Posts by Flak 353 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jan 2013
Too late now, but what should have happened in the UK is not the free for all infrastructure overbuild for residential customers where we now have two, three or sometimes more fibre providers in the same streets.
This is inefficient, wasteful and quite frankly bizarre. You don't get this for (fresh and waste) water, gas, electricity or roads. Why should fibre build be different?
What is the result - at the fibre level, low take up rates threaten to make fibre operators unviable. No-one wants to build in marginal areas without subsidy and LEO satellite services and 5G are now realistic alternatives for most.
Service differentiation could easily sit on top of generic (single mode) fibre services.
So, Ofcom as the regulator and policy makers have failed (IMHO) to create and maintain a fibre access market that is attractive, responsive and competitive. Other deployment models could/should have been chosen.
Let the down votes roll in, but this is my somewhat jaded view...
Having worked in Telecoms competing against BT as the incumbent for much of my working life, this does not surprise me at all, but shows again that Ofcom has BT in its various guises running rings round it.
The regulatory Laissez Faire attitude is problematic for one major reason: You cannot reverse time.
So, if you wait and see whether some anticompetitive practice is damaging - the damage will be done. And this is death by a thousand cuts - I have lost count how many times something was argued not to be damaging at all - only for reality to catch up and prove the opposite.
We need a stronger regulator with a bit of foresight who will be able to identify these kinds of issues and then set/enforce equitable principles and rules for the benefit of the wider market.
Curious to see how well this article will age.
I simply don't believe this metric at all.
More than happy for history to prove me wrong.
Previous form:
R100 in Scotland - originally due to have completed by end 2021 - now planned to be done by March 2028 (some delays caused by a challenged procurement process for one of the three region lots), with public funding increasing from £600m to some £640m for 'enhanced coverage'.
In short, I am not holding my breath...
Would be really interested to see how this is actually achieved.
I like the idea - a lot - but there are some considerations - regulatory, safety, insurance, practical - I am sure there are others.
You cannot use the grid to share - as then you would just be paid the export tariff. So do you have a private distribution infrastructure to one neighbour - or a few?
Building your own power sharing infrastructure will need to be done properly - not an extension lead slung across a fence - or it becomes a safety risk.
Does this impact the insurance policy? Probably a new one for them, but I can imagine what they would say.
Do you have neighbours you would be able to do this with - and not fall out with???
Very similar experience and numbers - with the difference that I have a 10 year interest free loan to pay for the infrastructure (6.5kW panels and 10kWh battery), installed just over 2 years ago.
Well worth it and looking to break even after around 8 years.
The problem with Fibre to the room infrastructure is that you then need an NTE that converts optical to electrical - and this needs power. And/or a wireless access point, which also needs power.
I have seen fibre to the room installations in the UK that also deliver TV signal (Sky and/or Freeview). All of the sudden you have three devices requiring power and a not very elegant in-room delivery.
PoE with 10Gbps delivery to a room should be sufficient in all but the most demanding deployments for a long time to come.
Realistic question - what equipment / application would be able to use this at line rate and what is the actual Internet feed to a building aggregating all of those connections? I suspect that most will top out at 10Gbps anyway.
Unfortunately my wife does not follow the Register, so I may need to drop some hints.
Actually saw the Space Shuttle Discovery coming in at Washington Dulles Airport in 2012 on the back of a 747 - totally unplanned and just happened to be there that day. Spectacular!
Had a second chance encounter with a Space Shuttle in NYC when the Enterprise came up the Hudson River on a barge a couple of months later. The crane to lift it from the barge to the deck of the Intrepid was the same one that lifted Sully's plane from the Hudson.
There is a huge information and experience disparity between buyers and sellers.
I have worked on the supply side for public sector IT & Telecoms services for over 25 years and I have NEVER come across a buyer who fully understood:
- what the actual client need is (rather than a 'want' from whoever shouts loudest in the client organisation),
- what they were buying,
- what was technically possible,
- what was commercially feasible or competitive,
- what was realistic from a risk perspective,
- what the interdependencies are with internal or partner teams, processes & technologies.
Our team on the supplier side would be deeply involved in several procurements for one service type every year.
On the buyer side, you are often faced with one person who is (at the time a certain service is being procured - say once every 5 years) just at the right level in their career where they get to do this once. They were too junior the time before and may have moved on to another role the next procurement comes around.
That is not a fair 'fight' and actually not ideal for both the buyer and the seller.
'[...] The tax collector's assurance they have not suffered any financial loss as a result of the fraud case' is somewhat misleading.
Every tax payer has suffered financial loss!
BTW I would like to understand how MFA was circumvented - and what has been done to ensure that cannot happen again.
1) Home hub Wifi, with all access points unaware of each other, shouting over each other and on default settings. Clients drop off the Wifi as soon as they leave the coverage of their home hub. There is often some sub-par public Wifi in corridors (and possibly even lifts), interfering with (and being impacted by) home hubs in apartments. This is like trying to have a conversation in a noisy pub with the music blaring.
2) Radio planned and properly designed Wifi, with APs connected to a controller. Clients can roam between APs across the whole building, it is possible to have private wireless networks configured and connected to in-apartment LAN ports. Much more efficient design and more akin to a corporate office setup. This assumes a single Wifi and broadband provider across the whole building. A far superior solution compared to 1.
Yes, have and use LAN ports also, but most client devices don't have physical ports anymore and the convenience of Wifi is compelling for most day to day use.
If I was staying in an apartment building, this difference could well be the deal maker or breaker!
Adaptation is needed similar to what has happened in maths exams.
Any work outside a controlled classroom environment must assume that AI is used by a student. 'How to' should be part of the curriculum and examination.
In an exam setting, this can be controlled for and non-AI questions could be assessed.
Both need to be taught and practiced and should be examined and graded. That way, there is still 'value' in education.
These kinds of projects are great - particularly when they are close to renewable generation sites.
Let's not forget microgeneration, micro-grids and micro-storage, however (in-home, EVs, etc.).
At scale, this can have a similar or greater effect and may also reduce the need for grid augmentation.
5 low earth orbit satellites (cruising altitude of just over 500km) will provide very intermittent service.
Apparently orbiting the earth twice a day, the photoshoot for this call will have been timed to perfection, both in terms of start time and duration.
Putting that aside, it is a fantastic achievement to have bi-directional comms between standard mobile phones and satellites, given the distance.
I am not sure how much cover this will be able to provide, even with a much enhanced roll-out.
Starlink is apparently planning a launch of direct-to-device mobile services from their 7000 current satellites.
Gen AI is going to be a bit like post-it notes, which people didn't know what to do with at first, but no home and office can live without today.
Through experimentation (both ad hoc and planned larger projects) winners will emerge - in terms of use cases, adoption best practice, applications, etc.
Hang on in there and, to paraphrase the Orange one's inaugural one liner: try, baby try!
This is just one of many recent examples where regulatory oversight should have prevented an issue rather than letting it get too far.
Quite often the damage is done and it is hardly possible to get it undone after being left unchecked for too long.
What other search engines are out there? A quick (Google) search reveals some names, but most consumers default to Google, just because it is there embedded in their devices.
Why does it take an individual to take this action when it should have been the CMA?
Other failing UK regulatory environments include - I am sure there are a few more:
Monopolies and Mergers Commission, then Competition Commission and now CMA (Competition and Markets Authority)
Ofcom (Broadcast and Telecoms)
Ofgem (Energy)
Ofwat (Water and Sewage)
FCA (Financial Conduct Authority)
ICO (Information Commissioner's Office)
Interested to see where this will end up, but the timescales are far too long, which is one of the problems - Google's market position is too entrenched already.
My focus was particularly on energy security rather than pricing / costs.
Every sovereign nation should ensure (if at all possible) that there is no or little dependence on other countries in terms of some of the essentials - energy, food and defense in particular. This is a policy rather than economic decision.
There are positive economic consequences in the medium to long term, however, if that independence is achieved (you mentioned price shocks earlier), as was brought into rude focus through geopolitical changes.
I understand the fascination with speed for mobile communications.
Economic operators also understand the cost reality, because cell sizes shrink as the frequency increases (up to perhaps 200m on a good day). There is virtually no penetration of solid objects and you pretty much need line of sight. In order for base stations to deliver the achievable radio throughput, each base station needs fibre backhaul.
The hardware cost, backhaul cost and simple logistics of delivering many additional base stations will mean that, realistically, there won't be blanket mmWave cover except perhaps in top traffic city centre areas and possibly event venues.
So don't get too excited about top speed wireless comms for consumers yet.
Happy to be proven wrong.
I was disappointed to see no conspiracy theories regarding this incident involving a certain global hardware company and the missing gentleman, but suspect the first post (of which there is only the evidence of deletion) may have contained some speculation.
On a different note, my thoughts are with his family.
I am normally a 'less is more' person when it comes to regulations, but in this case it is needed.
This is what is needed:
Originating caller carriers must only accept display caller IDs where the originating caller 'owns' the number. This may be a main office number or even a non-geographic one.
At least that way there would be traceability and accountability.
Hopefully they will also feel some further consequences with companies thinking twice before paying KPMG a king's ransom for their services, knowing that this went on.
Why do companies think that taking shortcuts is a good thing? This may work in the short term, but hardly ever in the long term.
FAIL, because that is what the automatic exam result should be for anyone caught up in this.
The term 'charade' is used in this article, which is not strong enough.
It is a murky morass.
We are pestered several times a day by these stupid popups which are still designed to beat us into submission (consent). They are not transparent! Who reads the long list of companies under each category, let alone understands who they are or what they do - and what they do with 'your' data?
And more recently the notion that you also consent to 'legitimate interest', adding further sliders you have to undo (I thought that was illegal already).
Solution:
Make 'no consent' the default and not require removing consent from legitimate interest categories. Have a button on a website where the operator can put forward all the arguments why someone should consent. And if someone continues to browse, they don't...
Simple. And overdue.
Oh - and what happens in the UK???
My evil little mind took no time at all to consider this scenario:
Load flying taxi with incendiaries or explosives (no passengers, no pilot) and request a flight to your desired destination.
Icon to the right for obvious reasons...
What countermeasures are in place or planned?
For anyone even remotely interested in the Space Shuttle this will be a 'must see'.
I was in NYC on the morning of 06 June 2012 when the Space Shuttle Enterprise came up the Hudson on a barge, to be lifted on to the Intrepid aircraft carrier - by the same crane which lifted UA1549 from the Hudson in 2009! Made our way down to the pier where hundreds of people had gathered to watch the spectacle. It took about 3 hours to attach the lifting frame and then lift the shuttle up on the flight deck of the Intrepid. Would love to go see it now.
The Endeavour in its new location will no doubt be spectacular! Just hope it will still be accessible - even in the vertical position.
A couple of years ago had a Masters student work at our company. He was working on a Masters project using LoRaWAN, an IoT wireless protocol. He was trying to get some ambitious interactions between an end device he had built (with e-ink display) and an application he had written. In his mid/late 20's and studying software engineering, he never had to work in a bandwidth constrained environment. As he investigated ways of getting a lot of information across a very constrained wireless link, I pointed him at legacy technologies and protocols which had already solved many of these issues out of necessity, indicating he may want to dust off some of these for his work.
Voice services don't need HD quality - 8kbps or even less may be fine where bandwidth is scarce.
SMS should still be considered an essential.
Networks need to be built so that these services can run even where signal strength is weak. Backward compatibility with lower frequency / longer range services must be maintained to provide those services!
