Gender-confused footwear cliché apart, Doc Reynolds will have his work cut out for him at Telecom.

Yesterday, there was stirring at Telecom suggesting someone (Helen Twose?) had got hold of early confirmation that Dr Paul Reynolds of BT Wholesale will take over after Theresa Gattung and today... there's the announcement.

Reynolds will head over to NZ end of September and be based at Telecom's new HQ in Auckland - the move to the Big Smoke is yet another two-finger salute to the government, to say thank you for the new regulation I reckon.

The question is, how will Reynolds approach his new role? Will he do a BT, and bash Telecom into new regulatory shape and get broadband off the social agenda in NZ? Or, will he be a gamekeeper turned poacher and use the experience gleaned at BT to delay and stall further, which is what Telecom has done so far?

Around 2010, when the first real effects of regulation may come in, Telecom can celebrate having successfully staved off efforts to rein in its natural monopoly for two decades. No other telco in the world can do that.

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh, wow: 100Mbit/s to your handset!

That sounds handy-dandy, doesn't it? It's what Russell Stanners, Vodafone NZ CEO, promises we'll have in 2010. Presumably, he was talking about UMTS LTE (Long Term Evolution) or whatever its indecipherable mobile telco acronym is now, at the Eighth Telco Industry Summit here in Auckland today.

Are you excited? I'm not. If Stanners had said "we'll make sure everyone gets the advertised 3.2Mbit/s on today's HSDPA network," I would've nodded approvingly. If had continued and said "we'll build out the network to make sure there's enough capacity so that you can get 10-30GB worth of usage every month, maybe more," he'd have earnt an applause from me.

Instead, we have HSDPA that at best hits 1.4-1.5Mbit/s, unless you're in Vodafone's V.NUE building where the network isn't choked down due to capacity constraints. In that case, you'll be nearer the 3Mbit/s mark for downloads.

Don't get me wrong: anything over 1Mbit/s on cellular broadband is great. However, asking us to believe that in just three years, Vodafone will be able to supply one-hundred times that speed through evolutionary upgrades is a bit much. The backhaul to each cell site would have to be massive, for instance.

Let's see how Vodafone handles the 7.2Mbit/s upgrade that was meant to be in place this year, but which is still only at the trial stage. Why is Vodafone not going to 14.4Mbit/s HSPA like Telstra in Australia, by the way?

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Is there some special international law or rule somewhere that says we have to pay much more than for instance the Australians for our mobile calls?

In April this year, minister Trevor Mallard, seconded to the task by communications minister David Cunliffe who had come under opposition flak for allegedly according favours to Vodafone, decided that Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs) should not be regulated.

This despite the Commerce Commission recommending regulation not once, but twice, because NZ MTRs are very high and have a direct influence on retail pricing.

And, Mallard decided against regulation despite Australia and other countries already having gone down that path, for the simple reason that competition in telecommunications tends to be non-existent so that's the only way to push down MTRs. Vodafone and Telecom managed to strike a deal with the government that got both out regulation, see?

This morning, I read in Communications Day that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACC) has decided that MTRs will come down to 9¢ a minute from July 30.

In New Zealand however, Vodafone and Telecom have it very easy. Over the next five years, MTRs will drop very gently to 20¢ this year, then 14/12¢. Yes, that's right: Australian will have substantially lower MTRs this year than what we'll ever see in NZ.

Why?

I completely agree with Ernie Newman of Tuanz, who says:

”In a world where these prices are falling rapidly, the government has condemned New Zealanders to paying more than twice the Australian equivalent. Termination rates are a major component of retail fixed-to-mobile calls and a reason we are paying silly prices such as 71c a minute for a call from home to a cell phone.

”The government should use this new evidence to cancel its deal with Telecom and Vodafone and hand the issue back to the Commission which has the specialist knowledge to deal with such issues.„

Maybe that special regulation for NZers is called "The need to shore up overseas-owned telcos bottom-lines"?

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Isn't it funny how disaster waits until the right moment?

Every winter, I get nervous about one thing... the supply of mains power. Auckland's power grid seems only marginally better than that of African slums. Short power outages occur most days of the week once the load on the grid goes up, and you don't want to be without uninterruptible power supplies for your computers.

Unfortunately for me, the two smaller UPSs I used for my workstations decided to both kick the bucket. Not entirely sure why, but there was a power spike last week that had them both beeping and after that, falling over.

Aware of the gravity of the situation, I've been shopping around for a single unit with higher VA rating that's also quiet (suggestions here would be welcome).

I was, however, not fast enough.

Yesterday, the Wairau Rd substation blew up. I'm not sure what happened - sounds like there was an explosion damaged part of the substation - but a huge chunk of the North Shore went black.

And, my computers were plugged straight into the wall... catastrophe. As a result, the Program Files (x86) directory on Vista 64 is now full of scrambled files. Most of the apps I use every day don't work because the files are corrupted. I should be able to replace them, maybe by using a System Restore Point, but it's still a major hassle I could do without, especially on deadline day.

Luckily, my servers are behind a chunkier UPS that's been holding up fine, so they're running normally.

Typical... just typical.

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Only on TelstraClear cable in Wellington and Christchurch though.

Looks like those of you within reach of TCL cable will get your speeds seriously bumped up by the end end of the year, from 10Mbit/s max to 25Mbit/s, according to today's announcement.

The Smales Farm crowd has spent $1.2 million - which is pretty cheap - on a new Motorola system to provide the enhanced speeds; unfortunately, the announcement is skimpy on details such as upload speed, but TCL says "the back end capability" is complete, so I hope this means the network will go as fast as the advertised speed.

What's good is that TCL doesn't mind if you run VPNs, VoIP or VoD over its network - none of your walled garden rubbish there, but... how about that peering issue again, TCL? Sorted or are we still "tromboning" traffic overseas, with some NZ sites unreachable?

I am also a little surprised that there are only 70,000 customers on the cable network. Expected it to be around twice that, but perhaps the price isn't quite right yet?

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Good on the Dutch for acting on 419ers.

AFP reports that 111 West Africans were arrested on Saturday in Amsterdam, as part of a seven month long investigation into Internet fraud.

That's a good start, but the Dutch police reckon there are over 2,000 'Net fraudsters active in the Netherlands so there's plenty to go still. However, they are being very soft on the 419ers apprehended: apparently, the 111 are in the Netherlands illegally, but despite that, only eight with false papers were kept in custody. The rest were released.

Something tells me it'll be hard to persuade the rest to appear at the police station again.

Also, expect a mass mail-out soon from the released 419ers trying to capitalise on the lot that were prosecuted...

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So what's Apple's Safari for Windows like?

The iJobs introduced a bunch of stuff at Apple's WWDC in San Francisco today, but the only one that you and I can check out straight off the bat is Safari for Windows. It seems to be OK on the hoary old iLamp here, so I downloaded the beta from Apple and installed it on Windows Vista 64.

The installation went without dramas; you don't need to get the full kaboodle with QT and iTunes and everything, as Apple has an 8MB Safari-only version of the beta available on the site.

First impression:

Ugh, Safari doesn't use Microsoft's Cleartype, but its own anti-aliasing/font-smoothing technology. The default Medium setting recommended for LCDs doesn't look great, and even at Light smoothing, Safari's anti-aliasing isn't as good as Cleartype.

Most of the sites I've tried work just as well as in Firefox, IE7 and Opera 9.x - in fact, I'm writing all this in Safari - but why oh why can't Apple make the Backspace key work with the Ctrl-key modifier? I use it all the time to delete entire words. And please Apple: in Windows, we can resize windows not just from the bottom righthand corner; this needs to be fixed.

The beta seems fast enough and stable for me. I see that Peter Griffin in the Herald however isn't impressed, as Safari crashes for him and isn't much faster than Firefox.

I haven't had any such issues yet, but twice as fast? I think that's Jobs' reality distortion field talking. That said, sites load fast enough, including the AJAX-heavy Netvibes feed reader. Flash sites like Youtube are also fine, and stylesheet support looks unproblematic. The Safari beta uses a lot of memory though... I'm up to 300MB already, with three windows and seven tabs in total open.

There's built-in support for RSS feeds, just as in IE and FF, a must-have feature for any browser.

Missing from Safari: zooming, like in IE7 and the printing support of Microsoft's browser. Plugins are available for Safari, but there's not the wealth and breadth of Firefox yet. There are probably some other things missing as well, but I can't think what they might be at the moment.

Overall, Safari for Windows seems a just fine, if unspectacular, browser. I can't think of a good reason why you'd want it, unless of course you work with Macs and Windows and want the same browser experience on both platforms. Am I missing something here?

Update Looks like certificates don't work properly in the beta... there's no Keychain on Windows, Apple.
Update II Safari looks like a very insecure proposition at this stage.

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

All the signs are that Vodafone New Zealand is doing rather well, but is that enough to ward off a sale?

Maybe not, if Telecom TV is to be believed. By July 24, a group of investors will present a set of demands at Vodafone's annual general meeting. Apparently, Vodafone hasn't exactly been shining when it comes to sharemarket returns so they want to release value to the tune of £38 billion, by forcing Vodafone to sell its stake in US operator Verizon and... perhaps also some of the smaller parts of the empire.

Vodafone New Zealand, doing well in a stitched-up market, would fetch a pretty penny if sold. There's been some speculation that Telstra is kicking Vodafone NZ's tyres but would Sol commit to huge capital expenditure like that for a small market here? It doesn't seem likely.

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Took Telecom a while to admit it, but here is the announcement, following what I wrote last week.

Telecom today announced a $300 million mobile network investment plan to meet New Zealand's future mobile needs.

The development of a new Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) network will complement existing CDMA network capabilities and allow Telecom to provide unparalleled mobile services using the best features and capabilities of both networks.

Telecom is committed to its CDMA network to the extent the company will guarantee customers their current mobile phones will continue to be supported by Telecom's network for at least the next five years.

Chief Operating Officer of Technology, Mark Ratcliffe, says the decision to develop a WCDMA network alongside Telecom's existing network follows extensive analysis of the future evolution of mobile technologies.

"Our priority has been to map out a mobile technology path that ensures Telecom will offer customers the best possible coverage, devices and services available, in the near and long term."

The new mobile network will be based on WCDMA HSPA technology, a real leapfrog in capability beyond current mobile broadband offerings.

This technology, and the Long Term Evolution (LTE) vision outlined for WCDMA will enable a new generation of competitive commercial and consumer services, including high quality music, video and entertainment offerings.

"Our approach is to offer customers the best from current CDMA technology, and in the future too as WCDMA is deployed," says Mr Ratcliffe.

Mr Ratcliffe says the existing CDMA network offers customers the most advanced mobile data performance available and Telecom expects this to remain the case until the latest WCDMA network is deployed from late 2008.

"By leveraging the capabilities of both CDMA and WCDMA we will maintain our capacity to provide New Zealanders an unrivalled range of mobile products and services."

This month Telecom launches its WorldMode global roaming capability, providing voice roaming on both CDMA and GSM networks in 180 countries.

"WorldMode is an example of how we can leverage both types of network technologies to deliver unmatched international roaming coverage," Mr Ratcliffe says.

The build of the WCDMA network will commence in late 2007 and will cost approximately $300 million in capital expenditure over the next two years. This is approximately $200 million more than would have been spent over the next five years under a CDMA-only path.

ENDS

For further information please contact:

Mark Watts, Head of External Media, 0272 504 018 or 09 355 4825

Fact Sheet

About WCDMA
Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), also known as UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) is a mobile voice and high-speed data technology that is part of the International Telecommunication Union's third-generation (3G) wireless standards. WCDMA typically uses GSM/EDGE technology as the underlay network technology.

The WCDMA technology provides users with broad device selection, global roaming, true broadband speeds and clear voice calls. There are currently more than two billion people using WCDMA/GSM services worldwide today.

About CDMA
CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) is a sophisticated digital cellular technology that achieves high-speed wireless voice and data transfer by using multiple frequencies. Telecom deploys CDMA2000 which is classified by the International Telecommunications Union as a 3G mobile network technology.

CDMA is particularly suited to New Zealand's geography and performs well both in coverage and call quality. Through EVDO 'revision A', Telecom currently delivers world-leading mobile data technology and CDMA provides a strong technology roadmap to maintain this market-leadership position.

Coverage and spectrum use
Coverage will be provided utilising a blend of WCDMA/HSPA at 2100 MHz and GSM/EDGE at 850 MHz technologies.

In particular, 850 MHz spectrum will be utilised to ensure strong rural coverage is achieved, with 2100 MHz employed largely in cities and large metropolitan areas.

Investment
Telecom expects to invest approximately $300 million to launch the new WCDMA/HSPA and GSM/EDGE network, with on-going capital costs managed within our normal mobile investment parameters.

This is approximately $200 million more than would have been spent over the next five years under a CDMA-only path.

Operating costs are linked to future subscriber growth to insulate Telecom from technology-specific impacts. This means no additional operating costs will be incurred as a result of this additional network deployment unless total subscriber numbers across CDMA, WCDMA/HSPA, and GSM/EDGE drastically increase.

Handsets & Devices
Telecom enjoys a strong relationship with a number of major handset and device manufacturers today and expects to utilise these same relationships to expand the range of devices offered across the two networks.

At launch, Telecom is committed to offering a world-leading and competitively priced range of devices across all networks - meaning customers will enjoy unprecedented choice.

Carrier Partnerships
Telecom expects to secure strategic partnerships with WCDMA operators in order to secure access to the very best range of handsets and products & services.

We have a long standing and productive relationship in place with Hutchison and are actively engaged in discussions with them on how best to work together in light of this announcement today.

Work is ongoing in this respect and we anticipate concluding these arrangements by the end of 2007.

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Besides being a four-letter word, that is. What do you actually do in the office?

Not a lot, it would seem. There are some interesting numbers in that NY Times article, like US workers spending on average 45 hours a week at work, of which 16 are non-productive. That figure's probably on the low side if you ask me - it should take into account commuting which, while being a necessary evil, probably adds at least an hour or maybe two to people's working days.

I'm not sure Steve Pavlina, the "perhaps the most intensely growth-oriented individual you will ever meet" is right about people putting in only one and a half hours worth of work each day, but can vouch for the vast majority of meeting I've attended having been a waste of time. Meetings are usually called by management so that they can write (or get someone else to write) a report that makes them look like they've done something. They're also used to bully staff who may be busy doing something actually productive - it shows underlings who's the top dog that can call a meeting no matter how trivial the subject.

Meetings are the main reason management in general oppose telecommuting workers - an office devoid of salary slaves to haul into meetings would give managers cold turkey. Doesn't matter that the majority of tasks can be done from wherever more productively, and just about everything talked about in meetings can be handled via Instant Messaging for instance.

In that kind of environment, where you're pressured to be put in face time instead of being measured on what you come up with, it's no wonder that people slack off on the Internet for instance. Trade Me is, I hear, New Zealand's biggest "productivity killer" but the fix for that isn't to make the working environment less dull and soul-destroying, but to remove access to "distractions".

Think about that for a while, and count the number of hours you're chained to your desk every week and you'll see how wrong the whole thing is. No amount of productivity surveys will help until that fundamental problem is solved.

Posted by Juha Saarinen at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)