The fuss in the media today regarding the government’s plan to make Internet Service Providers capture personal communications data is nothing new. It was brought up under the last Labour government as the “Intercept Modernisation Programme” and received heavy criticism from the Tory party in opposition.
Now with the responsibility of government the conservatives seem to have seen things differently and the word is that the forthcoming Queen’s speech will contain measures to enable the collection of personal information that includes who you have telephoned and emailed or have received emails from and which websites you have visited. The details of what is being sent in the emails isn’t being asked for at this time.
In a dramatic statement made after hours1 last night Apple announced a complete re-branding exercise under the new name “Kumquat”.
“The Apple brand has served us well and has made us the unbelievably big global giant we are today” says CEO Tim Cook. However with Steve Jobs no longer around, the share price at over $600 and the Market cap approaching $600Bn this can’t go on forever.
“There is a limit to how many iPods, iPads and Macs our fans are willing to buy so to sustain the growth we need to give them something else.”
That something is the Kumquat. The Kumquat is everything that Apple was but as a more upmarket and exotic fruit we expect consumers to be willing to pay even more for their addiction. Existing sub brands (iPod, iPad etc) will remain unaffected though replacement stickers will be available online and at Apple Kumquat stores and greengrocers in your locality.
The announcement has been greeted with some surprise
Actually that post title was a bit misleading. It should have read “frustrated of Lincoln”. The FTTC broadband availability checker has been saying 31st March for FTTC at my house for a good six months now.
For a long time I considered this to be a reasonable target date – 2 out of 4 Lincoln exchanges have already been upgraded. Moreover I’ve seen teams out laying fibre up Lindum Hill (down the road from me in Lincoln) and when asked they confirmed this was for FTTC broadband.
As we got nearer the deadline I noted that they still hadn’t upgraded my cabinet – it is easy to find out which is your cab – you just follow the telephone wire back from your house. Last weekend I noticed that the availability date for my line had totally disappeared from the checker.
I get so many enquiries re cabinet availability that it isn’t feasible to ask Openreach for information on every one but on this occasion I pulled rank on myself and decided to use my contacts to find out what is going on. All I can find out is that my exchange is not due to be upgraded until the end of June. This potentially means that my own FTTC broadband connection could be months after that date. The checker data base is knackered because this info is not in it.
BT of course say that the dates they give are “only indicative”. TBH I wouldn’t plan anything around availability of FTTC. It will come when it comes. Openreach does have a difficult job to do but the company doesn’t do itself any favours with what can only be described as terrible expectation management. Also it can’t be so difficult to provide their engineers and planners with some mechanism for properly reporting progress with network roll outs.
4G is like lightning, it’s an eye opener and seriously enhances the mobile data experience. This post talks about the truly exciting O2 4G trials in London and thinks about how the technology is going to change the mobile game.
Mobile data is already an important feature in the business communication landscape. As an ISP we see demand for it in the area of machine to machine, rapid site deployment, backup solutions for Disaster Recovery scenarios and of course straightforward internet browsing and email access from mobile devices.
The strategic importance of mobile data has even led Timico to invest in an Ethernet connection direct into the O2 network. We can now offer mobile MPLS solutions that sit within the same environment as existing fixed line MPLS networks – ideal for businesses that need security in both fixed and mobile networks.
Over the last year or two in the UK the focus in fixed line broadband has been on Fibre To The Cabinet, or in marketing jargon Fibre Broadband. With downlink speeds of “up to”40Mbps (to be upgraded to 80Mbps this coming April) the technology is revolutionising how people use their broadband connection. Add in the growth in high quality streaming video and gaming services and it is easy to see how the additional available bandwidth will be consumed.
Until very recently the mobile world, in the UK at least, has remained firmly in the domain of 3G – a technology that now seems relatively stone aged compared with Fibre Broadband. HSDPA makes the experience more bearable but it is still many Mega-bits apart from its fixed line counterpart.
The mobile companies are poised to change all this with LTE (Long Term Evolution) otherwise known as 4G. Trials are being conducted in a small number of locations in the UK. Timico is the first O2 Service Provider partner to be invited onto their London trials I am pleased to be able to report on my experiences.
This service is like lightning. It’s fast, speedy, call it what you like it’s a life changer. It’s been one of those projects that has been a pleasure to be involved in.
With only 25 masts around central London coverage is nowhere near what you would describe as ubiquitous but this is only a trial. When in a coverage area the speeds are great.
I started off in McDonalds at Kings Cross with a dongle fresh out of the box. After installation of the software, which was easy, the dongle performed an automatic firmware upgrade, also easy, using its own 4G connection.
At McDonalds I was getting over 13Mbps down and 540Kbps up which in my mind was a bit disappointing though I’m not sure it should have been. I have experimented with O2s 4G at their offices in Slough and seen much faster speeds both up and down than this. In fact this speed at McDonalds is faster than I get from my home ADSL2+ connection so I couldn’t grumble.
I knew I could do better than this. Roaming around town on the top deck of a number 25 bus I got 15.5Megs down and amazingly 25Megs up – near Wardour Street. The ping times for all these measurements were impressive.
In torrential rain I moved around on foot dipping into various places to check out the speeds and moving generally towards known good hotspots.
In the end I took shelter in a pub called the Devonshire Arms on Duke Street, just off Oxford Street. Sat in the window and sipping a cup of tea I hit the jackpot with 40Megs down and 23 Megs up. I did various tests including varying the browser – Chrome was much better than IE. I also did video calls with both Timico’s own VoIP service and Skype.
The screenshot on the right is of four iPlayer daytime TV streams. The things you have to do to get a blog post written!
The highest I have seen recorded is 97Megs in the O2 Arena itself. The 2,600 MHz LTE itself will go to 150Megs but the dongle tech doesn’t currently support this. We do have to remember this is very much a test rather than a production rollout so it isn’t going to be perfect but even considering this the experience has been great.
There were a few observations to be made out of this trial. The raw speed I saw with O2s 4G was terrific when in good coverage areas. The amount of data you can download in a very small amount of time is going to change the game. In upgrading the dongle firmware for example I used 50MB in around a minute. If you consider that until recently a typical “fair use” policy for an “unlimited” data package was 500MB then you can see that the model is going to have to change. The backhaul capacity that mobile operators are going to have to build in to their networks is going to have to see growth measured in orders of magnitude.
Spectrum allocation for 4G rollout is going to be very important. At 2,600MHz the bandwidth you can get is much higher than at 800MHz, say. However the in-building penetration at the higher speed is not as good so the overall network design represents an interesting (though not insurmountable I’m sure) challenge for engineers. This makes the forthcoming Ofcom spectrum auction important – there is a mix of spectra that is going to be optimum for commercial success.
As a side note it is going to be interesting to see how much the operators are prepared to pay for spectrum – they all think they overpaid for 3G but the demand has not been there for most of the time that 3G has been around. It is different this time and people are starting to get used to paying for the bandwidth they use.
From an end user perspective the ability to have genuinely fast internet access on your laptop, tablet or mobile phone is going to change their experience. Whilst WiFi is becoming more common, at least in pubs, coffee shops and other public places the need to authenticate is still a nuisance. Also not having to wait whilst a screen loads up on your mobile phone needs to become a human right!
It is certainly going to drive more business into the mobile environment. Timico, for example, gives all its salesforce an iPad so that they can demonstrate Timico applications and our customer portal on the fly at a customer’s premises. An iPad with 40Megs of bandwidth all of a sudden becomes a low cost endpoint for a telepresence HD conferencing system.
The gaming experience is going to be great1. Who knows what mobility combined with high speed internet will do for that industry, freed from the shackles of the lounge or the bedroom. City wide action games? Orienteering for the 21st century?
The use of mobile technology for backup purposes will also extend into many more areas of businesses. Typically 3G is used where only low bandwidth is required or where any bandwidth is better than no bandwidth. 4G becomes a viable solution for offices – even company HQs.
Of course with many more people on a production 4G network the average speeds available may well come down but LTE really is a game changer.
Footnote
It’s nice to to be in a position of being able to play with these new toys but there is a very serious business side to this. As those of you who have met me recently will probably know I’ve been testing the technology for a few weeks now – Timico is the first O2 service Provider partner to be given access to their 4G network. It forms part of the long term mobile data strategy of our business and follows nicely on from the direct connection into the O2 network I referred to at the start of the post.
I should finish off with a big thank you to O2 for including me in the trials. It’s good to be able to work with such a progressive partner.
1 I’m not a gamer but one of my kids would spend his entire live tethered to the Xbox. I have heard the tinny VoIP it emits.
The FTTC broadband 80Meg trials are now more or less over with production launch of the faster service currently due on 12th april. FTTC80 was the version of the 40Meg FTTC but using a different baseband frequency that results in a doubling of its overall speed performance.
You can see from the small pic inset that this user saw an impressive 75Megs down though he didn’t see much change in the uplink. The ping time at 14milliseconds is also pretty good. it’s just the way ahead. Waiting for an onscreen response when using the internet is just not acceptable. It needs to be instantaneous.
It doesn’t matter that no application has an use for this kind of speed. Now that we have built it the applications will come.
The smartphone revolution continues. Probably the biggest single game changer has been the incorporation of the digital camera. We all have memories of photos taken during major world events, the Arab spring, the London riots and no doubt the coming London Olympics.
Photos of the mundane can be just as interesting and unexpected. I offer here some shots from an average week at the Timico coal face. I’ve omitted some of the more exciting pics because wanted to give you a real feel for day to day work at a business ISP.
I’ve left out any shot containing the datacentre or the 24×7 NOC because these have so much coverage of late that I have a feeling people want to see other aspects of the job.
Also there is no point here in mentioning the fact that we won an ITSPA Award because I did that in this post and Vint Cerf is covered here.
So there you go. It isn’t a glamorous life but somebody has to tread that mill. The hotel, Stapleford Park, might want to get an expert in to sort out the damp that is clearly visible on that drum.
I don’t always get to stay at this type of hotel – sometimes they are fully booked and I end up staying at the Kings Cross Travelodge as I did last night. There is a story behind that which I will share with you next week1but you can picture the scene – living like a duke one day and being woken up by incessant noise of tube trains and the beep of reversing lorries the next. I’ll also be posting about some of the content of the #Timico2012 customer conference. V interesting stuff from Cisco, and O2 in particular.
I am an unashamed fan of Vint Cerf, inventor of the internet and Chief Internet Evangelist of Google. Imagine my surprise when he came up to me at the Nominet Internet Policy Forum and asked if I minded being photographed with him!
Of course I was more than happy to oblige though the photographer was so excited he couldn’t stop shaking.:)
I am of course only joking. There are some times in life when you have to abandon any shyness, walk up to a man and ask him if you can have your photo taken with him. Vint must be used to this and we had a nice chat about SIP – Henry Sinnreich and Alan Jonston are friends of mine and used to work for Vint at MCI – look ’em up.
Last night at the House of Commons Timico was presented with the ITSPA Award for best ITSP serving the Enterprise market.
This is very exciting. Not only was the HoC a fantastic backdrop for the event but the winning of the Award is a great reward for all the hard work the Timico team has put in over a sustained period of time.
The category we entered was Enterprise. In order to serve customers in this market you can’t just sell them a VoIP service. It requires a whole service wrap that can include broadband, Ethernet, hosting and mobile services. This market also requires a certain scale of operation – for example running an effective 24×7 Network Operations Centre needs a certain size of tech support team.
So the Award for best ITSP is also an award for an overall service set. I’m not going to say anything else other than if you want to know more about our VoIP services check them out here.
PS I know the fashion conscious amongst you will be wondering about my t shirt – it’s the Commons And Lords Rugby Club tour to South Africa for the 2009 British Lions.
Sometimes you just need a bit of downtime. Ever wondered what I do for downtime? Eh? No? I’m going to tell you anyway. I like to chill on the terrace of Stapleford Park Hotel. Club sandwich maybe and perhaps a bottle of Hildon lightly sparkling mineral water. I like to sit out face up to that stranger the new spring sun and soak up its warmth.
There is no rush. Occasionally I take in a frame of snooker and then saunter down to the pool for a wallow – nothing too strenuous. The heat in the steam room acts like a deep massage and relaxing on the lounger afterwards I drop in and out of a gentle sleep.
Back in my room I pick out my outfit for the evening and head to the bar to join some other guests for a pre- dinner glass of champagne. The meal that follows in the Grinling Gibbons restaurant is superb, the wines fine and the brandy in the bar afterwards, nursed whilst sunk into a deep armchair, the perfect ending to a wonderful day.
I sent my mum a mother’s day card. Posted it Thursday and she got it today. Actually I didn’t really send it, my wife did so I don’t know if a second class stamp is to blame for it not getting there for the weekend.
Last night I bought a book from Amazon.co.uk. I had the choice of delivery by 1pm on Tuesday for a fiver or 5 day delivery included in the price of the book. The book itself was only £9 so I went for the free option. It will be here by the end of the week I imagine. If I wanted to fork out a one year subscription for Amazon Prime (£49) I could get all my purchases delivered free of charge next day.
I also ordered a new part for my car on Friday. They have promised it will be here on Wednesday. The part was
My daughter is in her last year at school. She is a clever hard working girl1 and will do well for herself. She has had 4 good offers from top universities but hasn’t yet made up her mind which one to accept. She is off on her last “site visit” this week. An “overnighter”.
Students from two of the universities have now rung her to “see if there is anything they can help her with, any questions etc?”
This is remarkable and just shows how competitive it is out there, at least for good candidates. It is also mirrors life in the big bad world outside. This is a world where you can’t afford to leave things to chance. Every aspect of your business has to work for you. If you sit back and wait for that customer to place (or renew) his contract you can kiss goodbye to that customer. It means you aren’t giving him enough attention.
I am comfortable that an university that applies business process to its recruitment campaigns will also produce graduates well equipped to face that big bad world. The decision now is all hers. I have done everything I can to help when asked but now for the first time she is on her own. I can’t make that decision for her. Exciting times!
I don’t know about you but the fact that my kids are now at university age makes me wan to step on the accelerator when it comes to progress. It only seems like yesterday that I was there and the time has whizzed by. So much to do, so little time. Lets get on with it 🙂
Seeing as it’s Friday afternoon and I’ve had a hard day’s filming (which for the first time ever included makeup btw) and it’s my blog so I can write what I like I thought I’d share this link with you. It’s my son Tom who is at Warwick University1 appearing on the Scott Mills Show on Radio 1. Apparently goonpigs is a bit of a catchphrase of Scott Mills – I’ll leave the rest for you to listen to. It won’t take long. Have a good weekend and lets hope Wales win the grand slam eh?
1 Doing History and Politics – I know I know but I couldn’t persuade him to do sciences. You can bookmark his own website here
Just had yet another film crew in. You know what it’s like. Early start, breakfast provided by the outside catering company. Shoot a few scenes followed by bacon sandwich. Bit more then 3 course sit down lunch – it’s hungry work this location based filming1.
This one was from Dell. They had flown into Manchester from Paris and took a 2 1/2 hour taxi ride from the airport. Should have flown into
Just had a communication through from BT re planning for the Olympics. This year the good citizens of the United Kingdom are divided into two camps – those that are looking forward to the Olympics, think it is a great thing and are really excited, and those who think it is a huge waste of money that would be better spent on hospitals and schools and have been whinging about it ever since it was announced.
I am excited. What’s more I have tickets for me and the kids to see the kayaking slalom finals aaaand we have some great friends in Windsor who have kindly agreed to put up the whole noisy lot of us (and before anyone chips in we aren’t kipping at Windsor castle – they already had too many people staying). That for those of you who know the Davies’ (6 of us) is a big ask.
I’ve already posted about the expected growth in traffic on ISP networks during the Olympics. Interesting research just in is a look at the lessons learnt from the Vancouver Olympics.
One in four organisations suffered broadband network capacity issues
Which header photo do you prefer? This oneor this one?
I’ve just left the Retail Business Technology Expo at Earl’s court. I was there with Murco IT Director Umar Bajwa to talk about the 3G fail over they use in their petrol stations. Had a few interesting enquiries as a result so worth doing. We also had some media interviews so if you are a regular reader of the retail verticals look out for it.
After our talk I wandered around the exhibition to check out developments in the retail world. The first thing that struck me was there were a number of exhibitors offering “cloud services”. I realise that Timico offers “cloud services” but at the show we were pitching 3g mobile fail overs for huge operational efficiencies. I have decided henceforth to ban the use of the term cloud on this blog and will be recategorising some posts when I get a chance.
It’s amazing how many boring exhibition stands there were. These in turn lead to desperately boring people standing round being desperately bored. Take a look at the first small photo. The bored looking bloke stood around not talking to anyone just asked me “how I was doing today” as I walked past. I think I probably muttered something in reply, kept my head down and scuttled straight past.
Although there were a few unimaginative stands, in keeping with the retail nature of the show there were also a lot of interesting stand-out attractions. The attractive girl looking excited at the prospect of me kissing her is actually a back lit 2 dimensional mannequin. She caught my attention and drew me in. Also the Kinnect darts game made me stop at the stand – though I can’t for the life of me remember who the company was or what they were selling (sorry).
The table in the next photo was pretty interesting. It had an interactive touch screen which you used to select ingredients for a cocktail. Once the choices were made it offered you a range of drinks that could be made using those ingredients and printed off a chit for you to take to the bar to buy the cocktail. Pretty cool I thought but at £38k an idea requiring a pretty cool business case to justify the expense.
As regards my initial question re the headers, I prefer the one with the beer in it. This is more down to the liveliness of the stand but also it is really clutching at straws to think that a row of mints is going to attract people. The stand itself was very nice, I’m sure, but didn’t reach out, grab my sleeve and pull me in. Coincidentally the same company’s leaflets had been distributed freely around the sinks in the Gents toilet. What can they have been thinking of?!
As you will have realised what started out with the best intentions of being a post on retail technology has ended up as an analysis of what makes a company stand out from the crowd. In today’s marketplace you can’t afford to me “just another left handed widget vendor”. Your left handed widget needs to shout out “come and buy me – your search for the ideal widget is over”. The show seems to have been a success from the Timico perspective. We made some noise about our Mobile Access Management solutions, got some potentially great new enquiries and used the opportunity to meet some customers old and new.
I’ll leave you with some more photos from the exhibition. Some have artistic value and some just illustrate how to wind down at the end of a hectic day at a trade show. Anyone care to guess the name of the cocktail being poured by the barman (not at Earl’s Court). Also where were we?
Mobile data has been a bit of a theme recently on the blog. It must be trendy1. This is quite gratifying because when Timico was set up 8 years ago this Easter the mobile play was part of the vision of an overall convergence story that also included IP data networks and VoIP. At the time the sales pitch was the convenience of being able to source all your communications requirements from one supplier and on one bill. The approach back then was pretty revolutionary and stood us in good stead.
What we couldn’t foresee at the time was how the use of mobile data would grow and the effects of the more powerful mobile handset on our patterns of behaviour. That early decision to include mobile in the portfolio is now starting to payback and today we are announcing a case study with customer Murco Petroleum.
Last Autumn we got our first Ethernet connection into the O2 3G data network. The plan was to offer customers a cost effective multi-tentant version of the secure APN (Access Point Name – don’t ask) used by large corporations as private mobile Wide Area Networks. The resulting Mobile Access Management service is what is being used by Murco today as a mobile backup to their Timico broadband based MPLS WAN – the key infrastructure over which they carry secure payment transactions.
That time of year is here again. Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association Awards time.
We have been fortunate over the years to win some good recognition with the ITSPA Awards – last year it was the Large Enterprise Category. Timico are finalists in that category again this year. It’s the only one we entered.
Most ITSPs in the UK are squarely in the SMB space. This is usually due to the fact that larger businesses are reluctant to look at what are effectively startups – the industry has only been a going concern in the UK for half a dozen years or so. We have been fortunate in that we have a wide portfolio of services that has facilitated good growth across a number of technology platforms.
For example a customer that initially just uses Timico for managed MPLS networks will then migrate to using our SIP and then mobile services. The Timico Technology Group is now big enough to be considered a key communications partner for FTSE100 businesses.
Anyway the awards are being held in the Members Dining Room of the House of Commons on Wednesday 21st March at 4pm. A great venue. Wish us luck 🙂
You may have gathered from the post on Friday that I was off to Cardiff to watch the rugby over the weekend. There were four of us in the car – two adults and two “young adults” and I was in the luxurious position of not having to drive.
You have to picture the scene. My pal Huw driving with me on the laptop in the front passenger seat and the two kids on iPad and iPhone in the back. The connectivity was ok by and large. I guess that means that when we went in and out of data coverage we put up with it because after all, we were driving along in a car at 70mph.
This must surely be something that one day in the not too distant future we will look back at in amazement – “believe it or not you used to get black spots with no coverage”. Our use of mobile technology is growing at such a rate that it demands nay shouts out for ubiquitous high speed data connectivity.
This may mean that we have to pay more for the service. As the models change to reflect usage growth we are already seeing upward pressure on data prices in both fixed and mobile worlds. At this stage of the game for me, and I may be a consumer lone voice in the wild wild mobile web here, it is more about coverage than cost. My kids may not agree of course but on the way down I needed connectivity for emails and other work stuff and on the way back I wanted to watch Wales beat Italy on iPlayer. I was fine for emails but not for the streaming.
There is one thing in particular that the mobile data and computing revolution will render obsolete and which relates to kids when travelling. The first person to guess what this is wins a prize. This is normally a mug but I may be able to find some other goodies and if so will offer the winner an alternative. Timico staff may enter this one.
As a footnote here in Cardiff we stayed with my sister who gets north of 30Megs out of her Timico FTTC. Aaahh. It was also interesting to see that the last thing we did after our evening mug of cocoa was that before going to bed we all made sure our gadgets were plugged in and charging ready for the next day 🙂
Discovered My Data Manager this week thanks to Rob Bamforth of Quocirca. It’s a wonderful little app that lets you see how much data each app uses on your smartphone (I must stop calling it that – it’s so 2011).
I have only been using it since Tuesday when I was out of the office for a couple of days. It may be seen that in that time I notched up 46.3MB of mobile data usage and 36.9MB of wifi. You can see for yourself what I was using it for – I am a very connected person or addicted to Twitter – you decide.
Other than being a reflection of social habits and mobile usage the data does suggest that in a month I am likely to use around 480MB which is just under the threshold of 500MB typically used by mobile networks for “fair usage”.
I don’t believe it. I’m sure I use far more than that though it is divided between the iPad and the mobile. I’ll see what the number for the whole month looks like and report back. It would also be interesting to hear from others what their usage profile is (without giving away any secrets! )
The rest of this post is just a bit of fill in so that the text finishes off roughly in line with the bottom of the picture on the right.
Anyone else wishing to engage in polite conversation, inanities and observations regarding the rugby internationals coming up this weekend should do so through the usual channels.
I’m off to see Wales v Italy in Cardiff. Look out for me on the TV. Taking one of the kids. It was his idea.
There are still tickets available – not surprising at £75 high up in the corner!! I would also like to remind those who still owe me for bets on the England v Wales match it’s about time they paid up 🙂
Apparently during WW2 in the USA diners became hubs for social networking. Somewhere for lone workers finishing a late shift perhaps to go and chat to someone. At UC Expo in Olympia this week this was replicated and brought up to date by giving the diner actors iPads and laptops to play with. As an artistic creation it was great. However I can’t for the life of me remember whose stand it was so unless it was a charitable act in support of “social networking” they might want to change who they use to design their exhibition stands to make themselves more memorable!
A few things did stand out at the show. You could not escape the Microsoft effect because they must have taken up a quarter of the floor space. Microsoft was effectively standing on a chair in the middle of a room and shouting “you have to take us seriously”. Microsoft was selling Lync and its ecosystem.
Lync, the Microsoft Unified Comms play – Instant Messaging, voice etc, has moved on significantly since we saw them at UC Expo this time last year. Not, I suspect, the basic functionality, but the number of vendors supporting products that are compatible with Lync – receptionist consoles, call centre applications etc
I didn’t get the impression that it was being used in any great volume – the voice bit at least but Lync desktop clients are shipped free with a Microsoft Enterprise license – throw enough seeds… Coincidentally as I write someone called Barry from Microsoft has just called to see if we would be interested in rolling out Lync. We will certainly kick the tyres. They clearly are spending a lot of marketing dollars on this right now.
In the Microsoft village a couple of gadgets caught my attention. One is the Polycom video conference unit – this looks sufficiently space age to be cool. The other was the Altigen Fusion SmartStation and MaxMobile smartphone app. The smartphone app runs both cellular voice and VoIP and connects to the SmartStation using Bluetooth. The SmartStation then behaves as a normal telephone handset whilst simultaneously charging the mobile device.
This is the way ahead. Altigen also have plastics coming along to support various Android devices and, if my memory is right, BlackBerry. All it now needs are keyboard, monitor and mouse ports and we are done – the PC is a thing of the past.
Also had a play with a couple of Lumia phones demonstrated by an overly enthusiastic guy who had been trained up especially for this show. I have to say the UI and I didn’t gel though it does take some time to get use to a new operating system.
Finally Powernet were demoing ViBE which in my mind is the ultimate in bonding and QoS technology for ADSL circuits destined to carry both voice and data. Check it out here.
Powernet, which is a Timico Technology Group company was the only ISP at the show as far as I could see and had a very productive time of it.
There is frost on the ground but it is a bright morning and I am on the way to London. I’m using the train WiFi which according to the speed tester is giving me 3.1Megs. I don’t know what it’s max speed is but the train is not very full – when it is full it certainly doesn’t feel like 3 Megs & I sometimes oscillate between WiFi and 3G and mostly 2G. Currently 3Megs feels fast enough.
We put up with poor connectivity on a train and accept that when we go in to a tunnel it disappears altogether. We shouldn’t have to.
I’m off to Olympia for UCExpo – it’s a good place to get together with people and I have a few meetings lined up over the two days. In my experience connectivity at Exhibition Halls is poor. I once did a VoIP video conferencing demo over 3G. It was all fine in the dry run but of course once the place filled up with thousands of punters it was a different matter. I could barely get the client registered let alone use it in a demo. The patter had to kick in big time:) I don’t know why we should put up with poor connectivity at these places. There is no reason for it. They know we are coming. Perhaps I’ll be surprised.
Between Kings X station and Olympia connectivity will be pretty variable and of course on the Underground it will be non-existent, mostly, though there is no need for this to be the case.
Most pubs I’ve been to in London recently offer free wifi. 20 minutes and a stop in Newark to pick up some punters later the on-train WiFi speed is down to 1.1Megs.
Is Utopia a country with perfect connectivity1? What is that connectivity speed? It’s not 1 or 2 Megs. It has to be fast enough for us never to notice any delay. Bandwidth on demand. With the massive growth in mobile apps this connectivity has to get a lot better a lot more quickly than it is doing so. It’s all very well being ok when you are sat in your living room and using your home WiFi but that on its own isn’t good enough any more.
I’m up to 8.4Megs at Peterborough station but that may be my SIM kicking in with HSPDA. Outside the station, with more people on board it is down to 0.11Megs. This is more like it. It makes my whinging more valid.
I would say 100Megs per person would be a good number to have but it will be a moving number. It is going to depend on what you are doing at a given point in time. Bandwidth needs when just sending texts are different to when uploading photos for example.
I’m getting nearer to the big smoke. What’s happened to the sun? Thatsenoughfornow.
1 Ok ok add in perfect health service, zero unemployment etc but I’m trying to stay focussed here.
PS Bloke sat behind me is reading out his card details to someone over the phone! Including security number. I could have written it all down. Perhaps someone did. Personal security will be a blog post for another day.
Just noticed an email from RS Components had come in 23.30 on Saturday night acknowledging my registration to buy a RaspberryPi and that the boards, once they are in stock, will be allocated on a first come first served basis in order of when requests were received.
That puts me well down the list then because all the fuss surrounding the launch was on Wednesday and I registered on Friday sometime. The fact that the acknowledgement email came in over a day later surely suggests a massive backlog? 😉
Strikes me that it will be interesting to plot the progress of the kids’ coding skills once we get one in the house so watch this space.
It’s that time on a Friday afternoon when a young man’s mind strays off the subject of work and onto lighter matters. Spring has arrived. Benevolent lovely spring that prises open daffodils and encourages birds to raise their bright eyed heads to the sky in full voice. Girls smile and bring gladness to the heart.
In my email inbox a message arrives.
Dear Trefor,
I am following up on my email from last week that you might have missed first time around. I wanted to invite you to come along to our ‘Kofax Customer Connect Event’, with keynote speaker Derek Miers, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research on WEDNESDAY 18TH & THURSDAY 19TH APRIL 2012 at Westminster, London, UK.
Attend this event to learn how your organization can benefit from Capture Enabled BPM initiatives and take part in our interactive and lively speed workshops, where you drive the agenda.
If you don’t want to miss out, but can’t get the budget for travel approved Register for our Capture Enabled BPM Launch event as an online participant and guarantee your place on this first of a kind event.
Kind Regards,
Jenny
Dear Jenny
Where on earth do you guys get your mailing lists from. I almost certainly did not reply to your email from last week for a number of reasons.
It was unsolicited and one of many similar mails I get every day that I by and large treat as spam and ignore.
I have never heard of Kofax
I have no idea what Capture Enabled BPM is (though I do now because in the interest of scientific research I have scrolled far enough down the email trail – and it is of absolutely no interest)
All the best
Tref
PS I wish there was a list of databases that have my email address on it so that I could systematically unsubscribe from them all instead of having to do it individually. I’ve stopped leaving my business card at exhibitions because of all the unwanted mail it seems to generate.
Note I’ve left the original links from the email in in case any blog reader wants to go – looks like there’s a free dinner – I bet Kofax is a generous company. There is no info at all on timings other than the date – it’s at your own risk:)
Right back to birds, gladness and, oh, my presentation preparation for our customer event. Have a good weekend 🙂
Today is all about privacy. No Google doodle to go with it because Google is at the centre of the debate with its harmonisation of privacy rules across all of its services.
The European commissioner of justice, Viviane Reding says there are “doubts” over what Google has done. I’m not going to go into detail on the ins and outs – read about that in the Guardian. Commissioner Reding though in my experience is someone worth listening to so she is expressing concern there is likely to be something in it.
It is worth thinking about privacy for a moment because in our modern age it is a hugely complex subject.
If I do a search for “Trefor Davies” Google comes up with
I’m missing tricks here. Yesterday I came into the office with the intention of writing something highly entertaining yet informative around the subject of February 29th – leap day as it seems to have been labelled on Twitter. Instead RaspberryPi came along and hijacked the slot. Fair enough, though I did follow the Twitter deliberations of one female friend as she mulled out loud the prospect of proposing marriage to her partner. It didn’t happen. She is content with waiting another 4 years 🙂
Today is March 1st. St David’s Day or Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant as we say in the principality. It is also a beautiful spring day though there are no daffodils out in the garden yet for me to have wantonly torn the heads off to wear into work. Also my wife didn’t like the idea of my nicking a leek – she has been tending to them with loving care all winter and they are destined for the table.
So here we are pinching and punching into March and I have no idea how to weave the fact into a technical blog post.
Most people will not have heard about it before today when it hit the headlines. It is also hitting the shops – two of them. It is the way of the future in the here and now. It is affordable and will one day, in one form or another, inevitably permeate into every household on the planet. It is educational, sensational, it’s the RaspberryPi.
Most of you will know by now that the RaspberryPi is a low cost very low cost computer that has been developed to encourage kids to learn to write computer code. The level of interest in the device has been so great that the two outlets chosen to stock the device, Farnell and RS Components, have this morning seen their websites crash due to high levels of traffic 1. A botnet generated DDOS attack could not have done any better. In internet terms it’s the same as the huge round the block queues that unexplainably form outside Apple stores just before a new product launch.
Last week Matt Russell, CEO of WebHostingBuzz went down with Ukrainian manflu. The Ukrainian version is vicious strain and is especially effective when the Siberian winds sweep down from the Caucasus to catch the unwary Englishman abroad. Because of this it is very rare to find a native male Ukrainian there in February – they all winter in the Cote D’Azur. The whole country is left in the hands of their womenfolk who are of course immune to the virus.
Anyway Matt had been down to host a session at LincUpLive in Lincoln last Friday in which I was going to be a panellist. #LUL360 is a conference that discusses the use of social media as a business tool. Due to his affliction he got in touch and asked me if I would stand in for him. A big ask as I’m sure all of you who know Matt will agree. I did my best.
The session was held jointly with Jon Grubb, former Editor of the Lincolnshire Echo. I discussed the Timico approach to social media and Jon critiqued it from the perspective of a classic PR person. We had a lot of fun. It isn’t often I get to tell my anecdotes about the pigeon v broadband race anymore. There was also the Move over IPv4 bring on IPv6 party and the World Record Attempt etc etc.
We had some great audience engagement and an hour passed in no time. The message is that stories about how great left handed widgets are don’t work. If the left handed widget is used in a bank robbery that is a different kettle of fish (mixing it up a bit here I know 🙂 – I’m a bit prone to that )
The best bit is that I despite my best efforts no one let me pay for a drink at the after show party. If you want to understand how social media can be used within your business I can recommend attending a LincUpLive – the next one is in September.
As a footnote I should mention the venue. This was the brand new Doubletree Hotel on Brayford Wharf in Lincoln. I was uber impressed with this new facility – Lincoln needed a top class hotel and now we have one. Check it out. Photo is me being shown round by Doubletree Sales and Marketing Manager Nicola Shepheard. The hotel must have been built on the site of the old Lincoln Electricity Works – some nice touches around the lobby.
We operate a fair play system at Timico. Staff who work hard during the week are allowed out on Saturday afternoon to engage in a recreational activity of their choice1. A happy employee is after all an effective employee.
Some of the sales guys play rugby and last weekend Steve Hodges, Andrew Fox and Guy Beales formed the mainstay of the back line for Newark 4ths versus Notts Paviors 4ths.
Apparently they scored half of the points. The first three pics show Andrew Fox bursting through his tacklers then driving forward to score a crucial try that no doubt crushed the Paviors’ morale and set the game up for the home side.
The other pics are of Steve Hodges. In fact there is a caption competition for the first one at the bottom. The best caption gets a bottle of red I have been keeping in one of my desk drawers for a special occasion. The second photo shows Steve running with the ball. He must have beaten his tacklers because there is no sign of anyone else in the shot. Either that or it was taken after the game. You can decide 🙂
In a similar vein I note that England were beaten by Wales at Twickenham on Saturday – bad luck chaps. Should have taken advantage of the 10 minutes that we were a man down really. I’m going to Cardiff on the 9th March to see Wales play Italy – if anyone is in town that weekend let me know & perhaps we can meet up.
You can have till end of play on Friday to come up with a winning caption. This competition is open to all comers including Timico staff.
this is the pic for the caption competition - click for a bigger view
1 as long as they are back in the office by 6pm to make up their shift – they then usually get away for last orders at 10pm – fair dos.
I am not at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona. I have had a number of emails asking for meetings at the exhibition. They obviously aren’t using the attendee list for their mailing.
It’s ok though because almost every tech journalist I know is there and there will be a lot of coverage. It’s even made BBC primetime with Rory Cellan Jones trying (and failing apparently) to broadcast a report using the 4G network at the venue.
At MWC this year there are over 1,400 exhibitors. It is surely impossible to visit all stands. One journo I know has a table at a café and has invited anyone with news to book a slot for coffee/lunch/beer. That way he won’t wear out his shoes traipsing around the 11 or so exhibition halls. The value in these shows is not normally at company stands but in the networking opportunities at bars and restaurants.
Also in my experience each event needs to put together a best 50 powerpoint slides of the show. That way you miss out all the sales gough and cut to the chase (and can spend more time “networking”).
These are expensive events to attend – both as exhibitors and attendees. Realistically it’s a thousand pounds minimum spend per person if you want to pop along taking airfare hotel and meals into account. If you are a large corporate and not spending your own money it is probably twice that.
If you are not a journalist the only sensible way to do it is by reading about it online. For example I have just read in the Guardian online that this year Nokia is launching PureView camera phone with 41 Megapixels.
Interesting how technology dynamics have changed. It used to be that bigger and bigger Microsoft software footprints would chew up any progress made under Moore’s Law by the PC manufacturers. Now the race has changed to mobile handsets and connectivity speeds.
My Samsung Galaxy has an 8Megapixel camera and takes 3Mbytes photos. The 41Megapixel camera should proportionally take over 10 Mbytes of memory per shot. Last summer I wrote that I would be taking photos with a 40Megapixel phone by 2016 and discussed how connectivity speeds needed to keep pace with smartphone technology for access to the cloud.
Nokia seems to have blown the 2016 forecast out of the water although note that there is no mention of the PureView on their website – CEOs need to have something exclusive to talk about at expensive shows I guess.
The fact that the BBC has been talking 4G is a sign that the technology race is about to step up a gear. Whilst broadband speeds have started to climb, for the majority of us in any case, the UK is behind the curve on mobile – we haven’t even sorted out who gets which spectrum yet. Faster mobile data connectivity and in particular more bandwidth to cope with the increased usage that that faster connectivity will bring is going to be critical.
“Mobile” is where the future battles for country competitiveness of a country is going to be fought. Mobile applications, mobile ecommerce, “mobile anything” will depend on good connectivity. For the last two or three years here in the UK we have been talking about the need to have faster fixed line broadband – to have the “best fibre broadband network in Europe by 2015”. The focus of the debate now needs to start shifting to mobile.
When I was a kid in the Isle of Man I used to play sports after school – cricket in summer and rugby in winter. Afterwards I’d walk down Bray Hill to the phone box at the bottom and call home for a lift. I didn’t need cash. When the pips went Mam would know it was me and she would set off to Douglas to pick me up.
Mobile phones had not been invented. I really don’t know how we managed but somehow we got by. At university there was one phone to serve the whole hall of residence – 350 or so students. I must have called home every now and again but probably no more often than once a week. I recall I used to write letters. I had terrible handwriting in those days which has since deteriorated – I only ever type these days.
This morning we went to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life on Burton Road in Lincoln. There was an exhibition of old Meccano toys. I used to have a Meccano kit. Today’s layout had a train set from the 1930s. A bit before my time.
itself. The 2,600 MHz LTE itself will go to 150Megs but the dongle tech doesn’t currently support this. We do have to remember this is very much a test rather than a production rollout so it isn’t going to be perfect but even considering this the experience has been great.
