
Sexy voice
I wonder what it's not like on helium though :-D
Paris - because she can probably barely string a pair of words together in 7 seconds - never mind several full sentences!
Vodafone jabbered its terms and conditions at an unreasonable clip in a radio ad, according to a complaint upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority. Many advertisers have trouble squeezing their verbalised small print into the end of a radio advert without boring customers, and Vodafone's latest promotion managed to …
"Vodafone contended that the ASA rules make no specification about the speed at which terms and conditions are read out, and so they couldn't be found to be breaking the rules"
So, because the regulations are not in minute detail corporate lawyers want to ignore common sense... helping to make our world crazier.
If it cannot be heard as it is too fast, then there is no point in saying it atall, therefore saying it too fast amounts to not saying it atall.
The idiot at vodafone really needs someone to do an "ignorant tw*t says what?" joke on them. (wayne's world style).
...but there's an unnatural pattern going on.
For example, "subject to status, availability and connection to an 18-month contract." sounds like "subject to status availiability. And connection to an 18-month contract [no fullstop]". The way she says the website address doesn't match how most people say website addresses.
So it's not only arguably too fast, it's also arguably not English at all....
You can't take out a contract without dealing with the real thing in the paperwork, so why bother with the 'smallprint' on radio anyway?
It just annoys the listeners. Much like the rest of the ad, probably.
I should know, I've been writing them for 25 years...
The one with earplugs in the pocket, please
I wonder if I can buy out some of these phone companies and ISPs. I'll offer them unlimited* money each month for the rest of their lives** for their businesses.
* Fair use of my money applies... only 2%*** of my total earnings will be paid to you each month.
** Based on 2%*** of their entire lifespan.
*** 2% figure based on a 50GB monthly limit compared to the maximum**** amount an 8MB connection could theoretically download in an average month.
**** Maximum worked out as follows: (b=bits / B=Bytes)
8Mb/s connection = 1MB/s
1MB/s = 60MB/minute
60MB/minute = 3600MB/hour
3600MB/hour = 86.4GB/day
86.4GB/day = 2592GB/month (30 day month)
I think I lost Paris at Hello
"Read the small print before signing so you're aware of how you'll be shafted".
Whats that, 14 words? Leaving them more time to get Dame Judi Dench* to sprout their lies.
Other industries could adopt similar approaches:-
"We'll have our house back if you stop paying us money"
"Its safer to invest your cash under your bed"
"McBurger meal depicted is made of rubber and not constructed by a spotty youff"
"You'll look like a right wally and people will assume you have a small penis if you drive this car"
and so on...
*Yes, I realise it wasn't her on the offending bit of the advert in question.
Very nice. Or how about an announcement before the ad break:
"The following, we played because we were paid to do so by someone with a vested interest and no concern at all for you."
And after:
"If you want that crap more than you want your cash, bear in mind richer people than you have the opposite opinion. Your call."
No problem at all. Plus the number of times you hear these bloody adverts, it'd only take a couple of listens to get it.
I don't tend to listen to commercial radio any more, but I did catch my local station the other day and heard a radio advert that could have been from twenty years ago. If you remember Radio Active's "Martins of Bond Street Sale" sketch, you will understand. Ghastly.
"Most normal people speak at around 60 words a minute..."
What???
Try 170 words per minute for the average english speaking adult. For those who remember him, Mr. Rogers* spoke at 124 wpm. In contrast, most high school students speak (and have full comprehension) at approx. 145 wpm., which can cause problems when teachers speak at what they feel to be a normal pace. 60 wpm, however, is more closely associated with those just learning the language and people with developmental disabilities.
-Daniel
* For those who don't know, Mr. Rogers was a very popular children's show host years ago on PBS here in the States.
If theres a 60 min call cap, that mean you can speak for an hour, then you have to hang up? or does this mean you only get 60 minutes per period you pay for?
A few filters, some speed adjustment, and I've gotten it nearly understandable at approx 11 seconds. Only 3 seconds more then the previous 8 seconds.
http://thewhoisowl.com/voda_adslow.mp3
Same thing with Terms & Conditions printed in grey mouse-type on your junk mail. Or scrolling Agree/Disagree online T&Cs. Or "see website". Or the lines at the foot of billboards that you'd need a telescope to decipher.
No-one* reads them.
So the question is: do the regulators really care about us punters? Or are they more interested in covering their behinds?
More effective (and honest) would be to insist that advertisers include all essential details in their main messages, with a ban on small print. And if that would take a 2-minute radio spot or a super-size billboard to explain, then the product is probably too complicated anyway.
Not to worry for now, though: just shove all the negative stuff in an unreadable/inaudible footnote and everyone** is happy.
* In the alternative universe of the asterisk, "no-one" can of course mean "some people". OK?
** Except the rest of us.
Because if they don't have it on the radio ad, the customer will come into the shop, ask for the deal they're advertising, and complain when they see the limitations. This usually happens because they're idiots who expect all information to be in the advert.
So to avert this catastrophe of slaespeople having to do their jobs, they try to put all of this information in the ad.
Paris, because she couldn't talk at all at one time
Vodafone is to begin retirement of its 3G network next year, saying this will free up frequencies to improve 4G and 5G services.
The move follows proposals by the UK government late last year to see 2G and 3G networks phased out by 2033. Other networks have already confirmed plans to start early, with BT phasing out 3G services for EE, Plusnet and BT Mobile subscribers from 2023.
Vodafone said it will begin retiring its 3G network in 2023 as part of a network modernisation programme.
Updated The Lapsus$ extortion gang briefly alleged over the weekend it had compromised Microsoft.
The devil-may-care cyber-crime ring has previously boasted of breaking into Nvidia, Samsung, Ubisoft, and others. Its modus operandi is to infiltrate a big target's network, exfiltrate sensitive internal data, and then make demands to prevent the public release of this material – and perhaps just release some of it anyway.
"We are aware of the claims and are investigating," a Microsoft spokesperson told The Register on Monday.
A leaked internal report details how Ericsson paid hundreds of millions of pounds to Islamic State terrorists in Iraq, substantiating earlier reports that the company was paying intermediaries to buy off ISIS on its behalf.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed over the weekend that the leaked report, which reviews the years 2011 to 2019, included names and precise details of how money from the company found its way to terrorists.
Rather than halting operations in Iraq as Islamic State ravaged the country, some personnel within Ericsson instead bribed "politically connected fixers and unvetted subcontractors", the ICIJ said, while the Swedish biz continued building potentially lucrative mobile networks.
Exclusive Britain's tax collection agency asked a contractor to use the SS7 mobile phone signalling protocol that would make available location data of alleged tax defaulters, a High Court lawsuit has revealed.
Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs had the potential to use SS7 to silently request that tax debtors' mobile phones give up location data over the past six years, according to papers filed in an obscure court case about a contract dispute.
SMS provider MMGRP Ltd, operators of HMRC's former 60886 text messaging service, filed a suit against the tax agency after losing the contract to send text messages on its behalf. Court documents obtained by The Register show that the secret surveillance capability was baked into otherwise mundane bulk SMS sending carried out by MMGRP Ltd.
Admiral, the UK-based insurance company, has been refused legal access to a non-customer's mobile phone location data after claiming it would help decide whether or not a policyholder was committing fraud.
The Court of Appeal of England and Wales' previously unnoticed decision comes as a similar one in Germany this week raises questions about the use of the law against third-party providers of tech services.
Vodafone did not object to Admiral's application for a Norwich Pharmacal order (NPO) in November 2020 to obtain call records of someone who was not an insurance customer – with Admiral's barrister telling judges that mobile phones "have enabled people to lie about their whereabouts."
Analysis Hot on the heels of the UK government enshrining in law the power to strip out Huawei, five European carriers have banded together to ask European policymakers to push the development of open radio access network (OpenRAN).
The operators – Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia (TIM), Telefónica, and Vodafone – published a report, "Building an OpenRAN system for Europe" [PDF], asking the EU to throw money and support at whitebox mobile infrastructure.
This is almost certainly in the hopes the (ideally) cheaper, interoperable kit will help the carriers' own bottom lines, but also to regain some control after several years of uncertainty, maintenance of mix-and-match kit, plus the shock of rip-and-replace mandates after many of them thought they had invested in a relatively cheap and lasting solution in the form of Huawei 5G equipment.
Vodafone has revealed the first vendors included in its OpenRAN rollout as the telco starts to rip and replace its network infrastructure across Wales and the South East of England.
The company first declared an intent to embrace OpenRAN last October, with the aim of replacing proprietary Huawei-made towers with alternatives centred around open standards. Dell, NEC, Samsung, Wind River, Capgemini Engineering, and Keysight Technologies were all selected to provide equipment, software, and integration services.
Vodafone selected generic Dell EMC PowerEdge iron to provide computational muscle, with the RAN software running within a virtualized container system provided by Wind River.
Vodafone has launched 5G SA (Standalone) trials in London, Manchester, and Cardiff in its largest test of the technology yet.
The commercial launch has allowed the carrier to experiment with new ways to commercialise its network, including network slicing – where a portion of network is dedicated to a specific customer for their exclusive use. It will also allow customers to test 5G SA devices on a live, public network.
Vodafone selected Ericsson's dual-mode 5G core network as the dedicated provider for this trial. It follows trials at Coventry University in 2020, and a separate trial in Spain.
With 5G adoption on the upswing, Samsung provided a detailed glimpse as to what a 6G world would look like.
"We already started 6G research with the commercialization target around 2030," said Sunghyun Choi, corporate senior vice president at Samsung Electronics, during a presentation at the Samsung Developer Conference webcast this week.
6G networks may start going up in 2030, he said, in line with a new network being introduced every 10 years. The first generation network came about in the mid 1980s, and a new generation of communications technology has occurred roughly each decade.
MBB Forum 2021 The "G" in 5G stands for Green, if the hours of keynotes at the Mobile Broadband Forum in Dubai are to be believed.
Run by Huawei, the forum was a mixture of in-person event and talking heads over occasionally grainy video and kicked off with an admission by Ken Hu, rotating chairman of the Shenzhen-based electronics giant, that the adoption of 5G – with its promise of faster speeds, higher bandwidth and lower latency – was still quite low for some applications.
Despite the dream five years ago, that the tech would link up everything, "we have not connected all things," Hu said.
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