Categories
broadband End User

W-w-w-why wi-fi works

why-fiIn the last 2 years, I have travelled through 22 US States, the Caribbean, UK, France and Spain. In the last three weeks alone, I have clocked up 1000+ miles per week in 3 different countries. During 90% of that time, my phone has been on airplane mode after being hit with substantial bills for roaming charges a couple of years ago. Public WiFi is the answer.

Living without a mobile number is not as tough as it seems as long as there are plenty of places to access wifi.

Categories
Business mobile connectivity

Train wifi too congested but 4G fine

Just a 4G quickie. Catching a busy commuter time train back nowf and couldn’t even get a sniff of a connection on the on board wifi. Almost certainly a good thing – if it can’t hook up using DHCP then there are so many people trying to access it that the performance will be so bad as to effectively be unusable.

Categories
4g Business mobile connectivity

4G better than hotel WiFi – official

Sat in my garrett at the Cromwell Hotel in London getting ready to to a 5.30 meeting. There is great 4G coverage here from O2, Vodafone and EE. The hotel WiFi is totally pants. It’s so slow it won’t even connect.

During my 4G test trips I already concluded that it is better to use 4G than the WiFi of a pub or cafe. I can tell you after my scientific survey (sample size one)  that this is also the case in hotels.

It’s such a pleasure to have the connectivity on the move. This post is coming from my Samsung Chromebook hooked up to the Huaweii MiFi loaned to me my EE. On the train on the way down I also used the MiFi – it was tucked in my coat pocket so to all intents and purposes the Chromebook was “just accessing the internet directly”.

Now all I need to do is to figure out how to convert Microsoft presentations to Google format (see previous post).

Pics below are screenshot of speedtest on O2 4G on Samsung Galaxy S4 plus screenshot of “error” message when it failed to connect to Cromwell Hotel WiFi.

wifi connection at Cromwell Hotel O2 4G connection in London
It’s offical, at this Best Western Hotel, 4G is best 🙂

Categories
Apps chromebook End User

Samsung Chromebook keeps losing WiFi connection but reboot is very fast

samsung chromebookThe Samsung Chromebook has lost its WiFi connection twice now and I’ve been unable to reconnect it without rebooting. I guess I could have added another connection instead of rebooting but the process of rebooting is very fast.

If I had to do that with the Microsoft laptop I could have gone away and made a cup of tea during the reboot.

I think the device is 95% of the way there. Still need to nail the photo transfer issue. The other test is going to be mobility. I’m travelling to London on Monday and will see how I get on with it on the go. The issue won’t be portability etc because the Chromebook is delightfully light. It’s how the connectivity goes plus in tandem with that how well it works offline which I haven’t really looked at yet.

Ciao…

Read other posts on Chromebook – there are loads:
Just bought an Acer Chromebook Ash – review to follow.
Samsung Chromebook crash fix and print drivers – who needs em?
Footnote to Samsung Chromebook Free Galaxy Phone offer
Samsung Chromebook offer not very customer friendly
or search chromebook for lots of useful articles

Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity Net

Trains to get faster internet connectivity #networkrail

Internet access on trains to be upgraded by 2014

My auntie told me today that the rail network is upgrading its wireless internet access or at least it will have done by 2019. I’ve mentioned the rubbish connectivity on trains more than once – here and here for example. I’m a bit of an expert because I spend so much time on the train between the office in Newark and London.

Apparently we are going to get 50Megs which is a big uplift on the pathetic 2 Meg we have to share out amongst the whole train today.

The BBC news item tells us that apparently “A new fibre optic network should be capable of handling up to 192,000 gigabit per second (Gbit/s) of data once the upgrade is complete in June 2014.” Pretty advanced stuff a 192Terabit per second network (no quibbling over definitions of what is a Terabit please).  I wonder which router they are going to use? Perhaps someone from Network Rail could get in touch and I’ll do a blog post on the subject.

Internet access on trains. Can’t wait. Ciao bebe.

Categories
Engineer phones

kiss goodbye to the set top box – Android Stick

Trefor DaviesI think I’ve been burying my head in the sand as I have only just noticed Android thumb drives. Following on from my earlier post on low cost Android tablets 2013 could well be the year you kiss goodbye to your set top box, if you had one in the first place. Mini thumb drives loaded with Android and with a HDMI interface for plugging into your TV are the way ahead. They are sourced from China for around £32 including delivery!

Running with Android allows you to download apps from the Google Play Store which means you can, in theory use the drive to run BBC iPlayer, Netflix or any other media service service. You can also insert a micro SD card with some of your favourite1 movies or music for locally sourced content. These drives support WiFi for internet access and you can either plug in a USB keyboard or use wireless access to control it.

It’s everything you can do using the RaspBerryPi but without having to learn to programme or sysadmin. If you use an external powered  USB hub you can plug in some extras and, for example, use a webcam for video chats.

I’m going to get one and check it out. The only problem I can forsee is that we only have one telly at home. This is already called upon by two boys competing for XBox time and my wife who wants to watch every cookery programme on the planet. Also I don’t really watch that much TV but hey… It’s got to be done I think. It’s a cheap way of hooking your TV up to the internet.

The next problem is which one to buy – Amazon has 840 results for “Android Stick”. Any suggestions duly noted.

Ciao.

1 I think I’m starting to sound like a cheesy TV advert here!

Categories
Engineer mobile connectivity

Train WiFi – the unexpurgated truth (as far as I can see it)

test data for WiFi versus O2 cellular on Eastcoast trains - click for full size imageThe only sensible way to travel to central London is by train. Whilst it isn’t cheap it is fast and has the benefit of allowing you to usefully use the time doing work and of course tweeting and writing blog posts.

I was tweeting away during one such trip and one of my pals, @HmmmUK, suggested I write a post on the connectivity on board the train. This is that post (said in a dramatic booming sort of voice).

Finding out all about the service was easy. Icomera, the company that provides it, proudly boasts about it on their website. I had thought it was satellite based but surprisingly it is based on a combination of satellite and 3G.

The connectivity is based on the good old “Moovbox M800” which you may not have known “provides a central network connection moovbox m800 - it's a cool name - thanks to Icomera for the picfor all the real-time communication needs of urban and suburban rail systems…

…combining up to eight cellular WAN radios with an aggregated downlink speed up to 28Mbps (in our dreams). The Moovbox will automatically change between network types including HSPA, 3G UMTS, EDGE and GPRS to deliver the best connection possible depending on network availability. The M800 can also be configured with a DVB-S satellite module for connectivity in areas where terrestrial networks and unavailable. Each cellular radio supports two SIMs allowing it to switch between different cellular providers and thus the best available network. Where a track-side or depot Wi-Fi network is present the Moovbox will use this as a preferred backhaul alternative at speeds up to 54Mbps.”

Icomera is a Swedish company which explains why I’ve occasionally had Swedish language adverts pushed to me when using the service. The ground station is in Sweden with a Swedish IP address.

To make this post a little more interesting I decided to test the on board WiFi against the O2 sim in my phone. I did this on a 2 hour 20 minute journey between Lincoln and London Kings Cross (the train was late – it shouldn’t take more than 2 hours 5 mins 🙂 ). After Newark I did continuous testing using speedtest.net on both laptop WiFi and phone sim.

Although I tried to start each test at the same time in reality one normally took longer than the other so the finishing times do not coincide. I managed 88 cellular tests but only 55 using the WiFi which suggests that the WiFi tests took longer to perform.

This is borne out from the average results which were better for O2 than for the WiFi.

Average Download Speed bps Average Upload Speed bps Average Latencys ms
O2 mobile data 2002 872 203
On train WiFi 985 618 231

The recording process was not perfect. We have to remember that I was hurtling through the English autumnal countryside at 125mph for much of the time (must have been less than that seeing the train was late) and there were times when the speed test stalled due to no connectivity and continued when it picked up a signal once again.

It felt like it did this more often for the O2 sim which you could understand losing connectivity in parts of the countryside whereas the satellite should have had a continuous connection. That said the fact that I was able to perform more speed tests with the former is telling. Of course it may have been down to more people on the train using the WiFi than their cellular connection but I can only report my own experiences. The numbers speak for themselves.

Cellular WiFi
Fastest Download (bps) 6176 3930
Fastest Upload (bps) 3233 1580

Although I do use the on train WiFi I have on occasion resorted to the cellular connection in my laptop (O2 in phone, Vodafone in laptop) and whilst this test used O2 not Voda I suspect what it is telling me is that it makes more sense not to bother with the onboard WiFi and just stick to the mobile networks.

It also makes me wonder what sort of cellular connectivity they have on the Moovbox M800. I guess must have a lot of people hooked to it on that train!?  They must use some sims because the latency seems low for a satellite only connection. In fact thinking about it I wonder if they used a satellite at all on my trip?

Icomera looks like it has established a nice little niche in transport based connectivity but I suspect that passenger expectations in the UK have overtaken what Eastcoast is providing.

That’s all for now – click on the header image for a full size graphical representation of the test results. You will see that there are many more “good” results for the cellular connection than the WiFi. Also it’s no surprise that the best cellular readings come when the train is in or near a station.

Categories
competitions Engineer

winner of the most home networked devices is @NeilMcrae

Neil came in clearly ahead of everyone in the competition for who has the most home networked devices. He gets the mug. There were some great entries and it was all a bit of fun so I’m going to give everyone a fabulous Timico pen for entering. What’s more if you really want a mug you can have one of those too:)

Can everyone wishing to take possession of their prize (s) please email me their address and I’ll try and sort it out on Wednesday when I am next in the office.

PS don’t forget to sign up for the Trefor.net xmas bash. It’s gonna be a goodun.

The competition is now closed…

Categories
Engineer gadgets

Home networked devices

I took a look at my router yesterday, as you do, and counted 14 devices connected over WiFi and 4 over Ethernet.

WiFi included 4PCs/laptops, printer, 4 android phones, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Ethernet included my laptop, a VoIP phone and a couple of homeplug devices that hook up the XBox.

That’s not SoHo. That’s a small business. We certainly have the overheads:)

Categories
End User mobile connectivity phones

Monthly mobile data usage August using Samsung Galaxy S3

August mobile data usage using Samsung Galaxy S3It’s been a busy month on the mobile internet usage, what with the Olympics and being on holiday. So far this month, and it is pretty much over, I have consumed just shy of 20GB of internet bandwidth using my Samsung Galaxy S3. That’s 2.40GB of 3G/mobile data and 17.13GB using WiFi.

My hard drive tells me I have taken 9.38GB of photos and videos and I’m sure there are a few sound files on top of that though they won’t contribute much towards the total.

The first screenshot shows the applications that were the heaviest mobile data users.

Note that Gallery is the number one user by far. I like the way that Android pulls down albums from my online Google+ store but clearly there is a price to pay for this with the data usage.

At number two Tweetdeck comes as no surprise and I’m thinking OS Services must mean operating system upgrades and / or general system management though I’m not totally sure about this. I’d normally save any major OS upgrades for WiFi.

During the month I did a lot of speed testing which shows up in the stats as that app came in fourth.August WiFi data usage from Samsung Galaxy S3

Straight internet access/web browsing was only the 6th most popular activity! In total 56 apps used the mobile data connection to some extent in August!

The next screenshot is of the WiFi usage from the phone.

Obviously it was used a lot more when in range of WiFi.

You can see that the amount of photographs taken is reflected in the usage of Google+.

I also took advantage whenever I had good WiFi, as I did in a number of places around London, to upload videos to YouTube. This way I could easily embed a video in a blog post at a later date whilst on the hoof.

In all 55 apps used the wifi connection in August.

The next screenshot is somewhat revealing and in some respects tells me I need to get a life.

I spent nearly 26 hours in the month using Tweetdeck wtf?! That’s almost an hour a day.

time spent using data connectivity in August

16 and a half hours using chrome. Interesting to note that the times spent on specific applications haven’t resulted in those apps beign the heaviest users of mobile data. Shows how light Twitter traffic in particular is.

Then it was nearly 14 hours using TouchWiz which is the Samsung user interface. All that time spent prodding the phone. I’ don’t know how much time is allocated per prod but this seems to be a lot.

Maps I can understand – that four hours is probably a couple of car journeys.

I’m not sure I know what to do with all this information but it is certainly food for thought.

You can see from the pics that the app I used to gather all this data is My Data Manager. It’s great. Go get it and let me know about your own usage.

Categories
Engineer media olympics

Technological Olympic conversations and what’s so special about Finsbury Park?

We all had a great time watching the Olympics, be it physically going to the games, on the telly or online (or all three). I’m sure we all agree that the BBC did a great job. There were comments regarding the quality of the NBC coverage in the USA but a) I live in the UK so don’t care and b) NBC apparently had 9.9 million users visiting their website so they just may have been getting their dose of Olympics from that source.

In the long run up to the games I wrote a great deal about the technology and capacity being put in place for the Olympics. The BBC in particular had geared its iPlayer servers up to expect 1Terabit per second of streaming. In the end the service peaked at around 700Gbps. The BBCs answer to hitting its capacity ceiling would have been to reduce the bandwidth available per stream rather than stop new users accessing the service or suffering service degradation so this worked out well.

Interestingly the Beeb says that it’s Olympic peak number of viewers expressed as the number of streams was during the Tennis singles finals at 820,000 requests.  Bradley Wiggins’ time trial  was similar to that of the Jubilee weekend at 729,000 streams. The peak daily volume was 2.8PetaBytes! 33% of all streams were to mobile devices.

Virgin Media, who had provisioned a huge 240Gbps of additional internet access bandwidth only ended up using a third of it. Good news from the customer experience perspective and the additional bandwidth now in place will soon be used up so it wasn’t wasted effort. Virgin’s peak was during Usain Bolt’s 100m final win.

Virgin also had a great story to tell with its WiFi on the London Underground. With hotspots in 62 stations Virgin had started the Olympics fortnight with 277,000 users registering 275,000 email addresses so some people must use multiple devices (presumably unless I’ve got it wrong). By the end of the games the number of users had grown 166,000 to 443,000. The number of sessions peaked at 20.7M on August 13th, the day after the closing ceremony with Finsbury Park being the busiest station!! What’s so special about Finsbury Park? Virgin’s Underground WiFi traffic grew by 34% over the Olympics period.

Evidence suggests that network traffic generally peaked the day after the closing ceremony which we can only ascribe to people catching up on all the Eastenders episodes they missed whilst watching the Olympics (losers!).

BT reported similar peaks at similar times to Virgin though its most popular times were for different events which just might reflect a different customer demographic. Also on the BT network the Andy Murray doubles finals game had more traffic than his singles which is different to what the Beeb was saying. Both could be true as BTs customers weren’t necessarily watching the live stream online. They might have been watching the games on TV and using the internet to fill in with other content.

BT also said that the saw a specific increase during Mr Bean’s stint at the Opening ceremony – folks sharing their excitement online or watching the video a second time – it was fantastic, fair play.

The London Internet Exchange traffic peaked at just over 1.2Tbps. Compared with its pre-games level of 1.1Tbps this might not sound like a big rise but we should remember that traffic normally drops in August because I go on holiday1 and taking this into account the actual growth is probably more like 170Gbps. Note LINX traffic in August 2011 was 800Gbps. This is not a like for like comparison as LINX now has more members using its network.

Btw if anyone can explain why Finsbury Park I’m sure all readers of this blog would be grateful.

1 only joking but you know what I mean – I tend not to use the internet when on holiday but I hammered it this time.

Categories
Business olympics

Wireless connectivity during the “connected” Olympics

Olympic long jump great Bob Beamon who is taller than Trefor Davies helped with the WiFi testing if he but knew itIn February I wrote about the O2 4G trials in London. The trials involved travelling around the city with a laptop and a 4G dongle looking for fast mobile internet access. Six months later I was back on holiday in London for the Olympics, billed as the “connected games”. As I was due to spend 8 days out of the Olympic fortnight in and around Olympic venues I thought I’d follow up the earlier 4G exercise with some mobile speed testing.

Highlights include the Apple Store, Virgin Wifi on platforms on the London Underground, the Cisco House at the Olympic Park and BTOpenzone at the Waldorf Hotel.

To test the 3G and WiFi networks after 4G seems the wrong way round but is still valid. The rise of the WiFi hotspot combined with the continuous increase in mobile data capacity are elements of the new mobile battleground for network operators. You don’t need to be a mobile operator to play. WiFi is strategic for both fixed and mobile players. It’s a competitive play amongst broadband providers and an offload mechanism for mobile players wanting to reduce the load on their cellular data networks

For the tests I used my Samsung Galaxy S3 and a couple of different apps from speedtest.net and thinkbroadband.com. The two apps produced slightly different results but in the great scheme of things were broadly the same – when the connectivity was good they both said it was good.

Rarely can a set of technical tests have been conducted in such interesting and historical surroundings. I started at home in Historic Lincoln on 31st July and did a quick test whilst still in bed at 5.52am getting around 8Mbps down and 400k up using my home broadband (boy am I looking forward to FTTC).

We stayed that night with friends in Historic Windsor. Their WiFi was up and down and the cellular data connection was near to non-existent at 11k down and 85k up.

In the morning of 1st August we were heading for the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff to watch TeamGB beat Uruguay. I jumped on the 15 minutes of The Cloud’s free WiFi at Historic Slough railway station and got a reasonable  5.9Mbps down and 1.6Mbps up. Upload speed is becoming just as important for me as download as I back up all my photos and videos to Google+ and like to post to YouTube.

Interesting that the WiFi at our friends house in Cardiff was a poor 1.6Mbps down but 3Mbps up. O2 mobile data speeds at the Millenium Stadium in CardiffI couldn’t get on the WifI at the Millenium stadium because I needed a BT Logon and being tight I didn’t want to pay for it. However the O2 mobile data connection was absolutely terrific at 7.7Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up. At half time as the 70,000 in the stadium switched their attention to their phones  the speed dropped to 3.7Mbps down and 0.8Mbps up. Still very usable.

I was very very impressed with the mobile data service in the Millenium Stadium. My first true Olympic experience. I experimented with uploading blog posts using WordPress for Android. Without photos this was no problem. It struggled with big attachments though and I found later that this was very much a function of the upload bandwidth available for that application – faster the better obviously.

At the Millenium Stadium I was also seeing how well the battery would last on the Galaxy S3. I went in fully charged at around 5pm and hammered the phone by taking lots of photos (bursts of 20 at 3 frames per second) and videos and with using the 3G data connection. After 3 ½ hours I still had 24% batteryGalaxy S3 battery and wireless data usage left. I took 273MB worth of photos and videos whilst in the stadium. On the 1st of August I used 180MB of mobile data in total, 74MB of which was accessing the phone’s photo Gallery which downloads images from Google+!  Speed testing used 27MB of data on that day.

The next day I took the kids to Lee Valley to watch Team GB win Gold and Silver in the men’s doubles kayaking slalom (yay). This was an outdoor venue as opposed the near indoor nature of the Millenium Stadium but I was happy with 3.4Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up.

The free Virgin Media WiFi in underground stations was a revelation.Virgin Media WiFi speeds on the London Underground station platform at Covent Garden In Covent Garden Underground I got 26Mbps down ad 44Mbps up! Wow. My biggest problem was that you didn’t have enough time to reconnect for the brief time the train spent in stations once you were onboard. Once on the train you realistically had to abandon any expectation of using WiFi for the remainder of your underground journey .

Also in Covent Garden the Apple Store gave 11.7Mbps down and speed test at Apple Store in Covent Garden - a great place if you need easy and free access to good WiFi25Mbps up. You may have noticed a theme here. The uplink often seemed to be faster than the download but I guess that’s to be expected as most other users on the hotspot will have been downloading and sharing that bandwidth. This was the same at Lancaster House on the Friday (25Mbps down 31Mbps up) where I actually had to do some work at a Foreign Office Business Embassy meeting and the following week at the Cisco House WiFi speeds at the Cisco House - click to see the view from the balcony(21Mbps down 48Mbps up – they 50Mbps of internet access and 2x10Gbps backup if they needed it!) where I was entertained to Corporate Hospitality along with Dr Henry Kissinger and legendary US long jumper Bob Beamon.

Henry Kissinger is shorter than Trefor Davies

I had been looking forward to trying out the WiFi in the Olympic Park itself having got myself a 5 day Openzone logon. On Thursday 9th August at the Aquatics Centre for the Womens 10m High Diving finals – my first day of using it – I couldn’t get on to the network. It transpired that the BT WiFi landing page didn’t like the Chrome browser running on my Galaxy S3, the official phone of the Olympics!  Back the next day for the mens handball semi finals between Hungary and Sweden I found that the native browser on the S3 worked ok and I did get  WiFi connectivity.

The speed testers initially didn’t show much speed so I tried uploading a video of the handball to YouTube. It took a 69MB HD video file 18 minutes to upload which in my mind works out as roughly 0.5Mbps upload speed. I did eventually register 2.87Mbps down and 1.6Mbps up at the Handball.

The cellular speeds at the Aquatics centre ranged between 1.7Mbps andAquatics Centre O2 Cellular data speeds 5.4Mbps down with uploads between 32Kbps and 1.6Mbps.

After the Handball I did test the Wifi at various spots in the Olympic Park. It waxed and waned a little but I did see 8.3Mbps down and 3.2Mbps up at one point.handball cellular speeds were generally better than the WiFi
handball wifi speeds - I uploaded 69MB video in 18 minutes

 

 

BT say they had over 50,000 unique users register on their WiFi network in the Olympic Park. This must be lower than they had been expecting considering the total number of visitors to the site in the fortnight.  I guess that unless you were getting it free as a BT broadband people would have been put off paying.

The Olympic Park WiFi did prove to be reliable with 100% uptime for the whole period of the games which is good considering the shaky nature of the technology. In fact the whole Olympic experience from the network operator perspective was great. All the hard work put in to ensure there was enough internet capacity for everyone paid off.

I did have a few more comparisons. The Travelodge in Covent Garden was giving me just over 4Mbps down and 1.6Mbps up but the Waldorf HoteBTOpenzone WiFi at the Waldorf Hotel was terrificl where I stayed for the Hyde Park Blur gig on the Sunday night showed a whopping 20Mbps down and 26Mbps up. You get what you pay for. The Travelodge was a cellular connection as I didn’t want to pay extra for the WiFi and at the Waldorf I used the BT Openzone login that still had a couple of days left on it so that was free. Interesting contrast of hotels I hear you say? I paid less for the Waldorf than I did for the Travelodge the week before – crazy mixed up Olympics hotel pricing.

At the Hyde Park gig itself you could kiss goodbye to data connectivity unless you had access to BT’s own office WiFi, which I did and which gave me a variable result around the 3 – 4Mbps down.

I did try to pick up Wifi wherever I was in London. At various times I could see Virgin, The Cloud, O2 and BT hotspots. They were rarely satisfactory if you were walking around but I guess they are intended for use whilst inside a venue. Cellular was fine the whole time.

In conclusion I did find some great connectivity in London and at Olympic venues. 3G was more reliable but where WiFi was good it was great. I sometimes found that whilst there was WiFi I had to pay for it which I didn’t like so I went without.

The UK is going to be an interesting mobile battleground over the next couple of years. I think 4G is going to prevail outdoors. Owners of indoor venues will I believe have to offer free WiFi or somehow accommodate multiple providers of WiFi that offer free access to their own subscribers.

Looking at my phone data usage for August (up until am 22nd) I used 2.02GB of 3G data and 14.83GB of WiFi. This is largely because I took 7.63GB of photos and videos in the same time frame which were all backed up to Google+ over WiFi. If we assume that my own usage pattern is how the rest of the consumer world will operate at some point then a mix of WiFi and 3G or 4G is always going to be needed unless mobile data costs come down to match those of broadband which seems unlikely in the near term.

Have a play with the map below to see screenshots of individual speedtests at different venues. You might need to refresh your browser screen to see it. Zoom out to see all the test locations or click on the “view larger map” link below to see all the pins.

View Wireless Network Testing During Olympics in a larger map

Thanks to David Nelson for the photos of Bob Beamon and Henry Kissinger.

PS Would have been nice to get all the pins in view straight awayon the embedded map but it wasn’t worth putting any more time in the post to perfect it.

Categories
End User olympics

No WiFi on train but power points more important

John and I are wending our way back from Cardiff to London in First Class with First Great Western. I like to teach my kids the right way to travel.

FGW doesn’t have WiFi like Eastcoast does but actually I’m finding that power is more important. 3G is good enough and having a fully charged phone for this afternoon’s Olympic kayak slaloms at Lee Valley is more important. I think 24 hours of battery life at flat out use needs to be the benchmark – 2 days for contingency. We aren’t there yet.

The lad is dozing whilst listening to some sounds on his phone. His copy of the Times newspaper made him nod off:)

I’m feeling a little rebellious. Last night we took a vuvuzela type horn into the GB v Uruguay match. It was on the list of prohibited items but if the Uruguayan supporters could take an entire drum kit into the ground it would have been entirely unfair to confiscate our modest source of atmosphere and excitement.

Today I am wearing my HP branded Commons and Lords Lions tour polo shirt and we have a Nike day bag. Totally against he rules laid down by the Locog heavIes. We also have a packed lunch which is apparently ok provided we don’t take too much – presumably in case we start selling food inside the venue. We could undercut the concessions and make a fortune, our only overheads being a modest Waitrose bill and the cost of the tickets. The latter has been covered by the mortgage so repayments will hardly be noticed over the 4 years between Olympic games.

I read somewhere yesterday that some politician (I can’t remember his name, which will obviously be a disappointment to the individual concerned) has said that the food prices are in line with other major events and that a family should be able to feed themselves for forty quid. That’s as may be but for most people forty pounds is a lot of dosh and I bet his family only consists of four people. Being a highly virile couple we have four kids which by my reckoning works out at sixty notes for lunch or roughly twelve pints of lager if you live in London as many readers of this blog do.

What a choice. Feed the kids or drink lots of lager. I suppose I could drink slightly fewer lagers and save some cash for a curry or a kebab afterwards (the hidden costs of a night out on the town). No no no only joking. Honest :).

Look out for me In the kayakIng crowd in my red HP polo shirt. Hasta la vista baby.

More later on my OlympIc holiday, from the WordPress dashboard of the Samsung Galaxy S3…

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
End User travel

Random connectivity musings of a traveller

with all these wires running along the train tracks why isn't there better connectivity on boardThere is frost on the ground but it is a bright morning and I am on the way to London. I’m using the train WiFi which according to the speed tester is giving me 3.1Megs. I don’t know what it’s max speed is but the train is not very full – when it is full it certainly doesn’t feel like 3 Megs & I sometimes oscillate between WiFi and 3G and mostly 2G. Currently 3Megs feels fast enough.

We put up with poor connectivity on a train and accept that when we go in to a tunnel it disappears altogether. We shouldn’t have to.

I’m off to Olympia for UCExpo – it’s a good place to get together with people and I have a few meetings lined up over the two days. In my experience connectivity at Exhibition Halls is poor. I once did a VoIP video conferencing demo over 3G. It was all fine in the dry run but of course once the place filled up with thousands of punters it was a different matter. I could barely get the client registered let alone use it in a demo. The patter had to kick in big time:) I don’t know why we should put up with poor connectivity at these places. There is no reason for it. They know we are coming. Perhaps I’ll be surprised.

Between Kings X station and Olympia connectivity will be pretty variable and of course on the Underground it will be non-existent, mostly, though there is no need for this to be the case.

Most pubs I’ve been to in London recently offer free wifi. 20 minutes and a stop in Newark to pick up some punters later the on-train WiFi speed is down to 1.1Megs.

Is Utopia a country with perfect connectivity1? What is that connectivity speed? It’s not 1 or 2 Megs. It has to be fast enough for us never to notice any delay. Bandwidth on demand. With the massive growth in mobile apps this connectivity has to get a lot better a lot more quickly than it is doing so. It’s all very well being ok when you are sat in your living room and using your home WiFi but that on its own isn’t good enough any more.

I’m up to 8.4Megs at Peterborough station but that may be my SIM kicking in with HSPDA. Outside the station, with more people on board it is down to 0.11Megs. This is more like it. It makes my whinging more valid.

I would say 100Megs per person would be a good number to have but it will be a moving number. It is going to depend on what you are doing at a given point in time. Bandwidth needs when just sending texts are different to when uploading photos for example.

I’m getting nearer to the big smoke. What’s happened to the sun? Thatsenoughfornow.

1 Ok ok add in perfect health service, zero unemployment etc but I’m trying to stay focussed here.

PS Bloke sat behind me is reading out his card details to someone over the phone! Including security number. I could have written it all down. Perhaps someone did. Personal security will be a blog post for another day.

Categories
Business internet Regs

Boris Johnson promises WiFi for London

Mayor of London Boris Johnson has promised full WiFi coverage of London in time for the 2012 Olympic games. It would be ironic if the Olympic Games WiFi coverage was shut down because someone had been caught indulging in online copyright infringement. As Mayor will he be the one having to turn up in court?

Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity

Fixed Mobile Convergence needs a philosophical change amongst the mobile operator community

FMC is really the nirvana where all networks finally converge. We are already experiencing it with internet connectivity – I keep up to date with facebook, twitter (and, ahem, of course work and email) via the internet connection on my mobile phone. We use both WiFi and 3G/GPRS to do this and whilst service can be intermittent it does work and is reasonably ubiquitous.

Convergence of voice over fixed and mobile networks is really the final piece of the jigsaw. Since Timico started selling VoIP services around 5 years ago we have been looking at FMC solutions. These have all been based on WiFi for the mobile piece.

Categories
Business internet

Online reading

I was recently rung by a salesman from the Daily Telegraph trying to sell me a low cost subscription to the newspaper. Other than the fact that it was probably going to cost me as much to get it delivered as the the cost of the paper I told the chap that his call was fruitless as I usually read his paper online. 

As I was queuing up to buy a shot of caffeine at Newark Northgate railway station I noticed that the man behind the counter was snatching glimpses of the Beano comic in between serving coffees. One of the perks of the job at a newsagents cum coffee shop I thought 🙂 .

Now on the train where I am writing this blog post courtesy of the on train free WiFI (actual cost £128 return) I have checked to see whether the Beano, like the Telegraph, is also available online. To my delight it is .

I heard an article on Radio 4 the other day where someone was heralding the death of small newspapers. I guess what we are really talking about is the death of hardcopy. There will always be a place for printed matter but it must be moving towards niche status and it would be interesting to see what the statistics were for online versus hardcopy readership.

PS now I have a dilemma – Beano – hard copy or online?

Categories
End User internet

Municipal WiFi Scarborough style

Categories
broadband End User

Sports Bar

This isn’t really a technology post. I have just had dinner in a hotel sports bar somewhere near the M25 outside London.

 

Initially I couldn’t get near the bar because the one barman was snowed under with customers attending a function that had closed the restaurant. I didn’t mind that because I don’t like being seen as a sad git reading a book on my own in the restaurant. I prefer to sit at the bar with a beer and a burger and then go back to my room to work/sleep/watch TV. I did mind it taking ages to get served with my glass of shandy (yes).

 

On this occasion the bar eventually emptied of function goers only to reveal the lonely individuals normally seen in the restaurant but this time sat on their own at tables in the sports bar.

 

It does get worse. The four screens in the sports bar all displayed the same round of some boring darts competition. Probably the world championships J.  I seem to recall that at the age of eighteen I was interested in darts. I’m 46 now and no longer interested in darts.

 

Back in the room I’m writing my board report. Can’t send it though. The Wifi signal although present is too weak. I have to go back to the bar to get a strong enough signal. It will have to wait until morning. I could do it through my Nokia E71 (more on that later) but the GSM signal is also pretty crappy.

 

There you go. It was a technology post after all – sent from reception in the hotel.