There’s one post that’s always near the top of my stats and it’s this one – VPN’s, EVPN’s and IVPN’s. With all the tech stuff out there and carrier pages and wikipedia too, there’s usually a good number of people checking out that post.

The improvement in technology has meant that location is now important. Why, because Location Based services (LBS) are a hot topic at the moment with a huge interest in services such as Foursquare and Gowalla both of which are growing huge user bases, specifically the former, having just passed One million users as reported by Techcrunch.

LBS requires the network to know where you are so that if can tailor information specific to that location i.e. advertising, or allow you to perform a task specific to that location “check in” for example. The benefit of this sharing of your location, is you can see where your friends are, arrange impromptu meetings, coffee maybe as you’re in the same location.

However, less recent developments in technology and in particular high speed wireless data networks allowed us to become nomadic workers not reliant on a single location where work must be performed. As a result of this the importance of location reduced as we can perform pretty much “everything everywhere”.

An office is still the most common place where knowledge based work is performed, but that’s changing as teleworking or mobile working becomes much more common. The late 19^th century concept of the offices is analogous to a factory, it’s the place where you must “check in”  between 9am and 5pm to be seen by your superiors to be working.

We started with the statement; The improvement in technology has meant that Location is now important. However if you look back just 18 months or less, the statement could easily have been just one letter different; The improvement in technology has meant that Location is not important, the office is everywhere. Just goes to show 18 months is a long time in the technology world.

Also posted on the Orange Business Live Blog

There’s a lot of buzz on the web right now about Google voice going public. But there’s still a huge problem, text messages.

What people are looking to do is disconnect their number from their sim card. People are keen to have a number that’s theirs but not tied to a specific handset (voip, fixed or mobile) and are looking to Google voice to give them that functionality. The extra benefit being they don’t have to carry or use the same device they are device independent.

Google voice will only give you half of that functionality, the voice portion, the text portion is still left on your handset. So you’re left holding multiple devices again, if you want to receive SMS or MMS.

This is where Truphone trumps Google Voice, Truphone disconnects your number from the device, you can install Truphone onto most mobile devices and then insert any sim, local or roaming and it’ll just adopt that network as the transport, but using your truphone number as the ‘from’ number for both voice and text. So your Truphone number can deal with both Voice and Text. But you’ve spotted the tiny issue, it only works for mobile devices.

A little while back (august 2008) I wrote to the guys at Truphone with the following message, with the relevant one here being point 4 enter the Grand Central space (Grand Central is now Google Voice)

1. Number choice – The ability to choose a number from those available and or buy a ‘gold’ (and silver?) number.
Some carriers used to have the concept of Gold and Silver numbers, where you paid for a more memorable number.  If you don’t want to buy a number, you’re given the ability to select a number from the db. For example, my (GSM) number is XXXX 7887898, but my truphone number is +44XXX8804483, so I’d maybe try for  07978 887898 or 887899 for example.

2. Number portability – port my GSM number to Truphone.
James mentioned this in our short and bad line quality call the other day. I think this would be great as I could port my number to truphone and then use any carrier pre-pay sim card behind it for gsm coverage. Assuming truphone anywhere would still provide my Truphone CLI so it wouldn’t matter which sim you used. This I’m sure could cut my personal phone bill from a grand a year to a few hundred. The ability to disconnect your well known phone number from the carrier and allow you to move around carriers, both national and international would be a great benefit and provide a huge amount of freedom.

3. CLI choice – The ability to select.
I think there’s been some issues in this area with fraud, but the ability to choose either the GSM or Truphone CLI to be presented shouldn’t be a problem. People could put Truphone on their whatever phone and use it where there wasn’t any GSM coverage, but I would want to present my GSM CLI which my contacts can identify. (assuming you haven’t ported your number)

4. Enter the Grand Central space?
We don’t get Grand central in the UK and it’s had problems because it doesn’t do SMS, (no sms forward so resorting to sms to voice!). Could Truphone step into this space, by allowing users to register several numbers which are called in simultaneously or in order. The ability to define when certain numbers can get through or go to voicemail. The SMS capability of Truphone gives you a huge advatange over Grand Central here.

We know Truphone bought Sim4Travel and are working on their own sim for roaming, but I think some work on the back end of the voice routing, which could then allow users to tweak call routing via a portal would allow a much richer functionality to be gained and provide users with what they want, a number that’s not connected to a specific device that handles both voice and text.

I’ve been playing with the two main connection managers for S60, Psiloc Connect and Birdsteps Connect. The idea of these apps is that they manage the connection your apps use, for example when at home they will prefer the faster wi-fi, but when there’s no wi-fi i.e. when you’re out and about, they switch to 3G.

So they make chosing which connection a set and forget expierence and they also help when you travel as you can remove the GSM access point from the list and only use wi-fi thus reducing the cost.

The Birdstep app is available for free in Downloads on the e-series devices, which is where I first found it. Birdstep’s app let’s your create an access group and uses that to manage your connections, so if you set your home wi-fi as your top access point it’ll allways try that first.

The plus point with the birdstep app, smart connect has an advantage over Psiloc’s app, in that it appears in the access list group as a GSM access point. Psiloc’s app appears as a wi-fi access point in the list, this causes a problem for those apps that only allow GSM access points to be used. The S60 Jaiku app for one, doesn’t work with the Psiloc app as it doesn’t use wi-fi access points. The jaiku S60 app uses the birdstep app just fine.

So with Birdstep you can set all your apps to be managed and use the quiker and less power draining wi-fi whilst at home. Whereas the Psiloc app can only manage those apps that can use any access point.

As regards roaming across access points, I’m not sure if this works for the Psiloc app, but I know it doesn’t with the free birdstep app. I was hoping that it allowed my device to roam seamlessly from wi-fi when I stepped outside and the back to wi-fi when i returned. That doesn’t happed with the free Birdstep app, it just sticks on GSM.

I’m going to try out the full birdstep app, smartroam on my phone in the next day or so see how that deals with roaming. The web site indicates it roams seamlessly and doesn’t require any intervention interms of network selection.

So if you’re always switching networks and want an app to manage the connection selection for you give either one of these apps a try.

It’s clear that privacy is a concern in today’s web 2.0 world; the post ‘Does Google’s flu-tracker raise privacy issues?’ talks about Google’s ability to mine data and its potential impact on privacy. This is a valid concern, but may appear insignificant  in the future, when simply walking across an airport, or even an office floor, could confirm your identify, highlight your political sympathies and provide your state of health to the management via an imperceptible event.

Ubiquitous Computing , described by Mark Weiser almost 20 years ago in the article entitled ‘Ubiquitous Computing #1‘ , sets out this new age of imperceptible computing. One major premise of Ubiquitous Computing , or Ubicomp, is that  the computing process will become almost invisible- this is because the falling cost of the micro-processors means that they can be inserted into the built environment at almost no cost. The insertion of these computers into the fabric of the built environment in which we live would allow computation to flourish away from the PC- a huge  development considering the extent to which we depend on the PC today .

So how could the computational power of Ubicomp be utilised? Imagine you are walking across your office lobby. Firstly the smart floor identifies who you are, and thus determines where you work -for example office 12, floor 48. The express lift door would open as you approach and whisk you off to floor 48 without so much as a button press. Of course, in the meantime, your office heating has come on, your coffee machine has powered up and the status of your inbox is being presented to you as you walk along the corridor in the scenery of the pictures on the wall- lots of bonfires and you’ll get the hint as to what you’re about to walk into.

The Ubicomp world is enormously interesting and many commentators believe that it’s already on its way. However, it presents a challenge to the level of control that individuals have over their own privacy. What should happen if, for instance, your combined data presents a picture to your employer that he deems to be damaging? Think Virgin Atlantic’s Facebook fiasco without the need for Facebook.

It appears that Ubicomp is going to happen, but this raises questions about who will manage the data, and who will control privacy and the rights of individuals. Given that TELCOs provide the network backbone, would they be a better choice to manage the data than the Government, or  a non-elected organisation ?

TELCOs have the capability to filter data travelling across interconnected networks, could they provide the answer and control the data and execute the privacy levels set by the users in the same way they manage firewall policies? Could you choose to allow all data flow and benefit from that, or would you want only a subset of your data to flow and put up with having to swipe your ID badge and press the button for floor 48.

also posted to Orange Business Live

My Dad lives in Spain, he’s been there a few years now and we’ve managed to keep in touch using BT, and then I changed that to first jajah and most recently to Rebtel.

However,  recently Dad had a visitor who brought a laptop when they came to stay. Dad’s lucky there a open wireless nearby it’s a bit flaky at times but from his sun deck its OK for grabbing your mail.

However, Dad’s visitor fired up Skype and called home for free, I’m not sure if they fired up video or not but my Dad did comment on the call quality. As a result my Dad was hooked and was keen to get a laptop of his own get on Skype.

So a few months back on a trip to the UK he picked up a Fujitsu-Siemens laptop and gave Telefonica a call and requested DSL. This is where he hit a stumblling block, as he doesn’t have a landline in his farmhouse, the DSL requested caused Telefonica a problem. Telefonica  said they could provide data over his phone but it’d take a while to sort out, but this dragged on and on, if you’ve ever worked with Telefonica you’ll know what I mean.

So I was a tad surprised when I got a call saying let’s try Skype we’ve bought a Vodafone dongle.

I had to remind him he should have bought an Orange one but nevermind, I’m pleased he’s got one. It offers a lot more flexibility for him rather than being tied to a DSL line at home, but all in it’s good, we’ve given Skype a go and it works fine.

It’s only been a few months since the last time I mentioned that I’d got a new role within Orange Business, but it’s all change again, I’ve moved Managers and become the Manager of a new group, Telecoms Integrated Operators.

The Sourcing department of Orange Business Services (OBS) has created a new Telecom Integrated Operators Group for Europe or TIO as it’s known. It’s role is to look after telecoms sourcing within the countries where there’s both a Orange Business Network and an Orange Mobile Network, so countries like, UK, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Ukraine, Poland etc. I’ve got a team of  managers across Europe reporting to me, which is great, so I’ll be polishing up my management skills again as well as learning the ins and outs of various new telecoms markets such as Poland which is very exciting and a great challenge.

So I’ve been with OBS now for 1 year and this is my 3rd role, so things move fast here!

I’ve been using the E71 for a couple of days now and I don’t know what to think, but something is nagging at me, that maybe this isn’t the perfect phone I’d hoped it would be. It may be just me and how the device is used rather than the device itself being at fault.

Let me try to explain, it’s as simple as some phones need only one hand to be operated, and some need two. The E71 (and the E61i) is for me a two handed devices, ie, to get the best out of it you need to use two hands (or two thumbs) to type, you can’t reach with your thumb in one handed operation mode to keys on the other side of the keyboard, it’s just too big. The E66 on the other hand (no pun intended) is a one handed operation device, which I think is where my head is in terms of devices that I need to use.

I had this same debate with myself a few years back, at the time I had a Treo and it too has an excellent thumb keyboard but it just required two hand operation and after considerable deliberation I swapped the Treo for a (HTC) Orange SPV C500 running windows mobile, which was a much smaller candy bar phone, but it only required one handed operation.

So part of me is saying this E71 is a great device, the battery is awesome, the keyboard (for two handed operation) is great and it’s damn fast, but part of me is saying do I want to have to stop what I’m doing something or let go of something in order to respond to a message, as that’s what you have to do if it’s a two handed device, let go of the handle of Air France shuttle bus, no chance. There’s plenty of occasions when two handed use is just impossible, carrying your suitcase and laptop bag when getting off a plane, phone one hand, laptop bag the other, respond to message, no chance.

Maybe it’s about what you use the device for, if it’s a blackberryesque laptop replacement and typing out emails then two handed operation is the speedier way to go, responding with one line emails and the odd SMS, then one handed and T9 is the way to go. It’s about what you need for a device, is it a laptop replacement or is it a phone. I think I’m in the one handed operation camp, but  Let me give it a few more days use and I’ll have a think again, but at the moment, if you put too devices on the table right now, the E66 and the E71 I’d take the E66, let’s see if my thinking changes over the next week or so.

Which camp or you in… single handed T9 speed merchant or two thumbed typing deamon?

There’s two reasons I ask this, because of the talk about selling laptops that I read about and an experience I had yesterday.

The selling laptops is interesting and broadband providers did it recently so it’s not a new model. TalkTalk and Orange offered either free or extremely cheap laptops if you signed up to their broadband packages for, I think, two years. intomobile‘s thinking is that carriers should subsidise not only handsets but just about any data enabled device to drive data usage.

Subsidising handsets is fine if the voice and data packages aren’t capped as you’ll get substantial revenue from the heavy users. Once the cap comes in, subsidising mobile data devices loses it’s sheen quickly as all costs to the users are capped and so is the carriers income for those product.

So I can’t see carriers moving into the adjacent market of high tech goods retailing just yet, even with the buying power of the carriers.

Moving into banking maybe a little too ambitious, what I actually mean is payments. With the Telco Dilemma series it’s becoming clear that looking at adjacent markets is one for the carriers to grow revenue. This Telco2.0 post indicates that Services as an adjacent market is growing, but payment is failing to gain any traction.

Key trend: Beyond IT services, nothing else does – entertainment, healthcare, education, mobile payments, e-commerce all fail to gain significant traction as stand-alone lines of business

I’m struggling to understand why payments aren’t taking off, why is there such reluctance, does someone else have a strangle hold on this area of business and not interested in playing, the banks maybe? My experience yesterday morning was as I do when I’m at home, is leave the house around 8am with the girls taking them to nursery. On the trip home I decided to call into Sainsbury’s and pickup some more coffee. Now most mornings like millions of people I leave the house with my keys and my phone, I can get back in or I can call for help, but I left my wallet on the shelf.

So I walk around the store pick up the coffee and some fresh bread and walk to the checkout, when I realise I don’t have my wallet. But I have my phone, I can pay for ringtones with my phone, via SMS, I can donate to charity via SMS, why can’t I pay for my coffee via SMS?

This payment method could be used in just about any situation, Starbucks, text your order, pay, get text when it’s ready for collection. The carries who provide the network infrastructure take a tiny cut, that’s a tiny cut of every single business transaction that takes place, don’t forget the revenue for the SMS too.

Your mobile phone bill will look a lot like your credit card bill and then we move into interest on balance if you don’t want or can’t pay for all your purchases in one go, looks like banking to me and I want the convenience it brings. You can delve into this model in a lot more detail, the security is there for example, pin numbers in the SMS, but we’ll stop there.

BMW is moving some car production to the US to save costs [via] This isn’t the first I’ve read about switching work back into the US. Infosys the India IT company was moving some helpdesk services back into the US and the mid west to be precise. The advances in remote working for call centre people means that “stay at home mom’s” can now log on and spend some time answering calls and then log back off again in an extremely flexible manner.