Categories
End User phones

Statistics suggest that Apple staff must lose many phones a year #iPhone5

You don’t need this blog to tell you that hot news this morning is that an Apple employee has gone and lost an iPhone5 prototype in a Mexican Restaurant in San Fransisco.  This is almost not news because it is becoming a regular occurrence – it happened before with a previous version of the iPhone.

This is quite timely because at Timico we have been studying mobile handset security issues at work. We talked to directors of 200 companies in the SMB sector and found that 76% of businesses had staff who had lost company mobile phones in any given year. Unsurprisingly the bigger the company the more likely they were to lose more phones.

If you extrapolate our data to a company the size of Apple then the chances are their staff lose thousands of iPhones (assuming any other device would be heresy) a year. Statistically someone with a new iPhone prototype is bound to lose it at some stage though you would have thought they would take a little more care. I guess the euphoria of being in an elite band of iPhone testers leaves you a little more than light headed.

Our survey came up with lots more interesting stats which I will be writing more about over the next week or two so watch this space 🙂

Lots more coverage on the iPhone5 loss here, here and here.

Categories
broadband Business Cloud virtualisation

EFM Growing at 53% Year-on-Year Driven By Need to Access Cloud

Rhossili beach far away in time

These days I back up all my family photos on both an external hard drive and online on Google+ (it’s free and so far I haven’t hit a limit).

In August I had two holidays. From surfing on the Gower I brought back 2GBytes of photos (not including those I took on the Galaxy S2 which automatically upload when in range of a wifi and most of which had done so before I got home).  Wild camping on the Isle of Mull generated 2.4Gigs of media including video.

That’s not only a lot of storage for one month’s activity but it is also a lot of bandwidth used to upload the photos to Google+. Assuming my home ADSL does 1Mbps upload speed, which it doesn’t, and assuming no packet headers, which there will be, it would take me around 10 hours to upload that lot.

In the office I have a 100Mbps connection and the whole of August can be uploaded in the the background in a fairly short time. The bottleneck is probably the Google+ server at the other end though I am not familiar with Google’s i/o speeds for a given account if they have any.

With cloud services the upload speed, long ignored as secondary by the ISP community, is becoming a critical factor. At Timico our ADSL sales into the business sector are still increasing but at nowhere near the rate of Ethernet. Although an Ethernet circuit is of much higher value than an ADSL (or FTTC) line the number of lines is growing nicely.

The first 8 months of this year have seen an increase in Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) activity levels of 53% over the same period in 2010.

This is happening for a number of reasons. Firstly EFM is more reliable than ADSL and carries a Service Level Agreement. Secondly is the symmetrical performance – EFM can have up to 10Mbps upload as well as download. This combination is important because companies are increasingly using resources in the cloud as part of the day to day running of their business and many of these online resources, such as VoIP, are mission critical.

Large businesses have been using Ethernet for years – they were traditionally the only ones that could afford the cost. They also have the distributed systems and resources that requires the reliability and speed. Now SMBs are moving into the cloud – 48% of those in the UK according to VMware.

This means that there are going to be a lot more customers out there looking for higher upload speeds. At 10Mbps FTTC does bring faster upload but the FTTC footprint is still under construction. In the meantime there are over 2,000 EFM POPs out there (BT and TalkTalk) which probably cover a fairly high proportion of UK businesses.

Coming back to the photos the average size of jpg from my Canon Powershot is roughly 3MBytes – some more some less. This is for a 12Megapixel camera. Looking back 5 years I had a 4 Megapixel camera that produced 1MB jpgs. This suggests to me that in 2016 I will be taking 36Megapixel photos using 9 or 10MB of storage. My 4.4GB August family photo album would be more like 14GB which would still take 3 1/2 hours to upload even if I had a 10Mbps uplink speed.

It is easy to imagine that in 5 years time 10Mbps upload won’t be good enough for home use let alone business and that everyone will be looking for the next level up. It is also easy to imagine that people will find it hard to remember what the world was like before they lived in the cloud.

Categories
Apps Business Cloud virtualisation

UCAS should have a cloud based virtual system that can scale with demand

The A Level results were released just before I went on holiday. For me the noticeable bit was the fact that the UCAS system failed to cope with the demand for people wanting to see how they got on. Someone from UCAS came on BBC Radio to discuss this and mentioned the fact that due to next year’s University course fee hikes they had planned for a huge increase in visits but in the end the capacity was still inadequate.

This is clearly an example where a cloud based implementation would get by the problem. UCAS would have been able to increase the resources available just for the period of high demand which is of course only for a few days in a year. Lets hope they get their act together for next year when kid #2 goes through it all.

PS I’m back – didn’t have time to write this in the mad rush before going on holiday.

PPS It’s good to be back 🙂

Categories
End User travel

I’m off on holiday again – different kind of surfing

surfboards at Llangenith, Rhossili Beach, Gower

No more posts until after the Bank Holiday. This time we are going surfing on the Gower peninsula where there is of course no mobile signal to speak of and therefore no internet connection and no surfing the web. I’m sure the residents don’t like that situation but us tourists do.

When I get back it’s going to be an uber busy Autumn and I look forward to re-engaging with everyone fully refreshed and having used up all my annual leave allowance.

Ciao (or hwyl, seeing as I’m of to Wales).

Header photo was taken last August at Rhosili beach (far away in time).

Categories
broadband Business

Some BDUK money should be used to educate rural broadband champions #DEAPPG #DigitalBritain #finalthirdfirst

BDUK broadband cash didn't reach this farm cottage in time


BDUK broadband money needs partly to be spent  on education.

Much has been written on the subject of rural broadband and the digital divide and yesterday it all hit the news again as the Government published details of which areas will get how much money towards taking “broadband to all”.

This ranges between zero if you (are lucky enough to?) live in densely populated London to £31million if you live in Devon.

I’m not going to repeat stuff previously written on this other than to say I see the government is caught between a rock and a hard place – the few organisations able to deliver scale are unlikely to deliver what’s best and more over cost effective for the longer term prosperity of UK plc.  I don’t however see an alternative strongly waving a flag saying “this is how it should be done”.

There are islands of hope – for example B4RN.  However B4RN is lucky enough to have someone local called Barry Forde driving the project that really understands what he is talking about.

I listened to BF and a council official being interviewed on Radio 5 Live yesterday afternoon. Not only did the presenters not know what they were talking about but neither did the council official. How can we expect local authorities to create projects in their regions if they don’t understand the issues facing them? The outcome is that councils resort to accepting the friendly arm round the shoulder from a incumbent whose goal in life is not to help them but to take as much of their money as they can.

It would make sense to me for some of the BDUK broadband cash to be used to fund independently provided educational programmes for people wanting to champion local broadband network projects. At least then they would be able to make informed decisions about what to do with the money.

PS I realise it is a game but I do wish the Government would drop this PR spiel about having the “best superfast broadband network in Europe by the end of this parliament”. Who is kidding who?

Categories
Cloud End User surveillance & privacy travel

Fancy popping down to the library for a coffee?

British Library with St Pancras Station in the background

Popped in to the British Library for a coffee yesterday en route to a meeting. It’s handily placed next to Kings Cross Station and I had only been there once before when I gave a talk on the likely impact of the DEAct on public intermediaries such as libraries and universities.

I was very pleasantly surprised with the place but it did make me think what will happen when all books are available electronically? In theory people will have much less reason to visit a library, other than for a quick coffee and, in the case of the British library to view some “ancient treasures”. This potentially must go down as a great source of sadness.

I’m probably not a good example though since I don’t usually like to borrow books from a library or anywhere else.  This is because, for those of you unfamiliar with the system, you have to give them back. I’m sorry but online doesn’t cut it for me either. I have to have bookcase lined walls where I can identify old favourites by the colour of the spine. I have kindle on my iPad but have only ever downloaded free, “out of copyright” books – Darwin, Marx, Plato et al. Good stuff I know but they are a better read on paper.

So how will our behaviour towards books change when everything is online? Will an online librarian ask you to turn the music down, or the TV? Ssshhh for kindle’s sake.  Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Categories
Engineer gadgets

It pays to shop around – Dell Inspiron M501R

Dell Inspiron M501R Laptop

My youngest is getting kitted up for “big school” – the Lincoln equivalent of Harry Potter going to Hogwarts.

He will have to learn a whole new set of skills – the mind can only boggle at what. For example one of the kids told me the other week that everyone knows how to get around the school web content filter. Of course it is highly illegal to do so but…

I don’t really want to know what else they will learn, other than what I will hear at parents evening when I get to meet the teachers.

I have had a policy of equipping the kids appropriately for secondary education. They have all (4 of them) had mobile phones and PCs as an essential part of their kitbag, along with pencil case and PE kit.

When my oldest, now 19, went “up” we bought him a PC for £800. I don’t remember the spec although my wife still uses it, not without complaint. The heir is now onto his third computer – the last two having been laptops.

The next two got PCs as well, ie not laptops. However this time round I’ve been amazed at how cheap these things have become.  I bought a Dell Inspiron M501R Laptop (4GB RAM, 500GB HD, 15.6″ screen) for £319 from Tesco including a £50 discount voucher and 6 months interest free credit (and 758 clubcard points – I bought a bag too!).

There were suggestions on Twitter that I should just get him a tablet but tabs ain’t good enough for homework yet, for that is the purpose of the purchase.

It was also suggested that at the age of 11 he isn’t going to be particularly gentle with his machine but you know what? It isn’t going to be expensive to replace when the time comes and at least we can make him do his homework in view of a (partly) responsible parent.

PS Sorry if your thoughts are still on summer holidays and not school – you are right that this post is a bit early but if I’d left it until nearer the time I’d probably have forgotten all about it and the moment would have been lost.

PPS please no comments telling me I could have got twice the spec for half the price elsewhere. This would not be productive and I did shop around 🙂

Categories
Business phones

Google buys Motorola Mobility – will Microsoft follow suit with Nokia?

We do live in exciting times. The acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google turns the pressure on Nokia/Microsoft. Don’t have a crystal ball but it isn’t hard to imagine Microsoft acquiring Nokia leaving us, with Apple, a three horse race.

The interesting question is what happens to the other phone vendors? It becomes increasingly difficult to imaging RIM, HP and any other vendor with their own OS making any headway in this market and the pure hardware vendors (in this case) such as HTC and Samsung must be concerned despite the placatory noises coming out of Google. I guess if nothing else it will heighten their need to maintain competitiveness which is good.

Motorola brings huge benefits to Google: a large patent portfolio, hardware nouse and a resource of developers. I recently took a look at Motorola’s Xoom (online only – there is a limit to how many gadgets I can afford to buy and I’m not ready to buy another tablet yet) and it looked like a good first attempt.  I’m looking forward to seeing the products that come out of this acquisition and I would think that the staff at Motorola Mobile are on a high.

Categories
broadband End User

What Would You Do with Unlimited Broadband Speed and Bandwidth?

I sat in on a BT call recently where the experience of people on the FTTP trials was discussed. Individual users begin to see the bandwidth  constraints of far end networks and servers. In other words their own connection might be like a cow pat off the proverbial shovel but they were still having to wait for a response from a website they were looking at or downloading from.

It would be quite interesting to hear what people might do with the internet if they had unlimited broadband, no bandwidth constraints anywhere.

As a starter I asked around the office and was inundated with good inputs – though there is a theme if you read through the  bullet points below. Thanks to all who provided feedback – I don’t think I need to comment further myself at this point other than to say that whatever you can imagine yourself doing with your connection I could easily envisage multiplying it by orders of magnitude. ie if you think you could regularly use itto download 10TB data then 100TB is around the corner.

  • The only real use of unlimited bandwidth for consumers would be for Media functions. The current demand for TV and movies “on demand” both streaming and purchased and stored on a hard drive (both legal and Illegal) and as we are in a I want this now culture waiting 1-2 hours for a download isn’t good enough which is why Streaming from places like Lovefilm and Netflix is taking off .
  • Linking ourselves via wireless into our own neural network to gain information/communication anywhere any time via an implant – I’d have one! I wouldn’t want anyone to upload from me though:)
  • I think the point is “what would you do if you had unlimited internet access and it was legal to download whatever you want”.The reason I say this is that in an ideal world I’d leave it downloading films, music etc all the time, but of course these come at a cost.  This means that in reality I won’t bother doing this as I can’t afford the actual content that is available.  Therefore the argument that it isn’t required sounds quite just.
    However, if the content were free as well (or a volume was provided by your ISP) then this becomes much more appealing.
  • I can’t imagine I’d change my usage.
  • As more and more devices require updates and internet connection – anyone with a “capped” or limited internet connection can be soon either stuck with an out of date firmware or unable to update as they have reached their limit. Or they get half way through watching “All creature great and small” on the iplayer and they hit their limits.One thing that bothers me is the online films – I would love to use this service, but my speed is to slow at peak times and also I would watch one/two films, hit my limit and not have any internet access at all or if I do I am paying through the nose for it.Cars use the internet  (mainly Mercedes at the moment – 3G, but they can connect to you home LAN via wireless if the 3G is not in your area).   Nearly all new  TV’s have an Ethernet connection – some fridges do – kids toys do.The list goes on.If your car is uploading its data, your kids on the PC, your wife is online shopping, your fridge is ordering your shopping – that is peaking your bandwidth how do I get my work email? Like anything in life if it exists should we not be able to have it – or as humans are we being more greedy with our self-obsession.
  • The main benefits for me would be enabling a complete migration to the cloud for all local file access. For example, if speed wasn’t prohibitive for me accessing and editing files in programs such as photoshop, I would.Dropbox for example one become much more useful. Productivity and redundancy – 2 birds with one stone.Then you have the benefits to full digital delivery of entertainment.TV on demand taking off, gaming on demand… Goodbye Blockbuster. I know it happens today, but we are still scratching the surface of what is achievable.
  • Never had an enquiry or request for unlimited bandwidth. My customers just want unlimited usage!
  • For the vast majority of home users I can’t really see the need for over 100Mb which would be sufficient to stream HD quality video. If a 1Gbps home connection was available and affordable I suspect the few people that would actually require this speed would use it to host their own servers instead of using colo / hosted services.It would be inevitable that a large number of these servers would be hosting copyrighted material. Such a fast connection would make remote storage and cloud computing services available to a larger number of people however not everyone would want to use such services given the security implications.Obviously the previous statements would only be relevant if the 1gbps was symmetrical.Given that I myself live in the countryside and struggle to get 1Mb I would much rather money was spent to upgrade the network in the more rural areas to bring them in line with the rest of the country.Such an upgrade would cost hundreds of millions even billions and given the current economic situation I can’t see it ever happening nor would the majority of tax payers want to foot the bill.As a side note a 1Gbps connection is available or will be very soon to some of the Japanese population so I’m sure some usage details will be available at some point.
  • If it was truly unlimited in speed, I would move everything from my 6 Terabytes of storage (entire 250 DVD/Bluray collection in digital form as well as thousands of CDs backed up in digital form and entire photo collection) to the cloud as it would reduce my power consumption and (more importantly) make them available everywhere I went.  As it is, even with our 50MB Virgin Media service it would take too long to upload all of this as well as keeping it up to date.  It would help with other services like BT vision, sky on-demand, letmewatchthis.ch etc. It’s not like you need 1Gb to check your facebook 🙂
  • Community area i.e. our Village Hall – Setup Broadband connection for communal use. TV, Games, laptops, i-phones (simultaneously)
  • Stream HD TV, currently a no go for us, and imagine if everyone in the village did it
  • Being a keen users of services like Dropbox, snapfish, spotify and sky-go I would say that if bandwidth were no object we would subscribe to an increasing amount of residential ‘cloud based services’ and make more use of the available software, storage and processing capability that these sorts of solutions provide.Last night for example we uploaded, shared, modified and purchased for print over 300 photos on Snapfish, however the given that I was also working on salesforce.com it created a bottle neck and we had to leave the upload for over an hour to finish off, this would have also put pay to anything else we were doing on the net. If unlimited bandwidth were available I think there would be a vast update in online storage solutions and cloud based services. Equally we frequently pop to Blockbusters or download films from Sky box office however if a reliable, constant and high speed internet connection were available we would simply stream media from whichever provider was making it available.It is not however the only issue that needs to be fixed. We are now finding that with three or four iPod touches, three iPhones, a couple of PSP’s a PlayStation, Nintendo Wii, wireless streaming media throughout the house with Airport express not to mention a couple of work laptops, an iPad and home PC we are now finding that before we can trouble the internet connection we are struggling with our internal network, both wireless and wired as the demands on our pair of not too shabby £120 routers !
  • I cant see the use for 1Gb broadband at this very minute but it can be likely within a year or so.One of the things it would definitely change is the way we watch TV especially since Sky have launched their Sky Go which allows Sky customers to watch Sky content via the Sky Broadband service. Virgin Media have a similar offering but the best thing Virgin is that they are now offering the TIVO box which allows you to record upto 3 programmes while watching another. This clearly will use a lot of data. In our household we are constantly fighting over the remote to watch our programmes and as a result I and my wife have started recording programmes on Sky+ to watch at a later time. My son tends to watch Cars the film over and over again.My TV set is not HD but the one I want is very very expensive so Im having to wait a few months before I can even think of purchasing it. The reason is that the technology allows the TV to connect to the Internet for Rich Content and I believe this is where we will need to have at least 50Mb of broadband connectivity. If we say there are 3 people watching or streaming programmes in HD content, that will using a fair amount of bandwidth. Also I believe we may get into a state like the far-east where we will be bombarded with content based advertising!!Also I have heard of a UK manufacturer whom has launched a games console which is cloud based and I believe our desktops/laptops will go the same way like Google Desktop. I wont be surprised if Nintendo/Sony or Xbox start going down this route. Also with appliances which will be internet based like Fridges automatically ordering your groceries before they expire. I believe we will be looking at a home controlled by the internet, but that said 1Gb does seem to be too much and not really required in my eyes. Most of the above is not essential for life but clearly will make things easy for us but only for those who can afford it.
Categories
Apps Cloud Engineer virtualisation

PCoIP over VMWare View (for Keeping Up with the #Cricket Wherever You Are)

PCoIP thin client technology in use
I’ve been trying out thin client software at the office, specifically PCoIP running over VMware View.

It’s going very well. The station I sat at had just a keyboard, mouse and screen with a small connector box hooking me up with the network. I was running a virtual instance of Windows with the actual application running on a virtual machine in our data centre.

You wouldn’t know that there was no PC in a box underneath the desk.  The beauty of this technology is the fact that I can install a virtual client on my PC at home (or anywhere else) that will allow me to log in and replicate my work environment. It consumes much less power and also makes management of the whole estate much easier.  New users can be provisioned in seconds – the process of building a PC can take a day.

EVGA PD02The experience is great – in fact I didn’t know I wasn’t sat at a PC when I started using it. The header photo shows the workstation set up (a bit untidy – click to see more) and the inset photo (right)  is of the EVEA connector box. You can have up to 4 monitors using a DVI splitter plug – something our geeks really like.

The box is an EVGA PD02. They retail at around £216 plus VAT. When you add the costs of the licenses the individual per unit cost is roughly the same as a fully loaded new PC so the cost saving is in the management – IT staff headcount I guess if you were looking at a large estate.

Note England are doing well in the cricket against India which is why I sat at the workstation in the first place – I wanted an update of the score 🙂 . Invitations to the Oval test gratefully accepted.

 

Categories
End User Regs social networking

We must take care not to destroy the civil liberties we value when considering a response to the riots

We live, always, in interesting times. The global finance system is in crisis, again. There have been riots on the streets, again, with courts working through the night to process the cases of criminals caught breaking, stealing, committing acts of arson, violence, disturbing the peace, assault and grievous bodily harm.

It is natural to react strongly against this and I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone particularly busting a gut to defend the perpetrators. A petition has been started asking that anyone found involved in these illegal activities be deprived of their benefits.

Social media seems to have played a part in the organisation of these riots as does BlackBerry Messenger and the Prime Minister in his speech to the commons today said:

“Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

This is great in principle but of course not as easy to implement. Also how do we know in advance that they are plotting violence? Do we monitor everybody’s social networks one on the off chance that someone is plotting to do wrong?

For what the PM is asking for there is a parallel in the world of mobile communications. During times of emergency the cellular network can be switched off for everyone except the Emergency Services.  This is down to the need to keep the low call carrying capacity network open for priority communications rather than a desire to stop miscreants using the service.

The situation is slightly different as regards social networking and we have to take great care that we don’t overreact. Twitter, for example, was being used to channel help just as much as BBM may have been used to coordinate the riots. Moreover the fact that these people are communicating using social media tools is likely to be a means to actually tracking them down and arresting them. People have already started being reported for telling friends on Facebook what they have been up to.

There are other parallels concerning internet technologies and the desire of government to control them – website blocking and filtering for example. Where do you draw the line and who decides when a website should be blocked? It has to be a judge. The same applies when considering situations of social unrest as we have just been seeing.

On balance I suggest that we must take great care when considering the application of control over social networks that the PM is calling for.

Note that at the time of writing the HM Government e-petition site has crashed and you get the following message:

Categories
End User mobile connectivity

Mobile data usage – phone versus tablet

I use a couple of SIMs on a day to day basis – phone and iPad. The phone is always with me whereas the iPad is not.  The iPad is also more likely to be used in an area where there is WiFi. Needless to say if WiFi is available this gets used in preference to 3G in any case – longer battery life, faster and cheaper connectivity.

The usage patterns are as follows:

Month/device May iPad May phone June  iPad June Phone
Bandwidth usage (Bytes) 320,270,336 1,241,365,504 262,217,728 662,842,368
Days out of office 6 7

Clearly the phone gets used more than the iPad for accessing data. There doesn’t seem to be much correlation between days out of the office and usage though not that this small sample is particularly scientific. My days out are usually to London and typically I will leave my ancient laptop technology behind in favour of the tablet – lighter and good enough for most uses though not for any serious work.

It looks as if I am using between 1Gig and 1.5Gig of mobile data a month which is hugely more than the average of 200Megs (according to TMobile in January when they slashed usage allowances from 3Gigs to 500Megs). I may not be the average user but this must surely be the way of things to come.

Categories
Business internet media

Internet bandwidth use by press corps at the Edgebaston Test Match #cricket

There is something comforting about the start of a new day in a cricket test match, especially when your side is doing well. We don’t want any excitement, just the occasional run and maybe every now and again a boundary. There is plenty of time, no rush.

Test Match Special is on Radio 4 and cricinfo.com for a glance now and then at the statistics. It feels as if all is well in the Empire, and coming from a Welshman that is saying something. It’s all comfortable establishment stuff and far away from any trouble at t’ mill.

Which makes it somewhat bemusing when in the pre match commentary on cricinfo I read the following:

11.10am An entertaining diktat from ECB at Edgbaston. As reported by NG, “It has been detected that there has been inappropriate use of the bandwidth in the press box with people downloading music, movies, programmes, skyping etc. If you are found doing that today your computer would be blocked. Full Stop.”

This can be read in two ways. Either the occupants of the press box are upsetting the authorities by indulging in copyright infringing activites, which I’m sure they can’t be 😉 or one of our major test cricket venues has inadequate internet connectivity and doesn’t want to clog it up with streaming media.

Actually I would have thought that the press corps would be heavy users of streaming media – watching the game live and simultaneously online for example to catch repeat showing of runs scored, wickets taken etc.

If someone from the ECB wants to get in touch I will happily sort them out with some more bandwidth 🙂

PS the header photo is of the pavillion at Owmby Cricket Club in Lincolnshire. Owmby is one of those beautiful little rural grounds that make it a pleasure to follow village cricket.

Categories
broadband Business

B4RN JFDI FTTH – this is real community at work – not Big Society FTTP

B4RN rural broadband virgin media expansion

I note with excitement the B4RN website has gone live today. BARN do I hear you say? It stands for Broadband For the Rural North and is a community initiative set up by a team including Barry Forde, Chris Conder and Lindsey Annison to provide Fibre to the Home for country dwellers currently either completely unable to get broadband or the connection is so slow it is hardly worth the effort.

B4RN is not a Big Society, BDUK, Government funded project. It is reliant on the community itself investing in its own future. Its founders have become totally disillusioned with attempts to formalise “superfast broadband” projects under government initiatives.

To lay fibre cables to all 1322 properties across the 8 parish areas proposed for the first phase rollout will cost £1.86M. Each property taking service will get 1Gbs symmetrical broadband at a monthly charge currently set at £30 (£25+VAT).

The fibre terminating equipment in the customers property will have a one hour battery back up installed. This will allow those who want to use VoIP telephony services exclusively, to cease their landlines saving the £13.90 monthly line rental charge. Existing telephone numbers can be moved over to the service.

Members of the community can subscribe for shares in B4RN from a minimum amount of £100 up to the maximum permitted under FSA rules of £20,000.

As well as offering shares in exchange for cash investments B4RN are looking to the community to subscribe with payment of labour and/or materials. Of the £1.86M cost of building the network over £500K is due to labour; so there is considerable scope for members to contribute their labour rather than cash. There are many who could dig the trenches, install duct and make good afterwards and their contribution to the project would be invaluable. Similarly there are administrative, clerical and technical support roles to be filled and these skills and time can be offered in kind to purchase shares.

£1.86 million sounds like a lot but it isn’t. It’s around £1,400 per property. It’s a fraction of the what it would cost the likes of BT because their overheads are so much higher and B4RN is benefitting from easement waivers from the local landowners in the interest of the wider community – something that they would be unlikely to do for a for profit organisation such as BT.

What’s more this investment is hugely future proofed as the initial service will offer each property 1Gbps symmetrical connectivity, upgradeable at some point because it is fibre all the way.

I visited the B4RNlocale a couple of weeks or so ago and it is very rural. You can see the detailed business plan with a very transparent presentation of the costs of the project on the B4RN website here. It really does put BDUK to shame.

We all need to give this project our support because it seriously does represent the future of broadband in rural Britain. Also, at 1Gbps if we could but see it B4RN also represents the future of what all our broadband services should look like.

Categories
End User gaming

The language of the XBox Live hack Call of Duty World at War Nazi Zombies

I have spent all my life learning new languages. It began with simultaneous Welsh and English, moved on to French and then on to Fortran, assembler and Basic.

After that came the language of business interspersed with Ethernet, Internet Protocol  and a thick compendium of acronyms long and short pertaining to the world of communications. It continues with social media – tweets, likes, hangouts, circles.

Now I find myself even having to understand the world of online gaming as my youngest son’s Xbox live account has been hacked. He was playing Nazi Zombies on Call of Duty: World at War and received a message on his screen saying “haha you’re dead” or words to that effect. His rank has also been reset and he can no longer play online because he needs to be level1.

Following me so far? I’m sure you are (dudes). Apparently he was in a “modded” lobby and the only thing you can do is send a complaint about the user seemingly doing the hacking and not use this type of lobby. If you find yourself in one by accident get the heck out of there quick via the centre guide button on the controller or turn of the system before the changes can be stored on THEIR servers or you will find yourself neg xp a second time.

You also need to watch out for “infection lobbies” and, for WaW the “God mode mod” where you will see players flying all over the map, who you can not kill no matter how much you shoot them. When you score a kill the score will be incorrect and things may display incorrectly on the HuD, too.

I hope that helps – always happy to provide advice. The only thing I’m not totally clear about is the fact that I think he has now lost the cash he (I) forked out in points to buy the game in the first place.

If I were you I wouldn’t let them play this sort of stuff but I‘m clearly not the best role model. You try dragging a kid away from the screen, innit.

Sorted.

Whateva.

Nng

Categories
End User scams

Pre recorded phone message scam on mobile

I just got a pre-recorded message spam on my mobile phone trying to sell me some kind of insurance or other %^&*.  Aaaaaargh. The number was of course withheld.

This is a public statement concerning the despicable nature of people that perpetrate this type of intrusive scam. You are in the same category as ACSLaw in terms of low life.

Rant over – if anyone else wants to get it off their chest here I will authorise all comments unless you swear too much and I find it overly offensive.

 

Categories
Apps End User mobile apps

Time is money

In the interest of research and proper use of the technology I followed the hashtag #londonriots. On Tweetdeck that hashtag stream is moving so quickly as to be not of any use. My own stream has, at a guess, 70% of tweets relating to the riots.

This is of course the complete other extreme to my offline experiences on holiday. People are clearly mesmerized by the whole situation. I can understand it – I was in Austin Texas during 9/11 and it was difficult to do anything other than watch events unfold on the TV. Today they combine TV and Twitter.

It does underline the way our lives have changed. This is an addiction to data. We take onboard so much information it is impossible to know what to do with it. In fact most of it is discarded which underlines the total waste of the time spent gathering it in the first place.

I could apply the same logic to photos. Last week on holiday I took 849 photos consuming 2.3GB disk space. That’s more than the 1.54GB (2,177 photos) as much as I took in the whole of 2003.  Year to date in 2011 I have taken 9,985 photos using 49.9GB of disk space and there is still almost half the year to go. Ok this does now include videos and the photos are of higher quality than in 2003 but it is still a big change and very representative of the information overload in our society.

The point is how to manage all this data and how to apportion the right amount of time to it. I still don’t have the answer but it is somewhere in between how I got on on holiday in Mull and the start of this week with all the online reporting of #londonriots. What I do know is that whoever cracks the problem, if there is a solution, is going to make a lot of money out of it.

Categories
End User internet

Holiday offline

our wild campsite on Mull

It seems a long time ago since I actually set off on my offline holiday. That is partly because it somewhat reaffirmed the third law of the internet. This is one where time goes far more quickly when you are using the internet.

Without the internet the pace of life is far more relaxing – proof is this video of Highland Cattle. They look pretty chilled to me and I bet not one of them has ever been online.

So what does a person do when not online? In no particular order reads a history of the UK after the Romans had left, plays scrabble with son, keeps a diary, goes walking in the hills, swimming in the loch, visits the Abbey at Iona and Fingal’s cave, picnics at Calgary Bay, camping in the hills around Loch Ba and at the shores of Fidden, has coffee on the terrace looking out over the bay at Tobermory, visits Duart Castle, sees red deer, roe deer, sea eagles, mountain hares, dolphins, minke whales, goes to bed when he feels like it and wakes up early, hears nothing but the sound of running water, the wind off the sea and the lapping of the waves on the beach, visits a distillery, sees cheese being made, visits the local agricultural show, sees sheepdogs in action, cattle and sheep being judged, talks to walking stick makers and traditional tartan cloth weavers, visits the Boathouse on Ulva, pitches the tent in the rain, takes the tent down in the rain, catches the sun and watches it set over the islands in the West, fights off midges, washes the dishes in the stream, hears the eagle chick cry out across the loch for food, eats well, drinks only water and tea made from the water taken from the stream, drives 6 miles off the road to the campsite, gets rides off a friendly farmer and an estate owner and dries walking boots in front of a log fire.

I’m back now but the time did not seem to race by and I feel as if I have had a long and great holiday. Whilst I have been away there have been global stockmarket crashes, riots in London, tanks rolling in in the Middle East. They should have all gone offline.

If you are going on holiday leave the internet behind. Nothing will really have changed when you get back.

Categories
End User internet

radio silence in 2011

It’s Friday, five thirty and the beginning of my summer holiday. This year it is split into two. A week camping at the beginning of August and a week surfing in the Gower at the end of August.

This first week is going to be an interesting one because the camping trip is going to involve absolutley no technology other than wheels to get us there and a map and compass to get us around. I’m off with son2 (kid3) to the Isle of Mull and there will in any case for the most part be very little connectivity even if we wanted it. It’s going to be social networking the old fashioned way.

I am going to be recording the trip using a pen and notebook with the once concession to technology being the digital camera. It almost feels as if I am about to parachute onto a different planet. Watch this space for the report on this sociological experiment, but not until I get back.

If you are taking some time off this summer then have a good holiday wherever you are whoever you are.

Categories
broadband Business

Wholesale Broadband Connect (ADSL2+): Latest BT Rollout Plans

The latest most up-to-the-moment skinny on BT’s plans for rolling out Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC), the company’s ADSL2+ product.

Just had an email from BT Wholesale announcing the intention to “significantly extend the availability of Wholesale Broadband Connect – copper to around 90 per cent of UK premises during Spring 2013. This means an additional 2.5 million premises will have access to up to 20Mb/s broadband (ADSL2+). The expansion of the rollout plan is set to bring the total number of UK homes and businesses with such access to roughly 22.5 million. “

The current WBC enabled exchanges serve more than 17.6 million premises. The up to 90% rollout plan is set to include more than 400 additional ‘rural’ exchanges, serving more than 900,000 ‘rural’ premises.

“As BT Wholesale expands the footprint for advanced copper broadband, as previously advised, it will gradually withdraw its legacy broadband products. For example, IPstream, which offers speeds of up to 8Mb/s will be retired within the advanced copper broadband footprint by Spring 2014, as more and more customers are migrated onto more advanced services.”

I’ve cut and pasted some more detail below in the form of questions.  BT has of course a business to run and the process of extending ADSL2+ to more exchanges is part of this. We shouldn’t forget that the ultimate goal should be to get fibre to every premises in the UK which in the short term does not necessarily stack up with the BT commercial proposition.

Q. Is your legacy broadband retirement plan connected to this ~90% rollout intention?

A.  They are not directly linked but do complement each other.  We are looking to withdraw legacy broadband services in line with falling demand whereas our next generation broadband services will roll out wherever it is commercially viable.  This extension to the rollout plan means that many more end users should be able to get next generation broadband services as traditional broadband services are retired.

Q.So what’s the latest position on BT Wholesale’s WBC advanced copper rollout plan? 

A. This table outlines our current plans*:

  Exchanges in WBC footprint Homes & businesses served from WBC- enabled  exchanges UKpenetration 
Enabled today (July 2011) 1,336 17.6m ~70%
“Up to 80%” announcement 1,804 20m ~80%
“Up to 90%” announcement 2,604 22.5m ~90%

* May be subject to change

 

 

 

 

Q. How many Market 1 exchanges have been enabled to date and how many lines do they serve?

A. This table outlines the Market 1 position*:

  Exchanges in Market 1 footprint  Homes & businesses served from WBC- enabled exchanges Market 1 penetration(nb Market 1 comprises 11.7% of UK lines)
Enabled today (July 11) 11 54.5k 1.88%
 “Up to 80%” 137 380k 12.82%
“Up to 90%” 539 1.32m 44.44%

* May be subject to change

 

 

Categories
Business Cloud competitions

Announcing the Timico fairy cake champion

Timico fairy cake competition

At Timico we now have a champion fairy cake maker to add to the long list of other cake making honours within theTimico fairy cake competition company.

This time the winner is engineer Stephen Burdock who spends his days sorting out  customer problems and clearly must spend some of his evenings practising his baking skills.

As usual the standard of entries was top notch and the produce is available to purchase at £1 each – all moneys to charity.

Thanks to the judges, including Powernet’s marketing manager John Heritage and to all the other entrants who put so much effort into the competition.

The picture on the right is a cross section of the winning cake before being demolished by the judges. It’s nice to see blokes winning these competitions:)

Categories
Business Cloud datacentre

Hot off the Hollywood press – new video of the Timico Newark data center in progress


The video stars Timico Technology Group Chairman Tim Radford talking about the plans for the data center business.

Categories
Business Cloud datacentre

Timico Data Center Build Update – The Inside Story

Timico HQ

Progress is rapid with the new data center build. In fact I was to some extent lulled into a false sense of pace (if that’s the right way of putting it) because the photo I take every day from the same spot didn’t seem to be changing much.
rear view of new Timico data center build
Casting my photographic net on the other side of the building however gave a completely different picture and on Friday afternoon I wandered down, hard hat and all to take a look. I’ve take a few shots that give quite a good feel for what is going to be delivered in the new build. This first photo is a ground floor view of the rear.

The generators have not been delivered yet but one will go on concrete plinths either side of the central column.

front view of new Timico data centerMoving round the front there is still a big hole in the middle. They are still moving a lot of materials in. This should be covered up within the next couple of weeks.

The big central opening on the top floor will be where the Timico board room is going to be.

Moving inside we have a plant room and views of the first data hall. This will house 72 x 4KW racks using cold aisle containment and free air cooling – this should mean that for substantial parts of the year we don’t need to power the air conditioning.

Timico Data center plant roomTimico data center data hall 1

Were the facility to be exclusively used for hosting virtualised services then the capacity of each rack
can be as high as 100TeraBytes.

In reality the capacity is very much dependent on the mix of resources you have in the rack – high speed/expensive drives versus bigger. This is very much dependent on the application.

under the floor of the new Timico data centerTimico data centre data hall 2 under construction

The shot on the left here shows the flooring under construction. The floor tiles are heavy duty as the floor has to support a considerable weight of the fully loaded racks above.

You don’t wanbt to move a full rack if you can help it, at least not without the use of a fork lift truck.

first floor engineering offices in new Timico Data center NOC at Timico data center under construction

Upstairs on the first floor we have the development engineering offices (left) and the Network Operations Centre.

You can see the raised floor again in the NOC though this does not need to be as heavy duty as in the data halls on the ground floor. The end wall will be flat and covered in monitoring screens.

To finish off here are a couple of photos of me with a view of the existing Timico HQ building from the top floor of the new and one stood on the actual floor of the data hall to give some perspective.

Trefor Davies in the new Timico data center buildingTrefor Davies stood next to the raised floor of a data center hall

There are a few more photos below including ones I consider to be quite arty 🙂 if you are interested.

Continue reading “Timico Data Center Build Update – The Inside Story”
Categories
broadband Business

FTTC Broadband Cabinets – The Inside Scoop! – As Never Seen Before

FTTC cabling under the "manhole"

Yesterday’s post showing new photos of FTTC broadband cabinets prompted a flurry of off-blog communication. The photos are of the the larger FTTC with a capacity for 200 pairs using 4 * 100 pr SMPF connections.

The smaller cabinet has only 2 * 100 pr so has a capacity of 100 pairs. I have been very kindly sent some drive by (walk by) photos of the insides of a smaller cab taken when BT engineers were doing some work. The photos are of both FTTC and PCP cabs showing the cable pairing capacity/wiring loom.

Openreach engineers working at an FTTC cabinet inside a small FTTC cabinet

inside a small FTTC cabinet inside a small FTTC cabinet

 

 

 

FTTC cabinet wiring

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
broadband Engineer

FTTC Broadband Cabinet Update – New Photos

The photos I have been using for FTTC broadband cabinets were just not the right ones.  Thanks to reader Andrew Benham I have been able to rectify this and include below some new ones for your pleasure and entertainment.  I particularly like the one with the smaller older cabinet which is not FTTC, buried in the undergrowth. Don’t ask me why, it’s a personal thing.

You can see there is a significant size difference between the two types of cab. Click on each photo, including the one in the post header for bigger versions.  FTTC is the most popular subject for searches on this blog.

 

photos:  Andrew Benham who has kindly offered then on a copyright free basis

Categories
Cloud End User security

The Pocket Cloud (Innovation #1259) – Security Issues Answered

The Pocket Cloud…business critical data storage in a secure USB-connected non-wireless device.

the pocket cloud

the pocket cloud

The fiendishly clever engineers at my place of work have come up with a new innovation, The Pocket Cloud (pat pending TM applied for etc), a highly innovative means of storing important business critical content in a totally secure manner.

Built in security features include an USB connection – this is a totally wireless free device which completely eliminates drive by data theft.

The Pocket Cloud comes with “uber” portability as it fits neatly into your pocket and can easily be removed from an office location whenever there is a flood/fire/earthquake (delete as appropriate – other forms of disaster are available). It should be incorporated into every Disaster Recovery plan.

At times of Disaster The Pocket Cloud also has a secondary role as a cloud based stress ball thereby satisfying Health and Safety requirements as well as those of IT.

If you have any questions or are desirious of acquiring a Pocket Cloud please get in touch.

Categories
Business Cloud online safety Regs

The Google View of the Forthcoming UK Comms Regulatory Landscape #deappg

Google’s Sarah Hunter impresses at the Communications Bill Forum.

Google’s Head of UK Public Policy, Sarah Hunter was a breath of fresh air at last week’s Communications Bill Forum.  Firstly she was one of the few speaking without just reading out a prepared speech. It can get boring listening to someone reading out their notes.

Secondly she offered a perspective based on a platform as opposed to most of the other speakers who were largely either content providers or  pipes.

  1. The government should not make policies that favour specific industries without considering the wider impact elsewhere.
  2. Open platforms should be protected – both content and pipes need them and they are expensive to build and maintain
  3. Keep a sensible approach to data protection. In other words allow targeted advertising.  The direction the EU is going is not good in this respect.
  4. Encourage and promote investment in computer science and engineering – engineers are taking over the world.
  5. Concentrate on consumer education – digital literacy and consumer empowerment. In other words keep kids safe online by education (and not mandatory web filtering – my words).
As always we have to strike a balance and how well the government does this will greatly influence how UK industry thrives online Her first point was a reference to the proportionality of the Digital Economy Act.
The data protection issue is a difficult one.  Whether they like it or not I get the feeling that the long term future of revenue generating for businesses operating online, certainly for content providers, is going to be substantially driven by advertising.
If this is the case then the advertising model needs to be one that works for all parties, including consumers and this either means we accept the degree of “intrusion” being sought by the likes of Google, Phorm et al or we very carefully define what is and isn’t permissible. Not the subject of a short blog post but perhaps one that might usefully be covered in a 2 year debate running up to the next Communications Bill.
Categories
Business piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Priorities for the new Communications Bill #deappg BSkyB Guardian Google

I attended a Forum last week entitled “The industry priorities for the new Communications Bill”. We were given a ten minute talk by representatives from each of the BBC, C4, COBA (Commercial Broadcasters Assoc), Wall to Wall (independent media prod’n), Virgin Media, Google, BSkyB, BT, ITV, UKTV, Mobile Broadband Group, Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (ie video games) and Guardian Media Group. Quite top heavy with content production.

It is interesting to note that in the last Communications Act (2004) the word internet does not appear. This may be because the government of the day wanted to avoid regulation in a nascent market – let it grow unhindered. Whilst the talk is still of light touch and self regulation I can’t help get the feeling that this time round there is a big shadow of government looming over the proceedings.

A few themes came out of the meeting.

The market needs to provide a level playing field that allows competition and encourages investment. This may include addressing issues that allows UK plc to compete in a global market – regulation overseas is often different to that in the UK and can cause difficulties for UK companies trying to operate globally.

Some content providers were calling for increased regulation to protect Intellectual property. There were interesting contrasts here:

David Wheeldon of BSkyB believed that the government should go further than it had in the DEAct to combat IP piracy and seemed to robustly reject some aspects of the Hargreaves Report (“it should be up to Rights Holders not government to decide how to exploit their IP”).

On the other hand Andrew Miller, CEO of the Guardian Media Group recognised that content provider organisations needed to adapt to the changes in modern technology and society to survive. For example in the UK The Guardian is seen as the 3rd or 4th biggest newspaper. However the Guardian websites gets 50 million unique visitors a month and is a recognised and trusted global source of comment and opinion. The Guardian Media Group is clearly trying to move with the times.

If I were the government putting this Bill together I would be focussing on what will help UK plc to grow in the global market and to avoid making it in the words of Google’s Head of UK Public Policy, Sarah Hunter “a dumping ground for regulations as appears to have been the case with the Digital Economy Act”.

There are 2 years of deliberations before this Bill makes it to law. We need to make sure that we get this one right and not leave it to a last minute indecent rush as happened with the DEAct.

Categories
competitions End User

#Beckham baby named Harper Seven – defeats all name competition entrants

I’m thrilled to tell you that the Beckhams have named their baby daughter Harper Seven. Nobody came close to guessing this. Becks has played a canny game here as he knew people were thinking of place names. Instead he went for a time – he is quoted as saying “It’s about time we had a girl”.

The actual birth was, I thought 07.55am so either the Beckhams have gone for the nearest obvious name (who ever heard of a girl called seven fifty five?), their clock was wrong at the actual time of naming or half past seven was the time of conception.
We may never find out.

What is sure is that the England ladies football team will be looking forward to 2029 when Harper (or it be Seven?) will be eligible to play. She may of course opt to play for the country of her birth. By then it will probably be down to who is offering the most lucrative sponsorship contracts but hey, that is for the future.

For now let us all join in congratulating the Beckham family on their new addition and hope that in these exciting early days they are given the appropriate degree of privacy. Those of us who also have kids know how hard it can be to keep looking good after being up half the night feeding the kid and changing nappies (diapers).

There is no competition winner but I am pleased to provide a prize for @18days for letting me know the name and @timcoop3r for providing me with a link to the BBC website carrying the news of the name. If you guys want to let me have your postal details I’ll send you a mug each 🙂

Categories
Business Regs surveillance & privacy

And the winner is – ISPA Internet Hero and Villain

I am pleased to report that this year’s Internet Hero is Professor Ian Hargreaves. His report on the problems associated with online copyright infringement was a sensible measured work that has been well received by many.

The villain is ACS Law/Andrew Crossley. Nuff said.

The awards were announced at the 2011 ISPA Awards held last night at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in town. As usual I was there. As usual I have pre written this post as I will not have the chance or inclination to write it in the morning.

There were some good candidates for the Hero and it took some discussion. The villain was an easy one to chose. May he rot forever in ignominy.