Posts by theloon 116 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2009
Oh the fun of a BT laptop with a BT internal IT build on it.
Last time I saw one of these it was just under 20mins to boot up and load all the 'security' soft/mal-ware install by BT IT. The constant hangs and crashes and totally draconian restrictions on Internet access, as the Internet is seen as a bad thing inside the corp, for stealing all their lovely telco revenue and destroying the 'walled garden'
As of this afternoon "Facebook Messenger Now Supports Voice Calling for U.S. Accounts" and it's coming to the UK soon too, naturally.
This is the type of voice App that around 1 billion users will soon have. Socially integrated, not dependent on having a fixed line somewhere in their life.
BT was approached about backending something similar, but the response was that Apps and Social Networking where neither important to customers or would catch on. The same BT that only a few years ago had a BT Retail exec telling the media that he could see no demand for more than 2meg to the home....
It is hard to be kind....
http://www.macrumors.com/2013/01/16/facebook-messenger-now-supports-voice-calling-for-u-s-accounts/
Why a thumbs down?
BT has completely failed to deliver a VOIP or any Next Gen voice product, despite having bet the farm on GCTO's 21CN design which was supposed to move the entire legacy voice network on to the new shiny IP network over 5 years ago.
They have no mobile network, having sold the license, not just for the cash but also a massive lack of foresight at the executive level.
Lets not forget, BT made promises to the financial markets that they would deliver on 21CN, and these promised filter down to the customers, who have been woefully delivered to.
There is still NO VOIP solution over fiber approved at BT, something that you have been able to find at most other national carriers for the last 5 years, NTT, Comcast, etc.
The lack of fiber in the UK is not just a cost or regulation issue, it is also down to massive failure from the national carrier who still spending and supporting a legacy network as they continue the internal management landgrab battles at the expense of the customers.
Another classic BT product 'innovation'. 5 years to late to be interesting, and less than half the service you need to really make it useful.
Exactly who is the target audience for this? Who has a mobile and it is not now their primary phone? If you have a minutes plan then it's not in your interest not to use all the minutes you have paid for, and if you have an unlimited plan then why do you care.
But what about 0800 etc numbers you cry. What about them........ ? The EU is bring the pricing for these over mobile to the same as landline, Ofcom is well underway with sorting this.
Who is going to call you on it? No one. For two reasons, we wish to call the person not the premise and if they have a mobile this is the default number to call them on....and dial in does not work anyway for this, which will be defended by BT with their usual quality assurance argument.
Yes it will likely save you some pennys if you are abroad, but this is hardly reason to keep your landline as well as your mobile at the every increasing line rental cost. Unless of course you either have no choice but to take a copper based broadband product with the still compulsory WLR element, which is frankly a scam that BT still lobbies Ofcom to protect.....
In a BT video interview a few months back they actually suggested everyone needs to their normal work places, as their domestic bandwidth will be limited during the Olympics. Good to see that after 5 years of planning they have added the capacity needed. Naturally this video has been deleted, but I was fortunate enough to watch the web-broadcast live.
You bring up some good points, but I am quite aware as to how networks and services work and especially how to emulate them over fiber. it is not that difficult to either blow or splice fibre, it hardly requires highly-skilled people, just some skilled people with the right equipment. Having done this for real myself at SPs I can tell you it's not rocket science.
Having developed little to no program over the last 20 years to stop 'polishing the copper' and to begin to migrate services over to fiber is a massive failure from BT, but hardly a surprise when you look at the expensive mess of 21CN. Exactly where is the digital voice migration BT promised the market would have happened by now? Although I would agree its to late to bother as it will never pay back, landline decline / move to mobile etc. However to build a replacement network based on the idea of a dying product (against mobile) was obvious to most people as a failure.
Other countries carriers have done FTTP, and have detailed plans for other legacy tdm/circuit services and have consulted the regulator to wind down such regulated products.
There is no copper in my place and my alarm system works just fine using an ATA.....
First of all it's not BT Openreach, it' "OpenReach a BT group company". They get very annoyed being called BT Openreach....lol
It's hardly new technology and to BT's credit they actually invented Air Blown Fibre in the 1980's. The fact that they are having to skill people up for something that is already 30 years old, kinda tell you how fast BT has been prepared to move in the fibre deployment.
OpenReach is still replacing damaged copper bundles with..... wait for it... copper.
They spent a lot of time counting the number of gadgets I had on me one time. All Apple except for my TomTom. Then followed it with some nonsense, taking me aside, about why to you need a iphone, ipod, ipad, mac and gps, oh and a small torch. 'Because they all perform different functions'... not a popular answer. Whatever dudes...
Best of all recently they wanted to see my boarding pass for the third time, just as I was walking into the body scanner. Told them it was electronic and therefore on my phone in the bag as instructed by TSA currently going through the xray machine.
That confused the dude...
Best bit was being asked for it again, as I got out of the body scanner.
It gets dumber and dumber each time we all fly...
I can only conclude that MS has done this with full knowledge it will kill DNT dead by being in breach of the agreement, which is what the ad industry wants.
Frankly this deserves investigation by FCC and EU bodies.
Some people somewhere are having a drink and a good laugh at the rest of us. Bastards.....
How about a lottery grant? Or what about we raise the basic rate of tax to pay for some developers to wack off designing software no one actually wants....
Hang on, is that not already funded and done by our tax pounds?!!
It's called Government IT....
Enough of our money spashed up the wall already
Epic Fail!
So who do you think should pay for it? The cost of living in a major city is already astronomical, so frankly "we gave" and I see no reason for the cities to be burdened with the cost of rural broadband with what would amount to another tax.
As DJ Smiley says, it's gonna be expensive, get over it....
On another point, the 100M fund is frankly hilarious, BT's own estimates are over 12 Billion to do this country wide.
If this ends up being paid for via taxes then the new fibre infrastructure should be publicly owed and turned into a utility.
Good for AA. I would have been kicked off for it and you would have been kicked off for it, so some primadona also gets kicked off for it.
It's a simple blanket rule as the airline staff are not going to be able to check out all devices from all the passengers to see how/if when they could be in transmit mode.
Yes we all know that tons of devices get left on,and so yeah, perhaps the rule is BS when it comes down to it. However today, just for flying, that is the simple rule....
Frankly he should also be arrested and fined, like the rest of us would be.
No point in bitching about it, FB is just gonna continue to steal your data from your mobile. You know it's gonna happen, so remove FB from your mobile.
FB is NOT an essential part of life. It's not a doctor, a teacher, a parent, food, water or sex.
It's just a load of social BS which for some reason we think is cool and sooooo necessary.
I had it, I fell for it and it's time wasting nonsense, but now it's time to get a life again and just switch it off.
You almost have to admire the stones on Milner.
Vision is an industry joke. Youview - another industry laugh. Was it not called Canvas? Oh and why does BT Wholesale Content Connect still seem to have no content after more than 5 years in development? Start-ups with far less resources have gone from zero to hero in less time!
You only have to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmhimnAsYWM to see one of the execs bumble his way through a CDN interview...
The entire industry is going in completely the opposite direction and BT continues to behave like the 3 wise monkeys.
Not blocking! A highly questionable statement. We all know BT blocks and actively gets in the way of the customer experince using QoS, claiming that they have to protect their customers from themselves and each other. Bit Torrents is blocked, you can test it yourself, no discrimination as to what it is, legal or otherwise. Capacity is "managed" to substantially less than your line speed and their is nothing the user can do about it, specially during peak times.
You could call BT if you want to hear the standard reply of "We only guarantee X speed in peak hours". X was 2meg last time I called customer service, I had a 8meg service, clocked at 7meg.
"We believe in an open internet" - yeah really?
Good luck blocking Newsbinz and other sites, cat and mouse time again. We will all watch this and giggle as the courts and SPs stumble about fly swatting.
How about turn up a service that people actually want? Portable, affordable, multidevice media platforms.... Oh that's right Apple and others already did ;)
BT is still trying to charge people to terminate the service, even if you are leaving because they have failed to fix faults.
Personally I told them to get stuffed and refused to pay, informing them I had no problems going to court over it, plus would then demand compensation for all the time wasted dealing with them, which was journaled and available for them to read ;)
Strange...they just let me go for free, but why should anyone have to get to threatening them...
Change needed for sure.
Good selection, but nothing beats having a good headphone amp to drive them with, and there are some fantastic amps from a crazy budget to relatively affordable one.
Personally I have the AKG-702, not the 701 in the review and they are just awesome, however they sound like crap without a decent headphone amp. I'm very happy using the cheapish Trends Audio PA-10 Tube amp.
Yep, BT actually still have the 2meg peak time policers in force on their network even if you have subscribed to higher packages.
Under congestion they only allow 2meg per user....
So the real question is, is this a fault or the capacity planning rules between BT Retail and Wholesale.
Just a few HP printers!!! No way Jose... I found this preferences extension which make it work from my iPhone to all my printers, including the one my mini can see over wifi from the Time Capsule.
Printopia
I'm not trying to sell it, so Google away. However it works a treat for me and I'm sure there are other alternatives out there.
The question is then, why has Apple not just done it? Come on Apple this is lame.....so it's a FAIL from me.
The only part of this that will be worth "watching" will be complete failure of all parties to deliver a working service.
Anyone else had the ADSL2+ BT downgrade? Most people I know now have less Broadband bandwidth than on ADSL1....some have even been without BB for weeks following it with BT telling them they have no 'mean time to repair' date on this.
Add to the broadband mess the BT Content play which, as pointed out in a previous TheRegister article, is a 'cough cough scream laugh scream again' "Wholesale" product which only BT Retail can actually take...
Oh it's gonna be a fun time...
Yeah this sounds like an Open Platform to me ;)
If you needed any more proof just how crazy the design of the BT network is....try a traceroute from your home to anything on the web...
Sit back and enjoy the ridiculous number of hops.....
And that is only what you can see and not including the Infrastructure underneath it.
This is not normal......except for BT ;)
Oh I can't wait to see this one. It's hard to find a single manager at BT that has got their hands dirty in the last 20 years. It's all death by powerpoint....
I can't wait to see some fat late 50's manager up a pole with a "street wiring diagram.ppt" in one hand and a screwdriver in the other...
Perhaps the army of MBA people Al-Noor hired could see what is chapter 12 of "Idiots Guide to 22 Steps of the BT Operating Model" and have a crack at it too.
Usual hilarious BT mess.
Obstructing the pavement is an offence under Section 137 of the Highways Act 1980 and BT should take that on and fix the OR jerk you.
Openreach is actually pretty good about these type of complaints. If they fail you will be amazed to discover that Ian actually reads his emails and you should just write directly to him at, ian.livingston@bt.com.
Yes of course the Union likes to forget that BT has continued to top up the massive pension pot hole, which is does not have to do.
Despite the almost 1 billion £s which will have been added to it over 2 years those same workers who will benefit form it are going on strike and complaining that life is not fair for only a 2% rise and 500£ bonus and an almost guarenteed job for life.
The sense of entitlement is a disgrace in the country.
The fact that we are in a major recession seems to have escaped most people at BT. You are lucky to have a damn job you idiots...
If you want better pay and benefits then look for a better job and be prepared to retrain and move locations like the rest of us, who btw don't have final salary pension or job for life.
Everything stated in the article is just why I did not buy it.
Multitasking and flash and you got my money Mr Job's
Backstop is a working Ubuntu on the iPad....and I still give you my money for the device.
If only I was a better or even a slightly decent programmer I would happly give up some time to the Ubuntu dev world to help....
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