A bad case of ‘connectivitis’
First it was the connected customer, the connected home and now the connected car – how much more connected can we be? In fact, most of us are so used to being connected that if we are not for any amount of time and for any reason we start to get a little tetchy. Smokers [...]
Education evolution needs communications class
When Roman children were being taught to read and write they were given a piece of slate and some chalk as their main educational tools, a practice that still carried on well into the 19th century. Before the release of Apple’s now ubiquitous iPad the technology pundits favorite name for it was the ‘iSlate.’ Sadly, [...]
Telecommunications to decide government! I’d love to see that.
So, you’ve heard me bleating about governments interfering with the telecommunications industry once too often, right? Well, in what may a world first, that very same industry may be instrumental in bringing down a government! You will be forgiven for perhaps not knowing that Australia recently held a national election and that the result, almost [...]
What ever happened to ‘fair’ trade?
1 on the telecommunications industry. I mentioned in a recent blog that governments and the regulators they control seem to be living in a past age when all telecommunications companies were government owned monopolies. Yes, we all know those old arguments about national security and spectrum management, but when governments start telling CSPs who they [...]
CSP gives itself ‘bill shock’
Australian CSP, Telstra, incurred as much as AU$90 million (US$80 million) in bad debts in its past financial year, caused largely by customers that disputed and didn’t pay expensive bills. Chief financial officer John Stanhope told an analyst meeting in Sydney recently that bad debts increased 44 percent in the year ended 30 June 2010 [...]
It’s official: ‘bill shock’ is dangerous for your health!
It’s official, ‘bill shock’ can cause untimely death. At least that’s what Thai CSP, TrueMove, says. As a roaming customer of TrueMove I was trying to activate my voicemail service whilst in France. After negotiating the TrueMove website, that changes regularly from Thai to English, depending which page you are viewing, I came across the [...]
Is cloud security really behind Intel acquisition?
Funny how some news stories are viewed differently. This week’s big IT headline was that Intel had bought McAfee for a massive $7.68 billion, but depending where you read about the story took on multiple personas. There is no doubt that the acquisition underlines Intel’s bet on “hardware-enhanced security” and demonstrates that that security is [...]
Can the big boys play keep Apple at bay?
NFC, or near field communications technology, should be a raging success outside of Korea and Japan, but it simply is not. Despite efforts by the GSMA to get the ball rolling with CSPs worldwide and the finance and transport industries agreeing on the profound benefits of having multiple payment methods ensconced in mobile devices. It’s [...]
Growing pains not always gains
CSPs facing the challenge of home market saturation, increased competition and lower margins have a number of options to take up in order to improve shareholder value. Cutting costs brings the fastest results both to bottom line and share price, but it’s not always the best long term path. Aggressive and cash-rich CSPs are looking [...]
Privacy vs Protection at what price?
I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I was starting to believe that telecoms regulators around the world were relaxing their draconian grip on an industry that has, for the most part, been ‘deregulated’ in some form or another for best part of thirty years. Before you start asking what I’ve been smoking, let me point [...]