NETWORK OUTAGE

We have been advised of a major national outage, affecting outgoing calls to NGNS and mobile numbers.

Believe it or not we have been advised that this is due to network congestion in response to the release of the Take That tickets.

Our carrier is working on this issue as a top priority to restore service ASAP.
We will keep you informed of all progress with regards to this outage.

The internet will transform the UK economy

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) claims that if the internet was an economic sector it would be the UK's fifth largest. This would make the sector larger than the construction, transport and utilities industries.

According to the research the internet is worth £100bn to the UK economy. Over half of that is made up of the amount of time that users spend on online shopping and on the cost of their connections and devices to access the web. Approximately 40% of the rest comes from investment in the UK's internet infrastructure, government IT spending and net exports.


Google commissioned the research, and according to Matt Brittin, managing director of Google UK: "The internet is a central pillar of the UK's economy.


"The sector has come of age, and with great prospects for further growth the UK internet economy will be vital to the UK's future prosperity," he added.

iPads only for the rich

A Nielsen study suggests that Tablet computers are only owned by a high-earning minority.

The study found that only 4% of the 5,000 quizzed own iPads, compared to 6% for e-book readers and 25% for smartphones.



Interestingly it also found that users were not inclined to download any extra programmes onto the device, with only 9% of the iPad owners quizzed admitting to doing it. Of those that had bought apps, games, books and music were the most popular extras.


The research also revealed that iPad owners tend to be younger, with 63% of them under 35 years old, and nearly two-thirds being male.

Quote for the Week!

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

Pericles

Prepare yourself for the Government Cutbacks

The Coalition Government’s controversial Spending Review is being supported by a number of large business owners, and everyone, including SME owners, are bracing themselves for change.

Reducing costs is top of everyone’s agenda, but there is plenty of potential for small changes making BIG differences:

Speak to us about packaging your calls, lines, broadband and mobiles.

 Speak to us about getting better prices and bespoke tariffs.

 Speak to us about new technology that could reduce travel expenses, and potential energy bills.

 Speak to us about call management software that gives you the power to identify wasted resources.

 Speak to us about managed services.


Speak to us for a FREE no-obligation discussion about what is possible for you.


0800 092 1471

18th in the Broadband World Ranking's

The UK is gradually climbing the broadband world rankings but according to a global study, we are not yet “ready for tomorrow”.

Cisco has commissioned this year’s annual report into the world’s broadband capabilities. It’s a study that looks at countries performance in terms of both quality and penetration of net services. The UK is now ranked 18th out of 72 countries, up from 25th place last year, with South Korea once again ranked first.

The applications ascribed to tomorrow's internet include high definition internet TV and high-quality video communications; because such applications would require an average download speed of 11Mbps and an upload speed of 5Mbps.


Whilst the UK has improved significantly in the last two years, we are still not prepared for what is ahead.


Mr de Bernabe, a Senior Director at Cisco, said the UK was likely to experience a "step-change" in its broadband footprint over the next 12 months, because of increased fibre optic roll-outs from BT and extensions of Virgin Media's cable network.


"Where similar fibre roll-outs have happened the download speeds improved by 50 or 60% in just one year," he said.

First Click 2010 launched

9.2 million adults have never used the internet

60% of adults use the internet daily
 

Only 1% of 16 to 24-year-olds have never been online
Source: Office of National Statistics for the UK


Today, Terry Wogan has introduced First Click on Radio 2. First Click is a campaign running across the BBC people in the UK who do not have access to the internet to take the first steps to get online.

Quote for the Week!

“Change is inevitable – except from a vending machine.”

Robert C. Gallagher

Friday Factoid!

"The average person spends two years on the phone in a lifetime."

(Better make sure the service is right then...call Adodo now 0800 092 1471 and see what we can do)

Access to BT infrastructure granted by Ofcom

Ofcom has decided that BT are to allow competitors control of its fibre cables in a move designed to promote the take-up of superfast broadband services.

They have also insisted that the telecoms giant must give rival ISPs access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles to build their own fibre networks. However, the regulators have left the decision of pricing in the hands of BT.


The decision offers support to the ambitious and ongoing roll out of superfast broadband. Originally the plan was to nationally deliver access to basic 2Mbps broadband everywhere by 2012, however, the Government have pushed this back to 2015. A date that will put us behind in the European Union, which wants member states to provide citizens with a minimum of 30Mbps broadband by 2020 and basic broadband connections by 2013.

A warning for laptop users

It seems that whilst they are called laptops, we should not actually use them on our laps for prolonged periods of time.

The heat generated by the underside of the machine is enough to cause a nasty rash, especially if used against bare skin for hours at a time.


The full name for the condition is erythema ab igne, now nicknamed "toasted skin syndrome", and used to be common in people exposed to heat as part of their work, such as bakers and silversmiths. However, it is now being seen in some laptop users.


Where possible, laptops should be placed on a table or hard surface, and should not be placed on naked skin as machine temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius and above.

Windows Phone 7 is here!

Two years since they launched their first smartphone carrying Google’s Android mobile phone software, HTC have unveiled five new handsets with Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 operating system. By late October these phones should be available in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

Up until now the company has failed to provide a credible challenge to rival operating systems from Apple, Google, Research in Motion and Nokia. They have faced criticism due to previous operating systems having limited functionality and lack of applications.


Microsoft says it has rebuilt the user interface from the bottom up, making Windows Phone 7 more user-friendly. Having placed massive importance on the success of this platform, this could well decide their future position in the smartphone market.


"If it fails to claw back market share lost to iPhone and Android, then Windows Phone 7 may well mark the point at which Microsoft turns its back on smartphones forever" said Tony Cripps of technology consultants Ovum.

Go Go Gadget Specs

Not so long ago it was the Bluetooth headset that made us all look like something out of a sci-fi film, but the advancement of wearable gadgets does not stop there, as a firm in Japan has been demonstrating.

 

 Last week, NTT Docomo introduced the world to a lightweight pair of augmented reality glasses, which overlay the lens with digital content such as directions or a travel guide. The AR Walker places a miniature screen at the periphery of your right eye, keeping your field of view clear whilst letting you glance down to see the information being displayed. It is a scaled-down version of the company's earlier head-mounted display made with Olympus, now reduced to a comfortable-to-wear weight.


A link to your smartphone keeps the display populated, showing you information on your surroundings. A virtual tour of Kyoto was used as the first demonstration of the technology. Plans as to how to introduce the AR Walker for sale are still being discussed.

Quote for the Week!

"There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction"

Winston Churchill

The UAE will not ban Blackberry

Back in August we reported that The United Arab Emirates were planning to restrict the use of Blackberry’s because of National Security. Following talks with Blackberry maker, Research in Motion, they have confirmed that they will not be going ahead with any ban to Blackberry services.

The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority felt the service posed a risk to National Security because the network was encrypted and then the data was stored abroad. As a result they had threatened to suspend all Blackberry services from 11th October.


However, after collaborating with Research in Motion, the Regulatory Authority said this in a statement: "All Blackberry services in the UAE will continue to operate as normal and no suspension of service will occur on October 11, 2010".

Microsoft have spoken out against sick PCs on the net

A senior researcher at software giant Microsoft has suggested that virus-infected PCs should be banned from the internet if they pose a risk to other machines.


Very similar to the way that public health risks are treated, the proposal implies that putting infected PCs into a temporary quarantine would prevent the spread of any virus and allow time for it to be cleaned.


The idea is designed to tackle botnets, which are networks of infected computers. They are very popular with cybercriminals. Networks can consist of a few hundred to a few thousand Windows machines. However, some can contain millions of PCs.


Computers are recruited into a network when they become infected with a virus. Usually they are distributed by criminals as attachments in e-mail messages, and occasionally as software downloads masquerading as legitimate programs.


Whilst the suggestion does put an end to their concerns, it raises further problems, claims Scott Charney of the firm's trustworthy computing team, for example;


"An individual might be using his or her internet device to contact emergency services and, if emergency services were unavailable due to lack of a health inspection or certificate, social acceptance for such a protocol might rightly wane.”


There are other models being discussed around the world, such as throttling internet access once a user is suspected of having an infection, but they too are not without controversy. Watch this space.

SIP to take over all lines by 2011

60% of all telephone lines will be replaced by SIP by 2011 suggests the latest estimation from Research Company Tier 1.
 SIP trunking technologies are certainly becoming more popular to SME’s as a way to lower costs. Typically, a single ISDN30 line installation could cost in the region of £6,000 and savings could be as great as 40% when replacing a normal BT landline service.

 However, there are other benefits too, such as increased flexibility, especially as scaling the number of users is easy to do. There have been problems in the past with the robustness of connectivity for voice packet applications but the technology has vastly improved and it is now considered a viable alternative to ISDN.

 When asked whether SIP trunks are ready to replace ISDN? BT’s Head of Sales Engineering, John Bedwell said; “Yes, though I believe it is a good idea to understand what journey the user is on”

 We agree, which is why we encourage users to adopt an auto failover as a resilience mechanism for any potential failures.

Feel free to call us for some non-obligation advice 0800 092 1471

PC's that boot in seconds

For a quarter of a century, Bios software has been used to start up PC’s old and new, but at last its replacement is ready for roll-out.



Without getting too technical, the Bios software has been used to initialise machine operating systems for the last 25 years. The code was never intended to live this long, and adapting it to modern PCs is one reason they take as long as they do to warm up.


The Bios replacement, known as UEFI or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, will predominate in new PCs by 2011 and is designed to be much more flexible. Most excitingly though, for end users, is that new PCs could start in just seconds with the new software.

Quote for the Week!

“Sometimes it's the smallest decisions that can change your life forever.”

Keri Russell

Blackberry Playbook verses the Apple iPad

The latest player in a highly competitive computer tablet market is the Blackberry Playbook, and is set to be a long-awaited rival the Apple iPad.



It is one of the first business-centric devices in the tablet market with Bluetooth and wi-fi included; BlackBerry users can also tether their phone for a 3G connection, making internet on the move easy. RIM is pushing the angle that it will be ideal for enterprise and business and that security will be at the heart of everything it does. However, they have also made it very clear that it will appeal to the everyday user aswell.


A full list of specs is yet to be published but it features a 7-inch screen, two video cameras and will not use Blackberry's latest operating system, instead relying on that of QNX; a company RIM recently acquired.
The Playbook was unveiled after much anticipation at the Blackberry developer conference in San Francisco. It is set for release in early 2011, and whilst they have been reluctant to comment on the comparisons made with the iPad, it is creating a real buzz in the tablet market.