Categories
4g Business mobile connectivity ofcom

Everything Everywhere LTE Launch

The Ofcom decision to allow Everything Everywhere to launch an LTE (4G) service on its existing 1,800MHz spectrum has resulted in lots of press coverage this week (here’s me in the the Telegraph) and complaints from the other operators who have to wait for the auctions in the new year.

I can see both sides of the argument and like it or not I agree with the Ofcom decision to let them get on with the launch. We have to get these services out there so we can all start using them. I expect there to be no further delays in the auction process after this.

The big question in my mind is what the LTE packages are going to look like. I could be wrong but I sense that EE is not going to launch very fast services because speed uses up more of the spectrum. My bet is that the services will be perhaps 10 or 15Mbps using smaller chunks of spectrum and not the whizz bang speeds the technoogy can actually achieve.

10 – 15Mbps is still a lot faster than what we have already and allows the operator to offer faster services downstream without having to change its infrastructure. EE could alternatively offer the faster services at launch but at a premium. When it comes to it we don’t actually need 40Mbps (say) on our phones. What we will notice is the faster response rate at 10 – 15Mbps than we currently get.

Offering a speed that is not orders of magnitude faster than the existing services will also help prevent network congestion although the EE infrastructure has had a huge capacity upgrade in readiness for the launch.

The other interesting thing to look out for will be the pricing or more specifically how much data usage you will get for your money. Also which handsets will be supported?

Not long to wait now. Although Timico is an O2 and Vodafone house I will be getting myself an EE 4G SIM to play with.

That’s all folks…

Categories
End User mobile connectivity Net olympics

Olympic report from GBP v Uruguay

The game hasn’t started yet but the atmosphere is building up.this is a great family event but be warned. Queues are horrendous for the catering concessions and not a McDonald’s in sight – so much for the exclusive sponsorship. Maybe they only care about the London venues.

The mobile data connectivity is superb though I’ve not been able to figure out how to register for WiFi. I’m not a customer of BT broadband (I am but via BT Wholesale) and though I have a KeZone account with an Openzone roaming agreement I can’t see how to use it.

This actually doesn’t matter because much O2 SIM is giving me a fantastically reliable 7.5Megs down and 1.5 Megs up.

I have 3 pics for you. 1st is a panoramic shot of inside the stadium – just worked out how to do it properly.

The second shot is a screenshot of the speeders for the mobile data.

Finally there’s a photo of the 3g small cell antenna deployed in the stadium.

Enjoy:

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WordPress for android via s3

Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity net neutrality

Broadband Stakeholders Group Open Internet Code of Practice

The Broadband Stakeholders Group today released an “Open Internet Code of Practice”. This is a voluntary CoP promoting net neutrality.

Specifically:

  • users should be able to access all legal content
  • there should be no discrimination against content providers on the basis of commercial rivalry; and
  • traffic management policies should be clear and transparent

I’m not going to delve into the detail of the BSG announcement which is available here. What I am going to do is name the current signatories who are all in the main consumer service providers:

  • BE, BT, BskyB, KCOM, O2, Plusnet, TalkTalk, Tesco Mobile, Three

The significance of this list is in who is not on it, particularly the mobile operators. You can work out who they are yourselves. Some of them are already known to block the use of Over The Top VoIP services (eg Timico’s own VoIP, Skype et al) on their mobile networks which of course goes against the principles of the CoP being announced today.

Whatever their reasons for not signing these mobile networks will have to change their positioning as 4G gets rolled out. The bandwidth requirement for VoIP  services will be relatively small compared with that required for general use on 4G networks so the “lack of capacity” argument should not work.

4G is a fairly major inflection point for mobile networks. I don’t have any forecasts but during the life of the 4G (LTE) technology we should see the mobile business model transition from being minutes driven to data driven.

I suspect that growth in “data bundle” income may not offset any reduction in voice minutes revenues so the mobile operators are going to have to work out how to find cash from elsewhere. This may come from advertising, financial micro payments, device and personal security and I’m sure many more that I haven’t thought of.

For the moment I’ll leave you to figure out for yourselves why the non-signatories have not stepped up to the plate. I can’t see how they can stay away for too long. It isn’t the actual signature but the principle of how they treat their customers who will end up voting with their feet.

Categories
End User internet mobile connectivity olympics

Preps in place for the punters and their phones – London2012 Olympics

Usain Bolt - billions of fans want to see him win at the London 2012 OlympicsI’ve discussed what BT has done make sure the athletes, journos and hangers on have a great communications experience during the Olympics. That’s fine. For me though the biggest test is going to be what kind of experience we punters have.  There will be far more of us and we will be wanting to upload stuff and tweet just as much as the highest profile media type.

Categories
End User mobile connectivity

Rubbish mobile signal in parliament

I’m sat in the central lobby of the Houses of Parliament waiting for a 3pm meeting with my local .MP Karl McCartney.

Time was, not so long ago, if I had my mobile out a burly member of Her Majesty’s finest would have ticked me off. Not these days.

Only problem is there is next to no signal. I don’t know how MPs put up with it.

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Categories
End User mobile connectivity Net olympics

Olympic torch relay, Samsung social media and getting down with the kids

I don’t know about you but I for one am reallytref with Olympic torch in Lincoln looking forward to the Olympics. I have tickets for three sports – footballing in Cardiff, Kayaking in Lee Valley North London and High Diving at the Aquatics centre in the Olympic Park. I could have bought more in the last release, including the much joked about beach volleyball but at £95 just for the ticket I decided I had to draw the line somewhere.

My own Olympic story started on July 6th 2005, the day the winning bid was announced. I was in London, doing some presentations in the City. That afternoon we celebrated alongside everyone else in town, a victory tinged only withOlympic torch in Lincoln a slight hangover as the next day London was under attack with the July 7 bombings.

Some time later I went on a sewer tour to look at the huge amount of latent communications capacity there is in the fibres running underground in the capital. I was told that the sewer runs right through the Olympic Park. I don’t fancy being a guards having to check down there during the games. Then for the last year or so the ISP industry has been starting to think about its requirements to keep the network running during the games. It’s mostly about bandwidth.

The 2012 Olympic games is going to be all about information handling. Of course it is also about winning medals, taking part and all the good sporting stuff but this will be embedded in a communications wrap the like of which has never been seen before.

In the UK the communications build up has been massive and not without its glitches – the ticketing website and process has attracted a lot of criticism. Now that tickets are being dispatched hopefully that memory will fade.

The serious communications infrastructure preparations have been going on for much longer.  BT kicked off its network planning in July 2009 and most UK ISPs will now have
their plans in place on how to cope with the growth in internet usage during the games – basically by buying more bandwidth from BT.

The media build up has also kicked in big time as the torch makes its way around the country. A quick glance at the Facebook page of “Olympics” shows it has 2.8 million “likes”. The London 2012 page has fewer at 379k likes – clearly a newer page and a slightly lesser brand though far more specific to this summer’s needs.

There is a Facebook App “London 2012“ which with only 900 monthly users looks decidedly unofficial although there are lots of links to genuine Olympic resources. Then there is “ London Olympics 2012 “ which is clearly unofficial with only 3,435 likes. I’m not really here to comment on whether something is official or not, the fact is there must be a huge number of social media pages dedicated to the event.

Last night I went to the Olympic Torch event in Lincoln. I was a proud dad as my daughter was dancing as part of the entertainment. Everyone there had a fantastic time. There is clearly a huge amount of support for these games in the UK.

Most of the entertainment was provided by three of the Olympic sponsors:  Samsung, Lloyds TSB and Coca Cola.

The Samsung act was particularly impressive because of its use of social media. It included “Twist” and “Pulse”, apparently a popular dance duo. It was at this point that I realised how out of touch I was. I had pushed myself to the front of the crowd of 10,000 people as I wanted a good view of my daughter dancing. I found myself there with “the kids” – mostly 12 – 16 year olds I’d guess. They knew all the acts and all the words to all the songs.

Anyway at the end of the act Twist (or Pulse – you tell me  🙂 ) went on about how these were the “connected games”. All the dancers took out a Samsung phone and started to take photos of the crowd. Twist was elevated onto a platform and took a photo of the entire crowd. That’s 9,999 people (should have been 10,000 but my youngest son was playing cricket – beat Scunthorpe U12s by 10 wickets!).

Samsung entertainers Twist and Pulse with dancers taking pictures of the crowdHe then told us that the photo had just gone live at Samsung.com/takepart. People were then encouraged to visit the page to tag themselves using their Facebook ID. I did this – you can see me here (somewhere).

Think about this. The torch is visiting 70 locations. If there are 10,000 people on average at each location then that is 700,000 people being encouraged to engage with Samsung online.  Everone who tags themselves  are effectively providing Samsung with valuable social media marketing data. These people are also all going to tell their friends to take a look at them in the crowd and at the same time they are all uploading their own photos.

There are two types of person going to the Olympics this summer – us and them. The “us” are represented by all the punters, with or without tickets at the venue or milling around just taking in the atmosphere of London.

The “them” camp is divided into competitors, media and the rest of the Olympic family – the hard working folk of Olympic committees around the world over for a junket to oversee the smooth functioning of the games.

These games are likely to be the most technologically rich Olympics we have seen so far. BT has installed a 60Gbps core network in preparation. Despite encouragement from Samsung the heaviest users are going to be the media. 60Gb amounts to 2.7Mbps for each of the 22,000 accredited media personnel at the games. That’s around 30  x  maximum usage per connection seen at a typical business ISP and sensibly has a significant amount of headroom built into the capacity requirements.

As we approach the Olympic fortnight I’m going to be taking a more detailed look at the technology that has gone in to making it all (hopefully) a success – both from the point of view of the “Olympic Family” and us normal folk. Stay tuned.

Also check out this video of the Red Arrows flying over the Olympic torch relay event – they are  regular visitors to the skies over Lincoln. On this occasion their leader spoke to the crowd over his intercom – uber cool.

Categories
4g Business mobile connectivity social networking

#lincstweetmeet – McDonalds, doubledecker busses and the blistering pace of 4G

#lincstweetmeet live from the Showroom, Lincoln - click to see people :)Had a very enjoyable time at #lincstweetmeet yesterday. I gave a talk to an audience of just short of 100 social media fans on the effect that 4G will have on their tweeting, blogging and general online networking. Interesting to note that I recognised many of the twitter names from the badges as people I follow. It’s still very difficult to correlate an online persona with a real one though unless you have met them a few times.

Click on the header photo to see the actual audience. It was nice to meet them 🙂

If you want to understand the context of the post title click here.

Categories
4g Business mobile connectivity Net

Global Telecoms Business Innovations Awards

ballroom at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel for the Global Telecoms Business Innovation AwardsHad a great night at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel. I was there as a guest of BT Wholesale for the annual Global Telecoms Business Innovations Awards. My hosts won an award for their work with mobile network operator Everything Everywhere in rolling out 4G infrastructure that allowed the sharing of backhaul connectivity. Basically you can now have multiple VLANs terminating at different nodes. In the Cornwall project the BT POP was in Bristol and EE in London (I might be wrong with the specifics here – lemonade has a funny way of playing tricks with my memory but you get the gist).

The video below is of Chet Patel, MD of Markets at BT Wholesale and David Salam of Everything Everywhere picking up the awards which I’m sure will find a treasured spot in their respective HQ receptions 🙂

It’s a serious power networking evening and well worth going if you get an invite. BT won another award with Genband, the company that  Timico partners with for our VoIP infrastructure.

My sincere thanks go to Dave Axam at BT for being such a welcoming host. I’ll be writing up the 4G aspects of the Cornwall project sometime soon. 4G was used to provide internet connectivity for some of the more inaccessible parts of the county.

28/9/13 update – comparison of O2, EE and Vodafone 4G networks in London

Categories
End User mobile connectivity social networking

Zen and the art of battery conservation

I’m sat in a pub in Covent Garden in a race against time. I’m meeting Dr Sue Black at 4pm for a chat about stuff. She is, unfortunately, on a train stuck in the sidings at Wimbledon because someone is trying to commit suicide in Wimbledon station.

These things happen. V sad. The problem is that my phone is running low on juice as is Sue’s. I have the laptop but nowhere to plug it in. I could probably move to find somewhere to charge my phone (I only have a USB cable to attach it to the laptop) but I then run the risk that Sue’s phone battery will run out and she won’t know where I am. I don’t actually need the phone at my end as long as I have power left in the laptop because we are staying in touch using Twitter.

I have plenty of time. It is now 4.48 and my train is not until 7.06 (pm). I can plug both phone and laptop in on the train so I just need to husband resources until then. Also there are only so many glasses of mineral water a man can take…

Little glimpses of life in the early days of the mobile internet – real life drama lived out in Twittercolour on the www.

Categories
4g mobile connectivity

Location Location Location – indoor LTE coverage & demand density

demand density for mobile data usage - LTE/4G/WiFiEver thought about where to site your mobile data connectivity service? I have to admit I’ve not spent much time on it myself. I’d probably come up with a topographical map of where I was providing the service and plan a series of base stations to give me optimum coverage – most bang for my buck. Nothing new really.

That’s why the chart on the right makes interesting reading. Provided by Ruckuswireless the graph shows the relative demand density for data usage in Mbps per 10m2 based on type of location. Most of the high demand locations are indoor. The high street, which is where most of us would think of putting in capacity ranks 8th.

Ok the stats come from

Categories
4g Engineer mobile connectivity

Location, location, location – first mover advantage and the strategic nature of lamppost ownership – LTE

In the wifi hotspot game first mover advantage is becoming critically important. Experience shows that landlords everywhere are initially happy to allow a network provider into their mall/stadium/building. Once in however they decide they don’t want the hassle of doing it again or don’t really like the infrastructure they are now stuck with but have to keep.

As a result there is a market for the first movers in reselling capacity or subletting space on their infrastructure. We are therefore seeing a land grab in places around the world where operators are snapping up as many sites as they can.

In London The Cloud is looking at 1 hotspot per 200 persons. Time Warner is putting 15,000 wifi access points in Los Angeles and PCCW have 10,000 hotspots in Hongkong where peak time traffic has 50% going over wifi instead of mobile networks. For PCCW in Hong Kong their resold wholesale wifi capacity is their single biggest revenue stream1.

O2 is rolling out massive coverage in

Categories
4g Engineer mobile connectivity

4G Spectrum snippets – why LTE spectrum is important

Spectrum is the key resource in the mobile network game. It is what the operators paid billions of pounds (arguably too much too soon) each for during the 3G auctions. Users for the services weren’t there and nor were the handsets that would encourage bandwidth consumption.

It is a different game today. Don’t be surprised to see even greater sums of money paid for 4G spectrum. It would be commercial suicide for a mobile operator to not have any.

Spectrum when allocated is then divided into 20MHz bandwidth slots. 20MHz of spectrum allows for an 80Mbps data throughput using LTE. If you double this to a 40MHz slot you double the throughput. The higher the spectrum frequency you have therefore the more capacity your network can handle.

The downside is that the higher the spectrum frequency the lower the range and the harder it is to penetrate objects such as buildings. The lower frequencies are preferred for rural deployments – Vodafone in Germany used 800MHz for this. There isn’t a “right mix” of spectrum to own however. Vodafone operates in 30 markets and each market has different spectrum requirements.

That’s all folks…

Categories
4g Engineer mobile connectivity

LTE – the 4G deployment nitty gritty – macrocells and small cells

The mobile networks are built up from thousands of base stations around the country, connected back to the operators’ core networks using a variety of backhauls. Once the media hits the core network the voice/data session is directed as appropriate.

The backhaul technology has developed over time from E1s/ATM to Ethernet (fibre) with wireless connections thrown in where necessary.

Base stations, known in the business as Macrocells, contain the transmission and battery backup equipment to support a variety of call and data handling capacities (typically up to 250 simultaneous users) dependent on location. This equipment has historically taken a lot of space – it would probably fill the average master bedroom at home, requires expert installation and, because there is a mast involved to hold antennae at some height, needs Local Authority planning permission.

Technology developments mean that this kit can now fit into a single wardrobe.

Categories
4g Engineer mobile connectivity

IWPC LTE Small Cell Deployment Strategies Workshop – the funicular railway in Dresden

If you’re wondering what these seemingly random travel related posts are its because I’m in Dresden this week at the IWPC workshop on LTE small cell deployment strategies. Very interesting. These are long days though so you will probably have to wait until I get home for a report.

The video is of the funicular railway that took us up to the Luisenhof restaurant in Dresden. The view from up there is spectacular, or so I’m told. It was chucking it down when we were there so we couldn’t see much. We probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway – far too engrossed in the subject of LTE small cells.

wilthener xo - fine German brandyThe pic on the right is a sample of what the very excellent restaurant had to offer.

Categories
4g Engineer mobile connectivity

More O2 LTE trial datapoints – very impressive upload times

Continuing with the day’s theme of the O2 LTE (4G) trials I found myself back in the Devonshire Arms with Cliff Saran of Computer Weekly. I’ll leave most of the story to Cliff and his column but I herewith provide you with the video footage of 4 more iPlayer streams – we could have streamed more but screen size becomes an issue.

At the Piazza in Covent Garden I uploaded a 298MB video in eight minutes at 9Mbps uplink speed. O2 LTE 4G upload speeds at the Piazza in Covent Garden
In the Devonshire Arms I videoed the process of setting up the iPlayer streams and then uploaded that video again to YouTube so that we could compare performance with the Covent Garden upload.

This time the file size was 795Megabytes

Categories
End User mobile connectivity

Snooker, chainsaws and high voltage cattle prods & O2 4G LTE trial

In an idle moment last night whilst simultaneously watching the snooker and browsing Twitter I asked the important question of our time. Does anyone have a favourite agricultural equipment? This was totally random but it was amazing how many people responded – all blokes.

Rob immediately came back and said “David Brown tractor” as his dad used to build them. That’s cool especially as it turns out David Brown used to own Aston Martin (hence DB5) and Lagonda. I wonder how many gears that tractor has.

I thought plough had a certain earthiness to it. Note the video at the bottom of this post was taken in October 2010 just outside Lincoln (England) at the World Ploughing Championships. Check it out and note the O2 LTE upload medium.

Jon went for scythe which I agreed has

Categories
Apps Engineer mobile connectivity

Did you know? some facts from around the world on LTE / 4G

iPlayer screenshots using 4G - multiple simultaneous streamsDid you know1 that LTE was launched in the USA in December 2010 where a most aggressive competition between operators has been taking place, led by Verizon? In the USA LTE has high penetration across all devices, comes at no premium over 3G data services and LTE users typically use around 50% more data than 3G users.

LTE was also launched in Germany in December 2010 but has had a slow adoption rate with the initial focus being on fixed/mobile substitution. This I understand is in part due to regulations ensuring that owners of LTE bandwidth have to service “the final third” as part of their licensing arrangements. There isn’t much of a choice of devices on LTE in Germany.

South Korea was relatively late to the game here. They launched in July 2011 but had nationwide coverage by mid 2012 and has the highest penetration rate, focussed mainly on selling to consumers. LTE has brought innovative new services to the South Koreans  eg richer high quality interactive maps.

Norralorrapeople know this. Brings the scheduling of 4G in the UK into perspective doesn’t it?

1 source Ericsson & GSA (Oct 12th 2011)

Categories
4g Apps Engineer mobile connectivity

Samsung media event date announced – should we get excited – 4G & photos

I have to be careful here because whilst I am a Samsung fan I have no desire to be labelled a fanboi in the manner of Apple afficionados. Samsung has announced a media event at Earls Court on Thursday 3rd May and the speculation is that this will be the Galaxy S3 launch. This might be exciting.

I use a Galaxy S2 which is as far as I am concerned still a great phone. There has to be a lot of new functionality for me to want to upgrade – certainly more than appears to have been the case with the various flavours of iPhone churned out over the last 12 months.

What might these improvements be?

Categories
Engineer mobile connectivity

Growth in traffic over O2 3G data network between 2008 and 2011

growth in O2 3G traffic correlated with device intro milestonesThis chart is a few months old now but I haven’t had it all that long and is still interesting to take a look at (click either pic to enlarge).Growth in traffic over O2 3G network between 2008 and 2011

It shows the growth in O2 3G data traffic between 2008 and 2011. See the spike when the iPad was introduced combined with the football world cup traffic (dunno why anyone bothers!).

I don’t have an up to date one which would probably be even more interesting but I suspect that is too close for commercial comfort.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be covering two main themes. These are the Olympics Games and 4G. They are different though to some extent the technical aspects are very similar. Both subjects are going to be in our consciousness quite considerably from here on.

I’m not going to be blogging or tweeting over the Easter Holidays so see you all back on the 16th April, thoroughly refreshed and ready for the sensory onslaught that will be the run-in to London2012.

PS Thanks to O2 for the chart – keep the info coming guys – everyone is interested 🙂

 

Categories
End User mobile connectivity phones

what price a taxi? – charge what you like courtesy of Vodafone

Vodafone in taxi chargerNever before in the field of trefor.net blogging have I devoted such a large header photo to a post. According to Scott, my style guru and graphic designer the header is meant to be quite thin giving a tantalising glimpse of what lies within and tempting people to either click to see a bigger image or read the post below.

This one is almost three times the normal size!!! The subject merits the attention for on my way to an ITSPA meeting in a taxi this morning I saw a vision. In this vision Vodafone loomed large and loud and in my face. Well at my elbow actually because sat in that London taxi my eyes fell upon a mobile phone charging point compatible with multiple phone types.

Wow! Cool! So good I could envisage people asking the taxi driver to drive round the block a couple of times to give their phone more time to charge.

The taxi driver gets a few quid a month for hosting the “service”. Vodafone gets great publicity and feelgood factor. They made me think what a great bit of PR. Whoever thought of this in Vodafone’s marketing department deserves a bonus.I will seek them out

Well done Vodafone.

Categories
End User mobile connectivity phones

Apple to rebrand as Kumquat

latest brand revolution - the Kumquat - has fewer pips than an AppleIn a dramatic statement made after hours1 last night Apple announced a complete re-branding exercise under the new name “Kumquat”.

“The Apple brand has served us well and has made us the unbelievably big global giant we are today” says CEO Tim Cook.   However with Steve Jobs no longer around, the share price at over $600 and the Market cap approaching $600Bn this can’t go on forever.

“There is a limit to how many iPods, iPads and Macs our fans are willing to buy so to sustain the growth we need to give them something else.”

That something is the Kumquat. The Kumquat is everything that Apple was but as a more upmarket and exotic fruit we expect consumers to be willing to pay even more for their addiction. Existing sub brands (iPod, iPad etc) will remain unaffected though replacement stickers will be available online and at Apple Kumquat stores and greengrocers in your locality.

The announcement has been greeted with some surprise

Categories
Business mobile connectivity

do’s and don’ts of exhibitionism – retail expo #RBTE

Which header photo do you prefer? This oneblack sheep all in a rowor this one?mints mints glorious mints

I’ve just left the Retail Business Technology Expo at Earl’s boring boring boring boring boringcourt. I was there with Murco IT Director Umar Bajwa to talk about the 3G fail over they use in their petrol stations. Had a few interesting enquiries as a result so worth doing. We also had some media interviews so if you are a regular reader of the retail verticals look out for it.

After our talk I wandered around the exhibition to check out developments in the retail world. The first thing that struck me was there were a number of exhibitors offering “cloud services”. I realise that Timico offers “cloudgive us a kiss darlin' services” but at the show we were pitching 3g mobile fail overs for huge operational efficiencies. I have decided henceforth to ban the use of the term cloud on this blog and will be recategorising some posts when I get a chance.

It’s amazing how many boring exhibition stands there were. These in turn lead to desperately boring people standing round being desperately bored. Take  a look at the first small photo. The bored looking bloke stood around not talking to anyoneon the ocky - Tref the terror of the triple twenty just asked me “how I was doing today” as I walked past. I think I probably muttered something in reply, kept my head down and scuttled straight past.

Although there were a few unimaginative stands, in keeping with the retail nature of the show there were also a lot of interesting stand-out attractions. The attractive girl looking excited at the prospect of me kissing her is actually a back lit 2 dimensional mannequin. She caught my attention and drew me in. Also the Kinnect darts game made me stop at the stand – though I can’t for the life of me remember who the companyinteractive table used to find cocktail recipes was or what they were selling  (sorry).

The table in the next photo was pretty interesting. It had an interactive touch screen which you used to select ingredients for a cocktail. Once the choices were made it offered you a range of drinks that could be made  using those ingredients and printed off a chit for you to take to the bar to buy the cocktail. Pretty cool I thought but at £38k an idea requiring a pretty cool business case to justify the expense.

As regards my initial question re the headers, I prefer the one with the beer in it. This is more down to the liveliness of the stand but also it is really clutching at straws to think that a row of mints is going to attract people. The stand itself was very nice, I’m sure, but didn’t reach out, grab my sleeve and pull me in. Coincidentally the same company’s leaflets had been distributed freely around the sinks in the Gents toilet. What can they have been thinking of?!

As you will have realised what started out with the best intentions of being a post on retail technology has ended up as an analysis of what makes a company stand out from the crowd. In today’s marketplace you can’t afford to me “just another left handed widget vendor”. Your left handed widget needs to shout out “come and buy me – your search for the ideal widget is over”. The show seems to have been a success from the Timico perspective. We made some noise about our Mobile Access Management solutions, got some potentially great new enquiries and used the opportunity to meet some customers old and new.

I’ll leave you with some more photos from the exhibition. Some have artistic value and some just illustrate how to wind down at the end of a hectic day at a trade show. Anyone care to guess the name of the cocktail being poured by the barman (not at Earl’s Court). Also where were we?

guess the name of the cocktail?Moet anyone?

I liked these bags :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Categories
Engineer mobile connectivity

Murco 3G Mobile Access Management case study – huge operational impact

Mobile data has been a bit of a theme recently on the blog. It must be trendy1. This is quite gratifying because when Timico was set up 8 years ago this Easter the mobile play was part of the vision of an overall convergence story that also included IP data networks and VoIP. At the time the sales pitch was the convenience of being able to source all your communications requirements from one supplier and on one bill. The approach back then was pretty revolutionary and stood us in good stead.

What we couldn’t foresee at the time was how the use of mobile data would grow and the effects of the more powerful mobile handset on our patterns of behaviour. That early decision to include mobile in the portfolio is now starting to payback and today we are announcing a case study with customer Murco Petroleum.

Last Autumn we got our first Ethernet connection into the O2 3G data network. The plan was to offer customers a cost effective multi-tentant version of the secure APN (Access Point Name – don’t ask) used by large corporations as private mobile Wide Area Networks. The resulting Mobile Access Management service is what is being used by Murco today as a mobile backup to their Timico broadband based MPLS WAN – the key infrastructure over which they carry secure payment transactions.

This MAM service has some significant benefits

Categories
Apps End User mobile connectivity

My data manager – wonderful app from Mobidia

Discovered My Data Manager this week thanks to Robwifi usage screenshot from "My Data Manager" by Mobidia - used on my Samsung Galaxy S2 Bamforth of Quocirca. It’s a wonderful little app that lets you see how much data each app uses on your smartphone (I must stop calling it that – it’s so 2011).

I have only been using it since Tuesday when I was out of the office for a couple of days. It may be seen that in that time I notched up 46.3MB of mobile data usage and 36.9MB of wifi. You can see for yourself what I was using it for – I am a very connected person or addicted to Twitter – you decide.

Other than being a reflection of social habits and mobile usage the data does suggest that in a month I am likely to use around 480MB which is just under the threshold of 500MB typically used by mobile networks for “fair usage”.

I don’t believe it. I’m sure I use far more than that though it is divided between the iPad and the mobile. I’ll see what the number for the whole month looks like and report back. My Data Manager mobile usage screenshotIt would also be interesting to hear from others what their usage profile is (without giving away any secrets! )

The rest of this post is just a bit of fill in so that the text finishes off roughly in line with the bottom of the picture on the right.

Anyone else wishing to engage in polite conversation, inanities and observations regarding the rugby internationals coming up this weekend should do so through the usual channels.

I’m off to see Wales v Italy in Cardiff. Look out for me on the TV. Taking one of the kids. It was his idea.

There are still tickets available – not surprising at £75 high up in the corner!! I would also like to remind those who still owe me for bets on the England v Wales match it’s about time they paid up 🙂

Categories
4g Business Cloud mobile connectivity

I am not in Barcelona but the UK needs to shift the debate to mobile

I am not at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona. I have had a number of emails asking for meetings at the exhibition. They obviously aren’t using the attendee list for their mailing.

It’s ok though because almost every tech journalist I know is there and there will be a lot of coverage. It’s even made BBC primetime with Rory Cellan Jones trying (and failing apparently) to broadcast a report using the 4G network at the venue.

At MWC this year there are over 1,400 exhibitors. It is surely impossible to visit all stands. One journo I know has a table at a café and has invited anyone with news to book a slot for coffee/lunch/beer. That way he won’t wear out his shoes traipsing around the 11 or so exhibition halls. The value in these shows is not normally at company stands but in the networking opportunities at bars and restaurants.

Also in my experience each event needs to put together a best 50 powerpoint slides of the show. That way you miss out all the sales gough and cut to the chase (and can spend more time “networking”).

These are expensive events to attend – both as exhibitors and attendees. Realistically it’s a thousand pounds minimum spend per person if you want to pop along taking airfare hotel and meals into account. If you are a large corporate and not spending your own money it is probably twice that.

If you are not a journalist the only sensible way to do it is by reading about it online. For example I have just read in the Guardian online that this year Nokia is launching PureView camera phone with 41 Megapixels.

Interesting how technology dynamics have changed. It used to be that bigger and bigger Microsoft software footprints would chew up any progress made under Moore’s Law by the PC manufacturers. Now the race has changed to mobile handsets and connectivity speeds.

My Samsung Galaxy has an 8Megapixel camera and takes 3Mbytes photos. The 41Megapixel camera should proportionally take over 10 Mbytes of memory per shot. Last summer I wrote that I would be taking photos with a 40Megapixel phone by 2016 and discussed how connectivity speeds needed to keep pace with smartphone technology for access to the cloud.

Nokia seems to have blown the 2016 forecast out of the water although note that there is no mention of the PureView on their website – CEOs need to have something exclusive to talk about at expensive shows I guess.

The fact that the BBC has been talking 4G is a sign that the technology race is about to step up a gear. Whilst broadband speeds have started to climb, for the majority of us in any case, the UK is behind the curve on mobile – we haven’t even sorted out who gets which spectrum yet. Faster mobile data connectivity and in particular more bandwidth to cope with the increased usage that that faster connectivity will bring is going to be critical.

“Mobile” is where the future battles for country competitiveness of a country is going to be fought. Mobile applications, mobile ecommerce, “mobile anything” will depend on good connectivity. For the last two or three years here in the UK we have been talking about the need to have faster fixed line broadband – to have the “best fibre broadband network in Europe by 2015”. The focus of the debate now needs to start shifting to mobile.

Categories
Engineer mobile connectivity

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

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

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

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

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

Watch this space.

See ya.

PS I like Cadbury Creme Eggs – just sayin’

Categories
broadband End User internet mobile connectivity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Business mobile connectivity

Always have a Plan B – Mobile Access Management

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

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

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

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

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

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

a few minutes later

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

That’ll do.

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

Categories
Business mobile connectivity net neutrality ofcom voip

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

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

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

Categories
Business mobile connectivity

O2 – brown stuff spreads from whirring object

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

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

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

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