Predictions are tricky things, and the telco industry is doubly tricky because years where you think everything will happen tend to be damp squibs and years when you’re not paying much attention tend to be the ones where everything goes off.
Roaming is one of those issues that makes most people despair of the telco sector. It seems so unfair and unjust and penalises customers for simply using their phones the way the telcos seemingly should want them to.
Nearly eight years ago I went to the small town of Enschede in the Netherlands to see a fibre-to-the-home rollout.
It’s always good to get out when things are going well, so that’s what I’m doing.
For those who don’t remember, 1997 was quite a strange year. Microsoft was about to launch Internet Explorer 4 and there were concerns about its ability to play nicely with Java. The US Department of Justice was demanding things be unbundled from Windows. Early users of a beta for something called NT 5.0 were reporting big problems and Lotus was promising that the new version of Notes would fix all the bugs and “features”. As one wag pointed out, it may well have done so but the new crop were twice as unpleasant.
As was pointed out in last week’s Forum, communications is the name of the game these days.
No, no and no. We are not going to kick off the new telecom-munications regime — something that’s been described as world class, as something we should all be justifiably proud of after all we’ve put up with to get here — with back room shenanigans and closed-door deals.
So what’s the solution to the problem? Garth Biggs, executive director of the HiGrowth Project, says the biggest issue is one of perception.
The New Zealand ICT industry is at the point of crisis over the number of new recruits coming into the industry, according to a report commissioned by the Game Developers Association.
It’s been seven years since Computerworld’s special issue on the Knowledge-Based Economy and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.
Vodafone New Zealand CEO Russell Stanners won’t rule out further investment in fixed-line ISPs by the cellphone giant, following the purchase of ihug.
Geoff Lawrie, formerly MD of Microsoft New Zealand, has been with Cisco for four months now, but he says the future is clear before him.
Call me slow if you like but I’ve just figured out what the internet is good for.
Was anyone else surprised to learn that BBC TV presenters with “significant brain injuries” aren’t too dissimilar from TV presenters that don’t have such damage?
The debate over Telecom’s wholesale services boils down to one simple word: equivalence. It’s what every ISP is asking for, it’s what Telecom talks about, it’s what the government wants. Everyone just wants to be treated the same way as everyone else. Unfortunately it’s not that easy.