Tag: Germany

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Archived Business

Land ho – overseas customers spotted

Timico engineers wave goodbye to Blighty as they depart from Liverpool DocksWhat do the following countries have in common?

France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Poland, USA, Mexico, Hungary, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Liverpool.

They are all places where we have customers. During our monthly Exec meeting yesterday a Singapore customer was discussed which made me think of totting up all the other places we have installations.

It’s quite a cool list and quite took me by surprise. We are a business with global reach. Most of them represent locations of overseas offices of UK based organisations that we supply services to – broadband, SIP, MPLS connectivity, phone systems, that kind of thing.

I slipped in Liverpool for a laugh. That’s not overseas. It’s on Merseyside – top left on the map for you Southerners. It’s where our engineers depart from when sailing to see these customers. Big port etc.

Strikes me it’s about time a certain CTO made a tour of duty to visit all these locations, just to make sure everything is ok 🙂

Inset photo is of a bunch of Timico engineers gazing wistfully back at the shoreline of Liverpool as they depart Blighty on a trip over the water.

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Business internet net neutrality voip

Net neutrality, Skype and Commissioner Reding

Continuing with the theme of reports I’ve been reading the EuroISPA report that comes across my desk every month. Like it or not when the EC magisterially waves its authoritative hand we do feel the ripples in the UK.

This month in response to a parliamentary question on T-Mobile blocking Skype over broadband networks in Germany, Commissioner Reding, interestingly, referred to the provision of the Universal Directive, namely art. 2(3), whereby National Regulatory Authorities are empowered to intervene by setting minimum quality of service requirements for network transmission services, “as an additional safeguard in instances where competitive forces alone, are not enough to safeguard the openness of the Internet”.

If you’re like me your mind goes blank when you read all this regulatory jargon.  However with this one we need to note that in the pursuit of net neutrality, which as a consumer I’m all for, setting minimum quality of service levels requirements on ISPs is going to cost money. Skype should not be blocked by anyone but neither should ISPs be obliged to prioritise Skype traffic without someone footing the bill.

By the way you can use Skype to your heart’s content on the Timico network though most of our business VoIP customers chose to use our own VoIP service.

Categories
Business internet security

German court declares against data retention act

The Data Retention Act, which is about Big Brother getting out of control, is being rolled out across the European Union.  I’ve posted about it on a number of occasions, including here and here. 

The story has taken an interesting turn with a German court pronouncing it invalid.   Specifically:

“The court is of the opinion that data retention violates the fundamental right to privacy. It is not necessary in a democratic society. The individual does not provoke the interference but can be intimidated by the risks of abuse and the feeling of being under surveillance […] The directive [on data retention] does not respect the principle of proportionality guaranteed in Article 8 ECHR, which is why it is invalid.”

It seems to me this is going to hot up a little in the UK.

The link to the whole article is on the vorratsdatenspeicherung website 🙂

My thanks to James Blessing for this link.