Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Wednesday 29 November 2006, 9:39 AM
Mobile porn alert
Some interesting research shows that porn will account for 70 percent of mobile content revenue by 2011. No surprise there - remember how adult content drove adoption of the Internet - but another interesting story has Graeme Ferguson - ex-director of global content development for Vodafone - spilling the beans that Vodafone already derives that percentage of its content revenue from smut!
He accurately points out that Vodafone denies this - a call to the operator does indeed elicit a response that it is "nowhere near 70 percent, in fact its an awful lot less". According to the spokesperson it's mobile TV that's "driving content adoption" - but what exactly are they watching...?
Tuesday 28 November 2006, 3:12 PM
Bad Ofcom! says Reding
Euro Commissioner Reding has sent an open letter to Ofcom chastising it for its proposal that mobile termination rates (what operator B charges operator A when A's customer calls B) should be kept high-ish, to include the hefty investments that operators made when buying 3G licences.
I'm in too much of a hurry right now to offer an opinion on this, so what's yours? Is Ofcom on the side of the good and true, or is it playing at keeping everyone happy? You decide...
Tuesday 28 November 2006, 12:35 PM
VoIP regulation update
Good to see the nationals following up on our coverage of Ofcom's impending VoIP regulation (see here and here - why, it's a pleasure!).
Keith over at Telebusillis has also been on the case - he's of the opinion that the industry can cope fine unregulated (not sure of that myself) but hilariously reminds us that a couple of the VoIP "deficiencies" that we should supposedly be warned about are already issues with or without VoIP. Such as power - Ofcom wants us to know that we wouldn't be able to use internet telephony in a power cut (no kidding), but the same situation already applies to anyone who uses a cordless phone.
So let's see. I don't reckon Keith's entirely correct in saying consumers don't need to be told this stuff, but I can understand why some people think Ofcom might be about to overstep the mark. Maybe Skype will soon have to carry warning pop-ups in the UK. Joy.
Monday 27 November 2006, 2:56 PM
Transplanted head to review NHS IT
The massive NHS IT overhaul (the National Programme for IT - NPfIT) has a new boss. Richard Granger's not gone, but there's a new NHS chief, David Nicholson, who wants to review the whole operation, according to the FT, who also have an interesting interview with Granger himself.
Since you have to pay to read the FT's stories, I'll precis them for you:
1) 43 Hospital patient admin systems (PASs) were supposed to be running by the end of November - call it 19 in reality... Granger blames staff mistrust caused by having to choose between Cerner and iSoft's packages, neither of which currently do the whole job as desired.
2) Hospitals aren't too keen on undergoing "data cleansing" in the transition to new systems, as it shows up their duplicated records, missed targets etc.
3) Connecting for Health, which runs the project, is to be downsized as staff are migrated into their area trusts.
4) Nicholson wants to make sure the NHS actually "owns" the system that's being created. Which is rather hopeful, given the privatised nature of the task.
Also bear in mind that BT, who are supposed to be rolling the new systems out across London, have so far succeeded in installing only one PAS in a major acute hospital. And no clinical system.
A lot to review, then...
Monday 27 November 2006, 10:02 AM
SMS trojan threat demonstrated?
An interesting piece here regarding one of those proof-of-concept mobile security threats (none of which have yet come to pass). This one's from a guy called Wilfried Hafner, CEO of SecurStar (who is of course punting his company's products, but still...). It's a trojan called RexSpy and it's an SMS that looks like a security update from your operator, only what it does is let the sender eavesdrop on your conversations, check your SMSs etc.
All very nasty, but not in the real world yet. However, what is interesting is the operators' inability or unwillingness to explain what they intend to do about the fact that phones can't verify the senders of such messages. A poor show, and one to keep an eye on.
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