Llandudno pier – all life is there dead on a wet Sunday night in July
It wasn’t a particularly good ice cream but it was an appropriate use of my time and money. When on holiday it is important to indulge in relaxing holiday pastimes such as strolling on piers and licking ice creams.
This one had “raspberry blood” on it. Clearly marketing lingo pitched at customers of four foot height or less. I went for the raspberry blood. I opted out of the flake.
We enjoyed the sunshine whilst we could. The next day the weather returned to type and it chucked it down. That’s Wales for you.
Llandudno pier has all the usual seaside attractions for what it’s worth. Hook a duck, darts, slides, slot machines. The prizes were of course all total crap. We returned to the pier in the rain on the Sunday evening and even caught a glimpse of an entertainer twanging his electric guitar, banging out some old favourites (I imagine – wasn’t allowed to step inside for a beer).
See Facebook album here taken on the fine Saturday afternoon. Photo of Llandudno pier on a wet Sunday evening in July below.
Back to the subject of ice creams I am quite fussy about this foodstuff. It all stems from growing up in the Isle of Man where they had the fantastic Manx Ices. Used to buy wafers from an ice cream van. They don’t do them any more. Nowadays I think the company has morphed into Davisons but the product is equally good despite the lack of a wafer.
This post btw is another in the summer series along the lines of “where did I go on holiday”. Expect many more and if you would like to post your own then just get in touch. Delay not. I’m in and out of the office until the end of the first week in September.
Sat in the period luxury of the lounge of the Dunoon Hotel in Llandudno. That’s Chllan-did-noh, not landudnoe. The Dunoon Hotel it all its finery is however not the subject of this post. This afternoon I had my first experience of the hot wax treatment.
This was at a Turkish barbers in Chllan-did-noh. I am here for some quality time with my wife, 81 year old mother in law and my wife’s sister Sarah. Such a Chllan-did-noh excursion to is not something to be taken lightly. It involves the amassing of a giant container full of brownie points but they have to be paid for.
On this occasion payment was of the following kind:
Stroll to cafe for coffee. In this case it was somewhere called Cafe Ba. I wondered about the name and was intending to ask, when I realised it was actually Cafe Bar but the r had fallen off. Chllan-did-noh has probably seen better days although it was heaving yesterday in the sun.
From the Coffee Ba we saw a couple of casualties from the Scooter gathering we had seen yesterday. I missed the first photo opportunity but ran out to catch the second.
Stroll from coffee shop to shopping arcade. En route I bought a Ddraig Goch. I’ve already said there will be more mentions of flags in due course. Rushing to catch up with the ladies I used the last of my mobile phone battery to pinpoint their location. Auntie Sarah wanted the loo so they disappeared from the precinct for a short diversion.
I spent the time chatting to the bloke at the Sky stand. Busman’s holiday. He told me what the best pub was in Chllan-did-noh. I’ll be heading there later for a pre prandial pint, or whatever they call it in Chllan-did-noh.
Lunch at non-descript cafe in shopping precinct. I had a ploughman’s lunch, fwiw. Something to keep me going between the full blown breakfast this morning and the 5 course meal dished up at the hotel in the evening.
Stroll round M&S ladies wear department.
At this point I sat down next to some bloke in the same predicament as me and had a bit of a chat about the game of golf he was planning for later this pm. His wife eventually came to fetch him and i contented myself with making a start on the new translation of The Mabinogion (Google it) newly purchased from Waterstones en route from the non-descript cafe.
I didn’t get very far. The ladies returned and we began a gentle meander back in the general direction of the hotel, stopping to gaze in at every shop window and 70% off reduced sale bargain we came across, which was in pretty much every shop.
It came to a point where a further sit down was called for and I managed to slip the leash and head for the Red One Turkish Barber Shop for a trim and a shave. Seemed reasonable.
Skipping gaily, if somewhat damply into the shop I conveyed my requirements to Adnan the barber. He pointed out that for just a little bit more I could get the full works. The works included hot wax treatment on my nostrils, burning off any hair around the ears, a wax trim of my eyebrows, head and neck massage, a cut throat shave with all the towels and steam treatment and of course a number 3 back and sides with a bit off the top.
The whole process must have taken a good hour. I’ve reached the tender age of 53 and never before had a Turkish barber. It will not be the last time. The guy was not only professional hair artiste but had pro conversation skills. He found out that I was a director of an internet exchange. I always have to think with hat to put on when asked what I do for a living because I have a few.
Back at the hotel I was given 5 mins to turn around before heading back out again to the amusements on the pier. As we approached they looked closed for the day – a wet Sunday afternoon in Chllan-did-noh does not see the crowds rushing onto the pier. Rushing back to Liverpool and Brum more like.
So there we have it. Chllan-did-noh and the hot wax treatment. Not too painful and it certainly clears out the nostril hair.
I’d recommend Adnan at Red One Turkish Barber in Chllan-did-noh any day of the week and they are open every one of them. Something for the weekend sir? Hot wax treatment:) End result below:
On a wet Friday afternoon in July – oops something went wrong with the broadband order
I’ve procrastinated long enough. I’m ordering Virgin Media’s 152Mbps broadband only service. At least I’m trying to. As you can see from the featured image without too much success so far.
My logic in choosing Virgin is simple. I want the fastest broadband I can get. With Virgin I will get near to 152Mbps download and 12Mbps up. With FTTC I can only get 30Mbps down and 7Mbps up. Simples.
Also I don’t need a phone line – line rentals are all around £17 and are a rip off. That’s with expensive call charges on top. All I need is a VoIP line that I can use from a dect phone, IP phone or indeed my mobile phone. With the latter I can use it anywhere in the world. Also I don’t trust the mainstream telephony providers’ call charges. They are around 10p for a geographic number cf near to 1p for VoIP and their non geo pricing is not at all transparent. This has been made worse by Ofcom’s recent dictat on non geo number charges.
There are some tempting offers for bundles that include other services such as TV. To be honest there is rarely anything on worth watching on the telly. I don’t feel deprived by not taking up any of these offers.
All I need is a connection. The rest is all an Over The Top service somewhere on the internet.
I do have misgivings with signing up with Virgin. Non UK call centre is a big one. That really is crap. Bufferbloat is another, equally crap. I don’t think I’m likely to be caught by their upload limits and trigger traffic management/throttling. We shall see.
The Virgin contract is 12 months. I’ll be keeping you updated re progress which at the moment is pretty non existent because as I’ve already mentioned, oops something went wrong!!!
See previous post on how to choose a broadband provider here.
… bit later – Virgin clearly have some problem with the broadband bits on their website – see screenshot below. Can’t even get onto the product pages now.
Retiring University of Lincoln PR lecturer Jane Crofts writes the first of this season’s guest posts that talk mainly about their holidays. If you knew Jane she is far from retiring btw:)
Retirement is now imminent, today being the last actual day of work and the last day on the books is looming large at the end of the summer.
Many of the wise people I know have said to me ‘you are far too young to retire’ but that is delightfully not true, you are never too young to retire! It is a lifestyle choice made by my husband and I (spoken suitably regally if you please). We have never been rich, but we have never had to worry about paying our bills and putting food in the table. We have always been, and plan to continue to be, modestly comfortable. Most importantly, to us, we are planning to be stress free; as far as my natural inclination will allow.
So, for our summer hols; the last one before each day is a holiday, we decided to try a ‘trip’ much favoured by the retired. We both love trains, himself the mechanics of the beasts, myself travelling without driving or flying. We both wanted to visit the West Coast of Scotland and see the fabulous views for ourselves so we booked ourselves onto a West Highland Tour.
We left Lincoln by train heading up to Glasgow, first class of course, to meet up with our party. The joy of the East Coast mainline allows easy internet access and charging points for the electronic paraphernalia that follows us around these days – allowing us to check our journey’s progress, weather predictions and other such obsessions of the Brits on holiday!
We got to Glasgow early to give time to hop on a city tour bus, a great way to look round an unfamiliar place. Fascinating stuff; great buildings, wonderful regeneration projects but for us ‘Lincolnites’ frighteningly busy!
The next morning the party assembled to head to the station for the journey up the West Highland Line to Morar (our base for the next few days). We expected the party to be an interesting mix of people beyond their first flush of youth but it is fair to say we brought the average age down quite considerably! But it was not a problem at all; every group, whatever their age has bores, moaners, entertainers and educators; by far the best informed, most mischievous member of the party was the eldest at 91 years, definitely, young.
The difference in connectivity on this journey from the day before was immediately apparent as the signal dropped down to weak or nothing regularly and as our poor, exhausted smartphones struggled the batteries drained but there were no charging points to be had. The hotel in Morar offered the opportunity to charge up the umbilical cords but the signal there was not any better so we were forced to go cold turkey!
The next three days we travelled by rail and coach enjoying some of the most spectacular scenery the UK can offer. Lochs, Viaducts, Steam Trains, Monuments, Sea, Silver Sands, Mountains and Hills. – stunning, absolutely stunning. The stamina required on the hottest July day in years to sit on a Victorian Steam Train and chug along is considerable, we all made it several pounds lighter I suspect! The line followed much of the route seen in the Harry Potter films, across the Glenfinnan Viaduct and past the island where ‘Dumbledore is buried’. The coach tour took us to visit Spean Bridge where we were able to contemplate the sacrifices made by our commandos at the monument to their honour and enjoy spectacular views of the snow-capped Ben Nevis, it might have been hot at our level but up there was a different story.
Skye was a bit of disappointment as it was one of the days that played to its reputation as the misty isle; but it did afford and amazing view of a hill doing an impersonation of Mount Fuji. But not a Cuillin in sight.
What fascinated me about our group was the different attitudes to ‘smartphone world’. It was no different from any other random group of people, regardless of age folks loved being connected or hated it. Most had their paper maps out to follow the various routes but many had their smartphones at the ready when a signal was available. The 91 year old spent a fair bit of time talking apps with my hubby.
Travel tech was a challenge on the holiday as I have already observed. In these remote parts internet connections were slow and phone signals generally non-existent; 4G – more like minus 4G! We had taken the decision not to post our travels to Facebook and the like because our house was sitting empty. So I tried a break from the incessant communication that normally fills my day; OK, I confess I did use Messenger to chat to the odd student when I could get a connection, especially as final results were announced on that very hot day!
We travelled with Rail Discoveries, not sure if we will do so again for another few years but it has certainly given me a taste for investigating Inter Rail and the like so I can head further afield without getting on a plane. And of course, we will have the time to take a leisurely pace from now on without any pressure to be always connected.
The Avon SSS has arrived. Avon Skin So Soft, the ultimate in midge repellant. No boy scout serious beach surfin’ camper should be without. As used by the Royal Marines in jungle warfare training, apparently. And perfect for going to Hillend campsite in the Gower.
We aren’t going for another month but it doesn’t stop me from getting excited and starting the preparations.
You can’t buy Avon SSS in the shops but don’t worry. I have for your convenience provided a link direct to the right page on the Avon website. Voila http://avonshop.co.uk/product/skin-so-soft-original-dry-oil-body-spray.html
Note the two bottles – better safe than sorry.
This is one of a series of summer holiday posts. The next one, if I remember will be all about flags and flagpoles with a specific mention of Uganda.
Stay tuned to trefor.net to find out more. You heard it first etc etc etc…
Feel as if I should be throwing off my school blazer, flinging my tie over the settee leaving it all for mum to sort out and running out into the back garden to mess about in the paddling pool. It’s the last day of term for the last Davies of school age.
We have ahead of us the long summer vacation, six weeks or so and many of you out there will be getting ready to hook up the caravan, load the tent in the trailer or packing your suitcase for a slightly posher and more exotic holiday in the sun. Hopefully the queues at the airport will be kind to you and the traffic en route to the beaches surprisingly absent.
I’m not on holiday, yet, though the dress code in the trefor.net office has relaxed further to a pair of rugby shorts, deck shoes and a Cape Cod Beer tshirt. If you’re young enough or old enough not to be taking kids on holiday you will already have had your summer break and have to suffer the excitement of the rest of us as we look forward to ours.
I like to take my summer holiday towards the end of the period as it really does give me something to look forward to. This year we are off surfing at Hillend campsite, Rhossili beach in the Gower followed by the Flashback festival in Clumber Park and then the Isle of Man. I’ve pushed the boat out and bought valet parking at Liverpool John Lennon Airport.
One of the great things about Rhossili beach in Llangennith is its total absence of mobile phone coverage. It’s a proper holiday characterised by variants of bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning, robust sandwiches with crusty baguettes for lunch and a bbq every evening washed down with copious quantities of red wine.
The Clumber Park Flashback Festival involves a camper van, or in our case the Jeep with all the back seats down and a double blow up mattress, a posh picnic and a bop to some of the sounds of the 70’s including Sister Sledge, Boney M, Oddyssey and Hot Chocolate, the latter sadly without their recently deceased lead singer.
We are on the lookout for a camper van as well btw. I feel it is a slow learning process until we decide on what’s right for us but with 3 out of 4 children now out of school the time has come for us to prepare for the day where we will have the freedom to just drop everything and travel.
In the meantime, before our holidays proper begin we have a joyful short break 😉 with the mother in law in Llandudno followed by a night out on the town in da smoke with a crowd of like minded folk hell bent on letting their hair down and having a good time. We also have Jesus Christ Superstar on at Lincoln Cathedral this Thursday evening. Supposed to be a great show with around 200 members of cast!
So there ya go. I may well also fit in a day out at Skegvegas but that in one shortish blog is what I have to look forward to this summer. Although I’ll probably slip in the odd techie post I’m going to major on vacation stuff. If you want to chip in with your own guest post jest lemme know. Have a few already in the pipeline.
Ashley Madison helps you find other people who want to cheat on their partners
The older I get the more I realise how sheltered I am. I spotted a comment by @ruskin147 on Twitter whilst whiling the time away waiting for a late train to arrive:
PR for Ashley Madison says of the plans for a London IPO "they've had a huge number of meetings and it's going very well". Not after today?
Intrigued I looked up Ashley Madison to find a site that arranged extra marital affairs for people and claimed it had millions of customers. Not my kind of thing. What all the attention was about however was the fact that Ashley Madison had been hacked and details of its users nicked.
Notionally the hackers wanted AM to stop charging people to remove their details. I’m not really bothered. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Harsh but hey…
I am more concerned with the concept that these databases can be hacked. Of course they can. Even the Pentagon apparently gets hacked every now and again. Shit happens.
I have lots of personal details held at many locations online – Facebook, Twitter, Google and maybe another hundred other places online where I have an username and password. It’s my choice to give this info to the specific websites.
What I don’t want is someone keeping all sorts of information on me without my consent that could will inevitably be hacked and published online for all to see. The government, in compiling its latest version of the Snoopers Charter would do well to note that no database is safe. They will take no notice.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the Prime Minster’s voicemail account was actually hacked by the News of the World and that the information was being suppressed. Merely conjecture, rumour spreading, but entirely plausible. I heard it on good authority from a man in a pub.
The only safe way to stop information from being stolen is not to store it in the first place.
PS note the trusted security award on the Ashley Madison site.
Thought you’d appreciate this public service service announcement re HMRC scam spam. Got the following email text notionally off HMRC and with lots of links:
Hello TREFOR.NET,
You can’t afford to miss your payment deadline
If you submitted a self-assessment form in January, your second payment instalment is due on or before 31st July.
Filing your return means you’ll know how much you’ll need to pay, making it easier for you to plan ahead and put money aside.
Here’s a short video clip explaining ‘Paying HMRC – Self Assessment’
Take a look at the following YouTube videos to find out about key dates regarding Self Assessment and details of how charges are calculated. Each is only a couple of minutes long.
I thought it was a bit odd as I don’t pay my personal tax by instalments so I just forwarded it to my accountant without clicking on anything.
Lo and behold the accountant came back and said trash it it’s a HMRC scam spam (I like that phrase – not sure it accurately describes the email but it rolls poetically off the tongue so it’s in.)
It’s second nature for most people these days to distrust dodgy looking emails but you can get caught out. That unwary moment. The dropped shield etc etc etc.
Anyway gotta go and pick up a hire car as the Jeep is in being mended (again). Tomorrow we are off to York to film some pigs for broadbandrating.com. If you didn’t see the last video you can catch it here. This one’s going to be similar but totally different.
You heard it first on trefor.net…
PS loads of scam stuff on this site – check it out here.
Ofcom Strategic Review – the boys don’t want to see a separate Openreach
The Ofcom Strategic Review happens every 10 years, the last being in September 2005. This week Ofcom announced the consultation for its latest review with a wide range of subjects on the table around the general subject categories of
investment and innovation, delivering widespread availability of services;
sustainable competition, delivering choice, quality and affordable prices;
empowered consumers, able to take advantage of competitive markets; and
targeted regulation where necessary, deregulation elsewhere.
The 2005 review led to the formation of Openreach. The 2015 review includes in the “sustainable competition” section a discussion as to whether Openreach needs to be totally separated from BT. Cast off and left to row its own canoe.
There has recently been a flurry of complaints to Ofcom about Openreach, notably from Sky and TalkTalk. We discussed this at the ITSPA council meeting yesterday and then afterwards at the Summer Forum. The tone of the conversation was that yes there was a problem with Openreach – the number of engineering visit no shows costs the service provider industry a fortune – but no they didn’t see the benefit in separating Openreach from BT.
People would rather Openreach just got its act together and stopped failing the industry with its poor performance. See my own experiences here. The feeling was that the process of separating the Openreach would take years, during which time there would be huge disruption and little or no investment in the infrastructure.
This is a complicated subject on which I’m sure many readers will have their own specific views. I’m beginning to veer away from the idea that separating the two is a good thing. The biggest issue for me is the Openreach cost structure. There doesn’t seem to me to be much incentive for them to reduce their costs. On the other hand Openreach does have a complex bag of worms to manage – the archaic UK copper phone line infrastructure.
Technically the easiest/best thing to do would be to replace the copper with fibre. In the long run it would be by far the best thing. The problem is of course how to fund that. BT certainly isn’t going to do it.
The Ofcom discussion document is 185 pages – read it here. It’s a full time job reading this kind of stuff. You have until October 8th to respond.
That’s it. I’ve reached my limit on Telegraph reads this month. Henceforth I will have to read telegraph.co.uk in an incognito window. The telegraph doesn’t stop access via incognito window because they depend on cookies to count page reads. Cookies are blocked in incognito mode.
I tend to hop between the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph to home in on what is actually happening with a specific news item. I also read the cartoons on the Telegraph.
Part of me feels bad about this. It isn’t unreasonable to pay the Telegraph for the service they provide. On the other hand this kind of stuff is available free from lots of of places online. It’s the classic online media business model dilemma.
The pop up is somewhat bemusing. It comes up every time you surf the site in incognito mode. I only decided it was a good idea to write this post after I’d dismissed the box the first time so I closed the window and started again. Same box came up innit.
I never read the Times online btw because of the paywall. Dunno how they are getting on.
So there you go. If this is your final free article this month then there is another way…
PS as I write Australia are 104 for 1 in the second Ashes test. You can see from the screenshot that I am interested in this. Not watching it on the Telegraph though, or the BBC for that matter. Cricinfo is the place. Cricinfo is free though I pay for the Beeb through the license fee.
PPS I am happy to make the commitment that trefor.net will probably never implement a paywall. Fill yer boots.
PPPS I’m going to see day 2 of the third ashes test on the Friday at Trent Bridge. See you there?
Holiday season (if you have kids) is rapidly approaching and it gets pretty dead from a business perspective. So I’m offering slots to people who might fancy writing guest posts on trefor.net about where they have been/are going/are on their holidays.
Feels like the right thing to do. Photos from a beach somewhere (keep em clean – this is a family show), views from atop peaks climbed at great personal risk, blurry photos of drunken nights in tavernas (Greek holidays are being discounted) etc etc etc
If you want to include tech used whilst on holiday that is good. Description of airline upgrades. Anything you like really. It can also be something written during the boring periods in the office whilst the rest of the world is on holiday – someone has to man the phones in case that one customer not on holiday wants to call.
If anyone is interested btw I’m off surfing to the Gower, then the Flashback Festival and thence on to the Isle of Man for a seafood diet.
I periodically discuss the bandwidth usage on our home broadband and the growth trend in data storage on our NAS box, driven by the number of photos we store. This usually prompts a discussion on home broadband data usage and for your entertainment and delight I’ve put this chart together as an update to the previous post from 2013 on this subject. Clearly we were due an update.
What prompted me to think about this subject, apart from the ongoing decision making process re which broadband provider to use, was the fact that yesterday I copied some video footage off our CCTV. It was of our son’s 18th birthday party and there are memories in that video that will at some stage be overwritten by the CCTV box.
The CCTV records in High Definition and uses 1.7GB per stream per hour. I copied 6 hours from 2 cameras which I make to be 20.4GB of data storage. Add to that the footage from the GoPro used by one of the kids on the night and you have a hefty amount of storage just to record the proceedings of the evening. I don’t yet know how much is on the GoPro – it has a 64GB SD card and can record in 4k format.
The footage from the CCTV is very clear and in great colour (take note burglars). I doubt we will look at it very often or maybe not at all. Maybe it’ll get rolled out every now and again in the same way that we watch our wedding video about once every blue moon. It doesn’t really matter. The NAS box, currently with less than a TB used out of its 2TB capacity is upgradeable to 4TB. The storage is cheap.
Won’t be long before our rate of usage starts to grow significantly. Just as our broadband data usage continues to grow. It looks as if our broadband data usage approximately doubles every two years. This suggests that by 2017 we will be using 600GB a month and 1,200GB, or 1.2TB a month by 2019!! I believe it.
I’m sure I wrote a post sometime about when I expected to have to upgrade my NAS box but I can’t find that. When I get home I’ll take a look at the picture storage data over the last few years and extrapolate – just for you. I’ll add it to this post tonight. I’m betting the trend is going to look just like the broadband usage and with mainstream 4k use not far off (I don’t think it is yet even though it’s readily available) who would bet otherwise.
It’s another glorious summer day in the shire but I am up early and off South to the oven that is London. I have a good day ahead with the first trefor.net Tech Marketing lunch and the Political Intelligence birthday party. 7.30 am train down and 9.30pm t5ain home. Urgh. A long day.
Should be enjoyable though. There will be a gentle stroll from Kings Cross station to Kettners in SoHo, the lunch venue. It is an enforced gentle stroll as the tube workers are once more on strike. It’s a democratic right.
I’ll walk off the lunch with another gentle stroll of around an hour or so to the City for the party. All this exercise…
I employ an element of poetic license in the title of this post as the nearer I get to London the cloudier it gets. This is probably good. A gentle stroll can be onerous in the glare of the midsummer sun, high up above the lowering skyscrapers of the capital. I have not brought a hat.
En route to town it is noticeable that as we race through the countryside the fields, last week totally verdant, are now turning gold. The harvest will soon begin. The larders soon to be stocked up again for another winter ahead. We should feel good about this:)
I am wearing shorts and a Lonap tshirt and have a pair of stout walking shoes to assist my passage through the streets of town. There is a change of clothes in my knapsack (thought I’d use that word instead of “my Osprey day bag” – more in keeping with the flowery nature of this post).
I quite like the odd day out in London and the 7.30 am from Lincoln central gets you off to a good start with a full English breakfast as soon as you leave Lincoln. I’ve usually finished it by the time the train gets to Newark half an hour later – it’s a slow branch line.
The featured image of this post is today’s breakfast. Have a good day and if you are coming to the lunch I look forward to seeing you.
Just writing out aloud the process I’m going through of choosing a broadband provider. I currently have an 80/20 line from which I get 35/7 performance, most of the time. It’s an unlimited service. Bandwidth usage is approaching 300GB a month.
My current supplier is Timico a business ISP. As such I get great service from them but the monthly line rentals for broadband and phone are now approaching £80 inc VAT. If I were a business user then I’d probably pay that just to get peace of mind that when i had a problem I could easily contact someone to get it sorted.
Although I have no interest in TV I am interested in seeing what sports packages I can get so I took a look around at the consumer deals available.
I do have a couple or three concerns in looking around:
I am worried about ending up with an offshore call centre – my only real options in this case are to choose Plusnet or Sky
What wil lthe service levels be like – at least I have the broadbandrating.com phone answer statistics to work with here
Currently I am with an ISP that isn’t governed by government decree to monitor my behaviour or filter the websites available to me. This will not be the case if I go to a consumer service
The other consideration in looking is the speed of the connection. FTTC never delivers its headline speeds but the Virgin Cable service does, near enough. However Virgin are notorious for having technical issues such as bufferbloat and they do have a very public traffic management policy whereby they throttle heavy users at busy times. I am a heavy user. Will I be choked in this net?
The Virgin threshold for throttling a service is based on upload usage. If I assume I’m interested in the fastest service then Virgin allow 2.25GB upload in an hour (3GB in 2 hours). My biggest daily upload usages to date have been 10GB in April and 8GB in July (which was when I changed my google photos backup policy). I’m probably just about ok on the upload usage threshold.
The other consideration is availability of IPv6 and AAISP would have been a natural choice for this. AAISP are also fanatical with their support which is one of the reasons they are used by many in the UK internet engineering community. However they don’t do TV and don’t have an unlimited data usage product. They aren’t big enough to be able to cope with a few users maxing out on an unlimited bundle.
I’ve ploughed through the various ISP websites trying to compare their different offerings. It isn’t straightforward as there are lots of variables. All the products in the table below except Virgin are based on BT’s VDSL service. I’ve quoted 80/20 but most of the ISPs probably use 76/18 or some similar marketing variant. We also have to remember that for my house we really mean 35/7 where 80/20 is the stated speed. I would get a better download with any of the three Virgin speed variants but only with the top end one would I get a better upload (although there isn’t much between the 6Megs upload of Virgin’s middle offering and my existing one).
I’ve only quote the regular pricing (some may have been rounded). It is possible to get a great deal in the first contracted year but I’m not planning on hopping ISPs just to get a good deal every time a contract expires. The ongoing cost is more important to me. Where I’ve been able to (remembered) I’ve stated the pricing with weekend calls thrown in.
Product speed (Mbps)
regular price (with phone line rental)
contract term (months)
Timico
80/20
£77.40
24
BT
80/20 with “free” BT sports
£47.00
12
Sky
80/20
£46.40
12
Virgin
50/3 + weekend calls
£34.50
18
Virgin
100/6
£39.49
18
Virgin
152/12
£46.99
18
Virgin
50/3 broadband only
£28.50
12
Virgin
100/6
£33.50
12
Virgin
152/12
£41.00
12
TalkTalk
80/20
£36.70
12
Plusnet
80/20
£36.00
18
aaisp
80/20 (not unlimited – have assumed pricing for 300GB usage with £10 line rental no voice)
£70.00
6
It may be seen that the FTTC camps are divided into three. There’s the very low cost providers, Plusnet and TalkTalk who come in at around £26 a month. Then there’s the big guys Virgin, BT and Sky who are very similarly priced at £46/£47 (albeit BT bung in sport). Finally there are the business ISPs who are perhaps around £20ish a month more expensive edging towards the £100 for a product that comes with better customer support.
Plusnet’s call waiting times are often up around 15 minutes although in their defence their call centre is in Yorkshire (thanows).
What else do I need to take into consideration. How about the cost of making phone calls?
I’ve added another variable with this table. Compare the Voipfone call charges with those of BT, Virgin and Sky. Makes the three of them look a real rip off doesn’t it? Voipfone are one of the UK’s longest standing and most successful Internet Telephony Service Providers. You run their service over your broadband line aka Skype but cheaper. There is a scenario where I can go with Virgin’s broadband only package. If I want to transfer and use my existing landline number Voipfone will charge me £2.40 a month including VAT. In the business I’ve spent £40 with them on call charges since October 2014.
I realise that each of these providers will probably sell me a bundle of minutes but the members of our house rarely use the landline. They all have mobile phones with their own bundles. We only really need our local Lincoln number for legacy purposes (mostly for calls from aged parents).
So there is a scenario where I could take the Virgin 152Mbps broadband only service at £41, add £2.40 for a Voipfone landline number and it still would only cost £43.40 a month plus calls a very low rate.
What might be the problems with using Voiphone? In theory their service would work just like our existing home phone line. We use DECT phones around the house and I have a SNOM DECT phone system with a couple of handsets going spare in the office. Obviously the service relies on our always having a broadband and there have from time to time been issues with different variants of Superhub blocking VoIP. They don’t do this deliberately – it’s just incompetence and I don’t think the problems are there right now.
I also use Voipfone using a CSIPSimple client on my android so the whole family could have an alternative means of calling over wifi when abroad (for example).
How about adding TV or more specifically sport?
sports packages
BT Sports on virgin
big kahuna
£66.00
BT & Sky sports (full package)
big kahuna
£93.99
BT
free BT sport
£47.00
with BT sport & Sky 1&2
£68.99
sky
original bundle & sky sports – no bt sport
£71.90
The numbers change quite dramatically. BT stays the same but adding Sky sports into the picture sport is very expensive. Remember the punter is the one paying for all the big money contracts that Sky have with the Premier League.
The BT offer with just BT sport is dramatically better than the others as long as you remember it isn’t as comprehensive a bundle as having Sky in the deal.
If I went with Virgin I’d effectively be paying and extra £22.60 a month just to get BT sport – remember I’m not really interested in the other TV stuff. The full monty on Virgin is very expensive at £94.
Going with BT and taking both Sky and BT sports would cost me an extra £25.60 over my base Virgin broadband only deal and I’d not have all the Sky Sports.
You can’t get BT Sports on Sky.
This is the interesting set of facts I have to set before the family. I suspect I am not interested in paying a lot of money for the sport and am likely to end up with the Virgin broadband only package plus Voipfone. This really pains me as Virgin have a one of the longest telephone answer times and their call centres are in India. Sigh…
Just seen this wonderful invitation to connect on LinkedIn. See the featured image. As you can see it’s from
ABDULKADIR BALA MOHAMMED – FORMER MINISTER OF FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY ABUJA NIGERIA
I was so excited by it I had to drop writing a post on how I’m going about choosing a new broadband provider and share it with you straight away.
We are back to the old Nigerian General with money to get out of the country scam. I assume so anyway. It’s such a pleasure to have them try it on through this new platform. Taken a while mind you but hey…
I didn’t click on anything or accept the invitation although I am just about to report it. It’s the first scam I’ve seen via LinkedIn. Facebook went through a phase of it whereby gorgeous women with large breasts (apparently) wanted to be my friends. Pained me but I declined them all (yes I did).
When I first saw this invite I thought it was from Wales – Bala is a place in North Wales. Anyway I leave you with a tune in my head – Abdul the BullBull Khadir. Olden but golden 🙂
Back to the other post. Mundane bread and butter stuff but just as important 🙂
Still time to enter the Wimbledon Competition btw.
Win a mega prize Wimbledon Ladies Draw Competition
Hey evrybody it’s Wimbledon Fortnight and by gosh it’s hot in the office, dang it. Someone forgot to switch on the air-conditioning unit I bought from Argos last year and I haven’t got the energy to lean over and switch it on.
Instead of working we’re kicking back and watching the Tennis on the good ole internet. Now it’s a long long time since we had a competition on trefor.net so I figured now was as good a time as any. We should have had one before the most recent Royal sprog was born but we missed the chance – probably busy that day. No worries the tennis is here and it’s the Wimbledon Ladies Draw Competition.
It should be noted that the reason we have chosen a Wimbledon Ladies Draw Competition is that on Friday afternoon we are having a party on the balcony here at trefor.net towers. It starts at 4.30pm (you are invited but bring your own tinnies) and we thought we would announce the winner of the competition at the bash.
It is easy therefore to have a competition that involves naming the two ladies finalists – because we will know who they are by then. In theory.
So the competition is to name the two lady finalists at this year’s Wimbledon. To make it a little easier on the grey matter we have replicated the Quarter Final line up below. All you have to do is pick the correct two ladies. Some will already have been knocked out by the time you read this so if you can be bothered to find who they are you can narrow your odds of winning.
In case of the highly probable event of more than one right answer we have a tiebreaker: What’s my favourite flavour of crips What is the total number of games played in both semi-finals – winner is nearest answer.
The prize is a magnificent tin of Heinz Vegetable Soup. It’s been on the office windowsill for a couple of months and we are not likely to want to consume it now until next Autumn, so it goes. There is a very small health warning in that in moving the tin from the windowsill to my desk I noticed a teensy dent in the tin – barely visible but photographed in case you are worried (see inset photo right).
If this is unacceptable then a packet of Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps is available as an alternative. Appropriate packaging will be applied when shipping either prize options.
Quarter-finals
Seed
Player
Player
Seed
1
S Williams (US)
v
Azarenka (BLR)
23
4
Sharapova (RUS)
bt
Vandeweghe (US)
20
Muguruza (SPA)
bt
Bacsinszky (SWI)
15
21
Keys (US)
v
A Radwanska (POL)
13
Note this competition is not governed by any gambling commission type rules and the judges decision is final. Anyone can enter. Even my dad.
Please leave a comment with your answers. The winner will be notified by blog post and email sometime after the party on Friday.
Good luck and happy Wimbledon watching.
Prizes will only be shipped to mainland United Kingdom unless you send a stamped addressed envelope to I can bring it to present to you at a conference at some time in the future.
Zoe Easey is a web dev and co-founder of Epix Media. She discusses the fear of tech and whether it is a generational thing.
I have friends and work contacts that constantly profess “I don’t do tech” which scares me a little – how can you not ‘do tech’, you surely can’t avoid it these days? Are people really that fearful of it or is it just an excuse to avoid particular jobs or tasks?
It’s not necessarily an age thing either. In my career I’ve worked with people of all ages and it has made me interested in whether there is really a generation gap with technology, or whether some people just ‘get it’ and some don’t.
A few years ago I was of the perspective that as the generation that grew up with PC’s and other tech in their homes got older, the gap between those that adopt and embrace tech and those that don’t would shrink. Now I’m not so sure.
I have customers reaching retirement that embrace technology: WordPress, social media and more, and whilst they admit to it taking them longer to learn they crack on and get to grips with it, fear-free. I know of people in their 50’s that can find new things on their iPad much more quickly than I can on mine! On the flip side, I know of people their early 20’s that don’t understand social media, or why people share so much on there, or why it’s important for their business to be part of the social conversation (especially if they are being talked about already). The latter particularly surprises me as things like Facebook are highly likely to have been a much bigger part of their social life as they grew up.
Recently I was introduced to the concept of “micro generations” in technology, whereby tech is moving so fast that the gap in knowledge and what’s ‘cool’ can be massive between people of similar ages. Where tech is concerned the term ‘generation’ doesn’t mean 30 years, it can be as little as the iPhone5 and the iPhone6 being released. There are probably also micro knowledge gaps between tech adopters as we all use it in different ways. Whilst one person may be an expert in one area, or in the use of a particular phone or app, another person may not have ever interacted with them. The important thing here is that the adopters will have the right mind-set to learn if they need to, where as the “I don’t doers’ might not.
I guess there are other factors that impact the tech adoption gap too, such as location and environment. People in areas with poor internet connectivity or from more remote areas may not be pushed as far into the world as technology as those in environments that have the first access to 4G, superfast broadband and other tech related schemes. Just because someone was born in an era where tech is prevalent, it doesn’t mean it will be a key factor in their life. In some cases they will be aware of technology, but not understand its purpose or significance.
I understand that some people don’t feel technology is important to them and part of that may be because it’s still fairly new in the grand scheme of things. But it has moved faster than anything we’ve seen before and I wonder what will happen if people continue to shy away from the basic tools that are ingrained in many people’s lives. Where businesses are concerned their competitors will become more efficient and leaner than they are and they will miss out on tech that can help put systems and processes in place to improve in so many areas. From a non-business perspective technology if nothing else is heaps of fun and makes things much easier. We’ve been a convenience culture for some time now, and tech just helps us be lazier in the tasks we don’t enjoy and get things done quicker – who wouldn’t want that!
Embracing technology isn’t difficult when approached with the right mind-set. It doesn’t mean you have to go and shove all data you own in the cloud, or that it has to cost your business thousands of pounds – but just having a common sense approach can make your business and life more efficient.
I don’t think you need to be a programmer to understand tech, my interactions with people and those that have surprised me over the years is testimony to that. The “I don’t do-ers” just need to push the fear aside and grab themselves a handful of confidence. As long as they don’t give their bank account details to a Siberian prince and are smart about what they post online, they’re unlikely to hit any major snags.
So, encourage your friends and family to not be afraid, tech doesn’t have to be complicated or scary. And when they say “I don’t do tech” tell them “tough, it ain’t going anywhere!”.
Zoe started Epix Media in 2010 and has over 8 years’ experience as programmer and graphic designer. During the last 5 years she has focused on growing the business with her co-director, ensuring they stay on top of the latest tech. This along with great customer service means Zoe is well on the way to proving you can be successful AND nice in business!
Sat in the waiting room of Lincoln County Hospital. As I wait the media reminds me that it is the 10th anniversary of the July 7th London bombings.
I was in town at the time. The previous day I’d been at the Lloyds of London insurance building. Doing a talk about Unified Communications to IT folk from insurance brokers. IT in the insurance industry in those days mostly involved replacing notebooks – the paper variety. The insurance industry is very conservative in its outlook.
We finished just as the announcement was being made re London winning the 2012 Olympics bid. Naturally a party ensued and later I staggered back (I should point out this was due to me carrying all the AV kit (projector) and pop up booth) to the plush comfort of the Royal Scot Travelodge, nominally in Kings Cross.
We had an office in Camden Town in those days and the next morning it was a toss up whether I hiked to Kings Cross Station with the gear to travel to the office on the one or two tube stops on the Northern Line or wait for a taxi. The Travelodge (I stop short of giving it the accolade of “hotel”) wasn’t in a good spot to find a taxi – they were mostly already full and going away from the train station.
Eventually I caught one and got to the office 10 minutes later to hear the news of the bombing. Had I decided to walk I’d probably have been there just at that time!!!
I had planned to catch a train home sometime that day. Not much chance of that happening. Noticeably the mobile networks stopped working. In the State of Emergency as was the networks close to the public to allow emergency services access only apparently.
By lunchtime there was no point thinking of doing any work. Lots of the staff hadn’t been able to make it in anyway. We hit the pub and I stayed the night with my sister who lived in Bal ham (gateway to the south). Caught the first available train nowf the next day.
I was pitching presence an IM to the insurance community. We never got anywhere with it but it’s the same stuff used by everyone in the world nowadays.
You should know that the 7/7 London bombings were still quite close in memory to the 9/11 tragedy in the USA. On that occasion I was stranded at a SIP Summit in Austin Texas and it took nearly a week to get a plane home. After being affected by both incidents my wife began to believe I was jinxed. Still married mind you 🙂
This Thursday I am in London for the trefor.net Technology Marketing lunch. The transport system will again be in chaos as the tube drivers exercise their democratic right to withhold their labour. I suspect some French influence.
Don’t worry though. The restaurant is only a gentle 30 minute stroll from Kings Cross so it will still go ahead. We have three places left if you want to come. It’s going to be a very useful and informative session.
Multiple spam phone calls in one day and how I hate being called Mike
It all started as I left the tube, just after 8am on Tuesday. The phone rang. No one calls me at that time of day.
Unless…
The kids have hurt themselves or the office is on fire (metaphorically). Usually something bad.
So I answer..
“Hello..”
Ominous pause..
“ ‘ello.. is that Mr Daly??”
“Yes”
“Im calling from ‘Some random posh sounding solicitor’s name’, our records show that you have been involved in an accident and are entitled to compensaaaation” (Yes… at least 5 a’s..)
Now, I agree, its a failing on my part that I just can’t hang up on these calls. I figure if I’m rude then I’m just being unpleasant to someone who, probably, doesn’t like the job but needs it to keep house and home together and doesn’t need me having a pop at them.
“No, I haven’t had any accidents so, no I’m not…”
“Oh, but we have an insurance application that..”
“No, really I’m not interested, please don’t call me again.”
“Thank you….. Bye..”
“Bye”
Click.. burrrrrrrrrrrr.
About an hour later, the phone rings again..
I’m expecting a call from someone, no idea where they are based, so this could be it..
“Hello..”
Ominous pause..
“Goooood morning Mr Daly, my name is Phil1, Im calling from the pension clinic2, are you aware that there have been changes to pension regulations, and we’d like to offer you a free pension health check”
“Yes thanks, I have my own financial advisor who I’m happy with so I don’t need your help.”
“Yes, but as I said its free and will only take a few minutes to take some details and we promise not to steal all your money”3
“No.. Really, no… please don’t call me again..”
The next one Lunch time-ish..
Now this one was a blocked number, and I know that you probably shouldn’t pick up a blocked number call, but my Mother-in-law blocks her outbound number and the last time she called during the working day, well.. let just say it was a good job I took the call.
“Hi, Is that Michael?”
“yep, who’s calling?”
“Hi there, my name is Kelly4, and our records indicate that you are entitled to a PPI claim for a mortgage you had in….”
“No, I have never had PPI…”
“Yes, many people think that but mortgages were mis-sold before (Some previous date), so if I could just take some details….”
“No thank you.. Good bye..”
By this point I’m just a little narked.. Then the next one takes the biscuit.
“Hi, is that Mike?”
Now, I hate being called Mike. You may as well call me George. Mike is not my name. It has NEVER been my name. The only person who gets (got) away with calling me Mike was Grandma and that was because it came with sweets or cake, and by the time cake and sweets stopped she was too old and fragile for me to get worried about it.
Even my teachers got ignored when they called me Mike.
Apologies to all the Mikes out there, there is nothing wrong with the name but its just not mine..
“Nope.”
“Oh er.. can I speak to Mr Daly..”
“Speaking.. “
“Oh… er… OK.. Im calling from (wherever), Our records show…” (here we go again) “ that you
have worked in industry and may be entitled to compensation”
“NO, I have never worked in industry..”
“You have never worked in industry?”
What I want to say is;
“Well yes.. clearly I have, but not in the kind of industry you mean”
What I actually say is;
“Define Industry?”
“Sorry?”
“What do you mean by ‘industry’?”
“OH… our records show that you worked in shipbuilding”
I see the link – I used to work for a company that owned (among 30 other businesses) a shipyard..
“NO, I have never worked in shipbuilding.. Thanks for the…”
She hung up on me..
Thats a new one.. 🙂
Cue the tweet that triggered the invitation to write the blog…
I’m now a bit fed up.. the next call..
“what?”
“erm.. hello, is that Mr Daly?”
“yep” (Blimey, that was terse.)
“Hi, this is Sarah from…”
“Sorry, Im busy, I have had enough today, I don’t care what you are selling I’m really not interested”
“Oh, ok.. Im sorry.. Just to let you know, that I have the quotes we discussed last week,”
(you remember the call I was waiting for..)
“…shall I just email them to you?”
A very large helping of humble pie, an apology and a quite pleasant discussion about cold calling.
But it’s not really cold calling. They must have my number somewhere, I must have forgotten to tick (or un-tick) the box that said please don’t bother me. So not reading the small print properly somewhere has caused this. Unfortunately I have no answer. There is no great reveal coming about how we all solve this problem.
None of us has the time (or, frankly the inclination) to read the 70 page list of T’s & C’s before we click the “I agree…” button because they are written in some arcane legal language that we just can’t read, without taking a course on British consumer law so we can understand it… (breath… ) so what we actually need is better protection from the regulators.
Most of this crap is some kind of scam. The goal is to get you to pay for a service that you can probably get for free if you do a little bit of work yourself. So its not actually illegal.
If only there was some kind of list.. Oh wait.. there is..
The telephone preference service is supposed to help you get out of this stuff.
Am I registered? – yep.
Does it work? – Nope.
Because somewhere, some time ago, I accidentally ticked (or didn’t tick) a box that enabled one organisation with iffy morals to sell my phone number.
So how about a bit of crowd sourcing?
Lets share all the random calls we get on a site, so we can add the calls to our block lists. I think there is even an idea for an app in there somewhere.
I think I know someone who can help with that.
1Could have been Phil, I didn’t hear properly..
2Could have been… cant remember that one either..
3I added the “The We promise bit…”
4again..
Bio…
Michael is the Engineering Manager at Cloudflare, having previously designed, built and managed infrastructure and networks for Nominet, Mercedes Benz and Virgin (amongst others). When not at work, he can usually be found with his family or with a guitar in his hand.
Anything written here is his own work, and has nothing whatsoever to do with his employer. Follow him on twitter at @michaelscloud.
Women in tech week on trefor.net attracts high level of social media engagement
It looks as if we will be carrying one or two women in tech week posts over into this week but as of this morning the statistics look very good.
12 posts received a total of 694 shares split as follows:
275 Facebook
245 LinkedIn
133 Twitter
17 Google+
24 Comments
Makes you wonder why anyone bothers with Google+. I certainly only do so on the basis that it may help with SEO rankings. As far as comment numbers go there does appear to be a trend to comment in the social media streams of sharers rather than on the blog itself, particularly on Facebook and Twitter. The number of LinkedIn shares points to a high proportion of business people reading the posts.
Three posts drove the numbers. Chris Conder’s exposition on rural broadband, Liz Fletcher on the acceptability of drinking prosecco for geeks (ok it was about more than that) and Helen Jeffrey on how to be a woman in tech.
Chris Conder stimulated comment and debate from a number of prominent individuals both in the media and the internet industry. The issue of rural broadband still generates a very emotional response from people affected. ie those who can’t get decent internet access.
The common denominator here was I think the size of an individual’s social network. Liz is very well known in both prosecco drinking circles and the internet plumbing industry and Helen is internationally known in the publishing game. She must be because her Facebook posts over the weekend contained views from plush bars in New York where she was celebrating the 4th July.
Regardless of the number of shares received by any individual none of this week could not have happened without the support of contributors who have been very generous with their time and for which I am very grateful. There was a terrific mix of posts covering a range of tech subjects, most of which demonstrated an in depth mastery of their subject.
The themed weeks on this blog are becoming increasingly popular. To call a “women in tech” week a themed week is somewhat unfair labelling, or at least a poor application of a label. It’s not like a week of posts on the Internet of Things, or Cloud Technology. Women in Tech is not a theme per se. However most of the contributors are friends (and hopefully the one or two I didn’t already know are now friends) so perhaps we can call it a female friends of Tref week.
If you have a good idea for a future themed week feel free to drop me a line. I have started to get quite a few unsolicited approaches offering guest posts. These mostly get ditched, especially the ones that begin “Hi there” but some do make it through so don’t worry if we don’t know each other. You do need to be someone working in industry though and not a professional writer placing posts on behalf of clients.
Updated numbers Wednesday morning bring the total to 743 shares and comments split as follows:
When the wonderful @tref was looking for ‘women in tech’ to write a guest blog I had to answer a few questions: am I in tech, how did I get here, and what can I do to encourage others?
What do you do?
I perform the pivotal role of interpreting business needs to technical people and analysing the potential of technical developments for the board and business team. To do this one has to be an excellent communicator, be able to manage demanding priorities calmly and effectively, and have an understanding of the evolving technical context. The publishing company I currently work for is small but ambitious, constantly looking to implement new projects and initiatives. The continually-evolving technical environment demands drive, the ability to evaluate systematically, and unswerving support for and appreciation of our tech team..
How successful is this?
The magazine I work for has had constant growth in both circulation and revenue. This is even more impressive when considered against the backdrop of declining print in many sectors of the publishing industry and publishers’ struggle to embrace the benefits and culture of new digital technology. The challenge is an ongoing one and not to be underestimated.
How did you get here?
I am living proof that coming from a non-technical background is not a barrier. Women can combine their innate communication skills and strategic abilities with an analytical approach, to support and implement complex projects – ideal attributes for a digital world.
I first worked (in the distant past) at a small consultancy firm, initially as receptionist, moving on to the documentation department (they had the first word processors from the USA – with 8 inch floppy disks!), where I supported projects by creating inputs on punch cards for mainframe processing. Exposure to the first home computers, the ZX81, C64 and Spectrum, led to playing with machine-code programming, contributing to ‘Zipper Flipper’, a game produced for the Spectrum, earning a grand total of around £4,000 in royalties!
I spent the next 20-odd years working with databases (dBase and Pervasive SQL) and personal computers/networks, principally specifying, implementing, and supporting software (developed in Psion Archive initially, then C and C++) to manage subscriptions and royalties for publishing companies. At its height we provided software and support to over 100 publishers, sending billions of copies to subscribers, and processing millions in revenues. (I also had two children).
Six years ago I joined the London Review of Books to lead a new team, initially to manage the build and implementation of a (then) new @LRB website and newly digitised archive (and no, I had never done that before). This intense period of work culminated in a successful launch, on time, and very positive feedback. Now I am an Associate Publisher and lead on the analysis of digital performance and the development of digital strategy for the business.
What about outside of work?
As a long-time supporter of Scouting, I used a global database to run an international educational programme for 40,000 people at a huge camp in 2007. I have a great interest in the campaign for rural broadband access, which led to the choice of my MA research topic; “The use of social media in enhancing volunteer engagement”, a case study of a community website fighting for rural broadband in Cumbria.
I like to think that the re-evaluation of the ‘fibre tax’ and its impact on rural broadband initiatives was prompted in some part by my advocacy on behalf of rural communities with BDUK in 2010. As a follow-on from that discussion, I was invited to write a report for BDUK considering the implementation of a practical strategy to support data-led community-based decisions in the delivery of super-fast broadband.
I supported a local school in a voluntary role, working as part of their Membership and Development Committee and helping them to become the first state school to implement an alumni database and website.
How can I become a woman in tech?
Be curious. I believe it is vital to examine how different sectors approach the use of technology and social media. I believe that the educational, arts, public, private and voluntary sectors have much to learn from each other. I am actively engaged and interested in the use of technology to empower individuals, companies, not-for-profit companies and charities.
Find your ‘digital north’. I have often wondered why some people ‘get’ digital, and some do not – most often when facing barriers constructed of anxiety and fear. I put my comparative ease with the digital world down to playing around with machine code and BASIC all those years ago. So – make something. It has never been easier to learn. You do not need to be a coder to work in tech – but it really helps to understand the basics of how coding works!
Image credit: @davidshrigley
Be digitally creative. Take part in a hackday or two. I have been to several hackdays: Culturehack East, the National Archives hackday, EdTech hackathon at Google Campus, and Hackthespace at Tate Modern. Meeting and working with people in a creative digital space is incredibly motivating and I have always learned a lot. You do not need to be a coder to take part – just enthusiastic about digital.
Find your passion. Mine is data – I love it. This has led me to great conversations and connections – entity extraction from our archive with the BBC R&D department, for example. I also have the innate conviction that you should build capacity over one-offs (almost) every time. The exception is if you are making digital art!
Experiment. If you have the opportunity to push the boundaries, take it. I was lucky enough to run a fantastic digital project for The Space, a BBC and Arts Council project. The project explored the idea of a ‘digital essay’. The work, created in collaboration with the writer Will Self, and Brunel University, is called ‘Kafka’s Wound’.
Bring others with you. This can be very hard to do. There is fear and anxiety around the unknown. I am about to run a second mini-hackday for my colleagues. Last year we had a great day mixing up mostly non-techie people and letting them loose with paper and pens as well as laptops. The results were brilliant and the follow-up survey provided both solid evidence of the benefits, and suggestions for improvements.
Connect. This is fairly obvious. I can trace much of what I have achieved in the digital space to the decision in 2009 to find out what Twitter could be good for, and if I could make a difference using social media. I have met many, many people on Twitter before meeting them in real life (and some I am yet to meet).
Draw. Use paper and marker pen. If you can’t draw something, it’s very hard to explain it, even to yourself. It works for me (and I am terrible at drawing).
Listen. Engage with your technical people – have discussions, find out what they find interesting, ask questions, encourage everyone to speak. Understand as much as you can. Be patient.
Volunteer. Use your technical knowledge to support a local cause that inspires you, be that World Scouting, community broadband, or your local school. If you find others there to work with, all the better, but I have often found myself the lead in terms of technical understanding.
Get to grips with business. All technology is embedded in a business. Understanding the structure of business and how it works is vital if you want to straddle the tech and business divide. Running my own business was the foundation of my expertise, backed up with an MA in management, which I really enjoyed.
Explore organisational culture. Understanding the culture of an organisation will help you make moves towards organisational change. If you work in an organisation that is not a start-up (likely) then there will probably be a big shift required in order to embrace and take advantage of the opportunities digital can provide.
Look ahead. See what’s coming up – keep an eye on it. Expend some budget on R&D and make some of the advances in tech real for your organisation – it need not be expensive (cardboard headset and smartphone to demonstrate 3D video, for example).
What’s next for you?
As everything continues to shift the possibilities have never been more interesting. I am looking at how the cultural sector is adapting to digital, and there are some big projects out there. In my dreams I will one day do a PhD.
Final words?
Follow your interests. Become (almost) indispensible. Experiment. It’s great if you can manage it!
Exciting to announce that LONAP has Linkedin as another new member. This follows on from the recent announcement of Apple hooking up with the IXP.
AS 14414 LinkedIn joins an exciting roll call of members in what is a rapidly growing marketplace.
Not all readers will be familiar with the internet peering model whereby content providers and eyeball networks meet at an Internet Exchange Point (IXP). This is a means of getting content from providers servers (eg Amazon/Apple/LinkedIn) content to your broadband ISP and thence to your laptop/tablet/phone. Connecting via an IXP normally makes for lower cost connectivity and almost more importantly better performing, lower latency (read faster page loads) connectivity.
Membership of an IXP is therefore essential for organisations where quality of their customer experience is very important. VoIP service providers for example. Commercial website owners are also able to express faster page loading in terms of improved profitability – the faster the page load the more likely you are to make a sale.
The LinkedIn LONAP membership is yet another great piece of news for the IXP. The internet industry is just an exciting place to be at the moment. Long may it continue. A full list of LONAP members can be seen here. LONAP is a member owned not for profit organisation.
I should declare an interest as I am on the board of directors of LONAP. It’s a true pleasure to work with Will Hargrave, Andy Davidson and Richard Irving who are time-served veterans of the peering industry.
London, together with Amsterdam and Frankfurt is one of the major meeting points for the worldwide internet community which is very much run on a basis of mutual benefit.
Most recent LONAP post (on growth) here. Loads of other peering related posts can be found here.
Pebble smartwatch review – @Baskers compares 1st & 2nd gen
When Tref first approached me to write a guest blog post for Women in Tech week, to be honest I was kind of scratching my head a bit about what to write about.
Where to begin? What should I say? What to choose?
I’ve been reading all the other guest blog posts this week on here and just been in awe of what these women have achieved so far and what they are doing. I sort of feel like a bit of an interloper/false imposter syndrome being here. As I’m not in a tech company, I’m not a coder, developer, hacker and I don’t work in Telecoms. I’m a Civil Servant in Westminster, responsible for the Department for Transport’s Business Intelligence Systems.
So, not exactly the “sexy” part Women in Tech. But hey, we can’t all have the sexy jobs. However, as a great believer in the Public Sector, I want to make sure that whenever decisions are made that ultimately impact the people of the UK, that these are made with the best damn Management Information (MI) that I can deliver to my colleagues. Whether that be internal to Business Partners, Boards etc or externally for DfT Publications, HM Treasury, Cabinet Office and Parliament.
There are a lot of challenges around that I’m currently facing:
around Data Migrations from legacy ERP systems to the new Shared Services ERP offerings
Connectivity between various systems via SFTP, VPN, Citrix Clients, CSV Interface Flatfiles (No API’s yet)
how that interacts with my Business Intelligence System (SAP BPC for those of you that want to know),
how best to build upon the rich MI Data that I have and turn that into valuable information through Data Visualisations and Predictive Analytics.
Ultimately I want to make MI more open, transparent and accessible to my Department. That’s my Finance/MI “tech” thing. That’s what I’d like to make awesome over the next few years. But that’s not why I’m here today.
The Pebble Time
So, why am I here writing on Tref’s blog today? Because I also have a weakness for all things shiny and tech, when I’m not dealing with Finance and BI Systems. Only the other week a new shiny arrived on my doorstep. The Pebble Time. Which is quite timely given Tref asking me to contribute to his blog this week. I was an original backer of the first Pebble smart watch back in 2012, when it finally arrived in 2013 (after a year of delays) I was ecstatic. It was the first proper smart watch that totally changed how I used my phone, and for the first time in years I’d started wearing a watch on my wrist again.
I’ve been wearing a smart watch for a good 2 and half years and in that time there’s been a whole lot of new smart watches come onto the market as competitors to the Pebble and ultimately the Apple Watch. But I was still excited by the arrival of the new version of the Pebble.
Why? Because even though there are other smart watches out there I liked the simplicity of the Pebble. There are a whole slew of reviews out there telling you the pros and cons comparing against other watches and all the tech specs, but I’m here to tell you about my experience.
Likes
What I like about the Pebble Time (and it’s earlier version the Pebble) was that no instructions were really needed:
Simplicity – it is simple to use with a good UI and a mature and stable OS. If I wanted complex, that’s what my Phone/Tablet/Laptop is for (disclaimer here, am a total Apple fan with iPhone 6, iPad, MacBookPro, Timecapsule).
Price – But the Apple watch simply doesn’t appeal to me (and certainly not at the price tag from near £300 upwards). As a Kickstarter backer, I got the Pebble Time for $159. Comparing that to the entry price for an Apple watch is simply a no brainer. It will retail at $200 (£180?), with pre-orders now open at GetPebble.com and due to ship July/August.
Battery Life – Apple Watch 1 day. Pebble 5-7 days. Again, no brainer. I find I tend to get around 3-5 days on my watch, but I am a fairly heavy user of the Pebble.
Volume Control – One of the things that bothered me with the 1st generation Pebble is that I couldn’t control the volume of my music directly from my watch. Which is a bit of pain in the arse if you’ve not got a volume control on your headphones and then have to fish out your phone from your pocket to sort the volume out. They’ve sorted that out with the PebbleTime OS. It works a charm.
Apps – The platform has been around for 3 years + now, and the Apps for the Pebble OS are diverse and I think it’s great that the watch will work with iOS, Android and Windows. Often when I was out cycling I’d have the Bike + App connected to my phone and was able to check out my speed and mileage at the flick of wrist instead of grappling with my phone whilst trying to not fall off of my bike.
Notifications – Oh these are fabulous and one of the main reasons why I love the Pebble. Being an App junkie (+300 on my iPhone at last count), I was being overloaded with notifications and always taking my phone out of my pocket to see what was popping up on my screen. The Pebble Time deals with this effortlessly, showing me what the Notification is and content. A quick glance to my wrist to see whether or not I need to deal with it right away or leave it to later. The phone stays in my pocket.
Dislikes
Watchstrap – I really don’t like plastic watch straps. Really, really, don’t like them. The Pebble Time comes as standard with the plastic strap, but on the upside, there’s a quick release button on each strap at the back and you can exchange the strap for a normal standard 22mm band of your choosing. I had swapped the old Pebble watch strap with a standard leather one, so will probably do the same here when I get around to it. And there’s also possibility of “smart straps” that can be used in conjunction with the Pebble Time App on the phone. I’m looking forward to seeing how that develops.
Screen lamination – I know this isn’t an Apple Watch or other higher end smartwatch. It is an ePaper screen and I accept the limitations of that, but wish that I could choose how long to keep the backlight on. For me, it dims too quickly.
Charging Cable – it’s a propriety charging cable. Pain in the arse if you lose/break it and have to wait for a replacement. I would like to see in the future more universal type of chargers for smart watches. Like most phones gadgets with micro USB ports.
Notifications – I don’t like how when they pop up that they stay there. I would like them to disappear after a set period of time that I could set and for the watch to return back to the previous screen (either music or watchface for me). Perhaps this will could be new functionality the developers can bring to the App in the next update?
Comparing 1st Gen vs 2nd Gen
As I was an original backer, and have using my Pebble since 2013 I was looking forward to seeing how the 2nd gen version of the Pebble compared the original.
Size – Overall the PebbleTime is smaller than the original Pebble which is a much welcome feature to me. I have small wrists and did find the Pebble just that little bit too big for m. It’s okay for blokes who tend to have larger wrists but for me it was an annoyance.
The smaller size of the Pebble Time just suits me perfectly, and is far more comfortable to wear.
Graphics & Animation – Obviously having a colour display is a BIG win. And opens up the possibilities of far more innovative watchface designs. Looking at the same watch face on both the 1st and 2nd Gen Pebble right away you can see the difference. I’ve totally fallen for the Pebble Time BIGTIME in that respect.
Having an ePaper colour screen just rocks. It’s early days yet, and new watchscreens are just starting to get developed using colour and I can’t wait to see what the developers come up with here. From what I’ve seen in the Pebble App store already it’s looking very promising.
The animations on certain watchface Apps could be better, but it’s still early days. One of my favourites has to by Nyan Cat. Check out the 1st Gen vs 2nd Gen here.
The App –The Pebble Time App has had a bit of an overhaul compared to the original Pebble App. The new watch can hold a lot more (1st gen was limited to 8 watchfaces only). I’ve been download loads of new Apps and watchfaces and have yet to fill the watch up.
You can see that the screen is split between watch faces and Apps. Which makes it easier to filter through your selection and load up the correct one. Slightly more intuitive than before. And searching for new watchfaces and Apps is slightly better with the clearer category breakdown between each selection.
One thing I don’t like, and it was the same for the original Pebble App is the performance. When you do make a selection from the Pebble App store it does seem to hang on the iPhone. Now I don’t know if that is just iPhone specific or if it does the same on the Android and Windows App version.
I would like to see the performance of the App addressed when switching between the watchfaces/apps in the Pebble App store.
Weight – For me the by far the biggest feature that has made ALL the difference is weight. I’m not a fan of clunky heavy watches, and that was a bit of downside of other smartwatches.
Old Pebble & band = 38g
New Pebble & band = 45.5g
Apple Watch (lowest spec, and band weight) = 62g
Far lighter and less clunky that an lot of other offerings out there. Another killer feature for me.
Round up
I’m currently on a train from London up to Dundee (escaping the heatwave) and soon to run out of juice on the old laptop and disappear into relatively little connectivity so I’d better wrap up this post and get ready to disembark my train.
Owning a smart watch is a very personal thing. I’ve told you why I like my Pebble Time and why I’m sticking with it, but it’s entirely down to your likes and preferences to which would be the best smart watch for you. I like the fact that the Pebble was completely crowd funded and was way ahead of the game before the big companies finally caught up. I want to stick around for now and see how the Pebble Time develops. But ultimately, if it doesn’t offer what the consumer wants we’ll will jump ship onto other brands so I’m keeping a close eye on this and as always the Apple Watch 2nd Gen.
About the Author:
Sarah Baskerville aka Baskers is a Dundonian Civil Servant, lives and works around London. She is one of the organisers of UKGovcamp and Teacamp. Sarah is also a supporter of 300Seconds, Rewired State, Open Data and the Open Rights Group.
She also likes Doctor Who, blues music, wine and can often be found down the pub. Sarah intensely hates the colour pink.
Siemens IT graduate – my career experiences so far…
On October 1st 2014 I embarked on the first step into my career in IT. After completing four years at the University of Lincoln and gaining a Masters degree I was lucky enough to be offered a place on Siemens IT Graduate Scheme. Congleton is the only Siemens site in the UK not to have an Atos controlled service desk. IT support is done internally by the IT team. Therefore, I am the only specific IT Graduate in the whole of Siemens UK. Little did I know the exposure to various IT systems that I would get within a month of starting!
The feeling of knowing that you have a position waiting for you does spur you on through the last few months of study. It also dawned on me then that I would be officially moving out of the family home and relocating to South Manchester. A few weeks of flat hunting and acquiring furniture wasn’t so bad.
The contracts finally came around mid June. It was becoming so much more real! I’d secured my flat and bought a bed so in my mind this was what ‘growing up’ was all about.
Then the day arrived that I was due to start work. It has to go down as one of the most nerve-racking days of my life. I remember walking into reception and the feeling of relief and drive came over me. The lady on reception already knew who I was – which I did find quite odd, and my ID badge was there waiting for me.
The first month went by so quickly. IT had had an office refit with posh new electronic desks and I’d begun to get to know people across the whole site and manufacturing areas.
My first main task was to do a massive data collection exercise to gather every item of software that was used across the Congleton site. The plan was to create a Service Catalogue of all the systems on site which IT didn’t currently have. Support, usage and a criticality level were all collected during this project. This ranged from Web Apps, Server Apps and Installed items. I also learnt a great deal more about the factory floor systems. All these systems have been developed internally over the years. Some are approaching 18 years old!
Not only did this project give me exposure to the site and its systems, it also allowed me to meet people. I visited every department and spoke to a few from each to collect the information that was needed.
As a part of the Graduate Programme, there are modules of work to be completed. We had an Orientation event at the end of October and then these modules kicked off in January. Each Graduate had to select dates for each of the 5 core modules – Project Management, Business Influencing, Customer Communications, Team Building and Career Planning.
These involved training courses which were set over a few days at other Siemens sites across the country. These modules are intended for us to understand the company and develop ourselves as young professionals. It was suggested that we kept a log book of these activities as well as reviewing each module with our line manager. I found the reviews really helpful as it enabled me to outline areas that I should work on in my day-to-day working.
It is now approaching 9 months since I started as a Siemens IT graduate in Congleton. I have completed one 6 month placement in Demand Management relating to applications and I am now working on the software roll-out of a specific data analytics software package with the Business Intelligence team. I have completed several items of work along the way: from becoming proficient in SharePoint development, using my previous knowledge of Agile to set up Sprint boards in the department and rolling out several items of software across site to improve communications.
I have almost completed a site wide cost saving exercise in fixed line telephony which has saved the site as a whole over £42,000 per year and I am due to start more cost saving initiatives in the coming months.
Even though I am very young in terms of career, I have achieved a lot since I have been here. I have also learnt that if you strive to develop yourself and search for opportunities that you will be looked after.
I’m part of the Strategy team promoting and ensuring our sustainability. I’m engaged in numerous school based activities promoting STEM subjects to Primary and soon in Secondary Schools. I’ve attended careers fairs across the country and even been back to my old University as a Siemens representative. It’s definitely been a great start to my Siemens journey.
So what’s next for me? I finish the first year of the graduate scheme in August, so I then have one year left. I am due to spend 4 months in Germany at a sister site early next year as well as participate and lead in a few new software projects in the various IT teams. 2016 is set to be an interesting year for me that’s for sure!
Zoe Redfern is an IT Graduate at the Siemens Digital Factory, Congleton, Cheshire.
A farmer’s wife speaks – rural broadband solutions
why I care – what’s wrong – what’s to be done
I am a hairdresser and a farmer’s wife, and I don’t want to run the country, but I do want to set a few facts straight.
I got involved with tech in the late 80s, when my children started using computers, I didn’t want to ‘not know’ what they were doing. I did some training, and worked as a digital graphic artist for a designer from home, whilst doing caring duty. This meant posting large files on disks, but then we got digital in earnest to keep up with competitors. I started with dial up and tried satellites, without much success, so I ended up as part of a group building a wifi mesh with the help of the university, and this then led to laying the very first rural community fibre to the home in 2009. I am now a small cog in a fibre network called B4RN, built by the community, for the community, and costing £30 a month for gigabit symmetrical, unlimited, unthrottled awesomeness.
During the last 15 years I have seen what a mess we are making of ‘Digital Britain’. I have seen funding wasted. I have seen politicians looking foolish. I have worked as a volunteer for the Digital Assembly as an observer and reported to Neelie Kroes, who, like me wants every citizen to have the chance to be digital. I want to help. Thanks to my community and B4RN JFDI, I now have one of the best connections in the world, here on my farm. My speed test, just for interest, what’s yours like?
Why I care. (about the rest of the country) (inc You)
Millions of us are left on connections that are not, and never will be fit for purpose. Government have been brainwashed into believing in infinity.
In order to save billions of pounds in eHealth, eEducation and eGov we need every single citizen to be able to go online, easily, affordably. At the moment they can’t, so the analogue ways have to continue which is very expensive for the government and taxpayer. We should NEVER ask ‘what will it cost?’. We should ask ‘what will it cost if we don’t grasp the nettle and do it once, and do it right?’ Patching up the old phone lines is not a solution, and it is a scandal and a disgrace that this government, and the previous two have got it so wrong.
We are up against a monopoly incumbent, determined to protect its assets, with a massive marketing budget and snake oil salesmen. We are the lobbyists of the future. We need to be heard. Thank you to Tref for the platform! May I also say at this point that our phone line network was one the best in the world, it fed the industrial revolution, and that is down to the fantastic engineers who built and maintained it. Sadly, since privatisation the finances for upgrades simply haven’t happened. Yet money can be found to buy football coverage to try to stamp out Sky…
What’s wrong. (with the rest of the country) (inc you)
The current state of ‘Digital Britain’.
What really bugs me is the fact that most of the politicians, civil servants and funders who are in charge of building a Digital Britain in order to keep up with the digital revolution know very little about the subject. This has been proved time and time again. The emperor has no clothes, yet all the minions assure him he’s gorgeous. (looking at you Edward). As we lose our manufacturing industries we have to replace them with other exports, and digital exports are the way to do it.
All the funding for the final third (rural areas and those on long lines) who couldn’t get broadband has been manipulated into Openreach coffers and wasted. ‘Wasted’ you say? ‘they have brought fibre broadband, superfast to millions of homes’ you say? Not so. If you study the statistics its ‘homes passed’. What has really happened is that the monopoly has effectively prevented anyone else getting support by grabbing the funding and by doing so has throttled innovative solutions from altnets. They have enabled some cabinets, and every single home on those cabs are classed as having ‘fibre broadband, even if they are still on dial up.
The quango in charge of regulating telecoms is staffed with ex BT employees and tickboxers doing reports. They base their reports on information from BT and consultancies who are often paid by BT to write more reports. The ASA (advertising standards authority) has no grasp of physics and is worse than useless. They think we are getting fibre broadband through phone lines. They let millions of pounds of marketing budgets bombard you with advertising until you believe in infinity. This is total rubbish. I will tell you why…
Fibre broadband does not come down phone lines. Also, their statistics are ‘homes passed’, and many in those statistics aren’t really connectable, (too few cabinets deployed and not enough fibre). If an exchange is enabled it moves into the superfarce statistics, even if users’ lines are still too far away to get a fit for purpose connection. Business area cabinets are not upgraded to protect openreach revenue from leased lines. Poor areas are often not enabled. Rural areas don’t have any cabinets to upgrade to ‘fibre’. It is all a superfarce.
The ‘fibre’ cabinets are a choke point (see p141, Peter Cochrane evidence to HOL) and a dead end and are not futureproof. All the funding wasted on these would have been better spent getting real fibre nodes into the final third, not squandering it on the urban fringe where there was easy picking. All it has done is enable a few near the cabinets to go a bit faster.
It hasn’t helped any on long lines. Many cabinets haven’t been enabled, only the easy ‘economic’ ones that BT could have done themselves, and should have done if they had wanted to.
Many millions are therefore still on the wrong side of the digital divide, still tied to copper phone lines. We are no nearer NGA than we were in 2003. In those days 2Mbps would have been luxury, in 2005 someone invented youtube, and iPlayer and now needs are climbing and 100Mbps doesn’t seem that fast any more with many homes streaming on TV and PCs. Cabinets cannot deliver what many need now, let alone in the future. Many families have multiple devices and a single feed won’t be enough. Also they have to pay copper land line rental for phones they don’t use just to get the broadband.
Why did it go wrong?
In 80s the then government led by Margaret Thatcher started a programme to bring fibre to every part of the UK. They didn’t want a monopoly (BT) to do this, so they opened it up to competition. BT were well advanced in the manufacture of fibre and in pole position to deploy it in those days, but the Americans came in and it looked like they would get masses in before BT did.
So BT started with dial up, and followed with ADSL, and the bottom dropped out of the market, and the cable companies pulled out. BT have since ruled the roost with the second class solution – internet access through phone lines. Cheap as chips, should actually have been free. Virgin bought some of the bankrupt fibre lines and started their own network in urban areas. This competition in towns and cities has led to what is FTTC, fibre to the cabinet, or ‘infinity’, a faster service for those who are close to the cabinets. It doesn’t help those who aren’t within a few hundred metres much – if at all. Where Virgin go, BT upgrade, but Virgin cable is a lot better service so customers stay with them. Virgin on adsl isn’t good, they then become just another reseller of Openreach via wholesale. (I know, it’s complicated but stick with it).
In the late 90s in project Colossus, most of the exchanges were fibred up. That meant your dial up was fibre based. Smaller exchanges were government funded (all the project access funding went there) and only odd tiny ones were left out. Then Openreach sat back and collected the golden eggs, not investing, not feeding the goose, just paying fat cat wages, and shareholders.
They even gave their boss over £9 million a year, two years running!
The only time they have done anything to update the infrastructure is when and where there was a sniff of competition. The rural areas languish on dial up and sub meg ‘broadband’ and nothing has been done at all to help. Along came the digital switchover fund, and BDUK. They gave the money to the councils. The councils gave BT the funding, and they have used it to cherry pick the urban fringes. Essential maintenance has not been done, as any customer will testify, but now Sky (another ISP) is calling for a review. Openreach are now holding out their paws for yet more funding, (Phase 2) having not delivered the first set of promises. This funding will end up going into satellites with their partner Avanti. It is all a stitch up.
British telecom is split into a few groups. Openreach control all the infrastructure. Wholesale sell the access. BT internet buy from wholesale and are an Internet Service Provider. All the other ISPs buy from wholesale too. Wholesale buy off Openreach. This is why we are deemed to have ‘a competitive market’ but in reality we are held to ransom by a monopoly, with the exception of a few altnets who are independent. Virgin also has an alternative network, mainly fed from their own cables. But in the main, it’s all down to Openreach, and they are failing the ISPs.
In 2002 we attempted to get our telephone exchange ‘enabled’ for broadband. We already had fibre in it, as did most of the others. We marketed for BT openreach in other words. They weren’t interested in us, as with many of the rural exchanges, there was not enough profit in us. In 2003 there was masses of funding made available, ie Project Access in our area, and we tried to get funding to build our own wifi mesh, using a feed from the publicly funded CLEO project. (CLEO Cumbria Lancashire Education Online) We couldn’t get any, and all the other funds – Big Lottery, Plunkett, Nominet, Nesta etc etc replied to say that ‘BT promise to get broadband to every home in the country, so we can’t fund you’.
Eventually project access, having wasted all their funds enabling a few exchanges for BT in Cumbria, and millions in ‘promoting the benefits’ were a bit embarrassed to have nothing to show for it, so they gave us £25k for 6 case studies to shut us up. We did the case studies from the wireless mesh we built with their money. They spent a fortune making a film about it. It was showcased at the launch of project access at Rheged 27/10/2005. As soon as we started building the mesh, BT enabled our exchange. Coincidence? It didn’t matter, as our network couldn’t get broadband through the copper anyway, and still can’t. Our mesh thrived and prospered and now all the customers are on our own community fibre. And have sacked off their phone lines.
For the next few years, our hopeless regulator assured government that everyone had access to broadband. The OFCOM website still has the information on it (page 5, but they have now added a proviso about long lines after pressure from grassroots lobby groups). The ordinary people who I met every day still hadn’t got it, and where I live the lines are so long even dial up didn’t work, despite being ‘fibre based’. In some areas there is no terrestrial tv nor mobile signals. Some places don’t have mains water and electric, but you can generate that. Not so with internet. If there are south facing hills, even satellites don’t work, but we tried those too. Very expensive to run, dodgy upload, high latency and not reliable. One even broke the quoins out of the side of a house, because round here it is windy too.
Anyway, we made a fuss. We had a conference in Cumbria, we launched the Final Third First campaign. Government needed to realise that to enable everyone to have NGA you have to start at the outside and work inwards. Openreach jumped onto this very quickly, and with their snake oil salesmen they convinced the councils that only they could deliver to this final third. They assured government that their commercial footprint would be upgraded at their own expense, if government would fund the harder to reach places. They visited every one of the councils and convinced them they could do it. They have put a lot of time and effort into making their vital vision work. Their vision is to keep the country on copper, but they call it fibre. FTTC is no more fibre broadband than dial up is.
We made it quite clear at the start that they couldn’t do it with copper. We tried to get the civil servants and the EU commission to see through the hype. But they wouldn’t listen. (nobody got fired for buying IBM).
The upshot of all this, is that any altnet (alternative network) was not able to access any funding. Despite the PAC and NAO investigating and castigating BDUK and BT Openreach, and demanding that they release the postcode data to descope areas they don’t intend helping, nothing has been done, and regulation isn’t working. In the last few months, 6 years after the launch of Digital Britain, we have seen a couple of altnets get support, having spent 3 years and a lot of community and private money fighting for funding. There is hope. But it’s a farce to have to play a stupid game when it should be made easy for people to help themselves.
We are being held to ransom by a greedy monopoly who is killing the golden goose. It has consumed all the golden eggs, so there is no next generation waiting in the wings. We are stuck on an obsolete phone network for our internet access, and we are fast becoming a laughing stock as BT leech the last remaining assets from what was a world leading telecoms company.
Nations without good phone networks have leapfrogged straight into fibre, which has also enabled powerful mobile networks too, even in remote regions. All this talk of 4G and 5G, it won’t work without the fibre backbone, and unless we want millions of masts it still won’t work in the majority of the land mass without small local fibre mobile cells in homes and businesses. Even 2G still isn’t available in a lot of rural areas. As long as government believes the telco hype, there is no hope for us though. That is what compelled me to write this blogpost.
You cannot get fibre broadband down a phone line. You cannot connect the whole country using obsolete cabinet technology. gFast is the next stupid thing they will try to push on to us, this only works down 19 metres of copper in lab conditions, not through miles of twisted pairs flapping in the sky or knotted up in trees and ploughed up in fields, or up and down city streets in jammed up conduits. We have to wake up and talk to the taxi drivers and those who cut our hair, and stop listening to snake oil salesmen.
In our area we are now ok. We all have real fibre, dug in by the community, owned by the community, and funded by the community until it was sustainable. Our local heroes.
photo by Murdo McCleod in June issue of Saga magazine
Now it is making a profit. We have proved it works. This project can be replicated to go the extra mile, where telcos fear to tread. We are ok, so should I just stop ranting and ignore what is going on in the rest of the UK? I think not.
Who are We ?
It’s the whole population of the UK really, isn’t it? If not us, then who? The population employs a government supported by public servants to ‘serve the public’. We can all see “our employees” have been seriously led astray by commercial interests who have lost the plot and are stifling innovation in the UK. The Vital Vision brainwashing ran for many years before it was removed, but the damage had been done and many public servants had been on it. They became the ‘visionaries’ for the infinite superfarce. BT have erased all traces of it from their site, but the pdf lives on, thanks to the cloud.
The incumbent is determined to protect its investment in copper. It will not invest in fibre until it is forced to. It is wasting its profit on patch ups, fat cats and football, instead of futureproof upgrades. It has brainwashed our vital ‘visionary’ employees in Westminster.
What’s to be done?
If not now, then when? It’s almost impossible to deal with the “yes ministers” public servants but MPs are duty bound to investigate difficulties and instigate remedies. We need to insist that a group of MPs are educated with the basic rules of physics and successful solutions, such as B4RN the rural community solution, Gigaclear the commercial operators who have deployed rural fibre in several places and Hyperoptic in urban areas. These must be visited and studied as templates. These altnets have not had government support, but they are still delivering a vastly superior and more cost effective solution than the incumbent. After the explanations of what’s wrong, and when they understand, the MPs could follow instructions for including a much clearer and more precise set of definitions:
It is not ‘fibre broadband‘ if it comes down a phone line.
‘Homes passed’ should not be included in statistics.
”Upto‘ speeds are not acceptable.
It so happens that an “All Party Parliamentary Group” (this group could easily be brainwashed into becoming yet another delaying tactic?) has been set up specifically to investigate Rural Broadband. Ian Liddell-Grainger MP will chair the Rural Broadband APPG with Richard Bacon MP and Nigel Evans MP as vice Chairs. They, for a start, must visit B4RN in Rural Lancashire, Hyperoptic in London and Gigaclear in Oxfordshire and find out the truth, free from snake oil salesman hype. The telco lobby has brainwashed most of our nation. Rural areas are the lifeblood of our nation, and need fibre, and it has been proven to be economical by altnets. Once the rural areas have fibre, the rest will swiftly follow, as food and water flow into the cities, so will superb internet access for all. <end rant>
Please do your bit. Think about it, talk about it, to the taxi driver and your barber/hairdresser, friends, family and co-workers, and help stop this superfarce, bit by bit. The same way you eat an elephant. One bite/byte at a time. Do it for the next generation. Help build a real Digital Britain.
4As – the Activists enthuse the Adopters, the Adopters can enthuse the Apathetic, (activists scare apathetics) otherwise the Anti brigade get their way, and all we’ll end up with is FTTC and a superfast train set for a few commuters. If you can’t be an Activist, be an Adopter. Help us build a Digital Britain to be proud of. Why not be the best?
We have made a start, here in Lancashire. We have built our own fibre network from scratch, and it just works. The people have done it all. We have many retired people working in the trenches, grannies and granddads with spades and pickaxes. We have found it builds community cohesion and everyone has a feel good factor. It can be done. If we can do it, others can too. If government would support it, it could be done a lot faster and a lot easier. Your future is in your hands. To which group do you belong? Activist or Anti?Adopter or Apathetic? You don’t have to be techie. It isn’t rocket science.
For those who are interested in a truly factual account and history of the Superfarce that is Digitalbritain, they need look no further than this blog, it is written by the very brave whistleblower, Mike Kiely, and you will have no doubt after reading it that what I said is true. He has the proof. http://thebitcommons.com/cgi-bin/ebb/blog2/index.php?action=viewcomments&pid=19
When I was asked if I would like to contribute a blog item on Women in Tech I seriously wondered if I was the right person to do it. You see I have never thought of myself as a Woman in Tech. I am simply a person doing a job I love in what I see as one of the most exciting industries around.
Before I got involved in IT and Telecoms the most technical position I had held was designing and selling photovoltaic system for electrical power at remote locations. I never really thought of it as a technological role at the time. Maybe that is one of the reasons for my success. Technology has never seems unobtainable to me, it has just seemed a challenge of the job and I have always loved challenges.
My sister was involved in technology and my father and both my brothers are engineers. I suppose you could say technology was in our blood but I think rather that fear of technology was never taught to us. Maybe my parents were ahead of their time in never trying to teach us to conform to traditional roles.
Being educated in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Greece certainly did not give me a lot of strong female local role models. The wonderful thing about technology and engineering subjects in general is that they are for the most part logical and factual, and therefore in my humble opinion so much easier to deal with than the many shades of grey and public opinion that effects so many professions.
The IT and Telecoms industry is demanding and fast moving and to succeed you need to be logical, organised and dedicated. Above all you need to stay up to date which involves constant ongoing reading and discussions through networking groups. You can’t bluff it, if you are going to succeed you need to understand the industry and the technology.
I am aware that at the ripe age of 30 I achieved the distinction of becoming a Director and that over the following years I have continued to be one of the few women at board level, but I have always felt I could do the job, and I have certainly never felt that I achieved a position on anything but merit.
I do recall one position from which I resigned in disgust when I discovered that my male colleague was earning substantially more that I was for essentially the same work. I would have done the same if it had been a female colleague and I have never felt either discriminated against or held back by my sex. OK I recognise I have different personality characteristics from my, mostly male, counterparts but this has never seemed like an advantage or otherwise. It is just who we are.
30 years ago I did often find myself the only woman in the room. This was at first in meetings, then attending seminars or conferences and finally as my experience increased as the only women speaker at many industry events. But the people I met at these events whether as a delegate or as a speaker where not interested in me as a woman. They were interested in what I knew or had to contribute and so everyone at the event started on an equal footing.
Over the years the number of women in the industry has steadily increased and I am delighted to have met some lovely women that I now count amongst my friends.
Technology is great, it is exciting, it is fun. It is rarely boring and often challenging and in my experience you are respected for what you know and can do and for who you are. The IT and Telecoms industries are a wonderful place to work and I would, and have, encouraged any young person to get involved in a field that can be so rewarding.
Ofcom new UK calling rules muddy the waters – calls to mobile and 0870/0845 will rise
Today is the day that brings changes to the way telephone calls are charged for 084, 087, 09 and 118 numbers. The Ofcom new UK Calling rules are the latest initiative from the UK regulator that claims to make the cost of calling these numbers clear for everyone.
However, looking over the website ukcalling.info, it doesn’t actually say what the cost of calling an 0845 number is on the new scheme. Their own calculator on the ‘Cost of Calling’ page is no use either. Enter ‘0845’ and it says “Calls are typically charged at between 1p and 12p per minute depending on the time of day for landline customers, plus a call set-up fee. Calls from mobile phones generally cost between 5p and 40p per minute.”
Doesn’t seem clear to me? What is the cost? Tell me the money!
The new charging structure is as follows. There is an access charge and a service charge that together make the overall call charge. The access charge is what your provider charges you and the service charge is the portion that goes to the service provider. Add the two together and I get the call rate. Makes sense to the telephone geeks, me included. I like maths but at least I have the sense to know that most people don’t.
To be fair to Ofcom, this works best with telephone voting on TV. You will now see a message that says something like vote for Dan, “Calls cost 20p per minute plus your phone company’s access charge.”
This should be clearer if you can remember the access charge for you provider!
You can probably tell from the tone of this article that I am not supportive of this initiative. I have often joked that Ofcom has no powers to fix the problems in the market unless it is related to TV voting and then they come up with this UK Calling nonsense that seems to be focussed on TV voting!
The more I look at Ofcom’s project, the less I am sure of what it is trying to achieve. Fact, non geographic numbers are confusing, no one knows how much it costs to call them, even me with my power for numbers. Fact, mobile providers charge ridiculous rates for calling these numbers.
So Ofcom must have some goals? Goal, simplify the whole system so that more people understand the costs of calling non geographic numbers. Goal, try to ensure mobile and other telecom providers reduce their rates to the caller.
So let’s look at the first goal. Simplification.
When I speak to customers and they ask me the cost of something, they always want a straight answer or at least something that makes sense in English. Up until now I have been able to answer the question, how much does it cost us to call 0845, 0870 and 0871 from our service? The answer was 3p and 1p and 11p. Pretty straightforward. Now the answer is that we charge an access charge of 3p, plus the service charge for that number. My answer now doesn’t tell you the actual cost to call. The answer to that question is an now unknown and possibly different for every number you may dial. If I was speaking to the customer I would probably now say, ‘well we charge 3p per minute plus whatever you will get stung for by the service charge but I am with you on this one regarding the costs, who knows, it’s a lottery mate’.
Doesn’t sound simpler to me.
So what about reducing costs. In the past Mobile providers have managed to charge huge amounts for calling 08 numbers. But guess what, this UK Calling thing hasn’t sorted this. Mobile access charges are still high. A text regarding the change from my provider Three managed to include a hidden message to Ofcom.
‘Do you call numbers that start 084, 087, 09 or 118? From 1 July how these calls are charged is changing & will cost more. To find out more click …’
Did you spot it? Yes, ‘will cost more’. A small F you to Ofcom?
One second though. 0800 and 0808 numbers are now free to call on mobiles. Yes, this is indeed the greatest thing go come out of the whole initiative. Except, sorry Ofcom, no credit or pat on the back for this. You are just finally fixing something you should have stamped down on the day the mobile providers started charging for something that was meant to be free anyway. Dense question of the week for you. Freephone, how much is that to call? Anyone? Anyone?
Another reason the cost of calling has also gone up, is because Ofcom has let service providers set their own pricing for their number ranges. 0870 which were cheaper to call thanks to Ofcom’s previous initiative are now up by 10p per minute and 0845 service charges seem to be several pence per minute higher now from the providers I have checked. And why not? It’s a good time for service providers to take the opportunity to make increases hidden amongst the other changes.
So Ofcom have neither simplified nor reduced costs to the consumer with this new initiative!
The painful outcome of all this is. It has increased the cost of calling these number to the end user. Ofcom has allowed service providers to set their own prices on 0845, 0870 and 0871 and therefore fragmented the number ranges to make it impossible to answer the question, how much does it cost to call an 0845. Ofcom has forced providers to waste hours changing systems and communicating this to customers for no tangible benefit.
But wait, there might be one really positive and hidden message from all of this.
“Service providers, ditch your expensive 084 and 087 numbers and get an 03 number instead. That is if you want anyone to call you.”
See also this post by Simon Woodhead in which he quantifies how much prices will go up as a result of this move by Ofcom.
European Commission plan to end roaming charges and establish net neutrality rules – EC Single Telecoms Package
Hot in from the ITSPA (Internet Telephony Service Providers Association) secretariat is this commentary: Late last night the European Commission, Council and Parliament concluded their final round of negotiations on the Single Telecoms Package. The key parts of this initiative are a plan to end mobile roaming charges and the establishment of net neutrality rules.
With regard to net neutrality, the following principles have been agreed to:
All traffic to be treated equally with no blocking, throttling, degradation or discrimination of Internet traffic and also no paid prioritisation.
There are a limited number of exceptions to the general net neutrality rule:
compliance with legislation related to the lawfulness of content or with criminal law;
preservation of the security and integrity of the network (malware, DOS);
minimising network congestion that is temporary or exceptional; and
spam and parental control filters (with prior request, consent and possibility to withdraw consent)
The provision of specialised services is allowed as long as this does not harm general open internet access. Specialised services are services that require technical requirements which cannot be ensured in the best-effort open Internet.
Zero-rating of traffic will be allowed, but regulatory authorities will have to monitor and ensure compliance with net neutrality rules.
National regulatory authorities will be tasked to monitor and enforce open Internet rules and will be empowered to set minimum quality of service requirements on Internet access providers.
ITSPA has published a press release welcoming the news which can be viewed here. In summary, we are pleased with the news and have supported the Latvian Presidency of the European Council’s work on the subject which has found a compromise which balances Open Internet principles with an approach that ensures that the Internet can still be run in an effective manner.
ITSPA has campaigned on this subject – particularly the practice of mobile VoIP applications being blocked by network operators for anti-competitive reasons (which will now be prohibited) – for approximately two years at both EU and UK level. The announcement should be considered a great achievement for ITSPA.
The new rules are expected to come into force in early 2016.
The Council has published a press release and the European Commission has published a fact sheet – the latest agreed text has not yet been published.
PS we can particularly look forward to the end of the mobile data roaming ripoff.
Valeria Rossi, general manager of MIX is passionate about not for profit IX model
I am in front of the typical “blank page” …
I read “Women in tech – a blog written by women, not a blog about women”, and I wonder if a woman would write about technology differently from a man. But this does not matter, this is not the subject.
In reality I have never much felt gender differences in my job, nor have I suffered from it. At the beginning of my career, I had the chance to work in the IP networks field within the academic world. There, despite “networks design” being predominantly a male activity, gender has never been an issue. I realise that it is not always the case, but either I was lucky or I have always behaved neutrally with respect to gender, avoiding to making it an issue.
I must admit, nevertheless, that things changed 15 years ago, when I started to manage MIX, initially as the technical director and later as its general manager. There I had to make double the effort to persuade a board, composed then and ever since entirely by men, that one specific strategy could be winning rather than an other, or that a particular chance had priority over others.
Nobody has ever challenged my technical choices, but often I had to make an extra effort to assert my credibility in business management and general overview. Do I believe that this has been due, at least partially, to the fact that I am a woman? Yes, I believe so, but now, even in this respect, fortunately or thanks to my skills or perhaps only to my strong determination, this belongs in the past.
I think of how many times I had to act with, and sometimes against the governing board, in order to develop MIX, company that started very quietly and kept with a low profile for several years. This as in a highly vertical Italian market where peering seemed both the keystone and a service competing with the transport and transit services of those offering the peering.
It took years before achieving the IX (Internet Exchange) model which is now recognised everywhere in Europe, open and without barriers, where anyone in possession of an AS is welcome … But effort is part of the game.
In this effort I was supported by my colleagues – who along the years have become friends – and co-founders of Euro-IX. Euro-IX is a successful example of open forum where we debate and coordinate efforts for the benefit of the whole Internet community.
This experience shared together, at the very beginning just with a few people taking the first steps towards the achievement of the IX model, later with a larger community representing every European country and many others in the world, has been for me and consequently for MIX itself a source improvement and growth. Doing it with my friends, was also a life gym.
Actually, those have been important years of learning, both for the people and for the market itself.
Perhaps MIX reached some goals more slowly than others.
Why such an effort?
Well, because in such a rapidly evolving world we have faithfully adhered to the successful European models that espouse openness of the market – firstly in Italy but strongly linked to that of our foreign friends.
Amongst all this only one thing is really written in the stone:
never act in direct competition with our members’ business,
operate neutrally and
never considering a peering service as a money source in itself.
Every internal battle, every ‘lost’ opportunity, everything has been justified by the strong belief that we had to maintain the super-parties role of IXes and in particular of MIX, without discrediting it by giving in to market dynamics which we do not believe is compatible with the role of an Internet Exchange.
IXs are born within the ecosystem of Internet as neutral substrate, functional to its development. IXs can optimise Internet paths, while enabling the freedom and autonomy of traffic routing, favouring openness against closure, protecting the market from monopolies, and balancing the market logic of transports.
Therefore I do believe that an IX has a big responsibility and must be an example of neutrality. The stability and growth of an IX must guarantee this type of ecosystem.
Rethinking to the Euro-IX experience, I’m now certain that in the domain of IXs, the concept of ensemble is the keystone to success:
On the one side every IX is born to operate primarily inside its country of origin – where it knows the actors, the market dynamics, the political-economical implications, where it knows where it can ‘touch’ the ecosystem to improve it
On the other hand, the ensemble of IXs can act at a global level, intervening on the dynamics of the overall Internet, which by construction is a whole and only entity.
Unfortunately though, the millstone of the business-oriented is slowly but more and more clearly encroaching on our micro-world, where nowadays the strategy of the ‘IP routes trawling’ seems to prevail over a more global stability and growth.
I do not believe this is the right way ahead, I believe that attempts to predominating can only bring confusion in favour of old market logics.
But when things are changing and moving, there’s more fervour, passion, need to exchange new ideas and possibly to battle too. New efforts? Yes, but this is the amusing part of my job.
A long time ago, in Operations the world was very fragmented – web admins, sysadmins, database administrators. Now most people at good companies are generalists. Tools allow you to administrate all of the different programs in the same way. Specialists still exist, but for most day to day operations, specialists are unnecessary.
On the other side, traditional network engineers are in a world all on their own. Networking companies try to push this mindset, through interfaces and designs that de-emphasize interoperability and certification tracks which emphasize knowledge in single-vendor environments. Once someone has spent years and thousands of dollars on studying for their CCIE, there is a huge barrier to changing technologies and mindsets. The emphasis on certifications is just another way to reinforce the idea that network engineers are special and need to be held to a different standard.
We must learn from the Operations DevOps world. DevOps encourages the use of tools, quick turnover cycles, and intercommunication between teams in order to lower errors while deploying and encourage deployment. Tools allow developers and other technical colleagues to self-service their needs.
This new mindset is required to scale systems up to their current large state. Even medium sized companies may need to administer huge numbers of systems due to VMs and containerizing services in for security and helping to up the scale. Network engineers cannot be a single chokepoint in this environment. As well, network engineers should not have to spend the majority of their day assigning ports and vlans manually.
In the past few years, automation tools and network operating systems have finally become interoperable. Puppet Labs has led the charge with pushing custom agents for traditional network OS’es (like IOS and Junos), as well as partnering with newer operating systems that can run native agents (like EOS or Cumulus Linux).
Without tools, network changes are usually made manually at the command line. Even cut and pasting a known good configuration can incur errors… so many times in my life I’ve pasted a large configuration, only to have the buffers fill up and part of my configuration left out. Using network automation tools to commit changes to a central repository can ensure that manual errors are a thing of the past. Code reviews allow a second layer of protection and automated tests can prevent minor typos from bringing down your network. Automated configuration pushes ensure that no switch will be forgotten when pushing the latest firewall rule.
The prize is a magnificent tin of Heinz Vegetable Soup. It’s been on the office windowsill for a couple of months and we are not likely to want to consume it now until next Autumn, so it goes. There is a very small health warning in that in moving the tin from the windowsill to my desk I noticed a teensy dent in the tin – barely visible but photographed in case you are worried (see inset photo right).
About an hour later, the phone rings again..
LinkedIn LONAP membership announcement
– Overall the PebbleTime is smaller than the original Pebble which is a much welcome feature to me. I have small wrists and did find the Pebble just that little bit too big for m. It’s okay for blokes who tend to have larger wrists but for me it was an annoyance.
Having an ePaper colour screen just rocks. It’s early days yet, and new watchscreens are just starting to get developed using colour and I can’t wait to see what the developers come up with here. From what I’ve seen in the Pebble App store already it’s looking very promising.
Sarah Baskerville aka Baskers is a Dundonian Civil Servant, lives and works around London. She is one of the organisers of 
