We can only hope that BT hasn’t actually finished in Jazz’s area and moved on leaving him as one of an unfortunate few left on the legacy “normal” broadband.

In all fairness to BT they are cracking on with their fibre broadband rollout generally (I know @Cyberdoyle will have a go at me for calling to fibre broadband but hey…).

The purists amongst us will not settle for less than Fibre to the Premises but that is another story..

Ciao amigos. Skinny latte in the trendy coffee show around the corner anyone?