Intelligent Communications Update
OrangeCuts Back on Resellers
As a follow on from our report on 10th September it has emerged that Orange possibly through their investigation into data leaking from the Orange extranet have decided to terminate around 150 resellers.
A number of new clients who tried to register their SIM last week have been unable to do so with one source saying that he had already printed stationery showing his new number, etc, and now Orange are saying his SIM and telephone number do not exist on their records and need to be changed.
One large reseller in Leicestershire has been forced to lay off staff and put his company into administration as Orange are withholding commissions due to the company.
Companies can Eavesdrop
Corporations who want to record every call made by an employee on a land line or mobile can do so by using a new voice recording application from Compliant Voice.
The software, which runs on Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry-based handsets, routes all outgoing calls through a voice-proxy, which does the recording. Incoming calls are made to a new number connected to the proxy, which forwards the call. Alternatively, the software on the handset can bounce incoming calls to the proxy, which connects back, while listening in.
Whether this will prove to be the downfall for Insider Trading or leaking sensitive information is doubtful as there is no way of intercepting calls made on cheap pay-as-you go mobile bought from the local supermarket.
More Call Centre Redundancies
Blackberries for the MOD
The Ministry of Defence in a drive to make its workforce more productive and flexible are issuing any MOD worker who has a business need with a BlackBerry.
An MOD spokesperson said the MOD believed that this action would encourage flexible working and allow staff to utilize unproductive time such as when travelling.
A Bigger Slice of iphone Pie for O2
In an effort to defend Apple’s revenue sharing deal over the iphone, O2 believe that they will become more common as technology truly converges. A spokesperson said that if Apple brought a bigger share of the pie to the table of course O2 would be interested to share it.
The losers in a converged world would be the operators who failed to offer their customers true value.
The September edition of Which magazine berates iphone as it is not true 3G compatible plus the batteries need to be returned to Apple to be replaced.
In a report issued late last month Ofcom the phone regulator reported that they expected the mobile web market to explode due to the increasing convergence of data and voice services plus the rise in broadband penetration.
A surprise was the belief that there will also be a strong growth in mobile internet uptake. A significant factor has been the increase in the uptake of 3G taking it up to 7.8 million subscribers although it is also buoyed by the fact that most network operators now offer all you can eat data tariffs for around £5 per month.
Content providers are making great strides in offering consumers an experience approaching that available to users of fixed-line Internet.
Orange Move Customers
Orange has decided to remove all it’s users from the unmetered dial-up service onto broadband, and it looks like the customer will have no choice.
December has been set as the closing date of the dial-up service with customers being offered a Broadband package of 2Mbs for a low price of £11.99 which is actually £3 less than they were paying for the dial-up service.
However, consumers feel that Orange have not given them enough notice of the change as they have only 14 days to accept the offer. The feeling is that it smacks of the same bully boy tactics of last August when Orange terminated inactive accounts of the old Freeserve/Wanadoo service, which left some clients that had emails, stored on the servers no access to their emails. Orange did increase the period a user could contact the website to activate their dormant account from 90 days to 260 days earlier this year, but they failed to mention that once an account was deactivated it could never be re-activated again.
It is not known how many users this will effect or indeed, why anyone would want to be paying £15 per month for a dial-up connection if they could get broadband. However, there is still many areas where broadband is not available and the bad news for those people is that this could be the start of the end for dial-up unmetered connections.
AHHHHHHHHH! Daisy
Giving a new meaning to the phrase so well known for a famous gravy maker Daisy Communications staff took a brown dip to promote the inaugural World Gravy Wrestling Championships held this weekend.
The owner of the gastro-pub the Fenwick Arms in Lancaster and the man behind the Campaign for Real Gravy provided the gravy at the offices of Daisy Communications in Colne; Lancashire.
The award winning company were striving for another award that of World Gravy Wrestling Champions. Filmed by an ITV crew 4 members of staff got into the swing of things but agreed that they needed some practice if they were to challenge for the honours next year.
Teams that entered all did so to help support and raise money for the East Lancashire Hospice.