Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Friday 26 January 2007, 4:19 PM
Bonus day for O2 staff
Things must be going well at the British subsidiary of Telefonica - "each eligible O2 employee" (i.e. full-time workers, although part-timers get something too though) has just received a thousand squids bonus for adding an additional million customers (in total - not, of course, for each employee) during 2006. That's £10.5m overall. Well done O2 employees.
Wednesday 24 January 2007, 2:50 PM
They can't be serious...
Writing up this morning's appearance at the London Telemedicine Symposium by the Rt Hon Margaret Hodge, I left out a couple of choice quotes (we try to keep our stories focused, you see).
Aside from claiming that people are comfortable with the Internet (er, not the elderly folks for whom telemedicine is supposedly designed) and suggesting that it's the tech industry's responsibility to get kids fired up about science (who exactly sets the curriculum these days?), Hodge also complained that "using new technology can expose unmet demand", leading to resource implications.
What could you mean, Margaret? "Fixing one problem can often lead to another," she continued, going on to say that if "assisted living" keeps people out of A&E departments, the hospitals might then have trouble meeting their "performance targets". In other words, unburdening the hospitals (surely the whole point of telemedicine?) will mean they don't treat enough patients to satisfy the government's own, somewhat whimsical target system. Eh?
She also had something to say about the idea, now being kicked around by the EC, that health information (genomic, phenomic - a shift "from preventative to predictive medicine" according to one EC gonk excitedly babbling about "biochips") should be shared across European member states: "Issues around patient confidentiality are very difficult and have to be set against the advantages that we get if we share information between agencies." So that's all right then.
Think we've got an uproar going on against the idea of a centralised database of medical histories just here in the UK? Wait.
Monday 22 January 2007, 5:49 PM
VoIP vs evil roaming costs
In the wake of 3's abolition of roaming charges, the CEO of internet telephony provider Coms (nope, me neither) has issued a rather triumphalistic statement about how it's all the result of operators "feeling the squeeze" from VoIP.
Interestingly, Terry Martin seems fairly certain that Vodafone will be next to drop the cursed fees, and notes that "it will be interesting when the mobile operators have to start looking at partnering up with each other in order to survive".
Chiding operators for shelling out billions on 3G licences thanks to "over-enthusiastic forecasting" then trying to claw back money by screwing the customer (not my words or Martin's, but T-Mobile's), Martin goes on to call 3's new tariffs "a cosmetic offer to try and deflect criticism", showing "they have a long way to go to match the new wave".
Ignoring the fact that 3 is actively promoting the use of VoIP on its new handsets, and is including this functionality in its roaming-fee-free new tariffs, I'm a little uncertain as to how much impact VoIP has really had on the mobile operators' core roaming haul. Perhaps I'm behind the times, but is the Club 18-30 set of early 2007 really phoning home from Mallorca using Skype headsets?
Monday 22 January 2007, 2:07 PM
Real-time text chat for the deaf
A middleware company called OpenCloud (not to be confused with WLAN provider The Cloud) has been in touch to make us aware of a Dutch charity for the hearing-impaired, which is using its "device-agnostic" Rhino platform for a pretty cool service.
The charity, called AnnieS (Annie Sullivan was Helen Keller's private teacher), is using a real-time "talk-by-text" service developed by TNO ICT and operatored (is that a word?) by KPN. Basically, it lets you chat in real time, i.e. as you type a letter it appears on the other person's screen.
It can be used on a mobile phone (KPN's launched it on the BlackBerry), a PC - whatever (hello all you IMS folks out there). Simple, yet effective. As OpenCloud's VP of sales Simon Joles told me, it is "certainly more akin to the natural way one converses between two people". That is to say, it gives one the opportunity to interrupt the other party, which you can't do as such with straight IM.
For the deaf or hearing-impaired, it's brilliant - no more expensive textphone, no more having to get in touch with the family via a cumbersome text-to-voice translation bureau. Great in terms of accessibility, obviously, but as Joles pointed out it could even have enterprise - or even general consumer - applications. Now let's see if any operators over here bite.
Monday 22 January 2007, 12:26 PM
Orange to finally launch HSDPA?
It seems, perhaps, maybe, that Orange is getting ready to roll out HSDPA in the UK. Took them long enough - everyone else has it (even 3's bringing it in) and EDGE, if you will excuse the pun, just doesn't cut it in comparison.
We've had confirmation that Orange will be making an announcement about HSDPA at some point, though we still don't know when. By the way, this is all related to a story coming out tomorrow, but I can't say what that is yet thanks to a good ol' embargo. Stay tuned.
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