It's Good to Share - not Skype but OrangeFone

In a move that might change the landscape of mobile operators Vodafone and Orange have chosen to share their radio access network and their new UMTS network elements.

This is to give them a predicted saving of 20 to 30 percent in operating and capital expenses for their 2G and 3G networks over the coming years.

A trial of this sharing was announced in the Spanish companies of the two firms in the back end of last year but this was only for 3G networks.

The potential for a working model like this is huge in built up areas where there is already cell saturation and no way for new players to enter the market or where existing players have poor coverage.

A report has been written that says that for this to work effectively a third company needs to be set up to cover the operation.

This is for the passive equipment and not the radio frequencies or transceivers and in many ways mirrors the not-merger of NokiaSiemens hardware vendors that support Vodafone and Orange.

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PC over IP - The Teradici Effect

Teradici are hoping to blur the lines between PC and Data Centre. Their solution allows a use to view multiple screens and control the blade PC over IP. This is kind of like the dumb terminals with a new edgy deployment. The intention is that all of the computing power is performed offsite in a centralized area, the Data Centre, and this will save on power and maintenance costs as the engineers are co-located with the hardware and therefore don't have to go out to the client site for basic maintenance. The Teradici Company Article found in the Wall Street Journal

e-Olympics

This year's Olympics should be the best ever for coverage. Fring are looking for onsite commentators and as a means to encourage people are offering a 3.5G phone as your reporters tool. I hope that this will be the games of the micro blog. The potential for services like Twitter or Jaiku to open up access to the games in a way never seen before is encouraging. Essentially there are three dimensions to the games: Nation Event Athlete Typically broadcast of the games ha content defined by the nation. The USA channels closely follow the USA squad, the same for UK, NZ Australia etc. This is targeted at the national pride. For those people who are actively engaged in an event themselves, marathon, it's the event that is king. There will still be an element of "my country" but this is equally balanced by "my sport". The final element is the followers of a specific athlete. Friends, family and fans may elect to follow all of the events surrounding a person. ...

Cashless Society? Micropayments up for disruption

New Zealand, although small, is a long way ahead in many aspects compared to the UK. Some of their new schemes are being adopted by the UK government. What I remember from my first trip here 6 years ago was the impact of the EFTPOS system. Long before the UK was using Chip and PIN New Zealand was moving towards a cashless society with the ubiquitous EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer Point of Sale) cards and terminals. The system is good and robust. But the one place you can't find it for some of those micropayments is on the public transport system. Buses would benefit from some form of electronic payment system. There is one drawback of the system in it's implementation today, the time taking to pay. For small payments, say a Moro (think Mars) Bar at the local dairy (corner shop) is the time taken for the system to recognise the card and for the user to select the account (Cheque, Savings or Card) and input their PIN. This would certainly slow down the boarding process...

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