A brilliant solution to Britain’s 3G woes

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

When Ofcom (or Oftel as it was known back in 2000) auctioned off the 3G spectrum for a sum that could probably buy you Belgium – Norway, at a stretch – those expensively acquired licences came with strings attached.

One of those strings was that each of the winning bidders had to cover 80% of the country – by population, not land mass – by the end of 2007. Four out of the five networks met that target, with O2 earning itself a fine for finishing the job late.

So, given that each of the five networks has at least 80% of the country covered by themselves, the figures released by Ofcom yesterday showing that only 73.1% of premises in the UK has 3G coverage from all five networks seems, at first, to be contradictory. Until you realise, of course, that those five lots of 80% coverage don’t overlap precisely, creating many “3G areas” where only one or two networks provide a signal.

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No wonder people are confused by security…

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

The Met Police can feel justifiably proud of themselves, with an investigation leading to the jailing for many years of a pair of criminals who attacked computers with malware to steal £3 million from UK bank accounts.

Excellent news; high-fives to everyone involved. However, the force’s communications team slightly tarnished the win with some rather confusing advice on internet security.

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Google must get a grip on the Android orphans

Friday, October 28th, 2011

We may have griped about the problems we had upgrading our iPhones to iOS 5, but at least those old handsets are being upgraded to Apple’s latest OS. A new piece of research published in the US suggests the majority of Android handset owners are being left behind by the ever-evolving Google operating system.

The research, by Michael DeGusta from TheUnderstatement.com, tracked every Android handset released in the US before July 2010, and then recorded how many of them had been updated to the latest version of the OS. The results were startling.

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“Unlimited” is limited, but “truly unlimited” isn’t. Got it?

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

We’ve long known the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) takes a rather liberal view of dictionary definitions, but an adjudication against T-Mobile this morning at last provides clarity over exactly how our fearless advertising watchdog defines the term “unlimited”.

T-Mobile was sent to the headmaster’s office for describing its smartphone data contracts as “truly unlimited”, even though it barred services such as tethering, VoIP and P2P.

That was beyond the pale, according to the advertising overlord, which delivered the following guidance in its adjudication:

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Google takes Chromebooks to the high street

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

As you may have heard, Google has its first shop-floor presence — not in California as you’d expect, but around the corner from PC Pro, inside PC World on Tottenham Court Road in London.

So this morning I wandered over to take a look and take some photos. Obtaining permission for this latter task from this particular branch of the PC World empire proved a challenge, but that left me lots of time to eavesdrop on customers trying out the web-only machines.

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Has Ballmer lost the dressing room?

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

There are six words a football manager never wants to read about himself in a newspaper: “he has lost the dressing room”. Reports of mutiny in the ranks are almost inevitably followed days later with another six-word epitaph: “spending more time with his family”.

Will Steve Ballmer’s three kids soon have more quality time to spend with their dad? Judging by the reaction to last week’s annual employees’ meeting at Microsoft, it’s looking increasingly likely.

The influential Mini-Microsoft blog posts a largely upbeat account of last week’s gathering. Yes, people were reported to be “streaming out” of the hall before the event had finished, although only in “small numbers”, and as the blog points out, it was “nowhere near as bad as BillG’s last company meeting where Ballmer started screaming at people to sit down”.

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Is this the first sign of a touchscreen Chromebook?

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Those of you on the beta channel of Google Chrome may have noticed the new-look homescreen on version 15 of the browser. Gone is the single page containing your most-visited websites, apps and bookmarks. In its place comes a tabbed-based homepage that allows you to flick between the various options.

One thing is immediately obvious from this revamped design: Google is designing for touchscreens. Look at those large finger-friendly icons for the bookmarks — which aren’t entirely dissimilar to the bookmarks in the early betas of Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8.

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Bartz wasn’t fired because she’s a woman

Friday, September 9th, 2011

When Carol Bartz was unceremoniously fired from Yahoo earlier this week, one thought popped into my head: please, don’t let people say it’s because she’s a woman.

Thanks at least in part to the intriguing details surrounding her departure — being fired over the phone, returning fire with some very unpolite four-letter words — the issue of her gender has been, thankfully, a non-issue.

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Apple vs Google: the clash of the cowards

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

Google’s motto may be “don’t be evil” — but when it comes to confronting Apple, it seems “see no evil” is the rule.

For while Apple has been unleashing a patent war against manufacturers of Android devices such as HTC and Samsung, Google has – publicly at least – turned a blind eye, appearing less keen to rock the boat than the captain of the QE2.

Apple has hardly qualified for the George Cross either, picking its fights with licensees rather than Google itself, even though many of the disputed patents appear to relate directly to Android.

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The rock and a hard place of Britain’s broadband network

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

Put yourself in the shoes of Broadband Delivery UK – the Government body charged with making Britain’s internet network go whoosh. Well, more pffft when you consider the pathetically lowly target of universal 2Mbits/sec connections by 2015.

You’ve got only £362 million of funding to kickstart fibre broadband projects, which in relative terms is like walking into a Porsche showroom with £1,000 in cash and hoping to drive away in a new 911.

You’ve essentially got two choices: hand that money to the big boys such as BT and Virgin Media (via local councils) in the hope that it will prompt them to extend their fibre footprint to areas that wouldn’t otherwise stack up financially; or, pump the cash into a local fibre project.

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