Orient Expression

What the flood situation in Thailand has shown once again is the power of social networks to fill the void of communication. In recent times the role of Facebook, Twitter, and Blackberry messenger has been shown in good and bad light.  The same methods that released the Arab Spring have also been used to coordinate the London Riots . Love them or loathe social networks are here to stay and what the floods show is how they keep people connected.  Some will say there should be no communication void if central government is on top of its game, but with a situation that can change so rapidly, and over such a large area the traditional press certainly struggle to keep the public up to date. Twitter and Facebook have been saviours for those of us outside Thailand at this time.  With roving reporters and connected people like Patee Sarasin and Jetrin out doing and tweeting many more people are kept up to date. Equally useful is the ability to time shift news updates...

On a previous post on Access as Infrastructure there was a discussion on the government led initiatives for ultra fast broadband. The proposition is that the build out of new access networks is such an expensive activity that the governments of Australia and New Zealand will make the investment, using a combination of public and private money. So with ubiquitous access a near reality and with that access provided in the same way as electricity, water, gas, and roads getting to your house what does this mean for the net neutrality debate? If the telco no longer owns the asset and are merely a party in the trade then surely this solves the net neutrality problem? The incumbent may get preferential treatment because of scale and buying power but this wouldn't be extended to priority routing. Moving the competition from the physical platform to the offering, as long as the telcos, CSPs, and RSPs are not government owned, then we can have comfort that the pipe is there and ev...

iPhones baby brother, iTouch , looks very similar but doesn't allow you to make phone calls, or does it? Engadget has run a series of posts on iTouch hacks that make the iTouch able to make VoIP calls. Adding an external microphone News on VoIP applications Now today they are advertising a free download of a SIP based VoIP client app for the iTouch. It was only a matter of time before someone found another use for the onboard WiFi connection of this nice looking device.

The past couple of months have seen the entire country unplugged from the internet more times than I care to count. You can always tell it's a national problem when you phone the call centre and end up being on hold for 10 minutes or so. I don't know if this is to stop being hassled or because there really are a lot of people reporting the problem. Suggestions of using IVR updates to handle some of the calls "If you are phoning about internet connection difficulty, there is a problem and we are working on it. Please check back for updates" would be a good option, however it falls on deaf ears. What I'm not sure of is the cause of the problem. Lack of infrastructure investment More people going online Fragility of links out of Thailand There certainly is a lack of investment in infrastructure. One calculation suggests that if everybody that could go online went online at the same time each user would get 1.2Kb of bandwidth. As an example to get the copper wire...

Skype took a big credibility hit on Thursday when an unknown number of people could not log in to the one of the most well known VoIP clients in the market today. Take a deep breath and hope this is some glitch in the software and not the limitation of the peer to peer network capabilities. The problem started out as a login problem and there people started receiving delayed IM sessions hit the client. The IM sessions have often been a bit flaky and I often receive a delay in getting them (upwards of 2 days in some cases). Thinking back I wonder if this was the start of a problem that mushroom clouded for them on Wednesday/Thursday depending where you are in the world. They have been working hard to fix the problem and for me at least service seems to be more stable. After a laboured login I at least maintain a session now. At first it was hard to tell as with Skype normally being so efficient at finding a connection I assumed it was the flaky ADSL infrastructure at my end in Thaila...

The recent announcement from 3 UK to partner with Google, MSN and Skype caused some noise. Many pundits are musing over the partnership with Skype and it's disruptive "the whole world can talkk for free" which is targetted directly at 3 and it's usual suspect of associates. You've got to figure that the expansion of municpal networks (Norwich and Milton Keynes stlye) combined with more dual mode handsets appearing on the market that Skype is going to make some real in-roads into the mobile space. 3 are probably thinking that the timing is right to be a partner and not a target if the domain is going to change anyway. What was of lesser visibility was the time and place shifting that is also planned to be part of the X-series phone kit. The platform also includes Orb and Sling for viewing your TV choices over the 3G wireless network. Given the Skypers next disruptive project is the Venice project and their idea for TV 2.0 I'm not sure how the TV part of t...

The most hyped, most promising technology to really be tested gets another push from the Rupe. Rupert Murdoch is looking for life after (or during) satellite and he seems to think that TV over WiMax is it. It leads to an interesting discussion that is still ongoing, what is the business case for 802.16? Not surprisingly many people are still convinced that VoIP or VoWLAN will be the real use for the technology. This is because of the super-sized cell that potentially can be created, the super-hotspot could be a real challenger for GSM and CDMA due to the typical usage habits of the average subscriber. So with that said do we already have the killer application for WiMax. Skype was an early disruptor to voice reveune and it's portability across many platforms does it make the ideal choice for the VoIP application. Gizmo is also a strong candidate for me, it has already been trialled on GoogleNet in Mountain View by Team OM , and I like the fact that it does run on the Nokia 7...

Almost 1 year ago Paul in his usual tongue-in-cheek approach blogged about the foresight of Uma Thurman's parents Well in a shock exposure she has decided to become a Danish National !! The Baltic trader that is TeliaSonera, with presence in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, is the first mobile operator to release [publicly] UMA into it's network. Unlicensed Mobile Access or UMA is the technology that allows more traditional mobile operators to create a pire into their GSM network to allow people to start make use of some of the IP and dual mode feature on their phones. It, in theory, allows mobile subscribers to use VoWiFi features but this then gets routed through onto the GSM network. It is one of the real enablers for one form of fixed mobile convergence (FMC) that opens up the mobile handset to be used for home based telephony, using SIP phone. The key benefits for the subscriber are that they have the convenience of their contacts at their fingertips when using their phon...

There's been a lot of talk on Net Neutrality and it's all gone quiet. I don't see why everyone is so surprised Net Neutrality is the Techno equivalent of "selective listening" something that we all learn from a very early age and continue to practice through life. Working in a tricky project right now where I am employed to advise the client on how they should be implementing their chosen product to give them the best of functional match and easy maintenance and upgrade paths. However the client employs a lot of selective listening and it got me thinking of "Advice Neutrality" ©™® and why baby Bell react the way they do. Many decision have already been made before I joined the project and no amount of discussion and persuasion is going to change their minds as it might be more work upfront (short term pain, long term gain) or it might mean that they lose their position of power (they are the SI) as the real client won't have to go for them for chan...

As Paul Jardine wrote back in August on his search for an ideal IP device, he may be nearer to finding that foot for his glass slipper than he knows. In a recent article on TeleGeography Nokia steps up to creating handsets that are WiFi and GSM/WCDMA enabled that will seamlessly hop between services. The implication is that to support the growing market of VoIP users in Finland, Finns are never far behind when it comes to technology, the new handsets scoped for next year will use WLAN as a preference and switch to GSM when no hotspot is available. The question is can it carry the call with it? We'll have to wait and find out. It would be good if it could but that might be the next generation on. I still maintain, as posted earlier , that most mobile users aren't really that mobile. It is convenience rather than mobility that drives us to use mobile phones. We commute and we stay put and then go home. So why not use WiFi for VoIP calls when you are at work? Now the trick would...

Once seen as the technology for geeks VoIP is going to take a step into the mainstream following the announcement by Dixons, and it's sister chains of high street shops, to begin selling the FreeTalk VoIP phone kit. The founders of FreeServe internet providers think the timing is right to launch a starter kit that plugs directly into your broadband channel. There is no need to be PC bound to get cheap national and international calls. The Register report a statement by national carrier British Telecom that they are not overly concerned as they think that the public are not ready for the technology. Maybe it's just a bitter pill after the poor take up of BT Communicator . As usual market forces will determine the success of the technology or not. The price will pay a large part, obviously, and possibly the fact that it's not BT will help. There could well be skepticism that the BT offering was not as cheap as it could get; a bit unfair on one of the old style carriers that...