Posts by Jon182

Nationwide DOUBLES card payments in fresh banking gaffe

Re: Mark my words

Hopefully the transaction ID's of the duplicates from that batch run were logged and then they can just put them through a payment reversal program, assuming they have one.

Reference: Experience of payment processing system at mobile operator

O2's titsup network struggles to find its feet

Re: Yes it happens elsewhere too...

France Telecom said Wednesday that the outage that affected its services the weekend was related to a software problem occurred on one of its equipment had suffered an update 48 hours earlier.

Heard by the Economic Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, the first CEO of French telecoms operator Stéphane Richard has elaborated on the scenario of giant failure that affected its 26 million subscribers and the operators' customers who rent its network. The incident affected a strategic asset for the operator, a set of servers whose mission is to locate and authenticate all subscribers permanently, hence the magnitude of the rare failure occurred early Friday of afternoon, the day of baccalaureate results.

Aggravating circumstance, no alert was triggered as a result of this anomaly, preventing the initiation of emergency equipment. Stéphane Richard said the expert work on the causes of the incident was not yet complete but it has already ruled out a virus attack or a traffic overload.

Natwest, RBS: When will bank glitch be fixed? Probably not today

So pleased I left them. Now with First Direct i.e. HSBC. Would not touch any of the nationalised banks with a barge pole. This on a Blackberry scale in terms of screw ups. Used to support payment processing systems at a mobile operator but now look after mobile data. No glacial batch processes to worry about.

New iPad 4G data connection will only work in America

HSPA+ will be good enough

I'm not bothered about LTE, Orange and T-Mobile are rolling out HSPA+ this year.

http://everythingeverywhere.com/2012/02/23/everything-everywhere-announces-major-steps-towards-a-4g-future/

LTE frequencies are a mess, looks like EE wil have the first LTE network in the UK - at 1800 Mhz!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17355399

Vodafone: Do you take Visa?

Orange Cash

Orange already has the Orange Cash prepaid card in the UK with Mastercard Pay Pass contactless. Looks like they will also link this to NFC phones at some point as per Vodafone.

Nokia ditches letters for all-number names

Matrix banana phone

First Nokia I had was the Orange Nk502 or 8110. That was the one used in the Matrix but modified to have a pop-out slider with Nokia on the bottom for extra product placement. Orange used their own numbering system which they soon ditched along with writing their own manuals to replace the manufacturer ones.

RIM workforce decimated: 2,000 jobs slashed

RIM are in big trouble

Blackberries are good at e-mail but not much else.

Nokia ‘giving away phones at cost’

N900 not good enough

I was given a free N900 by Nokia to test in Spring 2010. Browser, keyboard and multi-tasking were quite good but could not get it to work with Exchange and no apps. I sold it to Envirofone and now am very happy with my iPhone 4 which works very well with Exchange and Yahoo! and plenty of apps. I was a loyal Nokia buyer and now am with Apple, tells the story really.

Post Office going tap-cash in 2012

Fraud

You will need to treat it with the same care as you do actual cash in your wallet. With my contactless card I am liable for a maximum of £50 of fraudulent transactions which take place prior to me notifiying them of the loss. Nothing afterwards.

UK taxpayer 'fleeced' in spectrum selloff windfall

It all evens out

All the operators got fleeced by the government in the 3G auctions so I don't have a problem with it. If they gave 2G spectrum away for free then tough. They also made the mistake of giving Vodafone and Cellnet (now Telefonica UK) all the 900MHz spectrum, which is the most efficient for the now exploding use of data. Future operators were not considered.

World+dog yawn over NFC smartphone shopping

NFC Wars

Actually I think it is Apple and Google vs mobile operators. Look at the mobile payments and advertising JV announced in the UK between Vodafone, Telefonica and Everything Everywhere.

Coins will soon go the way of cheques

NFC is worth it just to be able stop walking around with half a ton of metal in your pockets. Then having to pay some machine to get them changed back into usable cash again.