hitting the wire*

what next... a virtual braai?!?

There are times when the use of IT to implement virtual reality makes me wonder if it's just me and all the other jokers are driving the wrong way down the M1, or what?!?

Checking out a suspiciously good deal on Dell laptops (not quite as good as it would have been if the blaps Henk Kleynhans and his mates spotted had paid off, but a good one nevertheless), an ad for what I can only think of as the DVD version of mood music caught my eye...

The virtual fire.  Just plug in the DVD, adjust your screen and volume, and voila, you've  all the mood that homo cavus or whatever he was called got out of a good blaze, without all the fussy, messy, time consuming stuff!

Not only that, but hey you can choose what type of fire you'd like!  Maybe you'd just like some glowing coals... or a gas fire, or ... hey, what about an electric fire!

I vaguely get the idea of a fishtank simulation... but this is just one step before some schmuck tries to tell me a pill with all the protein of a steak, with some esters for aroma and taste and a fake fire DVD can replace a braai.  If anyone ever does I'll make sure they use it as an enema!

Fake fire.  pah!

engineers. doomed for life.

Being who I am, engineer jokes are something I collect, if only to disappoint my lawyer, CA, and medic buddies when they say "have you heard the engineer joke about..." "yup".

This is the first animated Dilbert I've seen.  Love it.

 

The rise of a new breed of Service Provider.

My first job in Storm, back in the late 90's was to add a Cellular LCR (Least Cost Routing) product to the International LCR product offering Storm launched with.  We were finding that we were losing deals to the likes of Orion and Telepassport because we did not offer "savings on calls to cellular".  TimWG's words to me were something of the order of "create a cellular product for us and just make sure you don't lose us any money".

None of us saw just how big the Cellular LCR market would be.  None of us realised just  how many more cellular phones than fixed line phones there would be by now.

Cellular LCR has always been a problem for the Mobile Network Operators.  The GSM networks were traditionally designed quite "thin", with some base stations only being able to handle 8 or 16 simultaneous calls from phones "passing through".  Installations of "SIM farms" or large Cellular Fixed Terminal CPE installations had the ability to "flatten" the networks in places.  An installation at PriceWaterhouseCoopers succeeded in causing dropped calls for anyone traveling past their offices in Sandton for weeks after their LCR installation went live.  The networks ended up spending many millions of capex to cater for LCR. 

Much better money was being made in charging Telkom to terminate calls originating in Telkom's network to cell phones.  But the fear of losing the LCR SIM business (and the traffic) to the other MNO network forced Vodacom and MTN to offer the likes of Storm attractive packages.  Once the LCR market had tapered off however, we saw them beef up "off-net" call charges to try and make more margin.  We had to become smarter about how we managed our base of SIMs.

Deregulation and the legalisation of VoIP has changed all of that.  Anyone who is trying to sell you on the idea that traditional cellular LCR is here for many years and it is worth committing yourself to a long term contract is blowing smoke.  The future is in aggregating traffic using either VoIP or once it is available a mix of CPS (Carrier PreSelect) and VoIP and passing traffic over interconnects.  Renewing LCR SIMs from now on is risky business.

The way forward is with the new breed of Voice&Data Service Provider (the EC Act calls them Communication Service Providers), who are geared to make most use of the changes in technology and regulations.  You just have to take a look at the M&A activity (traditional data guys buying voice guys, vice versa, and the likes of Vodacom starting their own ISP) to realise what Storm did years ago - the future is in IP.  LCR will be around for a while yet, unless either DoC or ICASA force some unwise and rather radical changes to interconnect rates.  The UK has one of the most competitive telecoms markets around, and cellular LCR is still alive with the likes of Westlake and True Communications.

Peter Walsh of DataRoom has written a good article on LCR on MyDigitalLife - worth a read if you're interested in a balanced outlook on this market.

More on "Unbundling the Local Loop" (ULL)

According to Tim (Storm's joint CEO), it was while listening to a story on bipolar mania on Cape Talk that Lindsay from Cape Talk called him to ask him if he'd be prepared to go on air with Mike Wills (no, I'm not mistaken - he really was on air - standing in for John Maytham).  Tim deftly tossed the ball to the first person he thought of... me.  So, while preparing to recount my lifelong experience with bipolar mania, I was somewhat flummoxed to have Mike Wills announce he wanted me to explain what "unbundling the local loop" was!

(ok, I jest - at least about the being flummoxed part - Tim would be quite adept at talking about mania's of any sort! ;)  More of that I am sure when his own blog goes live (oops... there goes the cat!)

Here is a copy of the interview if you're interested.

And I sincerely trust, Mr Halse, that I'm more coherent here than I was in the Business Day article!

That's me. More or less unbundled.

The cobblers kids are poorly shod - confessions of an inept home sysadmin.

For someone involved in telecoms and IT, I sometimes think I make poor use of technology.  My home network consists of a 512k DSL link to the Net, a Linksys WAG54GS all-in-one DSL router / LAN switch / DHCP server / WiFi AP / Firewall, into which my wife's PC is plugged and a Senao PCMCIA card (SL-5354CB) which I bought at an iWeek when WiFi was still young here.  My kids are blissfully unaware I could network their PC and provide them with the joys of online gaming - right now the likes of Age of Empires and Sacred fulfil their thirst for death and destruction by design, with no threat to our traffic-cap.

I bought the Linksys from Miro about a year back and have been quite happy with it.  Until last week.

All of a sardine, the damn thing stopped issuing my laptop with an IP address.  Nothing I tried seemed to work.  I resorted to my fallback, and hauled out the HSDPA card I use when I'm out of town.  One or two automated backups later (I run Attix5 every night now after learning the hard way that dead hard drives don't talk) and my traffic limit is trashed.  Time to get the link to the DSL line sorted!

I find some other guy has had similar problems, but can't find an obvious fix anywhere.

Part of the suggested fix from Miro was to uninstall the driver for the card and reinstall.  Nice idea. Only no one told me Senao have discontinued the card and no longer supply driver files (and the ruddy install disk has eloped with my favourite pen and has not been seen in years).  Not good.  Fortunately, Miro managed to dig up the correct install file, but still no joy from the DHCP server.  Grrrr!

Decided it must be the AP - either a factory settings reset will sort it out, or it needs a brain transplant and I'll have to take it in.  Now, few things raise my wife's ire like a broken Net connection when she has a deadline to hit and is embarking on an all-nighter.  The time she caused it herself during a DSL network wobble by pressing the reset button for too long and inadvertently reverted to factory settings (while I was away from home)... she was ready to throttle her inept sysadmin!  So, with my heart in my mouth, I hit reset and went through replacing all the settings.

I can't tell what a relief it was to have connectivity back to normal.

If you need driver files for a Senao PCMCIA card (SL-5354CB) - drop me a mail.  If your Linksys AP's DHCP server goes on the fritz... start all over.  If it starts this crap again soon I'll be ditching it for a Netgear.

Now, if anyone can tell me what I can do to speed up my wife's PC that has slowed to a crawl, I'll be delighted.  So far, I've tried most of the usual tricks, so bar laser surgery to the registry file... or wiping the hard-drive, I'm stumped.

that's me.  admin'd out.

IT & Telecoms trends in 2007

At the beginning of March I was asked to distil my thoughts on what trends are likely to emerge during 2007/2008 in the local Information & Communications Technology market. I’ve held back on posting until now while Storm's overworked Marketing team get the customer newsletter out to avoid stealing all their thunder. As usual, this is a mix of “duh, of course, like that's news?” type stuff and some “what are you smoking!?” ideas that may well be way off the mark! Here goes:

Obviously the desktop hardware technology “refresh” will get going as IT budgets are approved and laptop and desktops using Intel’s new super fast core 2 duo chip’s start hitting corporate desks in earnest; followed closely by the early adopters of Microsoft’s much awaited new operating system ‘Vista’. (The more cautious of us will wait for Service Patch 1 or even 2 to appear!)

On the bandwidth front - Broadband, now far from broad, will continue to drop in price, but I doubt as much as we have seen in the last 18 months. I can't even recall who started the argy-bargy, but at one stage MTN appeared to have created a new benchmark at around R0.20/MB. It was allegedly intended to be a limited duration half-price special, but showed what could be done.  Sentech announced they planned providing more bang for buck;  Vodacom then dropped their price (by 61% according to their ads) after being almost double everyone else’s price. iBurst also dropped their pricing, but remain more expensive than Sentech for equivalent packages (sub HSDPA theoretical speeds). The unlicensed players like Amobia and Uninet are still an order of magnitude cheaper but don’t have the coverage advantage. It is all a bit confusing for the man in the street, but ultimately these changes will make getting online and staying there permanently, more affordable. Offerings should start to differentiate on quality (reliability of throughput) and you should be able to get fixed IP addresses – currently not available to ADSL users. This will facilitate hooking up remote offices for voice and data over IP.

More telco’s will announce moves to converge their voice and data networks onto IP based New Generation Networks like British Telecom’s 21st Century Network project. This will make networks more intelligent and flexible, but will unfortunately not impact on customers for some time to come.

Video on Demand is growing overseas (where real broadband exists) – people are prepared to pay a premium over the likes of Mr Video et al to choose their viewing for the evening from their armchair. Don’t hold your breath here – we’re too spread out geographically to make it profitable just yet (maybe satellite will save us). And Telkom still dominates the local loop.

IPTV is being touted by vendors as the next big thing. Again, dependent on broadband, and ownership of content will be key! It will not be over the Internet, but over managed IP networks.

Music and video downloads, both legal and illegal, continue to grow. More cell phones with better mp3 players will eventually make people wonder why they have a CD player, but probably not this year! Apple’s iPhone will develop a cult following but will hardly make a dent in Nokia’s global market dominance.

Instant Messaging (IM) will continue to grow. Local mobile phone based instant messaging service, MXIT (Think MSN messenger on your phone) will find ways of “growing up” and becoming more respectable. IM will start making deeper inroads into corporate culture with IT managers needing to develop policies on IM usage.

WiMAX equipment will drop in price as the economies of scale kick in and more networks other than Sprint Nextel in the USA do mass roll-outs. It will continue to disappoint those who believed all the hype w.r.t. 70Mbps @ 70 miles @ 70mph. Some Meshed WiFi networks will appear here in SA, whether legal or not, and we’ll continue to see a LAN technology play in open spaces it was never intended for. Unlicensed Mobile Access, with VoWiFi phones following along behind, causing Mobile Networks to get edgy.

Spectrum is being fiercely fought over. It is a scarce resource and it is unlikely that anyone other than a few established players will get licenses. There will be many frustrated wannabes.

Municipal networks are coming to the fore, with the Cape Town tender awarded, but challenged, eThekweni ready to roll but caught up with legalities, and City of Joburg now out on tender. They are unlikely to have any real impact this year. They do not really have much of a sustainable advantage in the long run, as they will have to allow others access to infrastructure and will find that building a telco is not trivial.

The Mobile networks will announce HSUPA with great fanfare. Mobile broadband will then be about as broad as it gets for a while, but as up- and down-load speeds will be around 5Mbps, it will make quadplay (or fourplay?) possible – mobile/voice/internet/video.

Mobile interconnect prices are due to come down by 20 to 25% shortly. This should allow Telkom to drop the price of calls to mobile phones – whether they will pass on the full benefit or not will have to be seen. Mobile packages are unlikely to change as a result though. Least Cost Routing will become more and more marginal and the shift to Communication Service Providers using VoIP will be become more obvious.

Asterisk, the open source “IPPBX” will continue to make some serious inroads into the PBX market, with damage being done at a “higher level” in the market than originally proposed – medium to large corporates instead of SME’s. Watch the call centres here – they’re the weather vane of change.

Hosted IPPBX’s will start emerging as broadband improves and investors in some of the early VoIP entrants who committed large capex in these sorts of solutions seek to get ROI moving.

Social Networking using web based applications like MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, Second Life etc will become more widely known and used as people get used to being online 24*7. We’re seeing South African flavours of these appearing.

DSL and SSL VPN’s will become more popular as DSL prices drop and quality improves and mobile broadband grows. Business will seek help to set up and manage increasingly complex networks of devices.

As broadband improves in throughput, price and reliability, ASP services will become more popular, with companies seriously considering (but possibly not committing to just yet) such things as Getting Things Done, Gmail and Office packages from the likes of Google rather than Microsoft (from one evil empire to another!?).

VoIP will start emerging as more than just a cost saving exercise with some of the first real value adds starting to come through, with integration into calendars, address books, CRM’s and PBX’s.

There will be a lot of consolidation in the next few years, with bigger players buying smaller, more niche players to fulfill the need to have broader voice and data offering.

Oh, and Neotel will start taking on Telkom in the retail market and Infraco will make its clumsy and controversial way onto the stage…

(and if I look back on my 2006 predictions... if we see half of these during 2007, we'll be doing well! :( )

Dave Gale

March 2007

VoIPTopia - when VoIP gets funky.

When it comes to VoIP, we've all got a bit fixated on the means to the end instead of the end itself, which is to make communications not just cheaper (a definite fixation here in SA), but easier and more productive. VoIP is a technology.  Actually it is a protocol, which in turn is only a predetermined method of communications between devices. 

This post is long overdue and I apologise to those who had given up hope of me ever providing a version of the animation we used at the SA Broadband Summit in Feb this year.  Truth is, I've been busy and I couldn't get the HTML right first go.  I've finally hacked it (helps to follow the programmer's instructions to the letter!)

Here it is, a maybe not so futuristic view of what (Vo)IP can enable for the knowledge worker.  There is much it can do for the consumer, but that is another story.  If it seems the narrative is a bit rushed, it is; MeshSmith, the animator, begged me to cut it as short as possible - after all I did give him an impossible deadline - which he made.  Hit the play button below and adjust the sound for optimal listening pleasure! ;)

that's me.  and no one yelled "fore!" dammit!

Out with concrete slippers... slip into some concrete canvas.

This is so not telecoms, but I really love these kind of wacky ideas that have practical use!  These guys have come up with an inflatable, concrete shelter that comes in kit form…  just add water and an hour later… voila, a concrete shelter!  OK, so it does weigh half a ton to start with, but then expecting it to be light as a feather to boot would be a bit much.

Reminds me of those cake mixes I tried to make while in digs, which never quite looked like the picture on the box, but were never the less hugely enjoyed.

I think I just lost my heart to a phone!

oh dear.

I noticed a report that Apple had released a mobile phone, but have been too frantically busy since clocking back in at work Monday that I have not bothered to check it out.

All I can say is that I'm still a great fan of Nokia (despite or maybe because of owning a SE p910i at the moment - can't wait for for my contract to be up!) but this phone takes the cake.  Trust Apple to come up something this sexy.  Hot damn, I'm in love.  With a phone for Pete's sake!

Phone (with funky touch screen IP phone like functionality), Internet access device, and widescreen iPod rolled into one!  Oh and it has a camera too.

Now all I want is to find out mkII comes with WiFi/Bluetooth SIP phone functionality and I'm sold.

that's me finished.  and the year is only starting!

UPDATE:

Found my way to Robert Scoble's blog last night (that's the guy who I hear made Microsoft look way less Ogre-like in the eyes of many techs in the software industry by way of his blog) - he has a few sobering comments on the iPhone.

It may well be early days and are we fair to expect Apple to blow Nokia out the park with their very first shot at a phone?  I suspect this device and its offspring will gather the same sort of cult following the Mac's have.

stalled... on the starting grid.

Ever watched a Grand Prix where one of the guys stalls his car on the starting grid? Painful. You want to offer him a shove. I watched a Men's Health biathlon down at Llandudno some time back when one poor sod was so tired after the run that when he got to the surfski leg he could not get his ski beyond the first breakers without losing headway, broaching and coming off.

A bit like watching Sentech trying to get Biznet Xpress off the ground. Got the license. Got the network. Got the technology. Got the opportunity. Can't get going. With Telkom taking at times over 13 weeks to install Diginets, Storm is itching to find a viable alternative.

A year after starting to test this wireless Diginet replacement product, Sentech installed the first commercial Biznet Xpress link for us last week. Tests have shown it to meet, if not at times exceed the quality parameters of Diginet. Quality is not an issue with Diginet. Price is and so is lead time to install. We need better pricing - Xpress has it. We need links in within 5 to 10 working days. ya-well-no-fine!

The SLA, when we finally get it, promises to install within 2 weeks. I'm not going to be holding my breath, but if they get their act together and make that happen... I'll be the first to pop the bottle of bubbly!