VCs scarce, R&D dropping – spells trouble?

I remember the days when Venture Capitalists (VCs) used to stalk telecoms conferences looking for software companies with potential. investing in telecoms applications was no guarantee of success but they knew that the potential market for the products had a...

Aussie NBN Co/Telstra deal struck (maybe)

Newspaper headlines in Australia proclaimed on Sunday that Telstra had signed a deal with NBN Co to transfer customers from its copper network onto the National Broadband Network’s fibre network and share Telstra’s infrastructure. Not surprisingly, a press...

'Big Brother' in a Box

I guess one of the advantages of running an island nation the size of a big city with virtually no opposition is that you can make any sort of decision you like and everyone has to go along with it. However, with this level of power there is always the fear that it...

Today's alchemy – turning air into gold!

Did you know that the telecommunications industry could, single-handedly, save countries from potential bankruptcy? Here’s how it’s done. Firstly, you limit the availability of something in great demand, usually by legislation and heavy regulation (sometimes by...

Small 'mistake' for Google, big problem for the rest of us

I don’t intend to dwell on the story that Google ‘accidentally’ collected 600GB of data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks in 30 countries while out taking photographs for its Street View mapping service. Nor the fact that technical details revealed in a Google audit could...

Telus CTO 'on the money' with billing comments

Either Telus CTO, Ibrahim Gedeon, is an avid reader of my blogs or he is a brilliant man in his own right (probably the latter). At this week’s B/OSS Billing and OSS Conference being held in Washington, DC he said that telecom network operators needed to be more open...