antoniosk: Hard and Fast

Support

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:14:00 PST

For some time now, I've been working through in my mind how the NZ market will change as a result of UFB. In this case, UFB being used as a proxy word for a high-quality, widely available and reliable carriage network for data service - Voice, Video, Internet, Connection - and not the grand project being sponsored by Government. The closest to this definition NZ has had is the TelstraClear cable network in Kapiti, Wellington and Christchurch (not exactly 'widely' available), and to a lesser degree the fibre network FX Networks have been aggressively pushing out until recently (mainly supplied to high value Business and Wholesale customers, with some residential connections).

I've been doing this, because top of my mind is how the service experience will change for all consumers. The old concept of a phone 'master socket' on which sat your telephone, and possibly a broadband connection in another room near the computer, becomes one where everyone will have at least ONE router-like device - complete with detached power brick of a sort - to which your phone and other widgets must connect. I recently wrote an article about this in November, when I had the opportunity to upgrade the electrical wiring in the house, and chose instead to go the wireless route. Much of the comment I got was how useless wireless is for streaming 1080p content, which I find funny as even as recently as 3 years ago it would not have been easy to get even 100mbps around the house before 802.11n came out. For the 100mbps trial I was on last year, equipment was required to go that fast across a wide range of devices.

All of this really got me thinking about the absolutely fundamental role CPE - Premises Equipment - plays in getting a good quality experience. CPE is a jargon term the telco industry uses for the kit you use at your place - either on loan (like T-Box, Sky Box, Cable Modems), sold or given to you (so many DSL modems) or independently purchased (Apple Extreme wifi routers). All have to connect and support what you want to do. It's here that your opinion is ultimately formed on how good or bad something is, and the level of support you get in resolution and stability.

The mobile world has been set alight by Samsung's decision to not release Android 4.0 for anything other than their most recent devices - the Galaxy S2 but not the original - for basic performance reasons. Galaxy S doesn't have the technical chops for the job - but I suspect it's more to do with the burden of future support. For those with long memories, when Apple released iOS4 for the older iPhone 3 and 3GS, the iPhone3 ran so slow it appeared to stop. It was a mistake to release for that device, but I guess folks didn't want to make a large part of the base feel unloved. Unfortunately the software was so rubbish, the base DID feel unloved.

Such is the march of technology - been here before with Windows, where each release requires a machine with 4x the power of what you have now just to look and feel ok. Except of course, for most people a PC isn't that personal, and very few people actually upgrade a PC with a new OS, preferring a new PC - something which is trickier with mobiles, which are usually tied to 2-year carrier contracts.

In a world where fibre comes from Chorus and has uniform performance - and will usually cost from $40/month before performance, CPI and other 'innovations' start increasing the monthly cost - how does a service provider differentiate themselves?

Internet pricing - well, more web things are going 'unmetered', and pricing continues to drop to the point where a monthly price approaches a flat monthly fee.
Voice pricing - how much lower can these get across fixed and mobile? people don't talk much these days - they use the Internet, and so many phones have onboard WIFI that they can auto-switch to your home wireless and not use the pricy 'mobile data' rates.

That leaves what you are going to use these cool new things for. The CPE you attach and your interaction with it and the fundamental importance not only of getting stuff out, but supporting it, debugging it and improving it.

It's what your mobile device will or already connects to via WIFI. It's what your PC, your PS3 or Xbox will connect to, it's where your computer and probably your TV will connect to. The CPE that is your 'gateway' to the world.

Orcon found this out with the 'Genius' - Geekzone has numerous threads of complaint from non-working services, to services working a different way, to disappointment at the kit not being man enough to do more. The noise appears to be going down but it's still happening. TelstraClear T-Box has taken a very long time to go from functional to mostly stable and even then there are random pockets where the experience isn't acceptable. I have no knowledge on Vodafone's 'EasyOffice' - although I expect for some it's been anything but Easy - and for many customers on UCLL in general, they probably aren't getting the best they could (See Mr Biddle's excellent article here). I still see people lodging basic comments on not knowing which type of modem to get for DSL, how to configure basic settings for wireless access as well as locking down the firewall - and it's 2012, 6 years after the NZ broadband market heated up.

CPE support - and how it works with the service providers - has to change, and it has to do so for the whole market. What this means is that support has to cover the ubergeeks - those who rip and replace software on devices with their own (a bit like car enthusiasts changing the engine of a car to get better performance - which means you're off the grid for support), to geeks (those who fiddle at the edges and go for minor enhancements here and there), to disinterested users (the bulk of the country), to completely uninterested users (for example, those still using the CDMA phone they purchased in 2003 and won't upgrade until the network is off.).

Support as the next big thing that will emerge very quickly when the first fibre connections are made, and people suddenly REALLY discover what UFB means.

And I think only Apple is even remotely in a position to be able to talk to the public at large with ready, friendly solutions.

Go Wireless! End Copper

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:20:00 PST

Well, I was faced with an interesting conundrum last week.

My internet is with TelstraClear, and it comes in downstairs. The network is attached to the house at the corner closest to the street pole. which means I have limited option for upstairs internet service, where the most demand comes from. Today it's served by WIFI, with varying results.

So I had the opportunity to put in high quality wiring from downstairs to upstairs, in that some renovations are going on and the floorboards are up. What better possible time, right?

Except for the quote, which came back at about $1.2k. Seriously. From 2 electricians. 2x 75m CAT6 runs.

I could endeavour to do it myself, but I genuinely don't have the time or the useful tools to achieve that without scrapped knuckles and banged head (time in roof space is required). which forced me to stop and reconsider.

Why do I need this?

$1200 would buy a very nice set of wireless equipment - if I knew what had the best punch/performance and so on. I don't, which means either taking brand risks (Apple's gotta be good, right?) or lots of time googling different kit. The reason I ask is because nearly every widget in the house - except tellingly, my PSTN line and TV services - have wifi built-in. Every 6 months is an improvement in chip performance and technology in market.

Why do I need premises wiring?

UFB is going to bring fibre and powered IAD into everyone's house. As part of my job, I've been thinking through the inhome experience UFB brings, and how to get quality internet out there for all to use. It boils down to 3 simple things:

1. Tidy and effective termination of fibre/iad. Hope Chorus and co spend some of the $1,4bn on on this item!

2. Quality testing and recommendation of high-performance wireless gear for in premises. Caveat Emptor need not be the case - any SP worth their salt should recommend quality over cheap.

3. Services for this modern environment - which means PSTN de-coupled from the line or jackpoint. Sometimes known as VOIP, but giving ME the option to control, not the SP determining a POTS port on an IAD is acceptable.

The technology fraternity 'kindof' gets this - but what's the point if this technology is the preserve of the interested? the elements above need to be ready for the mass market, who don't care about solution elegance but that it works - and technologists frequently forget that when they spout off about something being easy or old tech. If it were easy - your mum could tell you how to do it.

So roll on wireless - roll on the reduction of trailing wiring, of endless house work, in favour of the beauty of the ethereal.. wireless...

A better class of service

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 14:02:00 PDT

Well, the wild weather extremes over the last couple of months has certainly had me thinking.

For some time now, I've been working through in my mind how I expect to see NZ communications change over the next ten years, and what needs to be put into place by the service provider(s) to make that happen. While some of these points may seem amusing or absolute common sense to the lay observer, or geek, what needs to be recognised by the reader is that NOTHING is to be taken for granted, or that 'of course it will happen'.

Anyone who spends time writing business cases or convincing others around them of the importance of pursuing an action will be familiar with this. For example, to provide fibre for the purpose of faster networking seems common sense. After all, the technology is suited to it and has been proven in other countries. Of course the Government should provide it, after all its for the good of the country, right?

The sums involved are tiny in the great scheme of countries and time. Of course, for those who live in the here and now, that's money not available for anything else sensible or useful. Like upgrading basic power generation, transmission, distribution and storage.

Tonight, the power at home has been fluctuating wildly. My technology has been reset and spiked so many times I'm amazed nothing has shorted out. I am grateful the heating is still running - grateful that the bods at the electricity company are doing their best.

But what has become abundantly clear, once it has been taken away, is the absolute and unremitting reliance on Internet. Should the weather prevail tomorrow, I may not be at work - and neither will the people I work with. Meetings disrupted, critical information unavailable or severely restricted. Sure, my POTS line continues to work, but as I don't suffer an emergency every other day it's redundant unless I pair it with the Remote Office functions of my VOIP line - after all, people call me at my work number, not at home.

And before the mobile zealots jump in - where I live is utterly atrocious performance for Vodafone. I have lodged faults complaining of basic performance and coverage and been met with the immortal line of the disconnected, "coverage is the best we can make it, function of technology and topology, adverse terrain blah blah blah". Twaddle of course - had the techs ACTUALLY driven my route and surveyed it themselves, they would see that the network has lost it's tuning and is performing poorly. The devices I use are highly capable of running applications independent of the mobile network. 2degrees, vodafone, telecom - welcome to that world where you really are replaceable but for the specials you provide on DEVICES.

Even if it where running well - well, I don't want a microwave next to my head anymore. I have no need for it. I dislike using my DECT gear, but I prefer the low-power of that to the happiness that is a 3G mobile. Good for email and texting.

But where i work, it's the Internet. Always the Internet. The mobiles I use are internet connected - for email and applications. Using 3G is a painful, uninspiring chore. I'm pleased the widgets have gotten to the point of being so capable, and this is the first of my 2 points in this blog:

1. The device IS the experience
As we know the selection on the market is astronomic. Which one is the right one to use?

Tonight I had to get Skype going, for the very real actual purpose of communicating face to face. I gave up on my PC gear and used the Mac - and it worked first time, very well, even with a low-grade camera. My wife, many of my colleagues and acquaintance's - they do ask my view/opinion of gear, as 'someone' who will know and have a view - and they know I have a view.

But as my wife points out, there is no way she would talk to the boys in Dick Smith, Noel Leeming, Harvey Norman etc - the atmosphere is intimidating, the techniques for selling visible and shameful, the actual help in many cases just utter rubbish. It reminds of dodgy car salesmen at times.

Yet. in the UFB world, DEVICES are KING. In the UFB world, who cares really about who provides the POTS line or Internet? the fibre after all comes from one company. The weakest link in today's industry (Telecom Copper) will be the only game in town soon enough (TeleChorus Fibre). After that, the differentiator is internet and call plans, and the quality of customer service/service reliability. What's left, except the widgets with which you use your ufb?

Which then leads to the 2nd and last point.

2. POWER.
An interesting point I heard from a Chorus chappie after the Feb 22nd earthquake was their absolute drive to restore Mobile for basic comms only, and Internet primarily - because most people wanted to visit the Civil Defence website, and NOT disrupt the work the humans were doing. Internet was more important - and many people struggled with the lack of power, as we know, for a great many basic necessities, like heating and communication.

Fibre is connected to your property at a termination point, then connected to a device referred to as a NID (Network Interface Device), NTU (Network Terminating Unit), IAD (Integrated Access Device), ONT (Optical Network Terminator) or other such acronym. They all do roughly the same thing: turn the light signals on fibre into electrical signals for use by your equipment. This device needs power - not a lot, but it does need it. And it needs to come from you, unless somebody has managed to convert the light to useful energy... So there is link 1, needing a feed.

Link 2: Highly likely you will have some unit from your service provider, which will supply you options of WIFI, VOICE, IPTV or similar content, Internet. whatever innovation emerges. Another feed point needing power.

As these 2 units provide critical services, they should get support power - both to protect against outage and provide respectable runtime - 3-7 hours in my view.

And that's it.

DEVICES
POWER

Both replacing the PSTN as a the base network, with Internet as the base upon which which all else is built. And that is where everyone must strive to succeed - securing the internet end to end, so that it all. just works.

Org charts… Silicon Valley style

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:01:00 PDT

I would argue that this doesn't just equate to Silicon Valley. Who's willing to play "plug in NZ companies into the chart below"?

Innovation

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:03:00 PDT

Original weblink: PWC on Innovation

A friend of mine reposted this article on his LinkedIn profile, which is on Innovation, and is something I found quite interesting. I'm posting it here, because it holds very true for the ICT industry in New Zealand, especially now that the UFB project is about to get going (more on my views in a coming post).

The main points:

"Demystifying Innovation: take down the barriers to new growth," the drive for innovation must arise from the CEO and other executive leadership by creating a culture that is open to new ideas and systematic in its approach to their development. The innovation process generally has four phases:

Discovery: Identifying and sourcing ideas and problems that are the basis for future innovation. Sources may include employees as well as customers, suppliers, partners and other external organisations.
Incubation: Refining, developing and testing good ideas to see if they are technically feasible and make business sense.
Acceleration: Establishing pilot programs to test commercial feasibility.
Scale: Integrating the innovation into the company; commercialisation and mass marketing.

The study also identifies seven misconceptions about the innovation process:

Innovation can be delegated. Not so. The drive to innovate begins at the top. If the CEO doesn't protect and reward the process, it will fail.
Middle Management is the ally of innovation. Managers are not natural champions of innovation. They to reject new ideas in favor of efficiency.
Innovative people work for the money. Establishing a culture that embeds innovation in the organisation will attract and retain creative talent.
Innovation is a lucky accident. Successful innovation most often results from a disciplined process that sorts through many ideas.
The more open the innovation process, the less disciplined. Advances in collaborative tools, like social networking, are accelerating open innovation.
Businesses know how much innovation they need. Leaders must calculate their potential for inorganic growth to determine their need to innovate.
Innovation can't be measured. Leadership needs to identify its ROII--Return on Innovation Investment.

ICT is a capital intensive business; that means LOTS of cash spent by companies is classified a certain way and can be depreciated over future years, much like any other asset can be. If I spend $1m developing a new product, it means I can take a charge to the business accounts over the life of the product, rather than realise all costs up front. This might sound boring and a little dry, but it's a fundamental tenet of how investment works and the behaviour it drives in a company. Put another way, if you spend $1m buying a business, you expect returns over the life of the investment, like any other investment. The more the better.

The interesting conundrum though is the last point; Innovation can't be measured. At least, not with significant accuracy in advance of the investment. Any investment carries risk, which can only be reduced by understanding more about the nature of the investment as well as the people making the promise.

The significance of the last point is that Innovation involves Research & Development - words that drive cold sweat into investment folk. Simple statements like 'Online Ordering', 'It all just works', 'It shouldn't be this hard' - well, Simple is difficult to engineer and takes a lot of effort. Folks have marvelled at how easy the Apple iPhone is to use - but prior to this, the industry threw GOBS of Innovation money at the concept. Apple did it better - and I bet they went down a lot of dead ends and wasted efforts in the process.

That's a hard business case to write - 'The estimate is $4m, but about 15-30% of the project involves stuff we've never done before'.

UFB has been pitched as $1.35bn public money investment, matched by at least equal private sector investment. The industry has thrown out estimates of $3-6bn of their investment over that time. Personally I believe it will be even more than this - but that is not a bad thing.

Innovation doesn't occur just in technology - it can and should happen with distribution, delivery, user experience, billing and so on.

But each change requires commitment and reason, and an element of risk. Some changes don't deliver new revenue - but they improve how a service is used and what customers experience.

One of the best I have seen is with 2degress, on their Pay Monthly plans:

I can set a billing threshold for my account, so I don't get billshock. For example, $250. At 80%, or $200, I get a warning text. At $250 my account gets suspended until I unlock it. It's a simple set and forget procedure, avoids opportunity to blow my bill (a BIG problem with Pay Later services), and gives me huge confidence to use it.

Where the innovation is required: unlocking it. I have to go online, or make a call to the call centre.

Why can't I just send a text back to a service number to say 'thanks for saving me, please unlock my account now'?

The race to 100mb Internet (part 3): All Good Things....

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:39:00 PST

So, I've been notified that the 100mb trial that TelstraClear has running in Wellington is due to finish at the end of January 2011, and I have given some feedback around what I thought the service was good for:

1. iTunes
2. YouTube HD Video
3. The ever-present Microsoft and Apple patchs, regular and clockwork and flippin enormous every time
4. Virtual working (Citrix, VMWare and so on), due to the need for LOW latency.

I also found a useful extra which I thought were quite good:

Plays For Sure content. Over xmas, my kids got some DVD's they wanted to watch on dad's iPod. These DVD's came with the option to get a digital version that works across a number of widgets.

Each DVD has a unique 500-number key, but once entered correctly you get to DOWNLOAD a new file that gets deposited in your library (iTunes in my case). Each movie is high-qual, scales from iPod to 24" monitor without artifacting. and is 1.25GB in size.

In my previous article, I discussed 'Always On' - the concept whereby you can always get what you want, with blistering speed (http://www.geekzone.co.nz/antoniosk/7513). This was one of those times that speed mattered - and the movies just flew down. I have also downloaded a few hefty album CD's, which come replete with Video Singles - fantastic, beautifally encoded content that looks the biz. And boy does it burn the GB's.

I don't really care that this doesn't have 'GEEK' appeal; I am well capable of finding filched content like most people, but I choose not to, because the experience is just so poor - and to what end? I've got friends that try to get the latest movies which have been camcorded from the theatre and sent out on the torrents... oooo, now there's something I'd like to share, dodgy video with people coughing in the background. Fun.

It reminds me of watching the cricket at the basin by climbing the trees; sure, you got away without a ticket, but it was a pain in the bum (literally) and ultimately not that enjoyable.

100mb is not fibre. fibre is a technology that could be used to deliver high speed connections, of which internet is one possibility, but which also allows high-grade video, high quality voice, multiple call lines into a premises and so on. But fibre means new powered equipment in the premises, video-capable devices (do YOU see a camera on your TV?), new computers, and upgrades.

Yet on the whole, this is becoming more frequent. Mobiles turnover pretty fast, and they come with a huge range of built-in capability. My mobile is 4 years old (really), and if I ever get another I know it's replacement will be 10x better than what it can do now. It will be replaced when it finally dies, by necessity, like nearly all mobiles (and judging by performance, that's about 5 weeks away). My computer is also 4 years old - an eternity in technology lifecycle. The next generation of consoles - Playstation 4, Wii 2, Xbox 720, whatever - will all be wifi'd to an inch of their life, ready for high-speed internet in the home.

Yet we wring our hands over what a change in network technology will do. Therein lies the rub, and it's not the show-stopper people make it out to be. Sure, as a world we got used to having landlines that were powered from the exchange, meaning we could make a 111 call in a power outage. Many of these folks will also have DECT phones which need mains to run, and even more people in younger demographics go mobile only - battery powered. So what we actually got used to was ALWAYS ON; the comfort that came with knowing you could make an emergency call, should you need to. THAT is what needs to be worked on - not what can go wrong, but how we turn the change into opportunity, and just get on with it.

Thankfully, some companies are. Others are working towards getting on with it. But get on with it we should. Where there are services already, people should sell. The metro areas of the main cities I believe are pretty well served, even if many the telco's have a poor to abysmal public record of delivery. It is for those areas that don't have choice where there are lots of people that next energies should go: Greater Auckland and Waikato. Hawkes Bay certainly. Taranaki too. Manawatu seems to have some choice. Greater Canterbury certainly needs some now. Otago/Queenstown and Southland.

I read a great quote the other day:
Amateurs talk about making change. The achievers just get on and do it, day by day.

Roll on!

The Race to 100 Mbps (part 2): Always On

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 07:44:00 PST

In the late 90's the telco industry was going through another round of uber-investment to install GPRS networks for Mobile Data, ahead of forthcoming torrent of money that would be unleashed when 3G finally rolled round. An over-used term at the time was 'Always-On', which was meant to be a soundbite summarising why mobile data is important. Today we would never question the concept: a mobile without access to the internet? Oh yeah, it's only $1/mb etc, doesn't feel like my prepay goes down that fast.

Way back when, these concepts were analysed in depth, at length, and serious money was spent verifying whether always-on was relevant, and would the public at large comprehend the whole MB charging concept???

At the time, the only application that was 'Always-on' was your voice and text messaging service. The voice and text 'app' were embedded in the phone, were a core part of how it worked, and were not considered an 'app' at all, as it just came with the phone.

I bring this up in terms of context for the High Speed Internet service I am using, on TelstraClear's cable network, in Wellington. The speed is running at 100mbps download and 10mbps upload, maximum. See earlier comments here http://www.geekzone.co.nz/blogentry.asp?postid=7494

A while ago I was asked what 100mbps was good for. And just like those early days of GPRS, I thought about finding an application or use case expression... and failed dismally, because that's not the way to view the opportunity.

The pace in the western world is accelerating. Information is more readily available, in more forms, quicker than ever before. Perhaps it is hard to digest. Or perhaps we just to expand how we use our brains and learn to filter more effectively, or listen to others and get their view. But, it's not going to slow down. Information will not decrease. Live with it.

So to quote an overused expression, we have to 'suck it up'.

And in that respect: i don't want to wait, and I don't want to compromise what I do get. A 15mbps connection on TelstraClear cable is pretty good. You can download an average quality YouTube clip in semi reasonable time.

But what brought 100mbps home for me, was watching my daughters explore YouTube and download High Definition content as the default, not the fallback. I hate grainy movies and poor quality audio - I don't have time for it. Huge downloads are a pain when your link is slow, and irrelevant when it only takes seconds.

'Glee' gets a good amount of airtime here. If you can tolerate the stageshow nature of the programme - I enjoy musicals, so no problem for me - the different is amazing (720 vs 360) when you upscale and go fullscreen, especially to a large TV.

It also veritably FLIES down, starting to exercise the Youtube cache that TelstraClear put in a little while ago.

Hardly stuff that's going to add another $100bn or so to the NZ economy. Parking the hyperbole, faster speed does lead to new experiences, and that's what it's about at the end of the day.

With speeds like this becoming widely available, paired with a high-qaulity wireless router (like an Airport Extreme, which I think works brilliantly), the 'concept' of always-on for wireless widget (ipods, smartphones, ipads) as well as streaming content to a TV from the web - well it's all just there. You STOP having to make a cup of tea wanting for the content.

You just get on with it.

More coming after the xmas break... have a good holiday, wonderful surfing and enjoy the sun....

The race to 100 meg Internet (part 1)

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 13:48:00 PST

Disclosure: I work for TelstraClear, in product development and strategy.

In marketing & management vernacular this would be the familiar terms of 'early adopter', 'leading edge' and 'pioneer'. I particularly like 'pioneer' - it conjures the image of a hard man in a strange place, almost alone, and making things work because they have to. The number 8 fencing wire myth of how New Zealand was made in particular resonates with the image. Ringing in my mind to this day though, is a quote I heard while studying at University, about why IBM were never pioneers in a technology.

The quip that came back was that 'pioneers were the one's with arrows in their ar*e', and that IBM chose to follow in the early footsteps of pioneers so they could make things 'go large' to use another term familiar to New Zealanders about success.

I like to think I'm a man of firsts. If not in carving out raw wilderness - my house has a wild enough section to keep me occupied for some time - then certainly in the area of technology and communication services. That's Mobile, VOIP, Internet, TVoverIP and so on, in common terms. And if not a pioneer - I look for help as much as the next person - then certainly someone focused on moving from the old to the new, in a very large way.

So the Governments' first announcements for UFB were interesting; Northpower and WEL. I worked on an early TCL project to use Northpower's fibre network, the first services of which went to market in November 2008. These guys are definitely focused on more fibre, so was an easy first win for the crown. The next was watching the announcements on bandwidth and the art of the possible, for residential and business customers. and the more mundane first products CFH has announced (30/10, 100/50 and 1/1Gbps), all with a min bandwidth of 2.5CIR.

I recently joined the 100/10 mb/s trial service that TCL is running, for those with access to the HFC network. I changed from the Lightspeed40g 15/2 package, which most HFC customers got in the price change implemented on October 1. The data cap is set at 120gb, and so far I have used. 6GB. Some weeks prior I was asked what 100mb is actually good for; what does it enable that the current speeds don't; and what are people likely to ask for? Being able to say 'I have tried; I have researched; I have discovered; I can comment' based on the real-world, rather than the lab, is invaluable. To use a sporting metaphor, it's easy to read the theory on playing football, but at some point you need to get in the field and kick the ball.

So first things first: getting connected, which was easy. I replaced the old Motorola standup surfboard modem with the new Cisco DPC3010, which is a lay flat, and quite tiny by comparison (15x14x3cm). It comes with 1 GigE WAN port, USB2 data port and of course the F-Connector to connect to the cable network. The unit is in an 'entertainment' cabinet but has about 20cm of ventilation above it - and it needs it. The heat from the unit is noticeable, like most Cisco gear I've ever used.

This unit is connected to a modern 802.11n wireless router. The router/switch equipment is HUGELY important when it comes to high speed internet - not least of which, the wireless device you use. The configuration of WIFI+Internet can't be ignored - and the way WIFI works doesn't easily matchup with how wired Internet works.

The main issue is error correction and speed. 802.11g router's are sold as "up to 54mbps", which is technically accurate. But this is 54mbps for the wireless link, and most of that bandwidth is chewed up in error correction - so you'll get about 20mbps clear to your computer by the time you're done.

802.11n increases this threshold to about 150mbps in the air - but of course, both device and access point need to be compatible, and you need to be sure they aren't too far apart. The further apart devices are, the weaker the signal, the greater the error correction and reprocessing. we haven't moved that far away from the basic principles of radio: poor signal = poor quality. Running a speedtest here, I get consistent reports of 90mbps wired, and between 30-50mbps over WIFI 802.11n.

So far I haven't said a word about what 100mb would be good for. When I was asked my opinion way back when, here's what I said:

1. Big-draw items, like iTunes, Skype HD Video, Torrent websites and other streaming media like Youtube or IPTV like Ziln, although pipe speed is just one factor
2. Point to multipoint video
3. Any work involving large file transfers (Microsoft Patch Tuesday anyone??)
4. Hosted work involving Citrix, VMWare and other machines within machines. Not because of the bandwidth, but because of improved latency - a 100mb connection will almost certainly operate with very low latency, on high-grunt infrastructure.

and of course the old stalwart of the technology industry. 'applications we've yet to imagine but for which 100mb will be great'. or 'build it and the apps will come'.

So what have I found?

1/ My iTunes does download content faster. Purchased music just sounds better to me - the audio levels are balanced, the albums are complete, and the format works brilliantly for my iPod. Of course, my 4-year old PC still takes an age to churn through what I've downloaded and present it to me - my 100mb internet hasn't made my computer any faster!

2/ Citrix and VMWare run a lot more snappily for me.

3/ The web runs as fast as it ever did, although Microsoft and Apple patchfiles do get delivered faster.

I'm keen to better see where this capability leads. A burst speed of 100mb in isolation is interesting but a little early - the Interweb's services are not scaled or dimensioned for a general population wanting to communicate at 100mb (more like 1mb). Sustained speed and latency would be intriguing - watching Apple movie trailers at 1080p was actually possible tonight (these files are around 200mb in size and take an age to download even on good quality low-speed).

When the plumbing layer gets to the point where the speed is not an issue. great, not before time. Moving to the next step - turning over solid, reliable and consistent services - now that will be a good move.

Comments welcome. I don't know where this technology will take us - but I'm interested to hear what others have to say.

Telecom sells Consumer part of AAPT

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:21:00 PDT

Telecom has announced the sale of part of Australian unit AAPT to rival iiNet for A$60 million ($75 million), confirming speculation it was unable to conclude its preferred deal to sell the whole company.
As well as selling AAPT's consumer division, Telecom said it had sold AAPT's 18.2 per cent stake in iiNet to institutional investors for A$70 million, A$11 million less than its carrying value as at June 30.
Combined with the proceeds from its sale of 10.1 per cent of Macquarie Telecom announced yesterday, the deals will realise about A$140 million.
Telecom had reportedly been seeking more than $400 million for AAPT as a going concern.
It will now concentrate on running AAPT's fibre network and the wholesale and business divisions, it said.
The sale of the consumer unit will reduce 2011 forecast earnings for AAPT by A$10 million, Telecom said.
AAPT was expecting earnings of A$101.3 million for the year to June.
Telecom CEO, Paul Reynolds, said: "Together these transactions rationalise non-core assets, strengthen Telecom's financial position, and help reposition AAPT's operations into a focused, network-centric wholesale and corporate business that is well-positioned for future growth."
A Telecom spokesman said the company was now ''taking stock''.
''We're happy with the transactions we've made,'' he said.
''That's not to say if a good offer [for the rest of the business] was put in front of us we wouldn't look at it seriously. But having done these transactions, which we're pleased with, we'll take stock.''
The buyer of AAPT's consumer business, listed Australian telco iiNet, said it expected the acquisition to boost earnings by A$20 million in the first full year.
AAPT's 113,000 broadband subscribers and 251,000 other connections would bring its broadband customers to 652,000 and total active services to 1.3 million, it said.
iiNet will continue to buy wholesale services from AAPT.
The transaction requires approval of iiNet shareholders and an extraordinary general meeting is expected to be held in September.

The click of death. Or not. A use for UFB?

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:29:00 PDT

Well, it happened. Not overnight... and without warning.

My 500GB main disk died. No click of death. No warning from SMART. Nothing.

The disk had been running a little poorly for the last few months - an unfortunate fight between ACPI and APM meant it's XP partition was never the same again.

But this morning - nothing. Not even a parting goodbye.

The darn thing won't register. I doubt it's even spinning up.

Now, it wasn't completely unexpected.... I have a new 1TB drive with Vista Ultimate on it (and please don't start on why not Win7... I did not have $400 spare) that I was progressively moving to, at a speed the wife would accept.

So now we're on Vista, I have a dead HD I'm wondering to do with, and a lot of stuff to migrate very quickly.

But it got me thinking about the cloud, for the first time in a long time (especially given it's my job to have my head in the clouds).

I've lost no email. My precious media of the children is on a seperate HD (which is about to be backed up AGAIN!). But I would love to be able to have a safe store for what is important to me and my family.

With my TelstraClear Cable Internet, I can restore my email and any PC pretty easily - although getting Vista and the apps patched up again came to about 3GB in a day - but for real content? forget it. WHo can offer me 1TB of storage? and what Internet service can I use to upload that amount of info?

A home server might be the answer... but that also has a hard disk that will eventually die. On the story goes.

I've been struggling to think about what use a fast fibre network could be. This is one of the uses.

But then economic reality steps in... my wife says she'd pay $30/month to back our data. That's real world consumer expectation, and she doesn't care what's involved in making it happen.

SO who will be first with a 100Mbps Internet service and unmetered 1TB in the sky. $30 a month up for grabs.....

BP Spills Coffee

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 13:53:00 PDT

Ex Stuff website, but STILL very funny

And streams _very_ well at HD on my cable connection at home...

Telstra and NBN Co sign a Heads of Agreement - a portent of what's to come for NZ?

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:24:00 PDT

Telstra has come to terms with NBN Co in a deal valued at $11 billion which will see the carrier decommission both copper and HFC telephone & broadband services.
Under the heads of agreement announced this afternoon, Telstra would provide access to Telstra facilities and progressively migrate Telstra traffic onto the National Broadband Network, subject to regulatory approval. The agreement for these terms will have an approximate value of $9 billion.
Separately, the Federal Government has agreed to progress “public policy reforms” with an attributed value of approximately $2 billion. These basically involve changes to Telstra’s current universal service obligations with the establishment of a new Commonwealth entity – USO Co – which will deliver unprofitable services. USO Co will receive a maximimum of $100m in annual taxpayer contributions with the rest to be funded by presumably increased industry contributions. It will take over Telstra’s USO obligations from 2011.
Telstra also said it has received a written agreement from the government that it will be able to participate in LTE spectrum auctions under the deal.
“This is a sound outcome for NBN Co because when finalised it can maximise the use of existing infrastructure and accelerate the roll out of its network,” NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley said in a press release.
NBN Co added that Telstra would likely become its largest customer. NBN Co will pay Telstra for migration of traffic on to the NBN and the decommissioning of its network.
The Heads of Agreement also provides for NBN Co’s use of Telstra’s “existing fit-for-use infrastructure, such as ducts, pits and conduit and a right to acquire Telstra backhaul services and space in Telstra exchanges. While there is a considerable amount of negotiation and contractual work to go, we believe this agreement is a significant step forward to creating a more competitive telecommunications industry,” Quigley said.
Telstra expects to be able to place the deal to a shareholder vote in the first half of next year. The deal is subject to both that vote and ACCC approval.

-------------------

Wow.

AK

There is NO silver bullet

Tue, 18 May 2010 15:28:00 PDT

About this time 9 years ago, I was sitting in a management meeting with my Director of Marketing, and we were reviewing the latest iteration of a truly dismal situation. The telco bubble had burst, 3G was a bust, and a huge internal project to install GPRS and MASSIVE ISP infrastructure had just gone through it's 3rd rescoping. From the hubris of a fully connected world where everything ran off a PDA - a state the world only managed to get to in 2009 with the iPhone 3GS - came the realisation that the only proposition available was. basic colour WAP over GPRS, using the classic Ericsson T65 handset.

Out of sheer frustration, my director uttered the immortal words in his best James Bond "Gentlemen. I want a killer app in 2 weeks". a meeting that still amuses me to this day, although it was anything but funny at the time (the project bill by this point was bordering on ?55m). Since that time I have many more 'amusing' meetings, where out of sheer frustration at the world of complexity, decisions have been made to pursue a technology or a specific way of selling come hell or high water, hoping this eventual silver bullet will prove to be what unleashes torrents of success and money.

A little bit like throwing $48bn at a fibre network (Australia) or $10bn (NZ - you didn't think the country would be rewired for less than that, did you?). This is the silver bullet to unlock all our problems. Especially if you actively destroy the existing technology and force everyone to start again.

Or maybe deregulating the Building Act, to make it faster cheaper and easier to build new houses. now there's a silver bullet to get the economy going. Too bad that people don't get the difference between treated and untreated timber, or what living in NZ's wet climate really is like (we have been here for a great many years. not that much has changed!)

The expression, 'No Silver Bullet', comes from a book written by software engineer Fred Brooks in the 80's. He wrote
".there is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude [tenfold] improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity." While Brooks insists that there is no one silver bullet, he believes that a series of innovations attacking essential complexity could lead to significant (perhaps greater than tenfold in a ten-year period) improvements.

Over the christmas break - while having a ball with my Telecom XT connection - I read a book called 'How the Mighty Fall' by Jim Collins. His main premise was that successful companies get arrogant, start to decline but fail to recognise until the decline is too late, then throw resource and money at the problem until it's fixed. which almost never happens, and they carry on as 'zombie' companies until closed down or sold off. Basically you'd have to be spectacularly bad to fail outright. it's more a case of gradual decline. Probably true for a large corporate trading on old successes.. I think smaller companies don't have this sort of luxury!

So how many companies s do you see out there lurching from strategy to strategy, product launch to product launch, always consuming more and doing more but never quite seeming to succeed?

Success is'nt about just striking the right mix - although that's important to. It's about endeavouring to understand your market, trying, adjusting, reflecting, going back and refining and keeping at it. It's about consistency mixed with execution. It's about staying the course and holding your nerve, and not backing away when it starts to look hard. And it's about trusting the people around and beneath you, while also supporting - and verifying - that things are on the right course. It's also about communicating widely and taking feedback from all places - not just those you work with day by day, but everyone. If the cleaner can tell you what you're about - you know a lot of effort has gone into living and breathing what you're doing.

It may not be widely known, but Apple launched the iPod in 2001, as a followup to the nascent MP3 market started by the Diamond RIO (I had one of those. good gadget). But they applied continuous effort to innovation, change, and were lucky enough to have some powerful management able to leverage content. In 2003 iTunes went Windows. In 2004 the 15GB iPod's came out, and then things really started getting interesting.

Imagine sitting in that meeting at Apple in 1999, with a Director proclaiming "Gentlemen. I want a killer app in 2 week", and proposing what iPod has become. Brass ones for sure.

Bring on the Broadband.

Holiday mode Redux

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 06:40:00 PDT

Over the the christmas break in 2009/10, I took the opportunity to buy a Telecom Prepay Mobile Data stick, running on the new XT network, and used it while away on holiday at the beach. Modern lifestyle means it can be very hard to be away from what you get used to: instant access to information, banking, email. and even sometimes just filling in quiet time when it's just too hot to go outside (and to avoid the other great holiday mode behaviour. eating!)

I also compared coverage with the Vodafone 3G network, which has the benefit (or curse) of being able to fallback to GSM/GPRS mode. In that review, I found the Vodafone network wanting.

This Easter break, we took the opportunity to have another beach break, this time in the Coromandel (near Hot Water Beach), and I have availed of modern technology during the high noon heat. The township I'm in is small but well formed, some of the houses look to be worth staggering amounts (especially those with walks down to the beachfront), and it has been genuinely gratifying to see people out camping and benefitting from the facilities.

The campsite we're at suffers power failure like clockwork between 7 and 9pm, when the draw is high. Water pressure falls to a trickle around 4pm. The general store reminds me of NZ in the late 70's (pile stock high, sell straight from the box), and some of the buildings reflect the building glory of that era (shades of brown everywhere).

But the township also has wide area WIFI Coverage (really) at $8/hr at not so bad speeds, spread across a area around 1 square kilometre, run by a group of shops on behalf of the community and visitors to the area. Vodafone's coverage and speed is good, but my gadgets fallback to 2G far too much for me.

Telecom's XT coverage is brilliant, with HSDPA readily available. Not bad for a coastal town with few residents.

This got me thinking about the pace of change in this country, and how telco is evolving as a whole. In my first role at Telecom (1996), the manager at the time told me how 'every year since 1987' had been the year of Mobile Data, the next big coming thing for the industry (1987 being the year Telecom rolled out the AMPS network - target forecast 50k subs by 1995). It really took the launch and settling of GPRS - 2003 - and widespread launch of 3G -2005 - along with the iPhone - 2007 - before anyone could really say that Mobile Data was here to stay.

But it is, and Telstra's model for Next G - go far, go fast, go deep - shows exactly what you can do if you build a high-quality mobile network. Too bad it's data pricing can't compare with a $35/month DSL connection. Mobility still enjoys a premium - for now - but the relentless downward pressure from government, consumers, competitors and so on, means this business is changing just as the huge pressure in fixed calling dropped prices to 'irrelevant' status (compared to mobile).

So Telecom suffered unforgiveable failures with XT, and is now running ads in the papers of photogenic staff who lived through that period (although Chris Q really looks just over it). So Mr Hamburger has stopped the Florida commute, and maybe a local will be appointed to take ownership of the line. The network is there, it's running. and it's still performing well.

That mobile network failures can take this much media attention shows exactly how important Telecom - STILL - is to this country. The difference: they are getting over the introduction and settling of new technology (just wait till the IP Voice services start rolling out), and just getting into the game for the next 10 years.

Where's everyone else?

Shameless plug

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:33:00 PDT

http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/telcos-not-ruling-price-rises-3420251/video

Spot muggins under the Poster... notice his coffee on the desk next to him.... and how bald he thinks he looks....

Confidence

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:07:00 PST

Well, what a february it was, as a start to the new decade.

Telecom suffered the most ignominious of sustained failure, with their shiny new WCDMA 850Mhz network having fallen over several times, with the blame eventually falling on AlcaCent (the supplier) and a sacrificial head from Telecom (Frank Mount, whose contract ended in June 2010 anyway). Add to the woe problems with the sacrosanct 111 emergency call system, and the Telecom must feel like someone has a voodoo doll of Spot furnished away, full of broken fibres (in the stitching). Add the new comments from the former boss Ms G about how things were'nt like this when she was there, and you can't help but feel that someone probably doesn't like you!

But never fear, as Vodafone NZ and 2degrees have invoked the fates and called on the combined forces of Murphy and Sod, taking switching campaigns to market on the back of these failures, inviting customers to join a reliable network. so now it's just a waiting game for their network to fail (as indeed it already has, but not to the same scale).

I'm interested in what is happening inside Telecom, to it's sales staff, support staff, field staff and everyone involved in service delivery. Because it is from these folks that customer's present and future take their lead on purchasing decisions. and there is nothing that has more inertia or destructive force that delivery entity that refuses to supply. A loss of confidence is hideously difficult to turn around - collective memory being a self-healing, reinforcing wall of despair (at least where salesfolk are concerned). After all, who wants to sell something they perceive to be a lemon, and have to deal with the fallout?

It has been my jolly good luck to have taken career roles where a turnaround has been required, coming from high expectations to failure to having to rebuild. and it never quite is the same again. The hubris is gone, replaced by an air of 'whatever', and a market that actively questions what is being said, even if all the elements are fixed. My article on using Telecom Mobile over the Christmas period has been challenged, but I stick with my assertion that Telecom has the better network. especially now that the failures will force people inside the company to sit up and take notice.

Microsoft required Windows 7 to get over the failure of Windows Vista, even though the service packed product is quite usable (I have Vista on one of my machines and it works very well). But markets have long memories, and product quality is so good these days, that customer replacement cycles have extended and people are more selective.

Service providers (like Telco's) can be frustrating to work in at times - you know good stuff is coming but you can't really say anything, because inevitably Sod's Law kicks in and you miss the dates you said. Equally people don't want to hear 'coming soon, we are working on it really really really'. they want solid dates, and they expect them met. Fair enough - but technology is such a complex beast that dates given are almost always under threat, and compromises/workarounds have to be made to get to the dates - or if the above can't be done. you slip. As companies get larger and have more systems, the complexity becomes exponential. so things take longer.

Speaking to some folk I know (none of which are involved with XT), we surmised that somewhere in the deployment of XT a compromise was made. A workaround was introduced to meet a date - "of course we can reuse xxx component, it's a few years old now but it still works" - which is pure poison with technology. Vendors can only backup, within reason, their own kit (and even then they struggle against all permutations), but telco's rarely rip and replace an entire system.

So 'integration' is required - words that are enough to send a shudder down your spine if you've ever had to do it. Integration is a level of joy reserved only for the brave.

But when integration goes right then wrong, products don't work well. When products don't work well, the humans cannot explain, respond or repair fast enough. When response is slow, confidence is lost.

Confidence lost is not a good place to be, personally, professionally or collectively. The YouTube clip of the Downfall/XT mashup is below, which I found quite funny. But the original is very sobering (when reality has struck home, when you have to take responsibility. and the first response is so very human, and so very appalling).

What conversations are being had inside the great Service Providers everyday? at what point are the accusations made of 'lies, betrayal, hiding things etc'?

I wonder how confident the Telecom folk are feeling today?

Reboot

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:52:00 PST

New Zealand Telecommunications has gone through one of the most significant periods of intervention, change and investment - and now the industry is about to enter the most dramatic period: identity.

2degrees Mobile and Telecom XT launched in 2009. Vodafone, Orcon and towards the end of the year, TelstraClear, launched offers using unbundled copper lines (telecom copper connected to other providers infrastructure). Telecom Wholesale created and launched a huge range of IP-only access products, allowing a service provider to offer Internet, Internet+IPVoice, or Private Network products, with a range of service speeds and characteristics.

The Commerce Commission waded in on commercial wholesale rates for voice calling for fixed and mobile networks, and of course the government pushed the Crown Fibre Company concept. The field service industry was shaken by Visionstream in Northland, and the march of Downer EDI as the technicians of choice. Chorus began the hard work of turning variable grade copper and successive investment decisions of the last 30 years into a semi-viable business model. and the last vestiges of the NZ Post Office were tackled (there are still chalk and blackboards in use out there, in the depots.).

TelstraClear flipped back to Vodafone for mobile, Black and White, Digital Island, Compass and Callplus all took Mobile (Wholesale) offers to market, most settling around the 25c/minute mark for mobile (good rate that.). FX Networks continued to cobble together a fibre network of own-grown and in-sourced, the utility companies tried to become telco's (Northpower, Vector.).

So lots of technology investment, lots of change, lots and lots and lots of money being spent. Or at least, planned to be spent.

NZ was about 4.2m people five years ago. I think we're about 4.3m now. The NZ telco industry is forecast to shrink from $5.6bn to $5.2bn by 2012. and the collective investment of the last few years has been about $4bn as I recall.

Commercial models based on the old world of TDM - POTS for Voice, with DSL grafted on top, moving up to Centrex or Trunk lines - is disappearing as the technologies become just another service, sitting on top of an IP-enabled access circuit. Mobile phones' continue to be the access device of choice (note I said MOBILE - not the mobile service providers).

The notion of paying $xxx for a phone line, $yyy for mobile, $zzz for Internet, and a raft of rates and charging models (1 minute billing, per minute billing, mobile mb being expensive but fixed being cheap). is all challenged, thrown in the air, and being thought about by many people. Some have no experience in economics, the reality of making targets, the challenge of recovering expensive installation costs. Some like to push numbers as a soundbite. Others overthink the market or allow inertia to act as a cushion to aggressive or poor sales practises.

Identity is the next big change to happen, as a way of standing out or just surviving this brutal market. Superior technology was an excellent way of creating identity, until the competition caught up. Telecom has caught up, and at a national level - so the technology line is reset (good time to buy shares btw - their performance can only improve from here). What do the others stand for? are their services even relevant now? Being $5 or $10 cheaper than the next one in line is hardly a compelling reason to change providers. And would you really trust your critical business apps to a company that comes in thousands of dollars cheaper? that gap in revenue is being achieved by some means, and not all of it is new technology - a lot has to do with tiny investment in backup systems and resilience.

The major movie franchises spent most of this decade being successfully recast - REBOOTED - along the lines of reality, grit, plausibility, and connection with the audience. Daniel Craig's James Bond is brilliant. Batman is enjoyable. Sherlock Holmes was enjoyable and grounded in the real when dressed in fantasy. So it goes.

2010 marks the start of the reinvention of NZ Telecommunications. The models of the old are challenged and under severe strain. The game has been lifted for all players. There is less money to be made but more people chasing it.

Companies will fold. Products will fail. Teams will be reorganised. Strategies will be challenged. Pressure will cause innovation. Careers will be made. Companies will succeed.

I look forward to being part of it!

BTW: This is the first article I wrote using Windows Live Writer and posting via the Metaweblog API Mauricio made available quote some time ago... worked very well...

At the beach

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:22:00 PST

This is a light article looking at Mobile Internet options for the holidaying, professional. You might think it sad that one would want to remain connected rather than swap to holiday mode – but take a minute and consider the world of today, in NZ at least.
The last decade has seen an embrace of ‘The Internet’ for providing services, information, tools and entertainment. There is so much that is now online, that only when you don’t have access do you realise how different the world is. Add some real spice and introduce two children under 10, and the weather we’ve had in the xmas/new year of 2009/10.
When was the last time you banked a cheque or used telephone banking? Or called a movie theatre to find out listings? Try going ‘internet-free’, then go on holiday… and try to manage your life. Technology may be considered a scourge of modern life. I see it as a way of making life better, easier and that much more manageable.
Babies learn to get attention by crying at a certain pitch, designed to induce response in tired parents. Pre-tweens learn two more dreaded words designed to tweak that nerve - “I’m Bored”.
I called a local movie theatre to get movie listings for the kids, which had a recorded announcement of all the movies on. The audio level was terrible – I struggled to hear anything – and there was no answer when trying to get a human. Movies were read in random order and with too much detail (rating, movie length and observations on movie) –too slow and too irrelevant for me. A quick trip to their website – sorted in 5 minutes flat (and $40 later for the tickets!). The online world, especially once it is familiar, is tough to leave.
Continuous Improvement: Product Launch’s & Compromise I’ve worked for several industries, mostly in telco and mobile. I have launched many products, and been through the subsequent after launch hangovers (when reality sets in). So I thought I would apply what I know to one of the biggest launches in 2009: the Telecom XT Mobile network.
A product launch is a series of compromises between commercial dates, technical realities, your own expectations and those of the sponsor(s). At some point, you need to go to market with whatever open bugs, missing tools, missing material are, for one simple reason: launch creates focus. It also puts the spotlight on, which means every move, success, failure, complaint or problem has huge visibility and is pored over.
No product is perfect at launch, no company is ever ready to deal with every type of usecase that gets presented – nor should they have to be. Being ready to solve all of yesterday’s problems is insanity – but you need to be ready to deal with ‘in-life’ as it crops up, and a company needs to make resources available while they work on ‘the next big thing’.
This state is sometimes referred to as ‘crossing the chasm’, between the hubris of launch and the dullness of reality. Not dealing with the chasm, or pretending it hasn’t really happened, is just crazy. A product launch is just the start – rapid response to in-life is more critical to success.
Telecom NZ has never run with GSM in NZ, although it has come close to swapping from CDMA. It took several years and a management change to sign off building a new network - WCDMA 850Mhz (same as Telstra for Australia). It’s just one technology - no legacy GSM network here – and everything is brand new, with little legacy baggage to contend with. The only real challenge is migrating the CDMA customer base to WCDMA, without having to give away 1.5m new devices.
This approach means you lose a mature, stable and reliable platform. Tools and technologies developed for the old have to be rebuilt, product enhancements and pricing plans need to be re-justified to the latest round of management, business rules need to be re-qualified… the list is endless. The recent failure of the XT network is a classic example – everything is new, which means the technology is still being stabilised.
The same conversation is happening for the PSTN network – moving to an IP Voice service forces the same discussions to be had. New technology often doesn’t have the same richness as the old - or the costs - and comes with its own foibles. Changing core technology is easy to justify in a presentation, and a lot of work to live through in practise – having been through it several times at every company I’ve worked for.
Knowing this I avoided buying an XT service for many months, waiting for the network to stabilise, for the sales channels to be trained and educated, for new propositions to be developed and refined, and for XT ‘mark 2’ to come out. Having a need for a Mobile Internet service, I took to seeing what the market offered and went from there.
The purchase Around the XT launch in May 2009, Vodafone launched a ‘$1 for 10mb a day’ offer, for any type of Mobile Internet use, with subsequent use costing $1/mb. The 10mb is reset daily, and is quite a good offer for very light use with a Smartphone, but not so hot for a datacard.
Vodafone do have options for prebuying 100mb or 512mb, but these require the user to be on ‘Supa Prepay’ and to purchase an add-on that recurs every month. Not so good if you only need it for a few weeks (I would have preferred to purchase a once-off block as I need). I have a Supa Prepay sim, as well as a Vodafone HSDPA datacard.
Before Xmas, Telecom launched a Prepay Mobile broadband offer. For $99 (or free to existing Telecom Xtra Broadband customers) you get the MF626 USB Modem (with USB extension cable), Prepay SIM Pack with $20 usage and 512mb bundled data. Subsequent data is either $29.95 for another 512mb, or partial usage that goes something like – “climbing usage of 10c/MB to 300mb, then 212mb uncharged usage thereafter”. Telecom gets to realise the revenue faster this way, rather than spread the $29.95 over 512mb (Money stored in a prepay account can’t be classed as revenue until it’s used for a service; while in the ‘idle’ state, it’s a liability on the companies balance sheet).
The purchase experience was one of the best I’ve experienced; I went into the Leading Edge store in Palmerston North on the 28th of December, and the entire process took 7 minutes. The girl at the counter was well-briefed and answered all of the tricky stuff I threw at here around compatibility, coverage and usage. She volunteered I shouldn’t activate the SIM Card until the 1st of January (else my 512mb free usage would be lost on the 1st of the month – this is a quirk of the Telecom billing system, but a nasty one nonetheless). Kudos to the Telecom retail folk – the training and execution was superb.
The environment I am staying near the beach, and depending on where I am in the house, I get between 0-2 bars for Vodafone, and 0-1 bars for Telecom - when near the window. Despite locking the Vodafone Mobile Connect software to 3G only, the Vodafone card still spends a great deal of time swapping between the UMTS and GPRS networks – which means lengthy delays as the card cycles between technologies. This is disappointing and should not really be happening in 2009. Both Vodafone and O2 developed their mobile datacard software simultaneously in the UK around 2004 (I know this because I led the O2 side for their 3G launch), and both use the same software vendor. Five years of product enhancement and development should mean the software is pretty robust.
To be fair, getting the Telecom software to install on my XP machine was an exercise. One only needs to insert the modem in a free USB slot, and your PC will auto-launch the installer – in theory. My machine recognised the Modem as a USB stick only and would not give me access to the embedded software – some obscure setting somewhere prevented autorun from working. I have Windows 7 on the same machine and was able to correctly install using that OS, as well as retrieve the software and copy to the local harddisk, to manually install with Windows XP.
I wasn’t interested in calling the helpdesk for support – I’m not doing a critical review of Telecom – and am lucky that I am able to self-support. No doubt driver install wobbled somewhere in the process – drivers being the biggest bugbear of Windows – and am pleased that the driver experience is better with Windows 7.
In Use What a difference new technology makes! Overall service speeds on Vodafone Mobile Internet, where I am, quite frankly suck. The card I have is not faulty, and I would not expect many other data users where I am so cell loading should be very light. My comments are subjective – I am experiencing the service as any user should – and to me, the Vodafone was just poor. When locked onto 3G for long enough, actual speeds for Internet, was disappointing.
Telecom (which has lower signal strength according to the Connection Manager) rocketed by comparison, with average performance of a vintage 512k broadband connection – which was more than enough to let me achieve what I wanted (banking and a little web use).
What I had forgotten was how greedy Windows is with an Internet connection. The moment a tunnel was available, all manner of updaters sprang into life (Windows Update, Windows Defender Update, AntiVirus Update, Apple Update, Spybot update and so on). I switched off as much as I could find, and even then there was usage going on (some malware perhaps?). On Vodafone, 10mb gets chomped through pretty quick, although they are good enough to notify you via text when you are 2mb away from your data cap. The Vodafone portal has excellent self-management tools – another example of services moving to the web – while I struggled with the Telecom website, and don’t wish to waste my precious bucket o’ data trying to figure it out.
Using Google Chrome, the surfing was fast and I achieved what I wanted – managing money, movie tickets for bored children, and keeping up with the rest of the world, as I have always done.
Conclusion I wrote this article to explore the concept of being truly mobile anywhere, with a useful piece of kit (a laptop). I also wanted to comment on product launch’s and product evolution, using a real-world example… and I think the Telecom experience is better than Vodafone. The self-service website needs a lot of work, but for what matters – actual customer experience – Telecom Mobile broadband is great.
Mobile is not yet at the point where it’s a true fixed substitute – the technology quality and pricing take care of that. But it’s good enough for the occasional user – and I do mean occasional – that prepay mobile internet is ok to use and fairly predictable (no bill shock either – if you run out of money, everything just stops).
Good on you Telecom for an acceptable service. Roll on the full XT Mark 2 – and then Mark 3!

Note: for clarity, I work for TelstraClear.

Doing your head in - numbers

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 09:31:00 PDT

Over the last few years, I've had an intense crash course in fixed-line telco and IT technologies, as well as the new world services of VOIP, against a background of projects driving change to enable all of this stuff and transition from one service to the other.

One thing that has done - and still does - my head in, is the discrepancy between speeds and the different technology types. It's easy enough to say 'it don't matter', except when it does, and I find it matters an awful lot, quite often.

What do I mean?

I mean those awful speeds. 24mbps Internet! 7.2mbps HSDPA! 1gbps Fibre, fwoar!

And yet, there is real nuance that affects what you get as a user.

For Internet, since that's the topic of NZ time and again...

The speed that matters I believe, is the IP speed you get for your applications. I use TelstraClear's cable service at home, and I can regularly download a file from a high-capacity server (eg microsoft.com) at 1.02MB/s - that megabytes per second, which measure the size of a file. To get that speed, I have the 10mbps - megabits per seconds, which measure the absolute speed of transfer at that second. As a rough rule of thumb, 10240mb /10 = 1024MB. Take 10 as being how many bits are required to represent a piece of information, with some overhead.

I know that I will be able to get those speeds, assuming all technology is lined up and functioning correctly (I am not getting into a debate over configuration and what TelstraClear does or doesn't do).

But now it get's interesting.

ADSL/ADSL2+ technologies use an older method of transfer called ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode)... this doesn't readily map with 100% efficiency into the IP world, and you get something called the ATM-Tax affecting speed. If your ADSL2+ connection can connect at 24mbps/1mbps to the local DSLAM... then the 'tax' will consume between 10-15% of that bandwidth in overhead and syncronisation... or about 2.5mbps... and on it goes. Except of course most people don't get those speeds, and they get something closer to 10mbps, which reflects that it's not a fair comparison between HFC and DSL. With DSL, especially on the Telecom network, sometimes you're up and many time you're not.

802.11a/b/g/n/q/s/x and every other letter also has wonderful overheads. At Radio layer the access point may be able to talk to the wireless network card at speeds from 11mbps to 300mbps... but once you take error correction, delay, latency, and generally poorly implemented software... you're lucky to get IP throughput closer to 5mbps on 802.11b, 20mbps on .11g, and who knows what on the .11n spec. Translation: what you PC gets is not what's on the box. But if you're trying to stream a High-definition video from a media PC to your TV on a wireless connection, you need about 9mbps bandwidth for the IP layer - if you're only getting twice that on average, wow!

Now for something else: Ethernet, which is a way of networking computers together, but also has overhead and loss. A 100mb Ethernet port will not give you 100mb IP - far from it. There will be loss to inefficiency, error correction's, retries and so on. If you purchase a service that is 100mb IP... then the Ethernet access had better be larger than 100mb so you can get the full bandwidth.

Head hurting yet????

Does 1GB fibre connection mean I'm getting 1GB IP bandwidth to my computer? of course not... and most PC's would struggle to process such a torrent of information. 1gb more likely will give about 500mbps, which translates to about 50MB... still huge, but quite different to what's on the box!

I won't go into HSDPA or that lot - that's a whole new level of panadol time...

Now, I'm not a techie, and i'm sure many services could be made to run more efficiently. But I think if you buy a service with a speed promise, then it should be at IP level - which is what your applications will use.

Off to get the panadol....

Responsibility

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:15:00 PDT

Such a powerful word, and yet, Wiktionary has no direct definition. It means to accept that your actions, words and non-actions have an impact somewhere in the world. Many times it's innocuous; my non-action around the rain is irrelevant; my non-action around the rain when the washing is out means the clothes won't be dry,

But everyday, I come across so much lack of responsibility, I wonder if it's endemic in NZ culture.

Working in the UK, I worked with many managers who spoke in platitudes and struggled to make decisions that could be traced back to them (I took them all the time, but eventually started getting into the habit of the locals, as you do). But even so, there was a drive towards succeeding and 'winning', and decisions were made and people did take responsibility.

In recent years while working in NZ, I have found to some people avoidance is an art form; or perhaps it reflects that in a true organisation individuals have very little direct control and rely on others to be responsible before they can to. Perhaps it's just endemic to the industry I work in.

Responsibility means being concious of choices (even when intoxicated, which is no excuse), and acceptance that you chose. Personal growth is accepting the choice, living with it (sucking it up as it were), and not let it hold you back or selfishly affect those around you.

What a delicious, delicate piece of nonsense. It's very easy to say 'take responsibility', and achingly difficult to do it. How many times can one clean up after others? How many times can one work on a project and knowingly ignore a weakness, or state "we'll deal with it in-life"?

I have worked and continue to work with some truly fantastic people who do take responsibility - and in equal measure do not step over the situation of others avoiding it. I have taken poor decisions from previous projects and made them better. I have made poor decisions and affected those around me I care about (but I still affected them). And at worst... I have been impotent when leadership was required, and others stepped in.

But always that word... responsibility. It is humbling. It is awesome if you let it be awesome.

I loved the scene in Men in Black, when Will Smith is telling Tommy Lee Jones 'tis better to have loved and lost etc', when TLJ is looking at a wife he hasn't seen for 20 years. "Try it" he responds, with a look that would freeze lava.

Responsibility. Try it.

Hot air!

Mon, 25 May 2009 06:42:00 PDT

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces
height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts:
"Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says: "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet
above this field."

You must be an engineer" says the balloonist.
"I am" replies the man. "How did you know."

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically
correct, but it's no use to anyone."

The man below says "you must be in management."

"I am" replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going,
but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were
before we met, but now it's my fault."

______________

Some people have suggested I'm full of hot air...

Freitas in shock move

Wed, 20 May 2009 09:42:00 PDT

In a move that sent shockwaves through the IT reporting industry, Mauricio Freitas unveiled that he was in fact planning to expand his role in life and free himself from the shackles of Geekzone Blogging.

Highlighting a desire for wearing long trenchcoats and looking like a hitman, as well as the desire to ride a moped around a beautifal island wearing nothing but an open shirt, Mauricio outed himself accidentally as a Bollger for Greekzone at a marketing event in Wellington...

"I've always considered the Hellenic lifestyle one to adopt as soon as possible. The Greeks have contributed so much to the world, compared to Brazil (with only a proposition on body hair waxing!)"

In a timely fashion, Mr Freitas, under dubious conditions and egged on by a raucous P.Pilcher, won a Jabra headset just for turning up in his open shirt. Despite protests from the crowd, another travesty was enabled....

The Jabra headset was found to pair beautifally with his brand new Acer Windows Mobile device, apparently not available to distributors....

A suitable way to start the new year!

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:46:00 PST

I have been thinking about what to write as my thoughts on 2008, and what I see for 2009... but then, a lot of people have done that, time has passed, and to be honest.... it's in the past, and what's done is done!

But in the Dominion Post job section this morning, I saw this website referenced... pure class!

http://www.quitinstyle.com

It's Australian, but it has enough humour to make you smile... and for anyone who works for Telecom, Vodafone or TelstraClear and has gone through a right-sizing exercise... well....

I love this

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:54:00 PST

Aaaaa..... hindsight.....

http://www.spareroom.co.nz/2008/12/07/worlds-worst-business-decisions/

Change

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:16:00 PDT

I've been a follower of management theory ever since I was in college, and have been an observer on how people relate to each other and operate (predominantly workplace, but increasingly in personal situations).

Change is frequent, but when it's happening around you rather than directly at you, it becomes very easy to be lulled into a false sense of security. At my age I should know better of course.... but it is very seductive when you think you know where you stand and that you have a modicum of control.

The last few months have been intensive - extremely intensive - periods of change. The pace has been unrelenting, the scope unremitting and the size.... unsurprising. Eventually all change has to consolidate and calm down, before another period begins.

Reading this, you might think, OKaaaay.... I could be speaking of the credit crises, the technology industry or even my personal life.

Reality is a state of mind. People don't see life as it is - they see life as they are. We are often in situations where we have little or no information, yet are trying to make sense of the 'reality' around us, as we see it.

Where it gets exciting - or destructive - is where the stress goes up, the pressure comes on... and then stays there. Most people in the mid-30's know this feeling, that exotic cocktail of being out of control and wondering when it will all just 'stop'.

So why do I write about this now?

There is a lot of change happening for me. A fair amount I expected, but it still needs to be worked through, and emotions experience - a quote I remember from Men in Black is Will Smith saying to Tommy Lee Jones' character 'Ah well, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved to all'.... and Tommy turning round and saying 'Just try it'.

All change makes us stronger, but there is a cost every time. Left unmentioned is that the process of making one part stronger - wisdom - leaves another part weaker - stamina.

The next period is one of personal journey; where one has to 'walk the walk' and other such comments. Knowing what you need to do - and then doing it, with a huge feeling of being alone - now that is truly frightening change.

---
AK