July 24, 2001 - July 25, 2001
News - July 25,2001
Vodafone Pushed Into Third Place
By:mark.j @ 3:33:PM -
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With the ever-present cost burden of 3G broadband wireless technologies, the last thing one of the UKs major operators needs is more bad news.
Today it looks as if Vodafone have now been pushed into third place behind BT and Orange following the admittance that 16% (out of 12.5Million) of their subscribers were inactive:
The admission came on the eve of Vodafone's annual meeting today, which could see chief executive Chris Gent refused a proposed record bonus by shareholders.
The telco has cut inactive subscribers to bring its reporting into line with Orange and BT Cellnet. Both have previously moved to tighten up their subscriber numbers by eliminating those who do not make or receive calls for a number of months - usually three - when they calculate their customer base.
Orange is now leading the market with 11.9 million subscribers, followed by BT Cellnet with 10.9 million and Vodafone on 10.5 million. Vodafone had led the UK mobiles sector since early 1996, but now ranks ahead of just One 2 One and virtual operators like Virgin Mobile.
The VNUNet item only highlights the business end of the problem, but what of the 16% inactive subscribers? If you're paying so much for a phone then you might as well use it. |
Impressive New Search Engine
By:mark.j @ 9:50:AM -
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Google is generally recognised as the Internets best search engine and is even used as the primary system for some groups such as Yahoo. However news has started to circulate regarding a better system called Teoma.
http://www.teoma.com
We gave the system a quick test and found it to return better results than others, although typically things will probably get worse as more data comes online and the database slowly saturates. Until that time, give it a try. |
MS Backs UKs Poorest Areas With Internet
By:mark.j @ 9:38:AM -
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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Microsoft) have kindly given £2.7Million to British libraries in 350 of the most deprived parts of the country. The Times Newspaper states this to include the London boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich:
Yesterday the list of libraries that will benefit from the American billionaire was published by the body responsible for distributing the money: Resource, the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries.
A spokesman for Resource said the decision had been taken to help the most deprived areas to go online at their libraries, providing Internet services for residents who do not have a computer.
A spokeswoman for the Gates foundation in Seattle said the donation had been granted with only one condition: that the computers had to be for public use.
Lets just hope they have the sense to install Windows 2000 on any of the computers and not '9x' or 'ME', which have more bugs than an anthill. Still we'd like to think that in amongst the crashing and technical support, somebody gets the benefit. |
EU Online Shopping Continues To Grow
By:mark.j @ 9:29:AM -
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Online shopping in Europe may have double in the last year, but a new report from Forrester Research warns that retailers must now focus on targeting the right products and markets. The industry is predicted to reach 103 billion euros in gross profits by 2006:
Contrary to expectations, the dot-com crash has not eroded consumer confidence in e-commerce. In the past six months, the share of Europeans online grew by 20% from the previous six months. Thirty two percent of Europe's population over the age of 16 is now online. In the UK and Germany, the percentage of consumers online reached 40% and 39% respectively.
But Forrester is warning Europe's larger Internet retailers that in order to succeed, they must target the right product for their country, and compete for a portion of sales in a market that has already become a "dog fight". The study draws attention to online spending patterns that are predicted to mirror offline retail spending more closely once consumers make purchases across more diverse product categories.
"When consumers start spending online they stick to purchasing low cost and low risk items such as books, but once they gain more confidence they spend according to higher risk categories such as airline tickets," explains Woodham-Smith.
In essence the ZDNet item is talking about market saturation, when there are so many online retailers that it becomes difficult to separate them from each other. Of course this can only be good news for the consumers, competition helps. |
News - July 24,2001
Online Electoral Voting
By:mark.j @ 3:53:PM -
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It wasn't long ago that a less than favourable portion of people stood at polling stations around the UK in an attempt to choose the next government.
Sadly an extreme case of voter apathy caused roughly half of the population to stay away, something the current government is keen to resolve without blaming themselves. Now The Electoral Commission has proposed a number of changes for the future, including online voting.
"Perhaps the single most important issue arising from the 2001 General Election is the need to address, urgently and radically, the decline in public participation," Sam Younger, chairman of the commission, said in a statement. "The commission is determined to press forward at once with an agenda for making voting easier and more user friendly."
The report suggested looking at the viability of voting over the Internet and by telephone, holding polling over several days and making registering to vote easier. It also suggested further promoting the system of postal votes on demand, brought in for the June 7 election, saying there had been no significant increase in fraud.
The commission then recommended a redesign of ballot papers to allow voters to make a "positive abstention", signalling that they want to vote but don't favour any of the available candidates.
However, the commission maintained that ultimate responsibility for reversing voter apathy and modernising the electoral system rested with politicians. Typically we'll have to wait and see, although online/Internet based voting systems were under trial in the last election, perhaps they'll become the norm for the next? |
UK Sites Fastest To Respond
By:mark.j @ 3:41:PM -
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Hewlett-Packards (HP) free web site performance checking service for corporate clients has found that out of 2,000 UK sites surveyed, 87.6% responded within 10 seconds, which is apparently good:
The company has received 5,000 requests for checking, and data from the first 2,000 surveyed sites shows that 87.6% of the Web sites responded within 10 seconds.
HP believes that customers will only tolerate eight seconds maximum wait to show something on the page, 20 seconds to complete the page, followed by six seconds before deciding to stay or leave.
The service, which watches each Web site for a 24-hour period, received requests from across Europe. In the UK, less than 1% of the surveyed sites exceeded a delay of 10 seconds to respond.
Typically the CW360 item is based off of HPs own findings for HPs own clients, thus you can expect the results to be 'favoured' in a particular direction. Another thing we'd like to know is what speed of network they were using for the test, we doubt any of your common garden modems were used. |
ISP Review Server Problems
By:mark.j @ 12:03:PM -
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A quick apology to the majority of you whom have been unable to connect to ISP Review since late last night. While the web server was running fine, one of our primary links to the DNS/HTTP servers broke.
Consequently almost nobody could see the site for nearly 12 hours, although a few readers weren't affected due to connecting through an different link. The problem now seems to have been resolved by the admin and all should be back to normal, although don't be surprised if some forum posts are out of sync.
Sadly things like this do happen and it's our first real downtime in roughly two months - back to work. |
BTIgnite Begins xDSL Install Talks
By:mark.j @ 11:56:AM -
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According to ADSLGuide, BTIgnite has today begun talks with various ISPs and modem manufacturers regarding new methods of installing xDSL (R/ADSL) broadband connections. The second set of talks will be on 31st July, it’s hoped this will save BT and the customers some cash:
Ignite with wires-only intend to NOT supply any modem with the connection, leaving the selection of this to the ISP, therefore we should see further differentiation between ISP's, e.g. some will offer better modems or a total user choice perhaps. Fingers crossed this will bring a reduction in the install fee.
The self install product is planned to allow users to install the DSL service in any room that has an existing phone extension and remove the need for a BT engineer to visit, hence reducing costs and hopefully the install fee. The filter faceplate would be replaced by a plug and play microfilter - similar to what some US DSL providers use.
The talks seem designed to gauge any savings that could be made and how practical a solution either method would be for ISPs. It remains unclear quite which method will ultimately be adopted (could be both) and how much this would save BT, the ISPs and the customers. |
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