Category: Weekend

something for the weekend – interesting non work related posts

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End User internet media olympics

BBC iplayer

I caught up with some reading on the BBC  iplayer last night and lifted some interesting facts.  iplayer now has over a million users a day with 1.7 million download requests. The BBC is expecting it’s 300 millionth “play request” anytime now.

During the Olympics usage rose by 40% which is is reflected in the increase in internet usage I reported back in the summer.

What I found amusing was the fact that people only watch a programme for 22 minutes on average which the BBC finds to be a good statistic. Only 35% of viewers watch a 30 minute programme in its entirety. To me this is an indictment of the quality of what is provided for punters to watch and reinforces why I don’t watch TV (Dads Army, rugby internationals and other free to air sports excepted).

For the geeks amongst you the BBC runs the service on 200 servers, has 92% peering which hugely reduces their cost of delivery (though not ours) and peaks at 100TB a day of streaming traffic.

There’s lots more to read in the EBU Technical Review which quotes a number of sources : 2008-q4_iplayer

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Business internet olympics peering

Internet Usage Surges During Obama Speech

Internet usage has skyrocketed with people watching the Inauguration of new US President Barack Obama online.  At first glance it looks like even more people are watching this than went online to watch the Beijing  Olympics.

The picture below shows a snapshot of traffic over the London Access Point (LONAP) exchange.

lonap-total-day

It looks to me  from the right hand peak as if traffic has risen almost 50% over the same time yesterday. This compares with around 24% increase seen by Timico during the Olympics (see post). Fortunately Timico has the capacity to cope.

If you want to follow realtime traffic across LONAP you can check it out here.

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Business fun stuff

Happy New Year

This, as you will I’m sure understand, is an automated post. Written in the dying working hours of 2008 it has been scheduled for an unnaturally early time on New Years day as a precaution against the extremely unlikely event that anyone will want to read this blog today. Most of us will still be in bed.

To those who have made the effort, a Happy New Year to you and may you prosper in 2009.

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Business fun stuff

What’s Going To Happen In 2009?

I would be writing this from my Caribbean beach home if I were really any good at predictions. Having said that there are a few macro level changes I think will happen in our industry that are worth putting down as reference points. Some of these might be considered obvious but are none the less valid – they will be high profile in 2009.

  1. Facebook will come of age as a business tool as well as a social networking website. Linked-In will struggle to keep up with Facebook.  Twitter will gain in strength.
  2. The use of web based conferencing and collaboration will grow significantly in the face of the economic downturn and the need to cut costs. 
  3. The ISP industry will see some big consolidations. In the UK the Big 6 will become the Big 4. 
  4. Mobile VoIP will become mainstream for business.
  5. The ISP industry and the Music industry will finally get together to combat illegal P2P downloading.
  6. Liverpool will win the Premiership. 

6 predictions are enough. It reduces the chances of getting it wrong 🙂 .

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Business fun stuff

What's Going To Happen In 2009?

I would be writing this from my Caribbean beach home if I were really any good at predictions. Having said that there are a few macro level changes I think will happen in our industry that are worth putting down as reference points. Some of these might be considered obvious but are none the less valid – they will be high profile in 2009.

  1. Facebook will come of age as a business tool as well as a social networking website. Linked-In will struggle to keep up with Facebook.  Twitter will gain in strength.
  2. The use of web based conferencing and collaboration will grow significantly in the face of the economic downturn and the need to cut costs. 
  3. The ISP industry will see some big consolidations. In the UK the Big 6 will become the Big 4. 
  4. Mobile VoIP will become mainstream for business.
  5. The ISP industry and the Music industry will finally get together to combat illegal P2P downloading.
  6. Liverpool will win the Premiership. 

6 predictions are enough. It reduces the chances of getting it wrong 🙂 .

Categories
Business fun stuff

Review of 2008

2008 has been a very busy year – as they all seem to be. The action started early on when Timico acquired Twang.net. This is the third ISP we have bought and the process is getting slicker every time. Soon afterwards, the integration of the Twang and Timico network infrastructures began. Twang ADSL users all saw an immediate improvement in network performance and web surfing experience on the larger Timico network.

In the summer we established a separate Network Operations Centre in Ipswich to take care of the growing Timico core network. Previously this function had been split across a number of locations as the company grew and acquired businesses. A well as settling the team in a single location we set about hiring developers to provide the growing number of customers (both internal and external) with a world class ISP capability. 

September saw Timico appear 4th in the Sunday Times Techtrack 100. This was up from 10th last year and an improvement that thrilled everyone involved.

We then had the installation of our 21CN Hostlink – a resilient dual Gigabit Ethernet fibre connection over which we then ran the ADSL2+ trials. 

Finally in December Timico won the ITSPA Award for the best Unified Solution. This was for the best ITSP that was also an ISP. Many VoIP service providers do not manage the underlying netowrk that is used to carry their voice traffic. Timico does and has now been recognised for the excellent job it does.

Along the way the company has grown to over 130 employees and has broken a number of it’s own records in terms of sales, profitability and numbers of subscribers.

On a personal basis I started this blog in May and am now pleased to say that it is getting in the region of 40,000 hits a month and growing by the month. I welcome any constructive feedback readers might have. I was also elected to the council of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) which is proving to be a very interesting place to be.

This is in addition to my role on the council of the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association ITSPA. Being on both councils I think gives me a pretty unique insight into what is happening in the UK’s internet world and I hope that some of it comes through in the blog posts.

The activity within ITSPA has grown this year and the organisation now holds regular networking events, dinners and workshops which are proving to be very popular.

During this year the Web2.0 revolution has gained pace with Facebook coming to the fore and plenty of new sites such as Twitter making the news. If you want to hook up with me on Facebook I am trefor davies. On twitter I am tref – the benefits of being an early entrant.

This year people have moved on from talking about VoIP to talking about Unified Communications which is good for Timico because that really is where our VoIP service has been pitched since the beginning. The rising cost of fuel and the green agenda is also helping to drive the market for us.

I am very excited about 2009, despite the economic downturn . It is an opportunity though I’m sure not without its challenges. The landscape is going to change yet again and it is good to be part of the game.

Categories
End User fun stuff

Panto

I was at the panto in Lincoln on Boxing Day. As usual they had three kids up on stage at the end for some freebies. In the brief interviews we discovered that there were two nine year olds and a six year old and that Santa brought them a laptop, an iPod Touch and a Nintedo DS for Christmas!

I guess this is good news if you are in the technology business!

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Business fun stuff

Have A Good Christmas

I’m shutting down now until Monday 29th. Happy Christmas to all my friends and readers.  Here’s hoping that Santa recognises that I’ve been a good boy all year!

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Business fun stuff

Scale Is Important

This is a business where scale matters. One machine costs £100,000 and can process 16 million bites a day. It takes 45 weeks to grow the bite in the ground and they are pulling for 50 weeks of the year. They grow 8 million per acre!

What on earth am I talking about? Chantenay carrots actually which is what I mean by a bite in this case. Thats a heck of a lot of carrots. I’ve just been to a soiree where mine host runs a carrot processing plant in Nottinghamshire. I got talking to him about his vegetables and was totally fascinated with the statistics important to his business.

He runs three carrot polishing machines. They can also be used for potatoes and parsnips, though with different brush sizes obviously!! Next time you buy a baby carrot in the supermarket remember that it has probably been cleaned for your delectation by my friend Martin.

There was also a farmer in the room and I would have been happy discussing carrot pulling until the cows came home had I not had to take the kids home to bed.

What a wonderfully diverse world in which we live. It’s not that different to communications. Bits, bytes, brush size (?). The language is the same. Check out your carrots here.

Categories
Business events

Party Time

I don’t know about the rest of you but by the time Christmas Day comes along I’m going to be partied out. It all started with the ITSPA Awards at the House of Commons on Thursday last week followed by lunch with customer Foxtons on the Friday.

Monday I had dinner with KeConnect MD Robert Kemp in Ipswich, lunch with NTL on Tuesday at Cafe Bleu in Newark. Last night it was the Timico management bash at the Olive Branch in Clipsham. Tomorrow night it is the Twang.net party at Monty’s in Newbury.

Then Monday it is the Timico staff party at Belton Woods near Grantham. Tuesday night it’s The Wig And Mitre in Lincoln. I’m assuming that Santa has already sorted out what presents to bring the kids because I certainly haven’t had time to do it.

I have to say that I am looking forward to the period of austerity that this time of credit crunch and financial uncertainty merits and will be joining the queue for discounted lettuce at the reduced section in Tesco’s on the 2nd January.

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End User fun stuff

Duck Suicide Rate Rises In Run Up To Christmas

Apparently suicide amongst ducks is on the rise in the run up to Christmas. This latest victim was clearly unable to cope with the pressures that come at this time of year.

Speculation is rife amongst the Timico Network Operations Team as to what made this particular individual “go over the edge”. On the surface what to the outside world looked like a cheery duck clearly had an inner angst.

The team offered the following possible explanations:

  • The duck’s pension fund was tied up in the stock market, and Woolworths in particular
  • He couldn’t face having the family over to stay during the festive period
  • There are other more sinister reasons involving a knife and fork and an orange…

Whatever the explanation our thoughts are with the family. It is not known whether the trend is also being seen amongst other members of the poultry community.

If anyone can shed any more light on this tragedy please leave a comment. Remember a duck is not just for Christmas. It tastes great at any time of year 🙂

Categories
Business events voip

ITSPA Awards

Off to the ITSPA Awards in The Houses of Parliament today. A good day out in store. This is the first such award bash for ITSPA and I understand there were 50 entries which must represent a fair percentage of ITSPs in the UK.

Timico is sponsoring the “Best CPE” category which I believe highlights our partnership approach to this business. Working closely with suppliers means better support and fast access to new technologies.

No doubt I will report back after the event.

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Business fun stuff

A day in the life

Life is rich. If yours isn’t you should seriously think about doing something about it. I was wondering what to write about today out of the many things that are going on. In the end I thought I’d just rattle off a list of things I was involved in during the day because I believe it illustrates the point of those opening three words.

Got in and made a cup of tea. Then spent time discussing a contract we are about to sign with BT. Checked up on progress of our 21CN trial orders. Sat with tech support discussing a Virtual Machine project we are looking at. Discussions with our new Business Development Director who starts in January (more on him in due course I’m sure). Meeting with Cisco to discuss marketing plans for the Cisco Small Business portfolio for 2009. Lunch with Cisco. Meeting with Nortel to discuss hosted VoIP propositions. Drop Nortel off at station. Arrange tech meeting to discuss SPAM strategy for 2009. Conference call with VoIP Operations Manager to discuss specific customer technical issue. Home to take kids to cubs. Catch up chat with CEO. Go to school prize giving evening (son Tom won prize for English  and yes of course I am proud of him). Chat with headmaster congratulating him on chosing son as prizewinner. Home. Kiss wife. Do emails and write blog post.

Tomorrow is another day, another blog post. Friday is a day off to take the kids to the Lincoln Christmas Market. Check it out here. They get hundreds of thousands of visitors each year (or so I’m told). We live slap bang in the middle of the action so it is difficult to ignore. One of the kids’ school shuts down for the duration because access to it is impossible. The parents run a cafe which raises around £10,000 each year for the school PTA funds. Thats one heck of a lot of teas and coffees at a pound each. 

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End User fun stuff

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving day in North America. Not many of my American friends are online,  Jeff Keni Pulver being the odds on exception. I expect they are all being thankful for the day off and gearing themselves up for the supersized feast that is to come.

It occurred to me that this was a good time to ask around the Network Operations Centre to see what the engineers had to be thankful about. Of course I had to discount “having you as a boss Tref” comments, partly because none of them came my way. Hmm.

Ben, Head of Net Ops, said we should be thankful for the internet. Ok. Uhuh. The others were more imaginative.

Paul said he was thankful for Nunzilla! It’s definately a good one. Photo below.

Ian said he was thankful for his black characterless keyboard. I must say it is impressive. Thank you for that.

Anyone wishing comment on this post should do so, please. Imaginative things to be thankful for will be acknowledged and if worthy, may result in a prize.

PS note the product placement 🙂  !

Categories
Business fun stuff

The customer is king

Every now and again the business throws a bone at the Engineering team as a reward for being good boys. Yesterday it was my turn and I got to go to Gordon Ramsay’s Restaurant at Claridges Hotel in London.

Of course there is more to it than that. This was a lunch with some of our most important IP networking customers to say thank you for their business. Doing business isn’t just about selling a customer a product or service. It is about building long term mutually beneficial relationships and this is what I was doing at Claridges.

Meeting up for a convivial lunch provided the right setting to promote a constructive dialogue. It gave the customers the opportunity to provide Timico with feedback regarding how we are performing and to open up new potential avenues of business. I also like to make friends with our customers. So much of your life is spent at work that you have to enjoy it. The Timico attitude is not “us and them”. It is simply “us”.

It isn’t logistically or financially possible to take every customer to Claridges. However this doesn’t mean to say that we can’t treat all customers as kings in the service we provide them.

As a bonus Gordon himself turned up resplendent in his chef’s gear and a great time was had by all. And don’t worry. I know how much people enjoy reading about others having a good time so I will be sure to keep you updated if I do anything like this again 🙂 .

Categories
End User fun stuff

Bangor University Industrial Panel

Attended the Bangor University Engineering Department Industrial Panel meeting yesterday. I always enjoy a trip back to my alma mater. It is an honour to be asked.

The Electronics and computer science departments have enjoyed a resurgence with entries up by over 50%. This is no small achievement in an environment where kids are moving away from the harder maths and science based subjects. The computer science department was ranked 4th in the country by the Guardian newspaper.

Universities are having to be innovative in attracting students and at Bangor they are given a free laptop in the first year. Clearly a marketing initiative that seems to be working.

It was interesting to note that entrants in engineering departments around the country  require additional coaching in maths. This is apparently the case regardless of the university, Imperial College and Cambridge included!

Life for students has changed in other ways as well. When I were a lad nobody had a job in term time. There wasn’t time. Lager was 40 pence a pint and you had to be in the pub by 7pm to get a seat!

These days they all need to work to pay the bills.  This is in turn must have a knock-on effect on academic performance. On a recent visit to Lincoln University I was told that a typical student graduates with £7,000 of debt. That’s over $11,000 for the benefit of American readers (subject to a continually shifting exchange rate).

I look forward to the next opportunity to help the Univeristy. The picture below is of the members of the Industrial Panel. A fine body of men and women 🙂 . It’s not often I wear a tie!

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Business fun stuff

In the land of technology the well trained man is king

During the first seriously exciting 4 years of Timico’s being the biggest lesson I have learnt is the importance of training.

A big part of the value that Timico provides to its customers is the knowledge of its employees. Engineers are constantly going on technical courses. Indeed Timico runs its own courses for business partners wanting to climb a learning curve and manage their own installations for their customers.

One area where training is not as straightforward to apply is in the area of front line sales. There are no sales training courses that teach people how to sell the mix of technologies that Timico offers (mobile, fixed line, internet, VoIP, IT services, PBX etc etc etc in case you didn’t already know).

So we have to do it ourselves. This semester the salesforce has been participating in what we called the “Multi-Site Campaign”. Multi-site because Timico specialises in selling solutions to organisations with people spread over many locations.

As well as taking part in a competition to see who could sell the most multi-site business the sales teams have been getting involved in mentoring sessions with your truly and others. I am pleased to announce that the winner is Jo Smith. Jo gets a trip for two to New York to go Christmas shopping.

I guess the point, for any customers reading this post, is that this doesn’t mean that a Timico sales person is now going to be selling to them more aggressively and on more fronts. It means that you are going to waste less time talking about things that are not relevant to your business.

The time that you do spend with Timico, and I am grateful to you for that, is going to be more productive and I trust that the professionalism of our staff will make you feel that it is time well spent.

Timico CEO Chris Tombs congratulates Jo Smith upon winning the multi-site competition. In the land of technology the well trained woman is in fact queen.

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Business fun stuff

Credit Crunch

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End User fun stuff

The Ducks Are Lined Up

We have just finished hiring more staff for the Networks Operation Team. This has taken some time because we wanted to be sure that we found the right people.

I have to say that the wait has been worth it. Timico now has a superb core of people that will drive the network forwards. I’m sure it helped that they had the new Network Operations Centre to move into but also that there is a lot of technical action here at Timico. The business is constantly developing.

We are very fortunate as a business in the people that we employ. Today I sat in at the final presentation of a group of corporate account managers who had been working on developing multi-site communications solutions proposals. The team, mentored by yours truly, did a great job (I know, I know I would say that wouldn’t I).

I guess the point is that it’s people that make the difference to a business and to our customers and I am happy to be working with such a great crowd.

The photo? Ducks, because they have to be lined up to be successful, and because you can’t always take life too seriously. 

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Business fun stuff

Must read items

I like this blog to be populated mainly with original material from the Trefor Davies world. Sometimes you just have to link to another source to give credit for magnificent reporting. The two links below are both from the Register.

This first one reveals that the management at Thus have inadvertently compared the Cable and Wireless acquisition of their company with the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster.

The second appeared a while ago and was a beautiful piece of prose designed to be read by afficionados of the Technology Section of the Sunday Sport – I assume there is one.

Long live the free press.

Categories
Business fun stuff

4th Fastest Growing Technology Company

It’s not often that reading the Sunday Times gives me a thrill. It did today because I came across the Techtrack 100 supplement and discovered that Timico is now rated as the fourth fastest growing business in the table.

Last year we ranked tenth which we felt was quite an achievement. This year I had forgotten all about it so the surprise is doubly pleasant.

This is an exciting time to be around in the communications industry. Lots happening. Lots of change. Companies have to be nimble to succeed and I think Timico is fortunate to have people with the talent to make things happen.

Watch this space!

Categories
Business fun stuff

Diversity

I was taking a look at the Timico open order book and was staggered to see the diversity of types of company that we have as customers. I couldn’t identify what they all did from the name alone but those I could I wrote down.

Courier, damage management, domestic appliance distributor, baby goods shop, sporting goods manufacturer, printer, skip hire, transport company, optical goods company, nursing agency, drilling services, recruitment agency, dentist, property developer, golf club, martial arts company, travel agent, design company, estate agents, charity, solicitor, farm, training agency, personal friend of mine, petroleum company (big one J ), a domain name registrar, financial services company, tyre fitter, insurance broker, an university, sportswear marketing, graphic design, cooker manufacturer, Church of England diocese, flower seller, gas services, sprayer (?), blacksmith, bathroom vendor, wine reseller, entertainment agency, asylum seeker support company, bus company, computer services, enterprise agency, theatre, flooring, cladding, electrician, soft drink distributor, advertising agency, company from the Isle of Man (incidentally where I grew up), a cooperative society, aircraft company, conflict management, shipping agency.

The striking thing about all these companies is that whilst they operate in a very diverse set of markets they all need the same communications and IT products and services. The great thing from Timico’s perspective is not only that they want to buy services from us but that the diversity offers a degree of protection from any market fluctuations in a given sector.

My favourite was a school for cocktail bartenders. There’s always going to be a need for a good barman.

 

Categories
Business internet olympics

ISPs heave a sigh of relief after end of Olympics

I wrote recently about the effect of the Olympics on internet usage. At the time we had seen a 10% or so increase in ADSL based internet usage as people went online to watch the opening ceremony.

Well the success (hooray) of Team GB prompted even more people to watch the Olympics online. Timico saw a staggering 24% increase in peak ADSL internet usage. Ordinarily this would have caused a problem to our customers because Timico has a policy of not thottling usage – the increase in usage would normally have slowed the performance of their web access.

However in this instance we had had the foresight to order additional capacity as part of our standard planning process and were able to bring it forward so that it timed nicely with the success of Team GB.

Interestingly our customers with homeworkers showed a much lower increase in usage than those with connections into their offices – presumably this was because homeworkers could have the TV on in the corner of the home office and didn’t need to watch online.

Now that the Olympic Games are over everything is back to normal.

Not sure about the name “Team GB” though. What’s wrong with “Great Britain” – would have been far more appropriate under the circumstances. My kids, suitably enthused, have already put their names down as volunteers to help in 2012. I’d do the same if I could be sure of getting in to watch the beach volleyball.

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Business fun stuff

Just got away from the crowds for a few days – back to work tommorrow

No takers.

Nobody to save.

Still a few available.

Categories
End User travel

A4 Pacific

Leading edge technology of its time.

Sir Nigel Gresley was the designer of the A4 Pacific Class Locomotive.

The A4 Pacific Mallard still holds the world speed record of 125mph created on 3rd July 1938.

The A4 Pacifics cut the journey time between London and Newcastle down to 4 hours (from 5 days by horse and cart 🙂 . The coal tender had a walk through passage so that drivers could be changed without having to stop the train.

These pictures were taken at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway which still operates the Sir Nigel Gresley.

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End User travel

The rain in Scarborough falls mainly on the Davies’

It also rains in Spain

but are they as well prepared for it?

You won’t find anything like this in Las Vegas.

Nor this.

 

Categories
End User travel

The rain in Scarborough falls mainly on the Davies'

It also rains in Spain

but are they as well prepared for it?

You won’t find anything like this in Las Vegas.

Nor this.

 

Categories
broadband End User olympics

The Olympic Effect

Readers might be interested to know that the Olympic opening ceremony stimulated an increase of almost 10% in internet usage last Friday afternoon.

It will also be interesting to hear whether the consumer ADSL customer community will have seen any changes in the performance of their connection as their ISPs begin throttling to cope.

Categories
Business olympics

Nortel and the 2012 London Olympics

Nortel just announced that they have been chosen to provide the communications infrstructure for the London 2012 Olympics. This is quite an achievement because as well as voice it involves the provision of a wide area network that one might more normally associate with Cisco. I get the impression from Nortel that power consumption/Carbon footprint played a part here although I’m sure that in such a complex bid there were a great many decisive factors.

Their press release talks about having to support 205 sporting organisations, 20,000 media, nine million spectators and over 4 billion viewers worldwide. I’d like to have been the salesman getting commission from that lot. No doubt there will be a few tickets floating around for Nortel partners wanting to attend the track and field finals:-).

Categories
Business events UC voip

The ITSPA AGM and Summer Reception

The annual ITSPA bash went ahead yesterday. Numbers were down a little, I suspect because of the encroachment of the holiday period. However once the formal proceedings were over we had a great set of panel debates and a talk from VoIPWatch blogger Andy Abramson.

 

I was down to moderate the Unified Communications panel. However due to illness I was stitched up with moderating the SME panel as well. This worked out ok because I was in two minds in the first place which one to go for. Timico’s sweet spot is SME but the sexy market leading stuff is Unified Comms (for the SME market in Timico’s caseJ ).

 

Interestingly of the fifty or so attendees the four panellists (Steve Mackenzie of ICU Global, Andy Abramson, Andrew Penn of Siemens Enterprise, Tony Cocks of Microsoft) and myself represented 5/6 of the organisations in the room involved with UC. I therefore invited Mark Owen of Nortel up to the stage to fill a spare chair and take part in the debate.

 

The fact that there were no other ITSPA members claiming to offer UC services is interesting. They are either offering straight dial tone products as is the case with the likes of Tesco and Orange Home (they may disagree with me) or are in the PBX replacement business.

 

There is an argument that says that the business market doesn’t want UC. However my take on this is that demand for UC is just about to take off as environmental and financial pressures come to the fore.

 

Key takes from the day?

 

Some big SIP trunk deals happening –  one company was spending £50k a month on call traffic with one ITSP.

 

Microsoft is launching a hosted version of OCS and is looking to locate one of its servers in Ireland. This is a direct service being launched by Microsoft. Not a partner play. Obviously the concern is that Microsoft’s marketing dollars can heavily influence their market share here. However after some debate the team came to the conclusion that this is an opportunity. Microsoft will make the market but a substantial number of customers will not want to deal with the big behemoth.

 

Also when it comes to selling communications to the SME market, which is a substantial chunk of the opportunity in the hosted space, customers like the direct touch. They need the confidence of knowing that they can trust their supplier and know who to call when they have a problem. Accessing support via an anonymous call centre won’t work for everyone.