Posted by admin on Aug 20, 2010 in
Uncategorized First published on MyBroadband | 20 August, 2010
Let me describe a situation that many of the exceptional individuals who frequent this site are probably familiar with.
You are sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon, the cars/bikes are lining up on the grid for the race and the phone goes. Invariably it is not one of your best mates asking if he can come round and watch the race at your place and bring beer with. Invariably it is a friend/relative/someone who you once went to school with who thinks you are god’s gift to technology and they are having some sort of technical problem with their computer and they are hoping that you might be able to help them.
So, being the good natured soul that you are, you ask a few vague questions in the hope that you might be able to figure out why they can’t print and before you know it you have missed, not only the start of the race, but also the obligatory first corner pile up and possibly the first set of pit stops and all you have left is the procession to the end of the race.
There is, of course, one thing worse than this situation and that is when you have volunteered to help out a mate/family member who needed help replacing their laptop and you stepped into the breach. To be fair you probably did this because you knew that if you left them alone they would buy some piece of junk and you would be left missing the grand prix because the machine they bought had just imploded and taken a whole day’s work with it.
But what happens when you get a great deal for a friend on a machine that you know that is pretty reliable and set it up for them and get everything up and running and all of a sudden they phone you up and not only is Window 7 randomly blue screening, but the printer doesn’t seem to work with Word or Acrobat (although it will print from Firefox and Wordpad) and half the USB ports just decide they aren’t going to work anymore.
Is it a dud computer? Has your friend done something monumentally stupid and ensured that you have to make a visit to their house and spend the better part of a weekend installing and uninstalling software, booting and rebooting the system? Or is this simply an issue that requires them to change one setting and everything will be all right?
The problem for me is that I feel responsible for the computer welfare of some of my friends. I want their experiences with their machines to be as seamless as mine generally is. And to be totally honest, I want them to think that I gave them the best technology advice they had ever had and that things have never been better.
Sadly 99% of the times helping people out with their IT problems, or even being known as the guy that knows something about computers, only results in more calls on Sunday afternoon as the Grand Prix is about to start, and this is something that should be avoided at all costs.
From my perspective I have achieved one of my goals in my IT support life and that was getting my brother to ditch his dialup connection and get ADSL and I am still working on my other goal. Namely finding a computer simple enough that my mother can use without having to call me for tech support once a day.
Tags: computing, tech support
Posted by admin on Aug 13, 2010 in
Cellular First published on MyBroadband | 13 August, 2010
Last week I wrote a column about the highs and lows that BlackBerry maker, Research in Motion (RIM) is going through at the moment and it would appear that some of the BlackBerry fanboys in the forums took offence to my take on the state of the smartphone market.
I was going to leave it alone, but then I was watching the Twitter feed from the Tech4Africa conference, where Justin Spratt, from Internet Solutions, was quoted as saying that by the end of next year BlackBerry will be in steep decline. I apologise to Justin if that is not exactly what he said, but it was tweeted by enough people that it should be close enough.
His argument seems to be that RIM are focussed on keeping the carriers happy and going forward it is much more important to keep the customers happy.
I don’t disagree with him, but I think that the fundamental flaw in the BlackBerry business model revolves around two issues.
The first of these, and the one that most people in the forums seemed to bring up, is the way that BlackBerry services are packaged. You pay a fixed fee for all the mail and internet access you can use on a monthly basis. For South Africans, who are used to paying through the nose for web access, this is a brilliant offer. No massive data bills and simple setup makes for a compelling offering. However, assuming that data costs are going to remain high indefinitely is a dangerous mistake to make. There will come a point when the lure of prettier and better handsets will overcome the attraction of fixed cost internet and email.
With Cell C and Telkom set to make waves in the mobile field it is likely that the one area that they might target is giving smartphone users a better deal in terms of voice and data bundles than they currently get.
The second issue that I have with BlackBerry is a direct consequence of the first. Because all communications to and from a BlackBerry user has to pass through a BlackBerry server, either controlled by RIM itself or by a company. For most consumers (not corporates) this means that there is not only a single point of failure for their email and internet access, but also a really attractive target for government snoops to use to intercept conversations.
Corporate types with their own servers are better off, but not everyone can afford to run their own server. So the majority of people will be feeding their information through a server that government spooks can get access to, if the government of the country you are in demands that RIM hands over the keys to the house.
Based on recent events, it would appear that RIM is not willing to lose markets in order to protect its users. If that is not worrisome then I am not sure what is. And I am not even a privacy fanatic.
Tags: blackberry, cellular
Posted by admin on Aug 5, 2010 in
Cellular First published on MyBroadband | 05 August, 2010
This week looks like a Charles Dickens novel for BlackBerry. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Just as RIM launched their big reveal of the BlackBerry Torch and the new BlackBerry 6 operating system, governments in the Middle East such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, are threatening to cut all local BlackBerry users off because they (the government, that is) can’t snoop on the encrypted traffic between BlackBerry users.
The problem is that if RIM were facing this kind of issue in more open societies it would probably be able to challenge this through the courts, but given the autocratic nature of the countries in question it seems that it has two choices, comply or shut up shop.
Even more worrying is that it appears that more and more countries have suddenly woken up to how BlackBerry moves information around the world and suddenly they are jumping up and down and shouting, “me too, me too”.
How the company will deal with half the world’s governments suddenly demanding that they change their business practises and let governments snoop (at will) on people’s private conversations is anyone’s guess.
It’s not like RIM needs any more challenges at the moment. For the first time since the start of the crackberry addiction, more Android phones were sold in the US than BlackBerrys. Even with the bad press that Apple is getting around the iPhone4 antenna issue, the damn things are still flying off the shelves. And then there is Windows Phone 7 that is going to hit the stores later this year. BlackBerry needs to come to the party and it is hoping that the combination of the Torch and the new operating system will be enough to keep it in the game.
For the most part I think that if staying in the game is its intention then it has done enough. From looking at reports from the launch they have fixed a lot of the issues with the OS that irked me (like getting a real web browser).
That combined with a decent range of handsets, from the Torch to the Curve and the Pearl, mean that corporates and keyboard junkies will keep on buying handsets just because that is what they have always had or because that is what their corporate IT department says they need to have to see their mail on the go.
BlackBerry will, however, keep losing market share, simply because most of the new entrants into the market are choosing to go with the more attractive offerings from the likes of Samsung, Apple and HTC.
BlackBerry has, over the course of the last two years, moved from being the dominant force in the smartphone market, to one that is constantly having to play catch up with companies that have a much better understanding of what the majority of users want and which are able to deliver it faster.
The jury is out on whether RIM is following the same path that Palm trod in the PDA market, but I, for one, am not planning to buy a Torch any time soon.
Tags: blackberry, cellular
Posted by admin on Jul 29, 2010 in
Uncategorized First published on MyBroadband | 29 July, 2010
You have to feel sorry for Telkom. Nobody loves them, the press love to write bad news stories about them and even worse, nobody understands them.
One of the biggest problems that Telkom faces is the simple fact that not only do people keep stealing its copper cables and its customers keep abandoning their fixed lines but they can’t even charge customers what it costs them to keep the phone network up and running.
According to recent reports it costs Telkom double what they charge us in line rental to keep your phone connected on a monthly basis and it hopes that you spend enough on services such as ADSL or calls to your granny in Perth to make up the difference. With lovers of broadband it gets lucky, but people like my sister, who only has a Telkom line to open the gate at her complex, it’s probably a losing proposition.
So what is Telkom to do? One potential solution is actually very easy. Get rid of the problem.
No I don’t mean cut everyone off, but rather get on Icasa’s case to accelerate the process of local loop unbundling (LLU).
For those who don’t know what the local loop is, it is every part of the telecoms network from the local exchange to the phone jack in your house and LLU involves giving all telecoms operators equal access to this infrastructure.
Now there are a number of ways to get this done, firstly Telkom could set a price for access and other operators would have to pay it, secondly Telkom could create a special, independent, division to run this and it would set the prices that everyone – including Telkom – would have to pay for access to the local loop. Finally, and this is my personal favourite, Telkom would take its local loop infrastructure, spin it off into a separate company that would be responsible for installing, maintaining and repairing the entire local loop infrastructure.
At this point you may think that I have lost my mind, why would Telkom want to give up its most valuable asset and make it easier for its competitors to steal its customers.
Well it’s very simple, once LLU happens the real cost of maintaining the network becomes a matter of public record. Telkom, and all its competitors will now have to pay the full cost of running the network. At the moment if you use another ISP Telkom only gets a part of the revenue generated by your line. With LLU Telkom will only be subsidising the lines of its customers and will be able to choose which customers it subsidises and if its competitors want to buy market share by subsidising the access fee then they would be free to do it as well.
But more importantly Telkom would be freed up from worrying about silly little things like how to secure its copper cables and handling installations and fixing line faults.
There are a few issues that would need to be ironed out, though. Who would want to buy this and could they make it profitable?
How would Telkom get this past its unions, which would probably throw a temper tantrum of note when the word ‘restructuring’ is mentioned?
Would Telkom be willing to give up its stranglehold on the local loop and compete on an equal footing with the rest of the market?
What happens to all those people that Telkom is subsidising and who wouldn’t be able to pay the higher access fees?
The one thing that I think is clear is that with an independently owned and operated local loop the SA telecommunications market would be a better place for all operators and consumers, and yes even for Telkom.
Posted by admin on Jul 27, 2010 in
Telecommunications First published on MyBroadband | 21 July, 2010
Telkom, as many of us have already figured out, is in a bit of a pickle.
Not only has it lost most of its senior management over the past month, but it has also written its investment in its Nigerian operations, Multilinks down to zero and is continuing to bleed fixed line subscribers at home.
The thing is that despite all of the trouble that the company is in, it is still a critical part of the South African telecommunications landscape. If Telkom were to cease operations tomorrow the entire country would be thrown into disarray. But what could possibly be done to get the behemoth that is Telkom, back on the tracks again.
There are a few options that could be on the table for whoever takes over at Telkom.
First would be to get rid of the albatross that is Multilinks. While I am sure that Jeffery Hedberg, who is running Telkom at the moment, has a good idea of the challenges facing Multilinks, the fact is that it is up against the wall in Nigeria. It is a CDMA operator in a strongly GSM market, the overall market is intensely competitive and likely to get more so and the average revenue per user in Nigeria is not exactly on par with South Africa or other – more developed markets. So find someone who will pay fair value for it and off load it fast. That would free up money and management time to focus on SA, where the real money still is.
The next problem is one that is more intractable than simply flogging off some unwanted assets. It hits to the heart of the problem – the shareholding.
The management at Telkom need to persuade their largest shareholders, the SA government, which owns around 40% of Telkom to sell its stake. I am of the opinion that having a single shareholder – that is not another telecoms operator – owning such a large stake in the company is simply not a good state of affairs. And additionally should anyone want to put in a bid for Telkom it would be practically impossible to pull off without government agreeing to it.
So maybe it would be better to simply cut the chains tying Telkom to the SA government and bring in an operator that would be able to turn Telkom into the world class operator that it has the potential to be.
There is, of course, the last flirtation with foreign ownership where SBC and Telekom Malaysia took every advantage to screw the SA telecoms users to make as much money as possible. Hopefully with a the regulatory environment very different and Telkom firmly on the back foot things will work out differently this time round.
Maybe it’s even time for a smart investor to take possession of Telkom and sell off the various assets to the rest of the industry and see what happens.
Tags: telecoms, Telkom
Posted by admin on Feb 17, 2010 in
Broadband First published on MyBroadband | 17 February, 2010
Ben Kelly feels that it is high time that Neotel reduces its data rates to compete more effectively against ADSL
I like to joke that I am Neotel’s only happy customer. From a brief glance at the MyBroadband forums it would appear that there are a number of people that do not feel that they receive the kind of service from Neotel that they were promised.
For my part I have nothing to complain about, my link stays up most of the time, I get speeds that I would consider decent and I haven’t needed to install an external antenna.
When I signed up a year ago I did some basic maths and I decided that based on the cost of getting an ADSL line installed and the cost of a 4Mbps ADSL service and a decent amount of bandwidth it would be better value for money to rather go the Neotel route.
Twelve months later and the picture is quite a bit different.
Now at this point I would ask readers to indulge me slightly and understand that I have neither the time nor the inclination to extensively research every ISP and the minutia of their ADSL offerings so I have just used G-Connect as a basis for working out how much it would cost to acquire a specific amount of ADSL bandwidth.
To buy 5GB of ADSL bandwidth would cost about 13c/MB, including the Telkom line rental and a 4Mbps ADSL link. To get a similar service from Neotel would set you back about 8c/MB.
So on that standard it would look like it was better value to get Neotel than ADSL. However, when you get up to the higher usage scenarios then ADSL comes into its own.
The problem that Neotel faces, in my opinion, is that its cost per MB when one moves out of bundle is simply too expensive. When it launched R80/GB was sort of the average for bandwidth no matter what service you used. Today that is not the case.
Considering that I can buy ADSL bandwidth for as little as R14/GB, Neotel is starting to look rather expensive.
It is time for Neotel to start passing on some of the savings it got from the launch of Seacom to us, its loyal customers. I am not asking for R14/GB, as nice as that would be, but maybe R40/GB would be more in line with the market as it stands.
That said the one thing that Neotel needs to get done faster than a price cut is a reliable system for monitoring our usage. Already there are rumblings about Neotel charging users for bandwidth that they haven’t used and the truth is that this matter will not be resolved without giving us some system that allows us to see how much bandwidth we use on a daily basis.
If Telkom has, for years now, been able to send a daily email to its users telling them exactly how much data they have used then I see no reason why Neotel shouldn’t be able to do the same.
If I were into conspiracies then I might speculate that Neotel would prefer to keep us in the dark because we are likely to use more data, above and beyond our allocated 5, 10 or 15GB if we have no idea how much we have left.
And telling me that I can call the contact centre for an answer is no bloody help at all. I don’t have the time to do this every day and keep a log of my usage.
Come on Neotel, get with the program, give us our bandwidth monitor and while you are at it cut the price of out-of-bundle data usage as well.
Tags: ADSL, broadband, neotel
Posted by admin on Feb 11, 2010 in
Uncategorized Over the past three months I have read seven books, maybe it’s eight but seven of those I read were not books in the conventional sense.
Three of them I read on the Amazon Kindle I was sent to review and four were audio books, which I downloaded from Audible.
That led me to think, the book I am reading at the moment, the second part of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque cycle ‘The Confusion’ is sitting on my bedside table with me only one sixth of the way through it.
The problem is that every time I pick it up I have to strain my eyes to read the rather small print. Now this may be a sign that I am getting old, but I honestly think that the print in that particular volume is too small to be comfortably read.
At over 800 pages, however, I am not sure how they could have fitted all the words into the space without reducing the font to the size it is.
The problem is that I am getting through a remarkable amount of books by listening to them in the car. Great books narrated by people who actually know how to speak English. Although I have to say that the chap narrating the book I am listening to at the moment ‘Dies the Fire’ by SM Sterling really needs a lesson on how to pronounce the words rations (rayshuns) and Edinburgh (Edenbura). The narrator of the latest Jasper Forde book, ‘Shades of Grey’ on the other hand was a real master. So I am getting through a fair quota of literature and just because I am listening to them instead of reading them directly doesn’t diminish my experience.
I would argue that my experience of the book is actually enhanced by listening to it. It may take a bit longer than my usual speed reading to get to the end, but many of the subtle nuances that I would normally gloss over in my haste to get to the next page I actually pick up while listening to an audio book. That and I hear it is frowned upon to read novels in traffic, especially when you have a tendency to get lost in a book like I do.
When it comes to reading on an ebook reader such as the Kindle I found that I was reading even faster than normal. Now, I am not sure if that was because of the number of words on the page or the novelty of the device or not having to hold the book open but I flew through the books I read on the Kindle.
The key to ebooks is two-fold, the ability to download books immediately from a library more massive than the largest Exclusive Books and to be able adjust the reading experience to what you find most comfortable.
I am particularly interested to see how the iPad fares as an ebook reader because the non-backlit screen of the Kindle and its ilk is particularly appealing to me. I get the feeling that the iPad is going to fail as an ebook reader simply because it will place too much strain on the eyes of the reader in low light conditions.
I hope that at some point in the future someone will come up with a screen that not only meets Apple’s demanding standards for display clarity as well as being able to switch into a non-backlit mode for reading the great, or not so great, works of literature.
Just for the record I don’t care who makes this device as long as it is easy to use and has access to a great ebook store. I have a funny feeling that it is more likely to run Android than any other OS and that will be great news for all of us.
Tags: audiobooks, e-readers, media
Posted by admin on Feb 4, 2010 in
Media First published on MyBroadband | 04 February, 2010
The first movie I saw in 3D was Up, in the middle of last year. Now I am a huge fan of anything that comes out of Pixar and Up did not disappoint. The only distraction I had was trying to keep my four-year-old son from taking his glasses off. Eventually I gave up and I guess he saw a blurry version of the movie while the rest of us were enjoying the film.
When Avatar came out I dragged my girlfriend along to the movie on the Thursday before it officially opened and I made sure we watched in 3D and I was not disappointed.
The greatest part of both those experiences is that it really allows you to immerse yourself in the film as film makers seem to have understood that 3D is not about scaring the crap out of your audiences, but rather adding an additional dimension to the viewing experience.
For some reason the technology gods have decided that it is not good enough to have 3D tech in the cinemas, but we also need it in our lounges as well.
Personally, I am not completely sold on this idea. From my cinema experience I can see the value of immersing your audience in the movie and if you were watching a movie at home there is an argument to be made for watching movies in 3D, but for me this is where it ends.
When it comes to 3D tech there are two options, either you have a special screen that provides you with some level of depth or you have to wear glasses to ensure you get the full 3D effect.
The only reason I would want a 3D capable TV would be to play games on it. Firstly because games are a focused activity only the people actively playing the game need to have the equipment – with TV broadcasts, or even with sport I struggle to see the point of doing this in 3D.
The reality of the situation is that for 90% of television viewing activities there is no call for 3D. If the television companies are throwing in the tech for free that is one issue, but if this is something that I am expected to pay extra for I think I will take a pass this time.
I’ll get my 3D fix in the cinema and stick to 2D at home, thanks very much.
Tags: 3D, movies, TV
Posted by admin on Jan 28, 2010 in
Computing First published on MyBroadband | 28 January, 2010
Last night at 8pm SA Standard Time about a billion geeks and I gathered around whatever Internet connected device we could lay our hands on and listened or watched someone else listen and then type up the launch of the mythical Apple Tablet, or the iPad as we must now learn to call it.
At the end of the presentation something strange happened, or rather didn’t happen. The world didn’t end, there was no heavenly host signing hallelujah and there was no shining light with a big voice proclaiming the second coming.
OK so maybe I exaggerate slightly, but in reality that was the only way that the lofty expectations of many of the Apple faithful were going to be satisfied.
To be brutally honest what we got was a large iPod touch with an option for 3G connectivity. Those people that thought they were going to get something that could run a full version of Mac OSX were so optimistic in their expectations they probably really believe that they are going to win the lottery this weekend.
The screen is 10-inches in size and that is exponentially larger than that on the iPhone or iPod touch and it is full multi-touch enabled. You can run any app from the app store, but only one a time, which when you consider that the iPad has a decent processor and a much larger battery you would have thought that Apple would have figured out how to allow multi-tasking. The only explanation I can come up with is that because it is running the iPhone OS it is bound by the same restrictions that irritate so many iPhone/iPod touch users.
I can probably think of a hundred other things that I would love to have on this kind of device, including using it for video calls.
This said the one thing that we should all be used to from Apple by now is that much of what makes the company successful is what the company leaves out of its devices, not what it puts into them. So there is no camera and it isn’t a phone, although I am sure that you could use Skype on it (lack of multitasking not withstanding).
What it is, in my opinion, is the best general-purpose portable content consumption device created to date. The TV will always be better for video, the Kindle is probably a better ebook reader, the iPod will always be better for music and the PC will always be better for surfing the Internet. The iPad, however, combines a set of this functionality into a single portable device that could probably meet the needs of most people that consume their media in digital format.
Granted you are locked into Apple’s little closed world and for many people this is simply unacceptable. I hope those people of this persuasion reading this article will have made it this far down and will keep the flames down to char-grill level instead of the usual incinerate.
What I will say is what I say to all my friends that ask me about the Apple vs Windows divide or the iPhone vs Nokia vs Android debate. Every person has a way of interacting with technology. Some people naturally drift towards Windows because it fits the way their minds work and some people drift towards Apple for the same reason.
The iPad is another one of those devices, if it fits the way you consume media then this could very well be an indispensible addition to you digital life. If not, then I apologise for the onslaught of hype that this has unleashed. Maybe you can think of it as a warm up for the madness of the World Cup in June.
Tags: Apple, iPad, media, tablet