THUS is working with Internet Villages International to develop a green powered Mega Data Farm in the Scottish Borders. This will entail the development of 1000 new homes that will be connected with 100Mbps high speed Internet access in what will be a fully sustainable work and live community.
THUS communications recently taken over by C&W (the second largest provider after BT) will retain it’s identity but with a different format, it will be a stand alone company within C&W focusing on the mid-market in direct competition with BT and other providers.
C&W plan to use THUS as another large channel partner. There are re-dundancies planned as C&W rationalise staff and property. A great deal has happened at Your Communications the Manchester based provider that once was NORWEB before being taken over by THUS.
The whole market is fluid with take-overs and mergers happening almost weekly.
Who says BT never put up their prices?
BT has decided to raise their Boradband Wholesale prices and as far as the FCS are concerned not only are they complex but also not coherent with BT’s stated strategy.
This is because BT state that it has done this as an incentive to swutch to the 21st century network products but as availability will be somewhat patchy for the next 18 months or so there appears to be little incentive to switch now.
BT Hike Charges For MillionsMillions of BT subscribers have woken up to the fact that the letter dropping through their letter boxes relating to the new BT offers represent massive increases in phone costs from the UK giant.
From April the new structure offers FREE weekend calls for the first time for many customers, however you will be hit in the pocket when making week day calls instead.
Those Option 1 subscribers (now known as Unlimited weekend plan) will find their evening calls being charged at 1.5p per minute instead of 4.5p an hour. daytime calls rise from 3.35p per minute to 4p.
Line rental across the board will increase from £11 to £11.75 per month for customers paying by Direct Debit, those on paperless billing will continue to pay £10.50.
The 60% of BT customers who still receive their quarterly phone bill through their letter boxes will contribute a further £80 milli9on pound to BT coffers just from the line rental increase alone.
There are lots of Blogs that I really enjoy and today while reading one of them I came across something very interesting IP Desk Phone Sold in 2008 to Create 47 million KG of E Waste.
There is a great post about it at
http://www.realtime-unifiedcommunications.com/mobilityfixed_mobille_converge/2008/02/ip_desk_phones_sold_in_2008_to.htm
Phone Phreaking On The Rise
A recent outbreak of phone phreaking, or telephone system hacking, has hit one company for £100k another for £25k and yet another for £8k over a weekend! This is just the tip of the iceberg, with phone system hacking becoming as prvelant as PC Hacking.
It is a world wide problem with major organised crime behind the majority of attacks.
Last year organisations lost some $50bn in telephone calls illegally made through unprotected PABX’s.
MOBILE WiMAX
A recent report suggests that Mobile WiMAX 802.16e will exceed 80 million subscribers globally by 2013.
An Excellent BLOG on WiMAX can be found at http://www.bwianews.com/.
What is WiMAX?
Broadband Speed Update
ISP’s should be forced to abide by a code of practice to stop consumers being misled over broadband speeds.
The Ofcom consumer panel has taken up the gauntlet thrown by the consumer magazine ComputerActive and other organisations to attempt to put pressure on ISP’s to make it clear exactly what speeds a consumer can expect depending on their location at the point of sale.
BT INCREASES BUSINESS LINE RENTAL - DID YOU KNOW?
From 1st November 2007, BT increased their line rental by 5% and in a recent survey of small businesses over 90% were unaware of the price hike.
This increase has been sneaked through and only a detailed inspection of the BT web site will uncover the price rise. Standard line rental has increased to £14.37 per month which is £43.11 per quarter.
As usual, BT doe not broadcast a price increase, they blow the trumpet loud when they reduce a price but hide away price increases to try to avoid a backlash by their customers.
CommsIQ is advising all small businesses to take advantage of their discounted line rentals as soon a possible. BT outreach are still responsible for servicing a clients line and correcting any faults as and when they occur, but the client will still benefit from a reduction on the price they pay for the line rental part of their bill.
At the same time businesses can take advantage of the low rates CommsIQ charges their customers for Local, National and International calls, so the total telephone bill will show savings of up to 50% compared to the bill a business will receive from BT today.
PHREAKERS ON THE INCREASE
A recent outbreak of phone phreaking, or telephone system hacking, has hit one company for £100K-plus, another firm for £25K over a four day period, and another company robbed of £8K over a weekend. This is just a small sample of cases that Callista Group believes to be the tip of the ice berg.
Telephone system hacking is just as prevalent as hacker attacks on PCs, and it’s worldwide, big business and organised crime. Last year alone, telephone system hackers, or `phreakers`, generated more than £25 billion, worldwide, in telephone calls illegally made through unprotected PABXs.
Phreakers usually strike after hours or at the weekend when detection is least likely and they gain the most by routing mainly expensive international calls through exposed PABXs. Professionals consider it a matter of course that PCs are secured out-of-the-box and it’s unthinkable to leave a PC without protection connected to a corporate network. This is exactly what’s happening with PABXs, and it’s only because of a lack of education that it’s occurring. People need to know that they’re exposed.
Unlike a typical computer virus attack, it is always targeted. Phreakers relentlessly hunt down insecure telephone systems using their knowledge of PABX programming to breach their security with ease. Generally, PABX security cannot withstand this kind of focused assault.
Data Leakage
A growing concern for businesses of all sizes is highlighted in the current research by Sophos which reveals that 70% of businesses are concerned about sensitive material falling into the wrong hands as a result of data leakage via e-mail. A further 50% of employees admit to having accidently sent an embarrassing or sensitive email to the wrong person from the workplace, demonstrating that email leakage is a growing concern.
Mobile Phone Usage in Work Increase Costs
25% of british workers admit to preferring to use their mobile phone whilst in their workplace even whenthey may bestanding next to a land line extension.
This has accounted for a major increase in the costs of providing and using mobile phones for British business.
Macro GSM has two challenges Cost and Coverage with service providers offering coverage to 90% of the UK many isolated areas, in building areas and even some residential areas cannot get a service.
There is now a solution both to costs and coverage.
A new service can cut the mobile phone bill for a company by 25% - 45% and offer complete coverage regardless of where the caller or receive is situated.
Full details of this service can be found at PMN
It is worth finding out how you can reduce your mobile costs without changing handsets, provider or any otgher equipment by following this link PMN
TV phone home
Worldwide shipments of multimedia mobile phones will exceed 300 million units in 2008, outnumbering shipments of TV sets, according to a report, The report’s findings do not disparage the growth of TV sales fueled by lower prices and more content for HD sets, but rather “highlight the fact that the number of handsets that are capable of providing an entertainment experience is going to surpass the number of TV sets,” said Frank Dickson, Multimedia Intelligence’s chief research officer and the report’s author.
While watching video is a key reason why many consumers purchase multimedia devices, it’s not the only one, manufacturers are building more fully featured multimedia units.
Overall, the report said, the trend is to include more into handsets all the time, including connectivity options like Wi- Fi, Bluetooth and USB and consumer features like touch screens like the iPhone which, the analysts predict, will approach 200 million in sales by 2011
Mobile Phones on Offer.
A full range of Mobile Phones and Devices with rates to suit all needs can be found by visiting our Mobile Phone Section
It is very rare for me to step outside the world of communications but I am going to make an exception today to highlight a programme that one of my friends has developed to help anyone who has an Internet business to sell more.
Motivated Marketing proves to be just as powerful in strategies as it is in the software itself. Below you will find a student and customer of the course revealing what he experienced after installing it on his site.
Ryan Bessling of SourceCodeJackpot.com said:
“I have more than doubled my sales and I have gained 22 new affiliates that are selling my products for me at SourceCodeJackpot.com.
Thank you very much!”
You too can have the same results as Ryan when you install Motivated Marketing behind your website.
For full no obligation information please follow the link below:
Learn why people are saying that this software changed the way marketing is done on the internet for good!
Click Here to read more amazing success stories from people who applied Motivated Marketing and how they all now profit big from their own products and membership sites.
Truphone expands with addition of 260 hotspots
Truphone has announced the addition of 260 hotspots to the expanding estate of locations from where Truphone can be used to make free and low-cost mobile phone calls over Wi-Fi and the Internet. Rick Ehrlinspiel, CEO at Surf and Sip, said: “Truphone and Surf and Sip are giving people what they want: low cost calls, on phones they like, from places they want to be.”
21 million broadband lines in the UK by 2013
The current downward trend in a growth rate of net additions to the number of consumer broadband lines is not just a blip but shows the pattern for the future, predicts analyst company Point Topic.
About 330,000 and 550,000 consumer broadband lines were added in the middle two quarters of 2007 respectively, the lowest numbers since 2003. Almost 600,000 broadband lines (business and consumer) were added which is a better result than projected. Point Topic estimates that by the end of 2012 about 73% of homes and 85% of business premises will have a broadband connection.
Mobile VoIP set to eclipse voice over WiFi & become mainstream
Future generations of wireless technology – 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution), 3GPP2 UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband), WiMAX – are `all-IP`, so unless mobile operators continue to run separate voice networks in parallel, they will inevitably transition to VoIP at some point.
Some independent VoIP players are already exploiting the fact that today’s 3G networks can already support VoIP, putting dedicated software on smartphones, exploiting open operating systems, flat-rate data plans and features like “naked SIP” and built-in VoIP capability. Some operators are even offering their own VoIP software for PCs with wireless broadband.