Telephone Systems & Communications News - Stories of The Month
May 2010 - "Broadband" Minister to be Appointed
According to BBC News, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has suggested an appointment will be made in the area in the next couple of days.
A likely candidate for the role appears to be culture minister Ed Vaizey.
The main priorities for the new minister will be ensuring that all areas of the UK have a broadband speed of at least 2Mb/s. The broadband minister will also need to draw up a plan for getting next-generation broadband to the third of the country that is unlikely to be served by current commercial plans.
Meanwhile, regulator Ofcom has been working on writing up a code of conduct for ISPs file-sharing, following the introduction of the Digital Economy Act. The code is due to be published in the next few weeks and will offer details on how the procedure, copyright infringement reports and appeals will be handled.
April 2010 - Mobile Operator Backlash against "Fair Use Policy"
t’s an often heard observation in the industry that mobile data has become a victim of its own success. The unlimited data offerings used to drive 3G adoption have resulted in an unsustainable business model, with the result that operators are now scrambling to revise their usage terms and introduce new billing schemes. Vodafone UK issued one such warning to its consumers this week.
From June 1, Vodafone will scrap the fair usage policy on its 500MB Flexi or Value Pack offerings, introducing out of bundle charging for pay monthly customers that go over the 500MB limit.
Under the new charging structure, monthly bundle customers will pay £5 for every 500MB after the first 500MB, while customers without a monthly bundle will pay £0.50 for every 10MB after the first 25MB.
Vodafone said it is introducing a real-time notification service to alert its customers to their usage patterns and be completely transparent about these charges. “The reason we’re introducing these charges is to make it fairer for everyone, and to protect our network from data abuse,”
March 2010 - WiFi Outlawed by Digital Economy Bill
The government will not exempt universities, libraries and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week.
This would leave many organisations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access.
Lilian Edwards, professor of internet law at Sheffield University, told ZDNet UK on Thursday that the scenario described by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) will effectively outlaw open Wi-Fi for small businesses", and would leave libraries and universities in an uncertain position.
"This is going to be a very unfortunate measure for small businesses, particularly in a recession, many of whom are using open free Wi-Fi very effectively as a way to get the punters in," Edwards said.
"Even if they password protect, they then have two options — to pay someone like The Cloud to manage it for them, or take responsibility themselves for becoming an ISP effectively, and keep records for everyone they assign connections to, which is an impossible burden for a small café."
February 2010 - Safer Web Surfing Day
These days millions of us regularly post information about ourselves on the internet – from updates and photos on social networking sites to videos and blogs.
But do you ever think about what happens to that information? Photos, for example, can remain online and be seen by anybody years after they were initially posted.
It’s important that everyone knows how to manage their information and identity online, particularly children and young people.
But how can we be sure that children know what they should and shouldn’t post online or how to use the privacy settings on social networking sites?
Safe surfing
A new survey reveals that that the average 6-14 year old communicates with more than 1,100 people online in a year.
But despite this just over a quarter of the young people polled said their parents never talk to them about how they’re spending their time online.
And of those who did talk to their parents, under half said their parents talked to them about using the internet safely
‘Think before you post’ is the theme of this year’s Safer Internet Day, an annual initiative which promotes safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones.
‘Click clever, click safe’
Organisations from all over Europe will be helping parents, carers and children themselves be more aware of what they post online, as well as providing information, advice and help.
To support this year’s Safer Internet Day, the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) has a range of information and resources available at the Directgov website.
January 2010 - T-Mobile shuts down it's @home service
T-Mobile was so confident that its @Home landline replacement service would be such a draw for consumers that when it introduced the service in July 2008 it had a commercial showing a woman cutting down phone lines with a chain saw. Cautioning consumers not to literally cut down lines, the @Home service tried to sell the idea that you could cut the phone company's cord and get dirt cheap calling through your broadband line. But with so many new broadband VoIP options on the market, the @Home service never took off the way T-Mobile envisioned it and now it's going to stop selling the service. T-Mobile will, however, support existing @Home customers.
The idea was simple enough. For $10 a month, a user could make unlimited local and long-distance calls by plugging a T-Mobile provided box into their respective cable or DSL broadband line. Although T-Mobile did not disclose why it's cancelling the service, it's likely that T-Mobile realized just as did Verizon when it canceled its Hub service last fall that its customers would just use their wireless phone instead of a new landline replacement service
December 2009 - Panasonic named leader in small business phone systems for 2009 in North America
Research Data Confirms Panasonic Is #1 in Small Business Phone Systems; Leads in Market Share for Full Year 2009
Secaucus, NJ (May 12, 2010) – Panasonic System Networks Company of America, a leader in business telephone systems, today announced that it continued to lead the North American small business telephone market* by achieving #1 market share for the calendar year 2009 in North America. The new market information, released by the Parsippany, NJ-based information technology market research firm T3i Group, affirms Panasonic’s leading position in both the U.S. and Canadian markets in the business telephony arena.** The T3i report, InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications, reports that Panasonic achieved 17% market share for the U.S. market. The executive summary also notes that “Panasonic revenues grew due to a shift to IP-enhanced platforms.”
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