trefor.net - Page 53 of 92 - Insider comments from the world of internet communications

3G back up for retail credit card processing and Cadbury Creme Eggs

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 22 February, 2012
3 Comments on 3G back up for retail credit card processing and Cadbury Creme Eggs

Just had a pot of tea at the St Pancras Renaissance 5star hotel – as you do. It’s my home from home in St Pancras. When it came to paying their credit card machines weren’t working – internet was down. They had to resort to the old fashioned paper imprint machine. I think retailers pay more commission for manual transactions because they are more prone to fraud. Not ideal but at least they were able to take my payment I guess.

They need a 3G back up service for their credit car processing system. Would save a lot of hassle and probably pay for itself in reduced fees – have you seen the price of a cuppa there?

Last weekend I was turned away from the Shell Garage on Burton Road in Lincoln. They were only doing cash sales as guess what – their credit card system wasn’t working. They didn’t actually turn me away – I took that decision myself. Sometimes these decisions are easy.

Credit card swipe systems these days either use ISDN or broadband connectivity. Had the Shell garage had a 3G backup it would have saved them a lot of cash. I don’t know the sums but if for the sake of argument the average tankful was £80, 10 lanes and 5 minutes per fill-up then that works out at nearly ten grand an hour plus all the Cadbury Creme Egg sales that generate the real gross margin.

Watch this space.

See ya.

PS I like Cadbury Creme Eggs – just sayin’

Tags 3G, backup, credit card, payment

Business voip

Future of Voice Seminar at UC Expo

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 21 February, 2012
No Comments on Future of Voice Seminar at UC Expo

Unified Communications Expo (UC Expo) is coming up – 6th and 7th March. I usually go down for one day. It’s a good place to meet people and catch up on what is going on in the industry.

This year there is a further attraction in the guise of “The Future of Voice” seminar given by three of the leading brains in the communications industry. Dean Elwood, Martin Geddes and Dean Bubbley have come together to provide us with an hour’s stimulation on where it is all going.

If you can make it I would go. I’ll also be there if you want to chat.

Details of the seminar including CVs of the three guys are here. Register here.

Cloud Engineer virtualisation

video case study BTiNet did of Timico

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 21 February, 2012
3 Comments on video case study BTiNet did of Timico

Filmed at Timico’s Network Operations Centre in Newark. I get a cameo role 🙂

footnote – posted this on youtube but find it has been taken down – the BTiNet uploaded one is there. They must have complained -or Google searches for duplicates! Dunno.
I’ve embedded the iNet version.

Tags BTiNet

End User nuisance calls and messages Regs security

The Telephone Preference Service seems no longer to be effective

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 17 February, 2012
13 Comments on The Telephone Preference Service seems no longer to be effective

We used to get junk phone calls, I’m talking years ago now. Double glazing, that sort of thing. My favourite was from people trying to call “Service Washing Machines”. These weren’t trying to sell me anything. The company had misprinted an advertisment with our number instead of theirs so we would get their calls. It did get a bit tedious after a while though.

Once (and you might not like me for this) I was at home during the day showing a builder around to get a quote. The phone rang and I said “watch this”

Tags Telephone Preference Service

broadband End User internet mobile connectivity

Being Back in the Land of Broadband Connectivity Feels So Good – Center Parcs WiFi

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 17 February, 2012
4 Comments on Being Back in the Land of Broadband Connectivity Feels So Good – Center Parcs WiFi

We have just been away for a holiday for a week. 2 days visiting the in laws and a 5 day break at Center Parcs in Cumbria. We had a good time. We go every year with the kids to Center Parcs and do the same things every year. I won’t trouble you with the details.

This year we took with us some electrical equipment: 5 laptops, 1 iPad, 2 HTC droids, 1 Samsung Galaxy S2, a Nokia N97 and another Nokia so old that I can’t even remember the model number – it belongs to my wife.

The laptops did see some use but not nearly as much as they might because of the paucity of broadband connectivity. The iPad struggled with (failed actually) getting on the free wifi at the pool or Cafe Rouge (my Galaxy S2 worked from both locations). The mobile reception in most places showed typically no bars and occasionally crept up to one or two bars. Two bars did not necessarily mean available data connectivity.

Fortunately Twitter is sufficiently lightweight to not mind the poor connectivity too much. My wife couldn’t understand why the internet didn’t work on the iPad. It did work but in her mind waiting two minutes for a page to load = not working.

So where am I going with all this? Should I mind that I can’t get connectivity on holiday. After all it’s a holiday and connectivity often = work, at least working “in the internet business” as I do. Last summer I had a camping break that was completely offline. It was planned that way and we had a great time.

I must say though that the experience of having a holiday that was only partially offline was a frustrating one for all. It would probably have been better to have no connectivity at all than poor connectivity. The experience would have been better for all.

Center Parcs is also missing a trick. Having forked out £800 or so for 4 nights I can’t imagine there would have been many guests not willing to stick another £20 say on their bill to get decent wifi in their villa – especially considering the demographic of their customers – not many “holiday parks” stock Veuve Cliquot in the camp shop I’ll bet.

Just for their benefit I’ll do the sums. £5 a day per villa, say 200 villas taking up the offer on average adds up to a £365,000 revenue stream a year. For that kind of money they could afford to wire up the site, provide a 1Gig connection and have a hugely profitable contributor to the bottom line.

If Center Parcs want to get in touch I’ll tell them how to go about it.

That’s all. I’m still on holiday but back in the land of Wifi and HSPDA – yay.

PS no comments about the amount of electrical kit taken on holiday – this is the 21st Century, the internet age – get with it man

Tags c

charitable End User

Skegness – it aint bracing – it’s a sub zero frozen windswept wasteland with good points

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 10 February, 2012
1 Comment on Skegness – it aint bracing – it’s a sub zero frozen windswept wasteland with good points

Have you ever been afraid? That helpless feeling when adversity looks you in the eye, evil veins popping out blood red against the whites of its own terrible eyeballs and the feeling of breath swirling up around your nostrils looking for a victim. When the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you feel a cold sweat under the collar. Have you ever felt like that?

Me neither.

However I did have to go to Skegness today. I know, I know, Skegness you say!!?? In February, with the glass reading minus two in the full glare of a dazzling Lincolnshire winter sun barely rising above the white tops of a cold and inhospitably grey North Sea, just visible across the vast expanse of beach that allegedly contains sand below its frozen snow covered crust?? Yes Skegness in February.

Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a mans gotta do and in the interest of technology, the readers of this blog, and the RNLI I did it.

Regular readers will remember the World Record attempt for the most comments on a blog post in 24 hours. Well we didn’t get the world record though there is a strong case that we might have a British record. However we did raise £6,034 for the RNLI and today I braved it over the Lincolnshire Wolds, looking austerely beautiful in a fresh coat of snow and ice.

My destination was the Skegness Lifeboat Station to meet coxwain John Irving, RNLI Press Officer Russell Matthews and some of the 30 crew that man the RNLB Lincolnshire Poacher.

I must say it felt a privilege to meet these guys. In all it takes 80 volunteers to man the lifeboat station at Skegness, including people serving in the shop, fundraisers etc. When I arrived John sent out a call for volunteers just as would happen in the case of a real emergency and in short order a full crew turned out for the photo opportunity. It takes 7 men to man the big boat you see in the picture and they have a smaller inshore craft that takes 3 men that is used to rescue unwary swimmers floating out to sea on lilos etc.

I am glad we are able to help them even if our £6k is a relatively small part of the £150 million a year the RNLI needs to keep going.

A lot of people retire to the Skegness area. As I get older I’d like to ask a small favour of you. Keep whispering in my ear “Spain, France, Southern Italy” – anywhere that is warmer than Skeggy in February 🙂

That’s if for me now. I’m off for half term and won’t be online except perhaps for the occasional tweet. Have a good break if you are off too and if not keep that nose to the grindstone and one day you too might earn a trip to Skeggy¹ – it’s bracing, apparently.

¹Perhaps I need to organise a trefor.net day out there in the summer 🙂

PS – the good points? The RNLI

Business UC voip

Timico Technology Group acquires Redwood Telecommunications < good stuff

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 9 February, 2012
3 Comments on Timico Technology Group acquires Redwood Telecommunications < good stuff

Redwood Telecommunications - a great asset to the Timico Technology Group I am pleased to announce that as of today we have Redwood Telecommunications as a new member of the Timico Technology Group. London based Redwood is a highly professional provider of communications solutions with particular expertise in Mitel and Avaya IP telephony systems.

This is is a highly strategic acquisition for both parties. It beefs up Timico’s capabilities in the VoIP systems space and gives us a base in London. Like it or not London is where a lot of the commercial action is in this world. Redwood also has a great list of customers that includes Jimmy Choo – my daughter will be after a discount !:).

Redwood, which will continue to be run by the same management team under MD Charlie Whelpton, will benefit from gaining access to the Timico network, system and data centre assets and skills.

This is a very exciting world to be working in but you have to be one of the players. There is no point in sitting on your hands and watching the world pass by.

It is interesting though that whilst we see a lot of hype surrounding new technologies & platforms aka the current frenzy over the Facebook IPO at the end of the day¹ it is sticking to the basics that makes long term value and sense.

Warren Buffet, for example, invests mostly in areas of businesses that he sees value in rather than those that attract all the media interest. In our business, communications, we need the technology but most important is the investment in relationship with, and the attitude towards the customer. The customer is king. No customers = no business. Lots of happy customers = long term business value. Timico is in the value game.

Redwood’s philosophy fits very well with that of the rest of the group and I look forward to working with the team.

¹ when all’s said and done etc 🙂

Tags Redwood, Timico

Business mobile connectivity

Always have a Plan B – Mobile Access Management

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 8 February, 2012
1 Comment on Always have a Plan B – Mobile Access Management

On my way to a series of meetings in London and sat on a train. This train ain’t going anywhere. There has been a fatality on the track at Biggleswade. Not good, especially for the deceased. Delays of at least an hour expected.

Not the end of the world for me as I have plenty of time before my first meeting. I like to get somewhere with plenty of slack in the schedule – in case of delays (QED). Also I am getting on with some work on the train. Preparing a talk for a Retail Technology Conference if you’re interested. I am presenting with my friend and customer Umar Bajwa of Murco Petroleum.

The talk is going to cover a number of things including the Timico Mobile Access Management service. This is the multitenant mobile APN service that allows mobile devices to sit within a corporate MPLS network and has much better access throughput than normal because you don’t need the packet overhead for VPN¹. Also great as a backup in case the primary broadband line goes down (Plan B).

It is getting hard to concentrate though. There’s a party of kids in the same carriage and they are getting ~~excitable~~ annoying.

The British Transport police are up ahead. We have some police forces as customers. They use an application of ours called hand-e-pix. When they get to a crime scene they take photos using smartphones which then get filed against the appropriate crime number and can be used as evidence. The photo is automatically GPS and time stamped. Perhaps I should mention it to the British Transport Police as we eventually get moving.

The guard on this train is very good at keeping us informed: “The train wot as struck a person is stopping us from moving” fair play to him.

a few minutes later…

The train is now moving, albeit slowly and we have just passed some men in hi viz jackets carrying flags. Funny how we live in a world filled with technology but when it comes down to it it’s the old fashioned analogue technology that prevails. Always have a Plan B.

That’ll do.

¹ notice how I slipped in a quick advertorial there – perhaps you didn’t 🙂

Tags Mobile Access Management, train

End User online safety

Louis Vuitton sells handbags but follow that link at your peril

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 7 February, 2012
3 Comments on Louis Vuitton sells handbags but follow that link at your peril

Louis Vuitton sells handbags. He also features very prominently in the comment spam caught by good old Akismet on this blog. I haven’t clicked on any of the links offered – domain names such as “limpidity” seem to be selling Louis’ stuff online – soft and flexible handbags for soft and gullible people perhaps?

I took a straw poll in the office and the first person I asked, Director of Account Management Andrew North said his wife owned two Luis Vuitton handbags. Blimey, I’d better not tell Anne although Tesco carrier bags are more in her line:)

So then I Googled Louis Vuitton and found 199,000,000 results – blimey again, I searched for Trefor Davies and only got 408,000. Must be a lot of Trefor Davieses out there – it is a common name. I wonder how many of us there actually are? Not as many as there are Louis Vuittons perhaps – I imagine the fashionably types around town went through a phase of naming their kids after him – the ultimate one upmanship. Pushed around no doubt in a LV pram and when small left on a sideboard at A-List parties to sleep in a matching handbag (are they called handbags these days?).

Imagine going to a posh nursery school just around the corner from Harrods and being one of several Louis Vuittons! In my day it was Dave or Andy or Llywelyn if you lived in Wales.

Anyway when I started this post I didn’t know where it would take me and I still don’t. Perhaps something relating to Safer Internet Day 2012? It didn’t happen. You will have to Google it (30,900,000 results) or follow that link to find out more.

I wonder how many of the Google results for LV are actually spamming pages? I will probably never find out.

That’s all folks – back to writing the Timico ITSPA Awards entry.

Tags internet safety, Louis Vuitton

End User phones

the ultimate mobile phone – early bird registration now open

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 7 February, 2012
1 Comment on the ultimate mobile phone – early bird registration now open

We have started to see speculation surrounding the timing and specifications of the Samsung Galaxy SIII. If truth be told such speculations start soon after the release of any new generation of handset whoever the manufacturer is. Such is the interest.

Although for the life of me I can’t understand why people get caught up in this hype I can understand why websites might want to fuel the speculative flames – loads of advertising dosh to be raked in. Note I have refrained from the slightest involvement in such lowbrow activity.

The hype has made me think about mobile handset technology in general. Rather than drill in to the nitty gritty of

Tags smartphone, ultimate

Cloud Engineer engineering

Meet Stuart Clark CCNA CCNA (security) CCNP CCIP (service provider) JNCIA #Timico

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 6 February, 2012
32 Comments on Meet Stuart Clark CCNA CCNA (security) CCNP CCIP (service provider) JNCIA #Timico

Meet Stuart Clark CCNA, CCNA (security), CCNP, CCIP (service provider), JNCIA and Timico 3rd line engineer extraordinaire. Stuart is one of the tough guys that gets going when the going gets tough 🙂 He is clearly camera struck in the photo but don’t let that put you off – not everybody is a media hussy 🙂

Stuart is into continuous self improvement – as you can see from the list of engineering qualifications he has started to amass. The entry level Juniper cert is his latest examination success and just a starter for ten in the Junos world. His Cisco certs will have made it relatively easy – more a question of adjusting to how Juniper does things versus Cisco rather than a whole new world to pick up.

Congrats to Stuart for his latest exam pass and actually for being a general good bloke who shows an interest.

Question for you. Stuart didn’t start life as an engineer. His first career was totally different. A fine bottle of La Grille, Sauvignon Blanc 2010 by Franck Chatelain¹ goes to the first person who can guess what that first career was – sorry no Timico staff or family members allowed to enter this one 🙂

¹ happened to have one in my desk drawer – as you do.

Tags CCIP (service provider), CCNA, CCNA (security), CCNP, JNCIA

Business online safety Regs security

Codes of practice and regulation of tinterweb – Home Affairs Committee report on radicalisation

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 6 February, 2012
3 Comments on Codes of practice and regulation of tinterweb – Home Affairs Committee report on radicalisation

When I was a kid my dad asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I of course said I wanted to be the CTO of a fast growing ISP with prospects 🙂 Dad was somewhat confused with this and told me not to be a silly boy because the internet hadn’t been invented yet and I should learn to be a doctor or a judge or pursue some similarly respectable form of employment.

Some days it feels as if dad will end up having his own way and I will end up as a judge. In the news this morning is yet another report suggesting that ISPs should put together a code of practice in respect of taking down websites that do something we aren’t supposed to like.

There is a lot of this going on. If it isn’t the movie and music industry rightsholders wanting us to block sites promoting copyright infringement it’s Nominet in cahoots with the police trying to suspend domains allegedly supporting criminal activity. Today its a Home Affairs Committee reporting on radicalisation suggesting that ISPs need a voluntary code of practice that supports the taking down of websites containing violent extremist material.

Glancing through the report the committee did cover the issues

Tags radicalisation

broadband Business

Broadband Pricing: Virgin Media Price Hikes

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 3 February, 2012
1 Comment on Broadband Pricing: Virgin Media Price Hikes

I see Virgin Media has increased its broadband pricing. This is almost certainly because people are using more and more data – especially seeing as the company has been giving its customers free bandwidth upgrades. Although bandwidth costs come down with time these reductions are being outpaced by growth in usage. Even if people are give data bundles (or unlimited use even) ISPs will assume an average overall level of usage in their costings and if this average is on the up the prices have to rise.

It’s the same in the data centre space where demand currently outstrips supply. You would think that Moore’s Law would sort it out but the same rule applies here as for connectivity – after all if people are using more and more data then it is natural that the required server and storage space grows in line with this.

Apps broadband Cloud End User

A Home Packed with Technology

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 3 February, 2012
5 Comments on A Home Packed with Technology

I have decided, and I haven’t told my wife this, that my house needs to be a case study for the connected home. The technological home of the future. The question is what does this connected home look like?

I have Cat 5 cabling downstairs a switch, wifi and shortly I will have FTTC. This is all very well but other than working from home occasionally and accessing the internet what am I going to do with it all.

I would welcome suggestions for services or technology that will be of use in the home that I should be testing.

Thanks in advance

That’s all folks.

Tags connected, FTTC, home, technology

broadband Business UC voip

Broadband Life: No Business Like Snow Business

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 3 February, 2012
No Comments on Broadband Life: No Business Like Snow Business

You are looking at a disappointed man. Wha! How can this be? Surely not you Tref I hear you say? Yes yes disappointed 😉 What’s up? We have had a very light smattering of snow.

I like snow. Snow, for the most part, makes the place look pretty and means I can wrap up cosily in front of a roaring open fire at home and enjoy the real winter. I don’t do the sledging any more – it’s all very well getting a thrill from speeding down that hill but you then have to traipse all the way back to the top dragging a sledge and almost certainly a kid. I still like throwing snowballs mind you. Nothing quite like the satisfaction of catching someone in the back of the neck.

I also quite like the superiority of owning a 4×4 when it snows. Other cars are sliding all over the place or struggling to get up the slightest incline but the Jeep takes it all with total ease.

This snow is not heavy enough for any of any of that. It might well close the golf course tomorrow but that is largely because you can’t see white balls on a white background. That’s the only thing this snow is likely to disrupt this weekend and in all probability I’ll be watching the 6 Nations rugby so not playing golf anyway.

None of the above is why I’m disappointed.

Tags homeworking, snow, voip

End User olympics

If You Haven’t Got an Olympics Ticket I’d Think Twice about Going Anywhere Near London in August #LOCOG

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 2 February, 2012
No Comments on If You Haven’t Got an Olympics Ticket I’d Think Twice about Going Anywhere Near London in August #LOCOG

Could the London2012 Olympics be the new Y2K? I suspect not. Y2K came and went and we all looked back and wondered what all the fuss was about.

I have just had an email from Transport for London telling me that for large chunks of the day I can expect to have to wait longer than 30 minutes to board some tube trains. I regularly come in to Kings Cross in the morning and the underground is sometimes so busy on a normal commuting day that they shut off access to the platforms because there are already too many people down there.

If TfL is talking over 30 minutes wait the queues just to get through the door will be enormous. This is bad enough if you have tickets for an event and need to get there but is also a bit of a shame if you don’t and were just hoping to hang around the city soaking up the atmosphere. It might not prove to me as much fun as you had anticipated.

TfL has clearly gone to a lot of effort modelling the passenger traffic scenarios over the period of the games. Check out their interactive tube map here. It’s a bit like the BBC’s own predictions for iPlayer traffic. The annoying bit is that the BBC, along with all ISPs in the UK I’m sure, will have additional capacity in place to cope with the increased traffic levels.

It looks to me as if TfL has just come up with this interactive map and told everyone they would be better off walking. I suppose that is planning of some sort! If you ask a London Cab driver what their plans are for the games many will tell you they are going to see how it goes for a day or two but think they will probably end up taking the time off and going on holiday which will compound the problem.

If employers in London haven’t yet put contingencies in place to facilitate homeworking for all their staff over this period then now is clearly the time to get their act together¹.

PS London is also often “full” on a regular weekday. ie there are no available hotel rooms. I’d take a tent if I were you.

¹ Timico specialises in supporting homeworkers and provides thousands of broadband connections for businesses for this very purpose – mail me at [email protected] if you want to know more.

Tags congestion, LOCOG, Olympics, TfL

Business ofcom online safety Regs voip

Sat in an ITSPA council meeting discussing strategy.

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 1 February, 2012
1 Comment on Sat in an ITSPA council meeting discussing strategy.

Many of you will perhaps not have heard of the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association. It is one of hundreds of industry trade associations serving their stakeholders in the UK. ITSPA was formed about 6 years ago at the “dawn of the hosted VoIP industry in this country”.

In its early days ITSPA was involved in the formation of codes of practice – working with Ofcom to define how an internet telephony provider should behave/operate. Things then went quiet for a while though the organisation has top notch networking events where executives get the opportunities to meet other people in the game to catch up on issues (and gossip).

Over the past 12 months industry affecting issues have started to come out of the woodwork.

Tags ITSPA

Business dns

Global domain name growth hit 9.5% in 2011 #Nominet

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 30 January, 2012
1 Comment on Global domain name growth hit 9.5% in 2011 #Nominet

The global number of domain names under registration grew by 9.5% in 2011, up from 6.1% in 2010. The total now stands at 218 million domains registered. I have a few of them – perhaps 7 or 8 I’m not sure. The growth trend might sound interesting but the rate peaked at over 30% in 2006 and for most of the ten years running up to 2011 was higher than the growth in that year. I got all this from the Nominet website.

It doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to envisage a situation where one day everyone on the planet has their own domain name. Every person in my family does. Your domain will be the basis of your own unique resource and identifier and used for many things. A bit like a “super” National Insurance number. The fact that John Smith is likely already taken is a bit of a shame if you are he but that is already something you have had to live with for most of your life. In the future we might even find couples searching for available domain names before choosing a name for their baby! 🙂

If we assume a steady rate of growth of 10% a year then it will take 28 years for the total number of domains to reach 8.14 billion. According to the United Nations the world population in 2011 was around 7 billion¹. I don’t know what it will be by 2040 but probably higher than my 8.14 Billion (assuming we don’t all blow each other up in the meantime) and it doesn’t matter for the purposes of this chat.

I guess what I am saying is that whether you agree with me or not re everyone having their own domain name there is still a long way to go with project internet. This is reinforced when you consider the capacity for expansion of the physical infrastructure presented by IPv6. I am also sure that thus far we have only scratched the surface of what can be done with domain names. We also have to recognise that many people and organisations own multiple suffix variants of the same domain so for everyone to have one we need to have far more than the 8.14 Billion registered.

As well as the Nominet website it is also worth checking out zooknic.com for data on domain history and growth.

¹ wouldn’t stay still long enough for anyone to count

Tags Domain, growth

Business datacentre

Service status updates at Timico – Thunderbirds are go

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 30 January, 2012
5 Comments on Service status updates at Timico – Thunderbirds are go

Some time ago I mentioned we were working on a new service status update page for the Timico website. Well the status of this service is now “up”. It’s been in testing for some time but I welcome any comments or observations as you come across them.

There is a lot of system development going on at Timico. Ultimately I expect the service status page to be integrated with our newly rolled out Service Now implementation although there are a few hurdles to over come first not the least being the amount of deep jargon that seems to fly around incidents and on ticketing systems. The service status page needs to be easy to read and understand. I am also wary of a status that always shows up a green so in our case the fault stays visible for 7 days after it has been fixed. If you sign up to email alerts you can get access all historical data prior to that.

One thing that caught me a bit by surprise was the number of service types we have to cover. It’s only when you see them all graphically illustrated in front of you that it hits home. Mostly they all come as facts and figures on reports.

You can see the new service status page here. Note that this site is hosted at a totally separate external location – if the entire Timico network crashed you would still be able to see that it has done so!

That’s all folks

Tags service status update, Timico

Business ofcom Regs

Bloggers subject to same rules as traditional journalists

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 30 January, 2012
1 Comment on Bloggers subject to same rules as traditional journalists

“Bloggers subject to same rules as traditional journalists.” Seems a bit obvious doesn’t it? In writing a blog one should respect the laws of the land and not defame, lie, slander, slur, libel, slight, disparage or apply any other similar verb to the html page.

I suspect if you are sure of your ground vilification, disparagement and other general character assassination is ok but the risk is yours to take.

At this point I’m sure some of you are wondering where all this is going.

Tags Attorney General, blog, Dominic Grieve, super-injunctions

Business mobile connectivity net neutrality ofcom voip

@EdVaizey reschedules #NetNeutrality Roundtable and ITSPA publishes detailed evidence on Mobile Network Operator bad practice

A Ministerial Roundtable on Net Neutrality had been scheduled for 24^th January (ie yesterday) with Internet Minister Ed Vaizey and the major fixed and mobile operators due to attend. EV is expecting industry to produce a voluntary code of practice in respect of Net Neutrality. In the run up to the meeting and following individual discussions with some of the intended participants the Minister has apparently been unhappy with progress. The Round Table has been postponed until 28^th March to allow time for further industry discussion.

Net Neutrality is a very emotional subject. By and large in my view it is something that has been creating more noise than the issue has perhaps merited but I can understand people’s concerns. The issue of transparency is in particular an important one

Tags mobile connectivity, net neutrality, voip

Business mobile connectivity

O2 – brown stuff spreads from whirring object

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 25 January, 2012
2 Comments on O2 – brown stuff spreads from whirring object

I don’t normally jump on a bandwagon although sometimes working for an ISP I get wind of juicy bits of network issues such as an exchange catching fire and might try and get in before the bandwagon has started to roll.

On this occasion the bandwagon is trundling down the hill at pace carrying news that O2 is including people’s mobile phone numbers in header information provided to websites visited by mobile users.

This was discovered by Lewis Peckover who has created a web page that tells you that kind of info is being left by your browser when you visit a site.

I took a look myself and drew a blank as you can see below

Tags mobile connectivity, O2, phone number, visited, website

Business Cloud datacentre

The communications world of the future #TimicoDC

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 25 January, 2012
5 Comments on The communications world of the future #TimicoDC

For the odd one of you that missed last week’s datacentre opening day I now have a few photos to fling your way (rhyming purely coincidental but reveals a deep natural talent 🙂 )

We had a great line up of VIP guests including from Newark Madam Mayoress, Mr Mayor and our local Member of Parliament the Rt Hon Patrick Mercer OBE, pictured here with our Chairman Tim Radford.

Hover your mouse over photos for narrative.

We had the TV cameras in and have also recorded the event for our own purposes (available in time for Christmas).

Tim gave a very inspiring speech supporting local business initiatives and talked about the great communications infrastructure that Newark has making it an ideal place to do business.

Patrick Mercer swiped some virtual curtains on an iPad that opened curtains on the big screen in the NOC revealing a virtual plaque replicating the real one downstairs in reception.

I was interviewed by Central Television and then gave what I can only imagine must have been a highly intelligent and entertaining talk about the new datacentre to an audience of over 200 invited IT Directors, CEOs and CFOs.

We were fortunate in having a top class panel that discussed the future of the communications world for business – you can wait for the video to come out – it would take too long to discuss on the blog.

The panelists were Christian Craggs, Director of O2 Strategy, Delfino Canas, Strategy Director of BT Wholesale, internet entrepreneur Rob Wilmot and last but not least Ewan Macleod of “Mobile Industry Review” fame.

Incidentally we have a great meeting room on the top floor of the new new building that can be used for many purposes – look out for news in the future of events that we will be planning here.

Finally if you are wondering what on earth that fancy dress get up is all about in the header photo then join the club. The things I have to do for this business!!

Keep the faith…:)

Oh and I almost forgot. Thanks to everyone who helped to make the day a great one. This includes staff, the panelists, our VIP guests and of course customers both existing and of the future variety. Having been involved in many successful events over the years I can honestly say this was up there with the best of them.

Tags datacentre, Newark, Timico

End User fun stuff

What’s in a name?

Despite on occasion being known to criticise the UK government for policy matters relating to the internet I am not a particularly political person. I have had a go at both (New) Labour and the current coalition.

The one thing I can’t fault them on, whatever their political hue, is the names of the politicians involved. Here we are talking David (Dave), David, George, Nick and looking back a bit, Tony and Gordon. at Timico the leadership team comprises a Tim, Chris, Neil, Jonathan, Steve, Andrew, Luke, Sandra, Geoff, Calum and Tref – a good spread from around the British Isles.

What I just can’t understand is how on earth anyone could consider being run by someone with a name like Mitt or Newt. I can ascribe Barack to being a cultural/language thing – a bit like a bloke called Nicola running France. Angela in Germany seems positively normal!

Perhaps the Americans have done some market research and picked the “most electable name”. I fully expect to see a Giraffe or an Aardvark running for the US Senate in future – the only possible reason in my mind that the UK media would want to report such an event.

The only possible excuse I can think of is that they needed to find candidate names with available domain names but I haven’t done any research to validate this theory. Any original submissions on this proposition could well be published in full.

Call me boring…

Tags Barack, Dave, Mitt, Newt, Tref

End User social networking

Simple guide to being a real person who someone might want to engage with on Twitter

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 23 January, 2012
5 Comments on Simple guide to being a real person who someone might want to engage with on Twitter

For me one of life’s little disappointments is to see that I have lots of new Twitter “followers” only to find that they aren’t worth following back. Sounds a little high and mighty?

My approach to life is that I am only here the once so I might as well make the most of it. Because of that I treat all waking hours as potentially time to be doing work but because I enjoy what I do I don’t necessarily consider it to be a chore. In addition I try to make my workplace a fun place to be.

Also I have a major vested interest in the success of the business I work for because I am a shareholder. It is in my interest to be on the case more often than not and I am not therefore a someone who switches off when I leave the office.
I use Twitter a lot – for much of my waking day. The platform suits my natural gregariousness and it gets used for a mix of purposes that reflects my approach to life – that is a mix of work and play.

On it I tweet:

work stuff – usually blog posts on trefor.net but also links to online articles that I think relevant to the business, industry or things I cover on the blog
non work stuff – usually creative writing posted on www.philosopherontap.com – latest post here 🙂
and inanities that perhaps reflect my personality and which people can either gel or identify with or chose to ignore/unfollow – it’s a free world and a reflection of what happens in real life and not just online.

It is always exciting to get new followers on Twitter. At the time of writing I have 1,777 followers. However I only follow 1,058 people back. So what do I (quite reasonably) hear you say?

The point is that it is such a source of disappointment to see that you have new followers but not to think it is worth following them back. I’m a fairly easy going bloke so why don’t I follow these people?

To some extent this is because, just like in real life, you wouldn’t “be friends” with everybody you meet. The criteria for making this decision are however somewhat wider when applied to Twitter.

Whilst I do use Twitter to sell as part of the mix described above I don’t want a constant stream of sales pitches. In fact any sales pitch has to be so soft as to be almost not discernible (feel free to knock me down at this point if you think this cynically doesn’t reflect my own tweets).

Of my last 40 followers I only follow 18 of them back. The ones I don’t follow have profiles that suggests they can help me with things. These include:

finding a mortgage
finding a job
finding a franchise to run
making a fast buck
helping me market my business
etc etc etc

Drilling into the tweets of these followers they are invariably one way broadcasts offering advice, thanking new followers for the follow, selling left handed widgets (for example) or simply retweeting “interesting” stuff posted by others.

If someone wants to be followed back they need to be seen to be someone interesting or engaging enough to chat with in a pub or coffee shop. In fact one of the wonders of the Twitter world is that if you have already chatted with someone on Twitter then when you meet them in real life they seem to be very easy to get on with – you already have many things in common to talk about.

Sometimes “real people” don’t get followed back. Often their profile has no information on the person and not much in the way of tweets at all giving me no help with deciding whether to follow them. Also if someone looks implausibly attractive (I get suspicious – no offence intended girls) or as in one recent case, only tweets in Chinese, then they probably won’t get followed.

Although there are some journalists and news accounts I follow but who don’t follow me back I don’t usually follow people for long if they don’t follow back. It isn’t a personal thing. It’s just that I feel social networking isn’t a one way medium.

In the same way many of the accounts that follow me but don’t get followed back unfollow me after a week or two. Quite satisfying really. These are often accounts that simply seem collect followers because they presumably feel this is the right way to build influence. You have to question this when you see people who follow 70,000 people and have 70,000 followers in return. Who is going to notice anything in that stream? Also I often wonder how on earth do some people go about finding me on Twitter! Businesses advice in the Minneapolis area? No thanks.

The rules aren’t hard and fast. I often follow local businesses even if they are “just selling”. It seems reasonable to support your local businesses online in the same way as you might buy stuff from local high street shops. I also follow some businesses in my industry for competitive information purposes.

This has been a longer than usual post and many may not have stuck with it to this point. I understand:)

I will finish the rambling though with the observation/fact that I get many cold calls and unsolicited emails from people wanting to engage (sell). Most of them get filtered out because otherwise I would spend my whole day listening to pitches.

If you want to make it past the gatekeeper the best way is to first develop a non work relationship on Twitter. A subsequent work related approach via email is then less likely to be ignored because of course we will already know each other. Twitter isn’t a medium for selling but it is great for warming up the contact.

To help facilitate this my business card nowadays contains only my Twitter username (@tref) and no email or phone contact details. All the contact info you need is in any case findable online.

I have just realised Twitter is short for Tref’s witterings. Better go.

That’s all folks 🙂

Tags Twitter

Business Cloud competitions datacentre video

Video games killed the art of conversation – spot the game megaprize competition #TimicoDC

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 19 January, 2012
5 Comments on Video games killed the art of conversation – spot the game megaprize competition #TimicoDC

We had a hugely successful data centre opening event at Timico yesterday – 210 customers, prospective customers and business partners came along and, if I say so myself, had a great time (and were impressed 🙂 ). More on this as soon as I’ve assembled the photos etc – I’m on the move at the moment.

In the meantime I have a little prize competition for you. At the back of the lecture theatre (conf room, call it what you will – it had more than 200 odd people in it), just for fun, we had a range of “antique” video games, consoles and computers on show.

There’s a bottle of champagne¹ and a mug for the first person to correctly identify all the different systems shown in the video below (Timico staff not eligible here as they will have been able to view the kit yesterday). Note no apologies for the title of the post. It is partly true and the internet is now doing its best to finish the job.

¹ I saved it specially from yesterday’s celebrations 🙂

Tags console, datacentre, game, Timico, video

Fish finger sandwich – a must when the wife is a way.