Categories
Engineer phones

A week with the iPhone 6 Plus

week with the iPhone 6 Plus

After a week with the iPhone 6 Plus Dan Lane endorses the bigger screen after using it instead of his laptop on a day out in London.

After a week with the iPhone 6 Plus Tref asked me to write up my experience with the behemoth, but I’m not going to do that. There are hundreds of reviews out there which tell you it’s too big, it’s too bendy or it’s just right. No, I’m simply going to tell you about Tuesday.

After receiving the device on Friday I’d spent the weekend fumbling with it thinking I’d made a mistake buying this comically oversized phone but then came Tuesday.  This was the day the iPhone 6 Plus really shone and I realised I hadn’t made an expensive mistake.

I was due to install some equipment in Telehouse so I threw my kit bag into the boot of my car and made the 2 hour drive from Winchester to Docklands using the TomTom app on the iPhone 6 Plus as my satnav (having purchased a new iOttie windscreen mount because my previous one was too small!). Even though the TomTom app has yet to be updated to take advantage of the larger screen it looked fantastic in the zoomed mode and I much preferred it to my previous iPhone 5s.

When I arrived at Telehouse I lugged my kit bag containing my Macbook Pro and iPad to the rack, I pulled the information I needed to locate and get access to the rack from Evernote and started to install the kit. As well as the equipment I was installing there were various tasks that were documented in Basecamp which loaded nicely on my phone.

I used the camera to upload photos of the cabling changes I’d made to Basecamp for future reference and the photo was so clear and detailed that you could read the circuit number from the cable’s tag. I also used the Slack app to communicate back with the various members of the team who had logged the work. I probably spent about three hours at the rack and my phone was on for most of the time, the battery read 97% when I left having been fully charged by the drive over.

Next, since I was in London I had a customer meeting scheduled. I drove over and met the customer (keeping the phone in my pocket and using my car’s built in satnav this time) and through the meeting I took notes using Evernote on my 6 Plus. Ordinarily I’d use my Macbook or my iPad and at one point I did feel like I needed to place my phone down face-up showing the Evernote screen so he didn’t think I was busily texting someone.

After the meeting I had an hour or so to kill before meeting my girlfriend for dinner so I found a coffee shop and got down to some e-mails and support tickets, again I just did them on the 6 plus using the Gmail and Zendesk apps. This is where it occurred to me that I hadn’t opened my laptop all day not because I made a conscious effort to only use my iPhone but because the iPhone was all I needed – I probably pulled it out of my pocket to check Facebook and noticed there was a ticket that needed my attention and got carried away with some emails.

If I had been on my old 5s I’d have seen that ticket and reached for my laptop but with the bigger form factor and bigger keyboard it was no hassle to tap out reply after reply while my laptop remained unopened in my bag. I was in the coffee shop for just over an hour and a half and I didn’t put my phone down once – by the time I left my battery was still over 65%.

While I was in the coffee shop I needed to do some field testing for our new mobile service – this involved an iPhone 5s I use as test device. I was immediately surprised at how minuscule and cramped the 5s felt after only 4 days using the bigger device and this really cemented my appreciation of the larger screen and form factor.

The phone pretty much stayed untouched while I had dinner with the girl and then served as satnav and MP3 player (via Spotify) for the 1.5 hour journey home – as an experiment I didn’t plug it in and the phone was down to 14% when I arrived home which considering it’d been using GPS, bluetooth, streaming data and had the display on for the whole journey was pretty good in my book.

Could I have done everything I did on the iPhone 5s or the regular sized iPhone 6? Yes, of course! but when I had that device I never did. For me the bigger screen turns it from a phone that happens to do smart things into a small tablet that happens to also be a phone and this encourages more use in that fashion. It’ll never replace the laptop in the datacentre visit as I’d need to pull that out for ethernet or serial access but for the tasks I did on that day it was more than adequate and performed admirably.

Of course your tastes and requirements vary but if you’re undecided between which size to go for and you think you’d prefer a small tablet that happens to be an oversized phone then you’re going to love the iPhone 6 Plus.

Categories
Business voip voip hardware

trefor.net/itspa voip security workshop sponsors announced as Yealink

voip security workshop sponsors yealink secure voip provisioning

Yealink announced as trefor.net/itspa voip security workshop sponsors at Sandown Park on 8th October

Further to last week’s announcement, IP phone vendor Yealink have come on board as ITSPA/trefor.net VoIP security workshop sponsors. The workshop being held during Convergence Summit South at Sandown Park on 8th October.

This is quite apt as Yealink are one of the first IP phone vendors to introduce security certificates as standard on their handsets. This means that when properly provisioned people can’t spoof your CLI because the proxy server is expecting to see a particular certificate to accompany your account credentials.

Yealink are a company that have been creeping up on the rails over the last few years. In the early days of SIP there were only a small number of handset vendors including one or two from the Far East. Then the number of players exploded as the market climbed the curve of expectancy (or whatever it is called). Now however we only see a few active vendors, at least in the UK and some of the Enterprise manufacturers don’t really appear much in the hosted market which is what ITSPA is all about.

The emergence of Yealink from the Far East is quite significant. I’m sure they must have been around for donkeys years but they have slowly grown to be one of the vendors getting most of the attention in the low end market. This is in no small part due to the team they have here in the UK.

Having Yealink on board as VoIP security workshop sponsors is a big help to the industry  as these events do cost hard cash to put on. Although the market is potentially huge – ultimately VoIP will replace the PSTN, it is still a relatively small community of players and events such as the ITSPA/trefor.net voip security workshop do represent great opportunities to get face time with stakeholders.

Anyone wanting to come to the VoIP security workshop can sign up free of charge here.

Categories
broadband Business

TalkTalk Fibre to the premises

TalkTalk fibre Broadband Technology

TalkTalk Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) rollout in York announced

I’ve been doing a bit of background work on UK broadband service provision, the output of which will appear in the fullness of time, in due course (etc etc). Yesterday the Twittersphere threw out the news that TalkTalk fibre to the premises was being rolled out in York. Digging into this (as one does when installing fibre 🙂 ) it seems that this is a part of a deal involving City Fibre Holdings, Fujitsu and Sky, TalkTalk and Sky presumably being the channel/retail partners.

I’m not going to regurgitate general press release blurb that you can find for yourselves. However it is worth saying that in the longer term the whole of the UK needs to be lit up with FTTP. I have pals working for BT who will nay say this and that Fibre To The Cabinet has plenty of mileage in it yet and that people don’t need the 1Gbps+ speeds that FTTP offers. They are right, at the moment.

The argument also comes partly from the fact that businesses need to see a return on their capital investments.  In telecoms this is a very long term game – BT’s Cornwall project for example had a ROI of 12 years only because of EU funding and even then I don’t think it met its subscriber targets which would have further pushed out the time to money date. Add to this the ferociously competitive marketplace with deals such as Sky’s £0 for the first year of unlimited Fibre and it is no wonder that large telcos such as BT don’t see a business case for ubiquitous FTTP.

The TalkTalk fibre to the premises availability in York is going to be an interesting one to watch. Interesting from the point of view of seeing the take up of the service and interesting to see if the business case pans out. York is a far more manageable proposition than the UK as a whole. It will involve capital but probably only a few tens of millions and not the £29 Billion that doing the whole of the UK would supposedly cost (see Caio report here). It will also be interesting to see how the infrastructure sharing works out (ie using BT’s ducts and poles) assuming that is the plan. Lots of scope for confusion there.

Having spent a fair chunk of my recent life looking at tweets about TalkTalk fibre and other broadband ISPs it is easy to see how fibre might take some problems away. Tweets either slate the ISP for poor speed, no speed or engineer no-shows and time spent on hold on the telephone. The poor speeds are often down to the copper line and perhaps end user expectations. This would largely disappear with FTTP (congested core networks aside but there really is no excuse for that nowadays). Engineer no shows I imagine are mostly down to resource problems due to having to cope with an ageing copper network and an increased demand for FTTC. The telephone hold times are a function of the problems caused by these factors.

So the TalkTalk fibre (and, lets be fair, Sky fibre too) rollout in York could be the forerunner of an Utopian ISP world where there are never any complaints about speed and the engineers turn up when expected because they don’t have any copper lines to mend (or replace those pinched). This world is also where probably the good citizens of that fair city spend their time playing with new and hitherto unimagined services happily available on their unbelievably fast and stable broadband lines.

TalkTalk fibre in York? It must be so.

Categories
Bad Stuff broadband End User

Broadband sentiment analysis

broadband sentiment analysis

Broadband sentiment analysis used to examine broadband providers

When you browse an ISP website looking at the packages they have on offer it is really difficult to decide how to choose. By and large they are all very similar. Some may offer different TV bundles and you occasionally see the occasional high street store voucher thrown in as an incentive to sign up. Been trawling through various ISP streams on twitter doing a bit of broadband sentiment analysis. I though this might throw up some real world feedback on specific ISPs that might help people decide on the right one for them.

What came out was quite revealing and makes me glad I no longer work for a broadband service provider. The amount of vitriol that gets heaped on ISPs when their service goes wrong is amazing. It’s no surprise. The same probably happens when there is an electrical outage. People now rely on their internet connection as an utility.

In doing the work it is worth noting that an automated sentiment analysis tool isn’t perfect because computers can’t understand the nuances of human language. Sarcasm for example is very difficult to get right. eg

So and so is a great provider

versus

So and so is a great provider !!!???

Same words but the second would go down as negative sentiment if judged by a human. Because of this some human checking has to be performed. This human checking has brought out some interesting anomalies.

For example this tweet:

@drdeakin: Most reliable network @EE ? Rubbish! 4 mobile contracts plus mobile broadband each month and was about to add a business mobi…

was retweeted 112 times (at the time of writing). I found this curious so looked up @drdeakin. He has 177k followers. No wonder he was getting so many retweets. I also wondered how he got hold of so many followers whilst only following 412 accounts. Was he a celebrity? Turns out he just got married to the mother of someone in “One Direction” – a popular music group, apparently 🙂 (@JohannahDarling with 1.15M followers). On this basis I didn’t consider it fair to apportion negative sentiment to tweets other than the first, although a few did get through early on.

Other tweets were showing positive sentiment but clearly posted by someone with a vested interest. These were discounted (eg “@Exposure4All Get 152Mb broadband, 260+ TV channels & unlimited anytime calls to UK landlines → http://t.co/vYY5LuJFUN http://t.co/Br52f3djA0″ is on the face of it just a sales pitch)

One provider in particular, Plusnet, looked like drowning in complaints. Plusnet suffered a major outage during the window in which I was looking at the tweets. This was exacerbated by the fact that Apple had just released iOS8 and all the fanbois were at it in droves.  As such Plusnet came out very badly compared with other ISPs. However this is a constantly changing data set. I know from experience that ISPs occasionally have problems that seem to the huge disasters at the time but they are overcome. A historical trend chart of broadband sentiment analysis should reveal who is the most reliable ISP overall.

ISPs use Twitter as a means of engaging with dissatisfied customers. Twitter is used basically as an alternative inbound means of communication. Some seem to  handle it better than others.

These two examples illustrate how:

  1. @BTCare @someukbitch Happy to but need a better description of the problem, whats the problem and is the light on your Hub blue?
  2. @EE @RhodriOR Hi Rhordi, Afraid we can’t help with home broadband queries, Please call on on 0844 873 8586 from your … http://t.co/OCZ4Z8vDYs

In this case BT is doing a good job compared with EE who aren’t making it as easy as they could for their customers.

The one common thread that came out of the analysis was the number of times an engineer didn’t show up. People had usually taken days off work to wait in for the visit. This is pretty unacceptable but is unfortunately a situation that has prevailed for years now. Maintaining the copper broadband network is a nightmare.

I’ll be making the output of this broadband sentiment analysis available quite soon but thought some of my findings were interesting enough to publish beforehand.

 

Categories
Engineer security voip

Announcing ITSPA trefor.net VoIP security workshop sponsored by Yealink

trefor.net itspa voip security workshop

trefor.net is teaming up with ITSPA, the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association, to produce a twice yearly VoIP security workshop. The first one is during the Convergence Summit South show at Sandown Park on October 8th, Read on to find out more.

Announcing the ITSPA/trefor.net VoIP security workshop

Telecom Fraud – Part 1 – A Case Study for the Channel by a Paul Taylor from Voiceflex @ 2.30pm

The Part 1 talk which is part of the main Convergence Summit South programme nicely sets the scene for the ITSPA/trefor.net VoIP security workshop colocated at the same venue. The ITSPA/trefor.net VoIP security workshop goes into the main types of fraud perpetrated on VoIP service providers and their customers and discusses how to stop it happening in the first place.

Telecom Fraud – Part 2 – Prevention is Better than the Cure by ITSPA (the UK VoIP trade body) & trefor.net @ 3.15pm

yealink secure voip provisioningThis VoIP security workshop is intended to provide attendees with an overview of the current fraud threats facing the Telecoms/VoIP industry, outlining its scale and discussing the ways to mitigate against these problems before it is too late. Looking from all angles (service provider, reseller and vendor perspective), there will be short presentations from various industry players, outlining their experiences, followed by a panel and Q&A session to discuss the best methods of combatting fraudulent activity and best practice tips. Nibbles and drinks will follow to continue the discussion.

The format includes:

1) Telecoms/VoIP Fraud – the current state of play and how bad is it? – Simon Woodhead of Simwood

2) An outline of three specific types of fraud and what to do to tackle it

a. PBX Hacks David Cargill

b. Accessing SIP credentials  Steve Watts of Yealink

c. Identity spoofing Colin Duffy of VoIPfone

Simon Woodhead will also do a slot on general protection against non-specific threats.

3) Audience Q&A – How to prevent fraud, spot fraudsters and adhere to best practice.

This week is also going to be VoIP week on trefor.net. We have a gang of regular contributors providing posts but if you have an idea for an interesting VoIP posts let us know. You have to be from the VoIP/ITSP industry and it should not be a blatant sales pitch for your company’s products and services.

Finally on the 8th October, the same day as the VoIP security workshop, we are having the 5th trefor.net UC Exec Dinner. This time the speaker is Dean Elwood, CEO of Voxygen. Dean is coming to talk to us about what is happening with OTT VoIP services in the big telco community. This is only open to senior execs in the UC industry. More details here.

Categories
broken gear End User Mobile

Broken S4 screen and Oneplus One availability

sgs4 broken s4 screen

Broken S4 screen once again in insurance claim and Oneplus One availability is somewhat of a disappointment.

Broken S4 screen once again. It’s either my second or third breakage since getting the phone. I get it repaired under the insurance that comes with my bank account. Fifty quid.

The last time it went I decided that if it happened again I’d use the opportunity to find a new phone. It’s happened again. I’ve looked around for a new phone.

I don’t need to get a new contract and so would be paying SIM free prices. This is ok except that the functionality of my Galaxy S4 is fine. I don’t feel the need to buy the latest and greatest just to have a slightly more curved screen or an optimised power button position – you know what I mean. These new phones offer very little over and above those introduced a year or so ago. If they offered unbreakable screens that might be different.

So I looked around. My instinctive port of call was the Nexus 5. A Google phone without the bloatware. To my surprise I found a newer better cheaper Android phone called the Oneplus One. Great power consumption, great processor etc and running Android CynaogenMod. Looked perfect on the face of it.

In town I popped in to Carphone Warehouse to see if I could touch and feel one. They had never heard of it. That rang a small alarm so I went home and did some more research. It’s mostly released in the US of A but can be easily imported. However the it has a limited support for 4g frequencies and will only give you the higher data rates on O2 and 3 in the UK. I’m with O2 but don’t want to restrict myself from moving in the future. An issue but not a showstopper.

The showstopper for me came when I tried to order one. I couldn’t. Take a look at their webpage. I either had to be invited to buy one by an existing owner or enter a competition. I’m sure that with my vast array of social media contacts I could find someone, or someone who knew someone with a oneplus one.

Tbh I can’t be bothered. It isn’t compelling enough to go to the effort. I’ve paid the fifty quid to repair my broken s4 screen. I’ll wait. Either they will bring out a version with more UK frequencies and launch it without the faff or Google will bring out a new Nexus 5. I hear they have stopped making the existing Nexus 5.

I’ve got loads of posts on broken phones over the years. It seems to be a common thread especially for the Samsung Galaxy range. Check out the category here.

Categories
Engineer peering

ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt

ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt,Netflix Germany chooses ecix,

ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt. More news from Deutchland as Netflix announce a deal with Frankfurt based commercial internet exchange ECIX.

ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt. I posted quite recently that ECIX had won the right to host Netflix traffic in Frankfurt. This was a surprise as DE-CIX, one of the largest internet exchanges in the world (universe!) would have been the favourite to win the business.

This latest announcement is all about an offer that ECIX are offering in conjunction with Netflix. Netflix have launched their services in Germany today. For internet service providers this is significant news as in other markets Netflix traffic represents a significant proportion of the total bandwidth used on networks with particular spikes in the evenings when consumers are more likely to be watching movies.

ISPs therefore need to be geared up to carry this traffic which is where ECIX come in. For anyone wanting to peer with Netflix in Frankfurt, ECIX are offering 20Gbps of bandwidth free of charge for the first year. According to the ECIX website this is worth E22k in the first year. As a promotional aside the cost of the equivalent offer at LONAP, where I am a board member, would be £6,500 for the year but this is a different market and ECIX is a commercial venture as opposed to the “mutual” not for profit nature of LONAP.

Netflix will also provide a free ECIX port for up to three years for all networks that qualify for and install a Netflix Open Connect Appliance. This appliance is installed in an ISP network to cache Netflix content and improved the quality the delivered service to the end customer. It should also cut down on the amount of peering bandwidth used.

It would be interesting to understand the business case here which will be based on the cost of the Appliance versus the value of bandwidth saved.

This ECIX/Netflix offer is quite innovative. In the German peering market it will generate a lot of publicity for both parties. Also it’s a fair bet that ISPs will take more than two 10Gig ports and certainly the traffic after the first year isn’t going to go away. The only way is up in this game.

ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt – you know it makes sense:)

Categories
Business ipv6

Business case for IPv6 #UKNOF29

IPv4 business case for IPv6

Participants at UKNOF29 in Belfast were unconvinced that there was a business case for IPv6

It’s over three years since the UK networking industry got together to celebrate the end of the internet as we knew it. The trefor.net “Move over IPv4, Bring on IPv6” party in the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden had almost 400 people sign up.  Every man jack of them there to dance on the grave of the old internet, drinking deep of the heady draught of IPv6. At the time the business case for IPv6 was simply that there would be no more IPv4 address blocks available.

In the meantime what has happened? Not all that much. According to Nathalie Kunneke-Trenaman of RIPE NCC, the organisation that dishes out IP addresses in Europe, the UK is 40th in the global rankings for IPv6 adoption. From personal experience network operators have been getting more efficient at using their existing IPv4 ranges. Recovering addresses no longer needed, moving small allocations around to free up bigger blocks for bigger projects. Stuff like that.

The thing that struck me from the talks at UKNOF29 was the seeming lack of urgency for IPv6.  Dave Wilson of HEANet, the Irish national educational research network (equivalent of our Ja.net) told the audience that they had IPv6 running in production for over ten years but the number of IPv6 enabled devices connecte to the network was so low that the HEANet management had questioned whether they should bother maintaining it. The business case for IPv6 just didn’t jump out of the page and scream “use me”.

This seemed to be the general feeling at the conference. “It’ll get there but there is no urgency”. There was also the feeling that equipment vendors that quoted their kit as IPv6 enabled had not done nearly enough testing and their gear was often bug ridden. This is really down to the lack of use of the features. If people were using IPv6, bugs would get found out and fixed.

Jumping ahead slightly in my timeline the subject of IPv6 came up at the ITSPA (Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association) board meeting yesterday. In the VoIP space the attitude of vendors seems to simply be “we’ll do it when we need to do it”. I doubt that there are any IPv6 enabled VoIP networks/systems anywhere. I’d certainly be interested in hearing about them if there are.

Whizzing back to Belfast it is worth finishing with some positive news in the space. BT are reportedly going to announce a roll out of IPv6 in their own network in 2015. This should be transparent to the end user and BT didn’t really consider it to be news. In reality it shouldn’t be. It should “just work”. The workings of the internet are hugely complicated and Joe Public doesn’t really need to know.

The business case for IPv6 is something Cisco are trying hard to push. Cisco Systems Engineer Veronika McKillop is leading an initiative called the UK IPv6 Council. Check out their LinkedIn page here. The last such initiative was called 6UK. 6UK foundered due to lack of interest and finance. At the time a very rough poll by me of large UK enterprise networks suggested that everybody had it on their list of things to do but there was always something more pressing that took up the resources.There was they said no business case for IPv6.

I think this time Veronika McKillop has a better chance of succeeding. The constitution of the board is as follows:

ISPs – BSkyB, BT, Virgin Media
Enterprise – Cisco, Glaxo Smith Kline UK,and  “a large financial organisation”
Academia – University of Southampton, JANET
Industry body – Institute of Engineering and Technology

The “large financial organisation” is going through an internal approvals process. I guess they really need more Enterprise participants – sticking Cisco in there is just making up the numbers as they should really be in a vendor category even though they are a large enterprise in their own right. The business case for IPv6 really has to come from the Enterprise.

The UK IPv6 Council’s first initiatives include a webinar entitled “The Business Case for IPv6” – you can sign up here. There is also a council meeting on 16th October at IDEALondon. I suspect that getting the UK up to speed with IPv6  is still going to be a long slow job but at least with the big ISPs on board they should be able to get some momentum/have some staying power.

More as it happens on trefor.net. You can also check out the live blogs from Monday and Tuesday at UKNOF29

Categories
dns Engineer engineering ipv6

UKNOF29 live day 2

UKNOF UKNOF29

UKNOF29 live day 2 – as it happens straight to your connected device wherever you are.

Welcome back to a beautiful late summer’s day in Belfast. Or is it early autumn? Anyway it’s a nice one and we have another great day in prospect. UKNOF live day 2 action is again brought to you from inside the Presbyterian Assembly rooms in downtown Belfast.

Today we have UKNOF in the morning with DNS action followed by a feast of IPv6. After lunch the ION conference kicks in. Stay with us for all the action throughout the day.

Don’t forget you can also follow the action on Twitter at #UKNOF29 and watch the live webcast on the UKNOF website.

btw if you missed UKNOF29 day 1 you can catch up here.

Categories
Engineer engineering ipv6 Net

UKNOF29 live blogging

UKNOF UKNOF29

UKNOF29 live blogging from Belfast – stay tuned for live updates as they happen – the best snippets brought to your desktop from inside the room

UKNOF29 is co-located with The Internet Society ION conference at the Assembly Buildings in Belfast. follow the conference on Twitter at #UKNOF29 or #IONConf and watch the live webcast over at www.uknof.org.uk . Alternatively stay with the  UKNOF29 live blogging action by following the frequent updates here.

Categories
Business events gadgets H/W Mobile phones wearable

A Virtual Tech Gadgets Smorgasbord!

Gadgety fun!

September brings word of new gadgets — smartphones, tablets, cameras, wearables, whatever else — and it all looks so tasty!

Ah, September. Summer holidays fading into memory, work ramping back up, children getting settled into new school routines, a hint of a nip in the air (at least once the sun goes down) as autumn begins baby-stepping into place, and the usual blast of new gadgetry hyper…er, news…no, had it right the first time.

Thick and furious, it seems that this week new smartphone goodness was announced by every player in the space (save for Apple, which has its circled-on-every-calendar iPhone event set for next Tuesday). Most if not all of this activity is in conjunction with IFA Berlin 2014 — Europe’s largest consumer electronics event — though it seems that none of the interested parties could be bothered to wait for the start of the actual event (today, that would be). Among the smartphony gadgets soon to show up on shop shelves are:

  • Samsung: Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge
  • Sony: Xperia Z3, Zperia Z3 Compact
  • Microsoft/Nokia: Lumia 830, Lumia 930, and Lumia 730

And those are just the smartphone devices put up for media scrutiny fawning prior to the IFA Berlin 2014’s official opening. Over the next five days similar smartphone announcements are due from HTC, LG, Acer, Lenovo, Huawei, Asus….pretty much everyone except Big Daddy Apple.

As if all of that is not enough, a kit-n-kaboodle of tabletish shiny things are also set for intro (or have already been intro’d), along with some wearable whatnot, and all kinds of digital fun that lies outside of phones and tabs.

It doesn’t take much in the way of deductive reasoning to understand why we as consumers get tech-dumped on during September every year. The mechanisms of hype need a bit of oiling up in preparation for the holidays, interest has to spread from those who are too-in-tune to those who listen to and/or depend on those who are too-in-tune, and the marks…no, no, no…the buying customers need time to get their heads around the cost of the new delights (and time to save coin to buy them).

Only 100 shopping days until Christmas*!

*And 7-8 fewer until Chanukah…but I couldn’t find a website for tracking that.

Categories
datacentre Engineer engineering internet ipv6

Live blogging from #UKNOF29 and Internet Society ION Conference in belfast next week

UKNOF UKNOF29

Look out for live blogging from UKNOF29 and the Internet Society ION conference in Belfast next week.

UKNOF, or the UK Network Operators Forum have really interesting conferences three times a year. I’ve often thought one could fill the blog for  week or two with posts based on the content. The problem is that it takes a long time to write a post based on an individual talk at a conference and at the same time you need to be listening to the talks. it is therefore impossible to write enough posts in a timely manner to do justice to the job. Getting the speakers themselves to turn their talk into a post is also like getting blood out of a stone. Next week at UKNOF29 I’m taking a different approach.

One of the things I’ve noticed about conference talks over the years is that you can probably choose one or two decent slides from each talk and get the gist of what it is all about. The rest is mainly filler. If you had a digest of all that was good at the conference it would save a lot of time and effort. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t go to conferences because a big chunk of their value is in the networking opportunities the bring. However there must be a way to summarise the conference, an exec or engineering summary maybe.

The answer I think is the live blog, The live blog is what they use to provide updates for sporting events.

GOOOAL  1 -1.

Davies strikes the back of the net after a great cross by Evans from the corner post.

Penalty missed – still 1 – 1

You get my drift. Next week therefore at UKNOF29 in Belfast I’m going to try out  new plugin that provides this functionality. I’ve had it since the design of trefor.net was changed, around the time of the Pissup in a Brewery, but not used it yet.

When people go to these engineering events a lot of the action is on the IRC back channel. I don’t user IRC because it gets too busy although it can provide some interesting insights. I can only cope with so many means of communication. Also I’ve not identified a suitable plug in for the the chromebook yet. The other channel, which is pretty constrained due to its character limitation is Twitter but hashtags don’t seem to have that much effect at these technical conferences. I think it is more the domain of the marketing luvvie.

So I think the live blog could well work for this sort of event, if properly done. The beauty is that It almost only needs a line or two about each talk. Maybe cut and paste of info from twitter, an occasional pic of a slide etc.

It must be said there’s some great looking stuff being talked about next week:

“What went wrong with IPv6” by Dave Wilson of HEAnet (Ireland’s Janet)

“IPv6 only data centres” by Tom Hill of Bytemark

“Broadcast editing and delivering over IP” by by our old friend (he’s knocking on a bit:) ) Brandon Butterworth of the BBC.

Just a snapshot really of what is on offer. UKNOF29 is colocated with The Internet Society ION conference. There is more IPv6 stuff in their agenda which you can check out here.

At the time of writing there are 142 people registered to attend UKNOF29 . This is pretty good going considering you have to get to Belfast to be there.

More UKNOF blog posts here. Check em out. See you at UKNOF29? Come up and say hello.

Categories
Business voip

VoIP week on trefor.net 6th – 10th October

Old Phone VoIP week best mobile phone

Advanced notice of VoIP week on trefor.net 6th – 10th October

There are times in the year where VoIP becomes a natural subject to talk about. On these occasions we have a VoIP week on trefor.net. This is where we get lots of guest contributors to write stuff about VoIP. In our case the guest contributors are normally senior industry executives and as such usually have something worth listening to (ok or worth reading if you want to be pedantic).

Our last VoIP week was way back in May where we had a diverse set of posts included articles on Net Neutrality (still in the news now), security and fraud, the technology of location identification for Emergency Services, considerations in designing conference phones, the birth of a new handset, will OTT services kill off the telephony service provider and more.

We saw nostalgia and forward thinking. What’s happening in the Google UC world and will ITSPs need to embrace Lync? There was also a post highlighting a real world case study of someone trying to find a serviced office that would allow them to use their own VoIP service.

The statistics for the week included 6,640 visitors, 9,352 page views and an average of 296 RSS feed reads a day. There were a total of 414 shares including 90 via Twitter, a whopping 188 via LinkedIn, 73 for Google+ and 63 for Facebook. This mix suggests a predominantly business interest in the subject of VoIP.

This coming VoIP week is timed to coincide with the Convergence Summit South, a channel trade show in which VoIP services resellers descend on Sandown Park Racecourse to discuss VoIP business and to drink lots of beer. That week we are not only having a week of VoIP blog posts. We have a VoIP security jointly organised with ITSPA – the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association and the twice yearly trefor.net UC Executive Dinner. More on the workshop very soon.

The Exec Dinner is by invitation only and largely attracts C Level individuals from the Unified Communications (ie VoIP) industry. Although attendance is by invitation if you are a senior exec in the UC game and want to come you are very welcome to get in touch and I’ll point you in the right direction. These dinners are always great networking events and have a senior industry guest speaker to spark a debate. This next dinner has Voxygen CEO Dean Elwood discussing OTT services in the large telco market.

Finally VoIP week wouldn’t be VoIP week without its guest contributors. If you think you have something to say by all means get in touch and tell your friends. Note this is not an open invitation to write a sales oriented post filled with links to your own product.

C ya.

Categories
Business google phones

iPhone 6 release date – trial web marketing

iphone 6 release date

iPhone 6 release date – blog post used for metrics trial

The iPhone 6 release date is no no interest whatsoever to me other than the fact that the event itself is as usual stirring up lots of interest in the online media. The reason for this is simple. Web based businesses usually make their money in three main ways:

  • online advertising based on page impressions and click throughs
  • affiliate marketing revenues – commissions on sales made as a result of click throughs
  • by selling goods and services

The key to making money is to get high numbers of relevant visitors to your site. A site selling cameras, for example, isn’t going to benefit from someone searching for cars. Google tries to help the searcher by constantly refining its search algorithms.

A subject such as the iPhone 6 release date is going to attract a lot of interest from a fairly wide demographic and represents a good opportunity to convert site visitors to revenues from one or more of the above listed mechanisms. All the “mainstream” media are going to want to use such an event to attract visitors and this they very much do. We get a constant dribble of non-news, rumours, “leaked images” and speculation about specifications. All this despite historical evidence that suggests each launch produces a product that is not very different to its predecessor. Apple et al have great marketing teams.

It is easy to see why the media participates in the hype. The featured image is a screenshot of the Keyword Planner tool supplied by Google to help advertisers with their Adwords campaigns. You can see that there are an awful lot of people (and this is specifically in the UK) searching for iPhone related information1. Almost 785,000 785,ooo searches a month. That’s a lot of visits to compete for. It’s no wonder the media is weighing itself dumbing down with “relevant” clickbait even if the clicked to information is scant.

Our plans for the trefor.net business include organising events but we also in the process of producing specialist brand sites geared at making money from affiliate marketing. There is a lot of money to be made in commissions from the sales of broadband connections, mobile phone signups etc and the space is already fairly crowded. Participants in this market, essentially that of online deal comparison, can easily make seven figure revenues from a single brand if they are at the top of the Google rankings and have a website well optimised to converting visitors to cash.

At trefor.net we are getting into the process of website Search Engine Optimisation. It’s fairly standard stuff. You have to include relevant keywords both in your metadata and in your content and have a properly structured site with urls also containing keywords. Links, both inbound and outbound from relevant authoritative sites are also important. These are all things you can work on. We have been writing content for over 6 years with 2,328 posts to show for it. For most of this time scant regard was given to SEO.  The process of going through a large number of posts and optimising them for particular keywords is somewhat lengthy but is ongoing ans will hopefully be worthwhile. At some stage soon we are also going to optimise the URL structure and this is something we will need to take great care over. The last thing we want to do is to break a ton of existing inbound links.

In tandem with this we look at the behaviour of visitors when they arrive at the site. In an ideal world you want to keep your visitors for as long as possible and have them click on as many pages as possible. Each new click is s potential source of advertising revenue. Google, with its Analytics tool, provides some help in doing this but doesn’t provide a complete picture of the visitor behaviour.

We have just signed up with Crazy Egg which should give us a graphical representation of the behaviour of visitors to the site. Who clicks where and when. By tracking this information we should be able to improve the site so that more people click on more links. In one sense doing this for trefor.net is just a learning curve for the real work which will be on subsidiary brands such as broadbandrating.com (coming soon) which will be our first foray into the affiliate marketing game.

This post, which is using what must be a highly popular search term in iPhone 6 release date (60,500 searches though low competition for the term, presumably because there is currently no money to be made out of the iPhone 6 because it isn’t yet available) is really an engine to monitor the behaviour of readers of the post.

If you are specifically looking for the iPhone 6 release date the word has it it is 9th September. I’m not publishing any images though I did get a sneak preview of the Samsung Galaxy S5 logo before it came out – check it out here.

1 Surprisingly the iPhone 4s is one of the most used search terms in the UK with 201,000 searches a month.

Categories
End User net neutrality

Namecheap promotes Net Neutrality in USA

namecheap net neutrality video ISP traffic management

Namecheap Net Neutrality video simplifies the message to the man in the street.

Net Neutrality as a subject could provide enough posts for a stand alone blog. Probably does somewhere. There are certainly enough posts on the subject on this site including this recent one from Pete Farmer. Was chatting to Matt Russell of  hosting and domain name co Namecheap (and trefor.net) this morning who mentioned that a Namecheap Net Neutrality video was going live this afternoon. The above YouTube video is the outcome.

The Net Neutrality debate has to a large extent been the demesne of industry. Network operators and content providers in the main. This Namecheap video is a very good attempt to get the message about Net Neutrality across to the man in the street who probably doesn’t understand the issue. The issue, if you are one of those men in the street, is that telcos want to charge content providers for delivering their content reliably to you. Telcos want to do this because delivering an ever greater amount of content is costing them money. There is a very recent example where OTT video provider Neteflix has had to pay telco Comcast to provide sufficient bandwidth to meet their streaming needs.

This was not a very good precedent but Netflix were caught in a difficult position.  They needed to be able to guarantee a certain quality of picture to their customers. Comcast also provide their own video services so arguably this could be seen as being anti-competitive. The point of course is that the customer, in this case of both Comcast and Netflix is already paying for the bandwidth.

The biggest issue is that this could be just the tip of the iceberg. We could end up with a multilayer internet where some people who can afford it get a better service that others. This is certain to stifle innovation in internet services where start-ups might be unable to pay to guarantee the delivery of their product.

 

Categories
End User internet Legal net neutrality

Consumer Rights and Net Neutrality

Consumer Rights

Consumer Rights is a far less toxic term than Net Neutrality.

I’ve previously written for Trefor.Net on the subject of Net Neutrality and what it means to members of the VoIP community. And I think it’s high time for an update, but this time considering consumer rights.

After a promising start the European Union went off the rails, passing a first reading of a text that essentially outlawed 4G services. VoLTE requires prioritisation. Hard line elements on the subject of “net neutrality” managed to convince a strange coalition that it was a good idea to promote their ideological definition just before an election. It was spun as a vote winner, this despite that fact that 999 calls would no longer be treated differently. Consumer rights being protected, were they?

Unforeseen consequences at their worse, which is why I believe that net neutrality is now a toxic term and should be avoided. In fact, I’ve worked on briefing documents that are four pages long that completely avoid the term. I also try to avoid “Open Internet” for similar reasons, as both — as I’ve written before — mean different things to different people.

That’s where consumer rights come into play.

What we want is a level playing field. We want a distribution system for content that doesn’t discriminate against certain types of lawful content for vested reasons. Most of all, we don’t want people misled, and we want consumer rights upheld.

If you ask the average consumer on the street whether Skype and YouTube are part of the internet, anyone other than a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia that would no doubt answer “no”. By extension, I defy you to find anyone, other than hardcore employees of EE and Vodafone, who would suggest that internet access does not include access to Skype, YouTube, or similar services.

Remember the outrage when people were buying 15 burgers for 99p and it transpired that those burgers were made from horses? It’s the same thing. It’s a basic principle of consumer law that you don’t mislead at the point of sale; be it overtly or through trickery in the small print. Consumer rights need to be protected.

This is why I was so heartened to see Philip Davies MP (Conservative member of Parliament for Shipley) build upon his great performance sticking it to Ed Richards (Ofcom CEO – 40 minutes into the video on the link) on the subject by tabling an amendment to the latest consumer rights bill. This amendment basically just said that you can’t call something “internet” unless it complies with the spirit of everything I’ve said before. For those who are interested, the amended stated;

A term which has the object or effect of permitting a trader to block, restrict or otherwise hinder the access of a consumer to any lawful Electronic Communications Network or Electronic Communications Service on the basis of an unreasonable or unusual definition of “internet access”, “data”, “web access” or similar word or phrase. Nothing in this prohibition shall affect filters for the purpose of child protection.

Electronic Communications Network or Electronic Communications Service shall have the same meaning as in the Communications Act 2003.

tn_own_consumer-rights_tweetPhilip Davies MP is a libertarian Conservative and as a result is one of my favourite MPs. This means he’s often at polar opposites to Her Majesty’s Opposition and an uncomfortable bed fellow with their coalition partners. That makes it even more incredible that the amendment was gladly supported by both the Shadow Minister, Helen Goodman MP and Julian Huppert MP (Liberal Democrat Member for. Cambridge and a good advocate for the technological community). A rare moment of cross party backbench support that, alas, was defeated without Government support, which is still backing the self regulation horse.

All the amendment sought to do was to ensure that the likes of Vodafone and historically EE would be unable to call a spade anything other than a spade and that consumer rights would be upheld. As such, defeat was a great disappointment.

In any event, word on the street is that there may soon be new signatories to the Broadband Stakeholder Group’s Open Internet Code of Conduct. The amendment may get re-tabled in the House of Lords. And The Council of Europe may well get its ducks back in a row.

The battle is one that is very much being fought on three fronts, however the momentum is now behind those of us who just want a level playing field to compete on. Who knows, it might even be over by Christmas.

Categories
End User google mobile connectivity phones

Mobile Phone in Spain – Holiday Tech

mobile phone in Spain

Mobile phone in Spain is very useful whilst on holiday – this post was written mostly in the shade by the pool.

Some of you will have noted on my Facebook timeline that I have been on holiday for most of August. At the moment I’m in Cala D’Or in Mallorca. Sat in the shade on the hotel terrace looking down on a moored yacht. Abba in the background:) The use of my mobile phone in Spain proved indispensable.

When we got here the first thing I did was to establish the comms position. Hotel WiFi was cheap at only 10 Euros per device for the 12 days of our stay. However I didn’t want to encourage to the kids to spend all their time on their laptops so I opted for the 1 free hour a day per person.

Next thing I did was source a Spanish sim. Mobistar 1GB for 20 Euros. I needed it to work the sat nav. We had a private transfer from the airport when we landed and had a hire car delivered to the hotel the following day. I needed the Sat Nav to make sure I could find my way back to the hotel the following day after picking up the heir who was arriving a day afer us.

translate_spainAs it turned out the Mobistar sim came in handy for other purposes. Kid3’s specs broke and the nearest optician was in the next town. I found the optician using google and then maps to get there. I took a pic of the street sign in case I couldn’t find my way back to the car.

I also did this in the huge underground car park in the centre of Palma. At least I took a pic of the parking bay number so that I couldn’t forget where I parked – easily done when you are using a hire car. Interesting to see car parks with red and green lights above each bay to indicate whether there was space.

The optician couldn’t fix the specs so we hunted down a supermarket using google maps to buy some superglue. We then used google translate to find out the spanish word for glue and showed it to an assistant.

We used TripAdvisor to determine where to eat each evening. By and large this was highly successful. We mostly ended up with great family run restaurants. Cala D’Or is very touristy and there were a lot of places I’d say were transplanted from Benidorm (though I haven’t been to Benidorm) and geared at the Fosters drinker. TV screens all over the place.

Restaurante Selani was #2 on TripAdvisor behind an Ice Cream kiosk at #1. The food was good enough to engender a very positive response from Kid4, the gastronome of the family. TripAdvisor did however make us 20 minutes late for the table as it took us to a spot only 60 metres away but across the marina. The 60 metres took 20 minutes to walk!

Every pub and restaurant in Cala D’Or, everywhere we went in Mallorca in fact, had free wifi. Whilst I had my 1GB sim the benefit of the wifi was the automatic backing up of my holiday snaps to Google+ which only happens in WiFi range. Upload was consistently slow though.

holiday mobile data usageWith three days of our holiday left I had 120MB left of the 1Gig.  MIght just last. Ran out with two days to go. Usage has been pretty linear and has consisted of mostly twitter, facebook, reading the papers and keeping up with email. We also streamed the Halifax v Lincoln City game (3-2 unfortunately) using iPlayer. After the first couple of days we didn’t need to use the sat nav other than to find the occasional restaurant.

Whilst I had some of my bundle left I preferred to use mobile data that any free wifi that might have been on offer. It was clearly based on ADSL with generally poor upload and download. I also noted that the Facebook mobile experience was not very good. It often timed out saying there was no network connection whilst I could access other sites such as the BBC with no trouble.

We left Mallorca with a healthy tan and some great memories. It was noticeable though that our home FTTC based Wifi was so much better. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief when they got their gadgets out at home.

It might be argued that we shouldn’t have needed any connectivity whilst on holiday. However you can see from my experiences above that having a mobile phone in Spain was very useful.  This technology is becoming part and parcel of our everyday lives and why shouldn’t you have it. My experience of being without a phone whilst it was being fixed also brought me to the same conclusion. Why shouldn’t we use the tech. It is useful.

That’s it for now. Summer is over, holidays are over (for now) and it’s time to get back to work. There is a fairly packed programme on the blog in the run up to Christmas. Check out the schedule here.

Hasta la vista baby.

snorkel

Categories
broadband End User food and drink fun stuff internet media travel

What I Did On My Summer Holiday (Digital Issue)

digital summer

Recounting a (digital) summer holiday, well spent.

I didn’t intend to take a break from writing during this year’s La Famille Kessel summer holiday in Normandy. No, I had plans to regale stalwart trefor.net readers with missives on the nature of my vacation from the digital perspective, intending to carry the content flag for anyone out there hungering for fresh pixelated meat during these dog days of August. Of course, I also planned to put sugar in the Latte Cannelle that just arrived to the left of KoryChrome here at Paris’s RROLL. Not salt.

Offering up the Yiddish proverb my departed mother used to wield easily and quite often, “Man plans and God laughs.”

Failures aside (gee, that was easy), in an attempt to backwards-engineer satisfaction of the aforementioned hunger I will recount five (5) areas of computer-based fun I indulged in around the edges of my mostly unearned R&R over the past four weeks.

<OK. Everybody take a breath. Here we go.>

  1. As an R.E.M. fan(atic) dating back to the 1983’s “Murmur” I was thrilled to learn in May that the band was finally making good on their long-held promise/threat to issue a rarities collection. And in typical R.E.M. style the boys over-delivered, kicking out not one collection but two — Complete Rarities: I.R.S. 1982-1987 (50 tracks) and Complete Rarities: Warner Bros. 1988-2011 (131 tracks). 181 tracks, the equivalent of 18 albums of “new” material. Of course, the fact that I already had 98% of the tracks didn’t make this treasure trove any less interesting, oh no! These two digital “boxsets” represented an UPGRADE opportunity supreme, as well as hours and hours of artwork foraging and data tagging and reconciliation amusement. Just my kind of BIG data.
  2. It seems that every summer for going on who-knows-how-many years I have on some late night or other sat down at my computer determined to finally get a definitive handle on media information delivery. Or, in other words, figuring out how to configure RSS feeds in a way that not only brought links across from my favorite resources in a great many areas, but that did so in a way that allowed me to spend more time benefitting from the deluge than managing it. I hesitate to whether I succeeded this time, but with RSS Notifier in place and tweaked pretty darn well I can say that my hopes are high. If next summer I find myself NOT re-attacking this project, at that time I will know that “Paid” has finally been put to this bill.
  3. The new trefor.net site that you hold in your hands, dear reader, has been praised far and wide, end to end, and in between the cracks (yes, I am the reason the store is out of clichés until next Tuesday). And on the surface it rocks far and wide, end to end…well, etc. Behind the scenes, though, quite a bit of work remains to be done to really get the thing humming. One major effort taking place is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) enhancement/reconciliation for legacy trefor.net posts going back six-plus years, an ongoing task that represented pretty much all of the work I did on the site during August, between opening my throat for copious food and drink intake, forming a marvelous first-impression of Guernsey (the result of a brilliant 4-day holiday-within-a-holiday excursion), and doing whatever-the-heck-else constituted a holiday well taken. Regular visitors to the site will likely not notice any changes to their trefor.net experience, save perhaps for greater crowds milling about the more popular attractions therein.
  4. 38+ rolls of film. In the four weeks stretching from 27-July to 24-August I shot over 38 rolls of film. “Holy Shutterbug, Batman!”, you are no doubt thinking, because presented like that the feat sure sounds impressive. And expensive. Leyna the Leica is quite the digital camera, though, so please temper your awe accordingly. Still, I do shoot in RAW and that necessitates that I “develop” the photos into .jpg files, adjusting various photo attributes as necessary (exposure, contrast, shadows, highlights, white and black clipping, saturation, sharpening, noise reduction, and perspective correction, to name far too many), so if you want to let your awe (awe for RAW?) run rampant then by all means please do.
  5. The “La Famille Kessel” cookbook project continued during summer holiday 2014, with 10 recipes added, the appendage of notes and photos to existing content, and even some scant thought paid to eventual production. The collection, an ongoing concern, is an amorphous beast of a thing that will bring together pass-down family and friend recipes and a wealth of those found in key cookbook/magazine/whatever over the years. Promises to be quite the tasty thing when version 1.0 is finally completed…sometime in 2022 or thereabouts, coinciding with the kicking of The Boy out of his broadband-enabled nest.

So in summing up my digital meanderings for summer 2014, it is apparent that it was all about data and databases (about as surprising as water flowing out of the spigot when the tap is turned on). And naturally, we at trefor.net are curious to know what you did to wile away the long days and short nights of summer — nobody will laugh — and thus invite your prolific Comments input. C’mon…have at it!

 

Categories
broadband End User internet Net

Openreach Profit Incentive in Action

BTOpenreach engineering visit Install ofcom strategic review

Openreach’s sub-contractors may not all be so bad after all.

I finally had BT Infinity installed a few weeks ago. Having watched the installation of Huawei DSLAM at the end of the road some time before that with much anticipation, I pondered how badly BT Openreach and its subcontractors would botch the job and ruin the frontage to our community, while also yearning to finally break beyond the 14 Mbps glass ceiling I have endured for 3 years.

With regular broadband I have been fortunate, being on brand new copper and only 100 yards from the primary connection point with a short run thereafter to the exchange; thus I’ve always had the top end of the advertised broadband speed. My problem was with up, though, not down. Regular readers will know I am a home-based professional nomad, and as such uploading documents to file servers etc. in a timely manner is rather important. 1 or 2 Mbps just doesn’t cut it.

I had done my research and knew that an Openreach engineer would have to visit to install Infinity II. Forums and blogs were full of details about cable models and data extension kits and Openreach engineers having to run new cables through peoples’ houses. In this industry, we would hardly trust them to dress themselves in the morning half the time let alone undertake works in our nicely decorated hallways. I was scared.

Turns out though that the BT Homehub 5 has an integrated cable modem, so that problem went away (and I note it has better in-house coverage for WiFi than its predecessors — I have been fortunate enough to have had a Homehub 2, 3 and 4 and a Businesshub 3 to play with — and it didn’t nerd up VoIP with SIP ALG either). Also, as the cabling in the house is only 3 years old and to modern standards, the engineer felt no need to run a new line or change face plates — useful as it is a large integrated one that includes TV aerial, satellite, etc. — and just plugged it in. The entire installation took about 20 minutes, including the jumpering in the PCP and DSLAM.

What struck me most about my Openreach install was that my neighbour was also having it done in the same installation slot. The engineer visited both premises and did what he had to do onsite, and then visited the PCP/DSLAM to do jumpering just once (i.e., he simultaneously did both jobs). Furthermore, he called me on my mobile from the PCP/DSLAM to check if it was working, thus negating the potential need for going back and forth. Turns out the sync speed is virtually the advertised 76Mbps up down and 19 Mbps down up, with the reality not far off (up is almost dead on, down hovers around 50/60 so far).

The engineer was a sub-contractor to BT Openreach, working for Kelly Communications. These sub-contractors are often derided for cherry picking easy jobs, making out that the customer wasn’t present when they were, so they can complete as many of the low-hanging fruit as possible to boost their profit margins.

I am not sure whether Openreach Direct Labour would’ve had the initiative to simultaneously perform two installations, thus, ultimately, reducing lead times and increasing customer satisfaction. I do know that Openreach Direct Labour, upon realising that there was insufficient copper in the ground between a PCP and the exchange to install a new line in a colleague’s home, had to get another engineer to pull it through and then that engineer couldn’t just provision the line, they had to get another one to do it (no doubt you can imagine how long that sorry saga took). If that job had been sub-contracted, I wonder whether it would’ve been done more efficiently and ultimately to a better level of customer satisfaction?

The incidents we have all endured at the hands of Openreach are many and would shock anyone. Anne Robinson and Watchdog even did a piece on it. Many of these incidents involve sub-contractors, however I think we are in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater here as clearly the profit incentive is doing some good in certain circumstances….. it may even work to overcome the inherent moral hazard in the way Openreach’s prices are calculated (i.e., the industry often pays for inefficiency, directly through the charge controls and indirectly through non-Openreach brand damage). Surely, the real challenge is how to we promote the positives and negate the negatives.

Lots of posts on t his site re BT engineering visits – check out this one on BT engineering visit lottery

Categories
fun stuff Weekend

Offline at 30,000 feet – Tesco sold out of ice #icebucketchallenge

pringles & tesco sold out of ice

Tesco sold out of ice due to Ice Bucket Challenge (presumably).

Offline at 30,000 feet I have nothing to do but listen to music and read my recently acquired Wisden Anthology 1963 – 1982 which whilst hugely interesting to us cricket buffs can only be dipped into in short bursts.

The outcome is boredom. This post, typed diligently by prehensile right thumb and using the WordPress Android app, is the outcome. I can’t even look out of the window for whilst seat 11 is notionally a window seat it lacks said orifice and I am left with staring at the wall. There is an alternative to the wall which is the drinks trolley.  I am watching the drinks trolley slowly making its way towards row 11. When it arrives at row 11 I hope to purchase a pod of Pringles which will be expensive but at least will provide me with something to do for the short interval between popping them open and scoffing the lot.

For reference the pack cost €2.50 and contained 25 crisps/Pringles. At ten pence each this might sound expensive but the value for money will be influenced by a combination of how long I can make them last, somewhat akin to how long you can keep a Rollo (or fruit pastille etc – you choose) in your mouth before finishing it off, and the value that might be ascribed to their contribution towards alleviating the boredom. As it happens I quite like Pringles,  especially sour cream and  chive, and I suspect I will dispense with any pretence of finding value in favour of a quick fix.

They are at least not as much of a rip off as the water in Palma airport which was €3.60 for a 750 cl bottle. You have to discard any liquids before going through security so you have to buy water for the journey when you get air side. In fairness to the travelling public, ie me, they should regulate the price of water at air side retailers.

We are, as you might have guessed, on our way home from our Mallorcan holiday. A tech (ish) post is in development but in the meantime this one is making good use of my time.

Apart from the Pringles I have refrained from ordering any other edibles from the cabin crew. This is because when we get home, which all being well should be around 20.30 tonight, I  am having beans on toast with sausages and/or bacon. The ingredients have been pre ordered with kid3,  who returned home early from our holiday to get some A level course work done, hopefully having nipped to Tesco for supplies.

During my globe trotting days I would look forward to returning home to some proper British food in the guise of either beans on toast or a takeaway curry. On this occasion we have only just had a curry so beans on toast it is. The food in Mallorca was great largely because we mostly avoided the crappy tourist joints that all seemed to get their ingredients from the same frozen food outfit. The biggest problem was gross over consumption with a large buffet breakfast each morning at around 10am followed by a club sandwich or simlar for lunch from the pool bar. The late evening meal added to the problem because it ensured that we were never hungry at breakfast time.

So next week it’s back to the gym and the morning swims in an effort to reverse the decline. “I’d been doing so well”.

Although I’m in the office, tomorrow, Friday, it’s for a board meeting and I don’t consider my holiday to be properly over until Monday.  In the meantime we have James Powell’s 50th birthday bash on Friday night, ditto Ian Stobie’s on Saturday followed by shoving some steaks on the bbq at home on Sunday. Is there any hope?

Flight progress update: we have crossed the channel and should be on the ground in 25 minutes or so. Gives you a bit of an idea of where we are. I’m told by the rest of the family, who have the luxury of being in row 12 behind me and therefore actually having a window, that it is cloudy down there.  This reminds me that for the whole of the time we have been away, basking in the glorious Mallorcan sunshine, the weather back home has been terrible. This is a real result. There’s nothing worse than paying a lot of money to go somewhere sunny only to find that the UK has had the hottest summer since 1963. This particular holiday is doubly blessed because not only has the weather at home been bad,  now that we are on our way back the forecast is set to change and next week the summer is returning to Lincolnshire. Yay.

As we come in to land I leave you with an image of a Ryan Air seat back, approximately 2 1/2 phone lengths from my nose.  Ciao Mallorca.  Hasta la vista baby.

image

Footnote.  Ice Bucket challenges are trendy at the moment. Got home to find that kid3’s band had to use frozen peas for their ice bucket challenge. Tesco sold out of ice!

Categories
Bad Stuff Business Mobile

EE Priority Answer – A Tempest in a Tea Cup?

priority answer EE home broadband

Priority answer service introduced by EE causes twitter outcry but Pete Farmer disagrees

Surfing the Telegraph website in recent days my interest was caught by an article on EE Priority Answer, a new initiative from our friends in Hatfield that offers you the option to jump to the front of the customer services queue (during working hours) in return for the consideration of fifty pence. The resulting Twitter storm (aka The Hamster Wheel of Outrage™) was somewhat predictable:

Sundip Meghani tweeted: “Everything Everywhere, but not Everyone. Disgraceful that EE doesn’t treat everyone fairly.”

Matt Woosie said he would “definitely leave EE” at the end of his contract because of the charge.

John Masters tweeted: “EE, disgusting that you’re charging for priority on query calls. Everyone should be treated equally.”

I haven’t spoken to Mr Meghani, Woosie or Masters on the subject, of course, but I am guessing that there is a basic British principle of queuing that has been offended by EE Priority Answer. I have a great deal of sympathy with that view, after all, as we Brits proudly enforce the custom on a daily basis at the taxi rank or Post Office. It’s also easy to bash EE. I recently delighted in it an open letter to Olaf (their CEO) regarding mid-contract price increases; Voice over IP trade body ITSPA came close to referring them to the Advertising Standards Agency over a Kevin Bacon advert. They also top the leagues in terms of the complaints they receive. In this case, though, despite their being close to my ranking them my “arch nemesis” I don’t think we should be so hasty.

The UK telecommunications market — especially mobile— is rather saturated and very competitive. Thus, a premium product for a premium service at a premium price (like Priority Answer) is a natural evolution of their businesses. And the notion of Britishness I mentioned earlier is becoming somewhat archaic. For instance, EasyJet has offered Priority Boarding for years, and nightclubs theme parks have VIP lanes in which members or others can jump the queue. Our time is becoming increasingly valuable to us, which is why Sainsbury’s deliver in one-hour slots, British Gas services boilers in two-hour slots and, heck, even the Jurassic aged BT Openreach has floated narrower appointment windows. A million more people in the UK now employ a cleaner than did ten years ago, there are apps like Orderella to help jump bar queues on a night out….. First Class carriages on trains always arrive in London first (ever notice that?). I could go on forever.

The crux of it is that many people are willing to pay a premium to save time, jump a queue, or have an easier life, and this has been the case for many years. Others want the cheapest possible way to get a product or service and happily trade their time in return for a reduced price – getting a later train to avoid paying the Anytime rate or rejigging your schedule to get an Advance ticket is no different. We really shouldn’t pretend otherwise. What we should do is welcome innovation, be it technological or in service delivery. The market (consumers voting with their feet) will ultimately decide whether EE’s move is right or wrong.

I suspect today’s Twitter storm over Priority Answer will soon be forgotten.  After all, Easyjet survived the introduction of Priority Boarding and Alton Towers is still going strong despite offering Fastrack tickets. There’s that, and their pedigree in 4G services is still stronger than the competition, which I believe is of far more importance and relevance to one of their key markets than an optional charge for jumping a queue.

Google+

Categories
Business hosting

Bandwidth limit exceeded

bandwidth limit exceeded

Bandwidth limit exceeded message on Peel Swimming pool website.

Regular readers will know I’m on holiday – this week its Peel in the Isle of Man. When one is on holiday one goes for bracing walks along the Coastal Path and relaxing strolls around the harbour and castle. One also has multiple cups of tea in favourite caffs and quite possibly a dip in the sea. This week it’s too cold to swim in the sea so I thought I’d check out the local pool. Unfortunately their website is down and shows only the following message “bandwidth limit exceeded”.

This is rare but not totally unusual. The slight eyebrow raiser here is that one imagine that Peel Swimming Pool is publicly owned and therefore unlikely to have a website hosted by a commercial entity. I can’t check because the website is unavailable – bandwidth limit exceeded! Maybe it’s a not for profit job.

Anyway I did a quick “who is” and it would seem that the domain name  westernswimmingpool.im is owned and managed by  Techcentre Limited  of Technology House  Woodbourne Lane, Douglas. IM1 3LJ. They, Techcentre, are a Microsoft Gold partner and fwiw I note use the same image library as Timico’s website (for years).

Wasn’t totally sure where this post was going but here it is. Techcentre are somewhat disingenuous in registering the domain name as their own. It means that the Western Swimming Pool in Peel are stuck with them for hosting unless they are happy to change domain names. In turn the swimming pool itself is naive in allowing this to happen.

I can’t believe that techcentre would let the website get to situation where the “bandwidth limit exceeded” message comes up. There’s something else going on. The message has moved on to

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator at [email protected] to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

 

At this rate I’m going to have to nip up to the pool to find out if it is open to the public this afternoon. No harm I suppose. I’m on holiday. There is no rush.

Another  internet bandwidth related post here

Categories
Engineer media peering

Netflix Germany launch to use ECIX instead of DE-CIX

ECIX free 20Gbps Netflix bandwith Frankfurt,Netflix Germany chooses ecix,

Netflix Germany launch uses ECIX instead of largest player DE-CIX

Netflix, in case you didn’t know is a company that streams TV to your home over your broadband internet connection. In fact in markets in which it operates Netflix is responsible for a big proportion of bandwidth usage. Last year Netflix was reported to have 29% of all USA ISP traffic. Netflix Germany is a new venture.

There are all sorts of issues to take into consideration before Netflix can launch in a new country. Content licensing rules and local regulatory rules for example and what the competition looks like. Some countries may demand investment in local content.

From a technical standpoint Netflix also has to make sure their network can deliver the content to local endpoints. They do this through a number of methods including placing a cache inside an ISP’s own network providing that ISP is large enough and its traffic levels sufficiently high to justify the cost of the equipment. For the most part your ISP will likely carry Netflix content through its peering arrangements.

Peering in internet terms is the sharing of traffic between service providers. I’ll carry yours if you carry mine. It is by far the most cost effective way for an ISP to connect to “the internet” which is of course just a large global collection of individual ISP networks. To make this easy the industry has spawned Internet Exchanges (known in the game as IXPs). In the UK we have a number of them including LONAP, of which I am a director, LINX, London’s largest and the UKs oldest, IX-Manchester, IX-Scotland and IX-Leeds. The regional market for IXPs is an emerging one. The IXP model is that of  mutually beneficial not for profit.

Netflix Germany has put its peering arrangements in place and there is a shock in store. The natural thing for Netflix would have been to join Frankfurt based DE-CIX, the world’s largest IXP. However instead Netflix Germany has opted to join ECIX, also based in Frankfurt but much smaller than DE-CIX. In Frankfurt ECIX has 34 members compared with DE-CIX’s 580. Logically you would opt for DE-IX as doing so would make it a lot easier to connect to many more ISPs and thence to their end users.

However the Netflix entry on industry resource peeringdb shows the following message:

***NOTE ON FRANKFURT, GERMANY***

Netflix will not be on DE-CIX Frankfurt. We encourage you to join ECIX and will also allow PNI from any network that desires to interconnect with us at Equinix FR4 & FR5

This announcement has sent shockwaves around the IXP world. It’s great for ECIX as it will encourage new members. The alternative of Private interconnect through Equinix would probably come at a cost as Equinix is a commercial, for profit data centre operator.

Word has it that the decision was taken because DE-CIX pricing was far too high.

This is quite interesting as there is a tendency for the larger internet exchanges to add overhead. The internet is growing so fast that IXPs are growing almost automatically along with it. With growth comes new members, bigger ports able to handle more capacity and also more cash.

The relatively easy availability of cash is what makes the scenario interesting. It is easy to understand how an organisation with lots of cash might look around at ways of spending it. The purely mutual model might suggest that this cash is returned to the members in the form of lower operational costs and membership fees. However the European IXP market is also becoming quite competitive as organisations fight to attract new members moving into the area. For example LINX, DE-CIX and AMSIX (Amsterdam) might all be competing to be the first European peering point for North American and Asian networks. This competition demands marketing resources. With the growth of traffic over an IXP network also comes responsibility to maintain uptime and this also costs money.

Getting the balance right of where to spend the cash is not an easy one and one wonders whether, if we are hearing right that this is a pricing based move,  this is now reflected in the Netflix Germany decision to choose ECIX over DE-CIX.

Netflix Germany end users will be oblivious to all this but it does go to show that underneath it all the internet is a complex organism with lots going on to make it work. It’s also an industry that is highly interesting to work in and gets more so with each passing year. If there is anything more to report I’ll get back to you. You heard it first on trefor.net etc…

Categories
Business fun stuff

Banknote – I promise to pay the bearer

banknote

Banknote promise by Andrew Bailey, Chief Cashier, Bank of England.

This afternoon I used a twenty pound note to pay for two teas and a fruit scone at the @Harbour_lights cafe in Peel. For the first time, ever, I noticed the wording on the banknote “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds”. The note was signed by an Andrew Bailey, Chief cashier.

A certain number of questions arise from this. In the first instance I’m pretty sure that Andrew Bailey will not have signed every banknote himself. That would be ridiculous. He’d spend all his time just sat there signing banknotes. Millions of ’em. That would be most unproductive and not a particularly good use of his time. I imagine he is quite well paid. No the signature will be a facsimile.

That, however, is not the issue that prompted me to write this post. The question is were I to approach Andrew Bailey with the twenty pound note (I’d have to use a different one because I’ve already spent the one in the photo) what would he give me in exchange? Were he to give me, the bearer, another twenty pound note it would render the whole exercise completely pointless. Just swapping twenty pound notes would be plain daft.

So what would Andy (I already feel as if I know him well enough to call him Andy) give me for my banknote? Not beaver pelts. That would not be scalable. Not gold. We in the UK abandoned the gold standard many years ago afaik. I don’t know the answer which is why I’m asking you. My dad doesn’t know either – I just asked him and he would be interested in finding out.

I’ll finish with a public apology. I realise that we aren’t supposed to reproduce banknotes. No idea what the penalty is but I feel sure there is one and it could involve doing time. I have taken a risk in posting a photo of the twenty pound note in question. I’m sorry about this but I felt it was necessary accompanying illustration. Evidence if you like.  You can check by getting one of your own twenty pound notes out and taking a look yourself but I have made it easy for you.

Categories
Weekend

Gull at Peel breakwater

gull at Peel

The gull at Peel breakwater

I was up early as I always am in Peel and wandered down to the breakwater. There was no one else around except for the woman opening up the cafe and the gull. The gull at Peel breakwater was a pretty cool customer. He stood there eyeing me. He knew that if I tried anything he would be able to fly off.

I walked slowly towards him taking pictures as I got closer. As I got to within a few feet he took off and I instinctively clicked the camera button on the phone. I didn’t look at the photo until I got home but was pleased with the outcome. When you are on holiday you are easily pleased:)

After lunch I will saunter again through town to the beach. The prom has an ice cream parlour that sells Davison’s. Delish. The format is quite likely to be wander idly around, catch an ice cream and time the whole stroll to end up at the Creek for a beer. Mam is cooking a curry for tonight. She is a good cook. We all look forward to a bit of luxury living on the island.

I may stop off at the Harbour Lights Cafe. They have free wifi and a twitter account – @harbour_lights. Follow them if you will. I’ve written about them on more than one occasion – check these posts out. I should get myself hired by the Isle of Man Tourist Board the number of posts I’ve written about the place!

Whatever happens, wherever I stroll, whichever pub I stop off at it is going to be a fairly chilled few days. A chilled 3 weeks actually. Please come back to trefor.net for more exclusive holiday photos as they are snapped.

Hasta la vista amigos.

Categories
End User phones

iPhone 6 photo leak points to rounded edges – oh!

leaked iphone 6 photo

leaked iPhone 6 photo points to rounded edges – analysis

Am on the Isle of Man ferry and have a bit of time to kill.  Now that I’ve managed to book tickets for Wales v AllBlacks. This was an achievement that involved an hour’s wait in a queue, most of which was whilst I was also waiting to get on the boat that was 2 hours late leaving Liverpool. Ah well. Being last on and in the Premium Lounge all the papers have already been taken. It doesn’t matter. I have tinternet and most of the other occupants of the lounge look as if they were born pre WW2 and will need the papers to fall asleep to. Having tinternet I’ve landed on the telegraph website and found a headline about a leaked iPhone 6 photo.

The most startling thing about this is that the telegraph considers this to be a front page news. It’s quite sad really. Why should anyone give a toss what the new iPhone 6 photos look like. I think we must surely have reached saturation in the smartphone marketing stakes. There isn’t enough difference between models to make it interesting any more.

It’s a bit like an advert for a car. It just isn’t possible to make a car look interesting or exciting. You will always have dyed in the wool fans who get hyped up bout a particular model but hey. Get  life…

In the last 10 years I have only had two cars. One was my N reg Peugeot 406 diesel (250k miles on the clock) and the other is my current job, the Jeep Commander. It came as total bemusement to me to find that a neighbour of ours, who was in a company car scheme, spent weeks studying his options before deciding on a Mondeo. Apparently Mondeos were cool – totally dispels the Mondeo man as boring Mr Average myth.

Someone somewhere has probably been able to retire on the success of the Mondeo advert, I’d imagine. Maybe.

Apple have clearly got the marketing clout to keep their fanbois excited about different iterations of their telephone. At the mo. I’d like to ask you, yes you, does anyone really care. If you do care I suggest you look around for something that will make your life more fulfilling. Like doing a 5,000 piece jigsaw or counting the number of sheets on a toilet roll to make sure that they aren’t short changing you.

You get to see it all on trefor.net. It wasn’t so long ago we released exclusive images of the new Samsung Galaxy S5 logo. If you want to see the leaked iPhone photo check it out here.

Categories
fun stuff Weekend

Yorkshire Tea Jazz All Stars

Yorkshire Tea Jazz All Stars

Yorkshire Tea Jazz All Stars entertain the crowds at Old Trafford Test Match

Yorkshire Tea Jazz All Stars. Heard of ’em? I hadn’t either but I have now. In fact I don’t think they are called the Yorkshire Tea Jazz All Stars but I wasn’t concentrating when they made the announcement at the cricket but it was something along those lines, probably, ish.

It was apparently a beautifully sunny day at Old Trafford. I say apparently. I could see the sun coming out during the sunny spells but we were sat in the shade in the family stand with the full force of the advanced party for Hurricane Bertha constantly in our faces. Not complaining, apart from the fact that I’d told the kids not to bother bringing a jumper because it was going to be warm. We weren’t. Manchester remember.

Fortunately the action on the pitch more than compensated. A terrific day’s cricket, as long as you were supporting the England and Wales cricket XI. I was. We won, by a country mile. Look it up. England v India, 4th Test, Old Trafford.

We had decided to book tickets on the morning of the first day. A genius of an idea of Kid 4’s when considering what to do on the spare Saturday of our visit to the Wirral, en route to the Isle of Man. On the day we had a full English in the nearby Tesco before we went in to the ground. It was packed with cricket-goers all with the same idea.  One does have to laugh at the thought of the restaurant manager getting a load of sausages and bacon in ready for the five day test match only to find that the bloomin’ game finished after three days leaving him with a load of stock! I expect they have a big fridge and the food will keep.

So there we have it. I’d like to say that the Yorkshire Tea Jazz All Stars were the highlight of the day but they weren’t. That was the cricket, and the excellent takeaway curry we had when we got home (Wirral Tandoori, Bromborough). They were good though and did a job. That teatime interval went like a shot.

I have a great cricketing story from my yout hwhich I’ll relate some day. In the meantime read up about the technology of the school cricket match here.

Categories
fun stuff travel Weekend

British summer holiday weather – the gathering storm

british summer holiday weather

Location 1 of our 4 centre summer vacation allows me to study at first hand the British summer holiday weather in action.

Bromborough, Wirral, Saturday 9th August, 2014.  I’m lying in bed listening to the first passenger jets of the day coming in to land at Speke John Lennon International airport. It is still early and I am biding my time until it is time for me’n kids 3 & 4 to head off for the cricket at Old Trafford. We bought the tickets on the spur of the moment just prior to setting off across the Pennines from Lincoln.

Yesterday was a classic day for British summer holiday weather. It had been quite hot overnight but a slight breeze had picked up by morning. By lunchtime it was ice cream conditions again and we set off for the attractions of New Brighton.

My first visit to New Brighton was 34 years ago on an eventful day trip to Liverpool on the Isle of Man ferry with my mates. The boat ride over had been quite rough and I suffered a bad bought of seasickness. Then we were delayed mid river Mersey for two hours whilst the outgoing ferry returned to its mooring following a bomb scare. Eventually arriving at the dockside I had to give all my cash to my sister Ann who was setting off for sixth form at Atlantic College in South Wales and had left her money behind.

An afternoon in the amusement arcades and pubs of New Brighton in which I drank soft drinks whilst the boys hit the pop was rounded off with a steak and chips in a restaurant at Pier Head before boarding the ferry for the return trip. I just about recovered once I got the food in me at Pier Head and spent the ferry crossing home in the bar. My pals however started to suffer from the effects of the beer and ice cream and they spent the crossing home lying down feeling sorry for themselves.

Back to the modern era and the four of us hit New Brighton again. Slots, crazy golf and ice creams although no beer. It was a hot and unusually competitive round of crazy golf which went to the last hole before the winner (Kid 4)  was decided. Always a sign of a good game of golf when it goes down to the last hole. Walking back along the prom licking our ice creams we turned around and could see the rain approaching. The remnants of Hurricane Bertha just missed us.

We made it back the the car and set the compass for Bromborough. Switching on BBC Radio 4 Test Match Special it was clear that Bertha had emptied her load on Old Trafford and rain stopped play for the day. Today the sun is back and we are looking forward to a great day’s cricket in Manchester.

The featured photo is of the British summer holiday weather in action – storm clouds gathering before the beach at New Brighton.

Categories
Bad Stuff Business Legal Regs scams

The ethics of non geographic numbers and information, connection and/or signposting services

ESA ICSS non geographic
ESA ICSS example

Information, Connection and/or Sign Posting Services (known as “ICSS”, subtly different from the topical ISIS, though many will put them into a similar “scourge” pigeon hole) at their core are simply a number translation service on non geographic numbers overlaid with advertising.

The idea is that ICSS providers make it easy for you to locate the phone number you are looking for, or, to put it another way, they are better at Search Engine Optimisation that the companies you may be looking for. In one sense, it’s a Directory Enquiries service via Google as opposed to dudes with moustaches.

But like all things, they can be abused. If you Google “British Gas Customer Services”, thankfully you’ll see official bona fide entries at the top, with their plethora of freephone numbers. A few entries further down is this;

British Gas ICSS
British Gas ICSS

 

What’s that? An 0844 number at 5ppm (plus call set up fee) from a BT Landline and probably more from mobiles? It’ll translate through to their 0800 numbers, netting the value chain for this service circa 5 pence per minute margin to share around between them. There are two sides the argument on the ethics of this – be it paying a premium to reduce your notional search costs and revel in your own laziness (ultimately this is no different to why I employ a cleaner) versus exploitation of the naive.

I don’t take a view on that here; and nor did PhonepayPlus when they intervened in this market on 09 numbers and 0871 numbers (6 pence per minute and higher) last year. Essentially, they laid down the detailed and comprehensive ground rules to ensure that such services were only used by people on the left hand side of the ethical spectrum I outlined before.

But 084 numbers aren’t included in the Premium Rate Services Definition and aren’t covered by the Code of Conduct and all the requirements therein. That means they are more open to being used on the right hand side of that spectrum. And that’s when I start to get concerned. A few years ago, the Department for Work and Pensions entered into negotiations with major mobile networks to make their freephone numbers genuinely free to their users. Ofcom’s own research says that around a quarter of socioeconomic group DE households (the most vulnerable) are mobile only which makes their move, surprisingly for government, well targeted.

But if you Google “ESA contact number” as in Employment Support Allowance, this is what you get

ESA ICSS example
ESA ICSS example

 

Another 5 pence per minute 084 number, an ICSS hidden in a void of regulatory oversight, which could be argued to be exploiting the most vulnerable and least able to pay (noting that historically some mobile phone operators have charged upto 75 pence per minute for an 084 call, with many tariffs still at 40 pence per minute). Is this ethical? I’ll leave that for you to reach your own personal conclusions, but in the mean time, I hope to raise awareness of the issue after someone I know was caught out.

Categories
End User fun stuff google phones

OK Google – we interrupt this holiday…

ok google

OK Google ad on TV made me try it out and it worked brilliantly

An ad for OK Google came on the TV. It was all about where to find the nearest cake shop. I immediately tried it. It worked perfectly. Just liked it did on the telly.

It was astonishingly accurate. I’ve since tried it for other things. The weather forecast for example. I said “OK Google , what’s the weather forecast tomorrow?” it not only came up with the forecast for my postcode but a voice spoke it.ok google weather

Voice recognition technology has seriously come of age. I remember years ago buying a Dragon voice rec software package. I used to be the Press Officer for Lincoln Rugby Club. I had a theory that I could dictate details of matches onto my Sony voice recorder and then use the voice rec software to turn it into text.

It never worked. In those days the software had to be trained, PCs weren’t powerful enough and in any case there was too much wind noise for it to have a chance.

Given a suitable mobile data connection I think it would work now with me dictating straight into the phone.

Getting back to the weather forecast one has to be glad that it is looking good for the first day of my holiday:) Plenty of time for it to go wrong yet but I’m sure that OK Google will keep me posted.

OK Google isn’t perfect. I just asked it “what should I wear tomorrow?” It came up with clothing advice sites. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted it to to tell me which combination of shorts and tshirt I should get out of the drawer. It’ll get there.

After that it will need to pre-empt my needs by ordering my clothes for me from the shop. Life will be full of surprises.

Ok Google. Time for bed. No answer required. Just letting you know.