Communication Breakdown

Pity poor Jacqueline Fleming, who has seen thousands of her AOL-stored emails go bye-bye. As Which? points out, AOL's stance was something along the lines of "tough luck, lady", which can't be terribly heartening for its customers.

AOL told her that "it was not liable and gave different explanations each time, including having too many emails in her inbox and that there was probably a problem with her computer". A similar report found its way to Which? from "Heather Sager, who uses AOL for business". Sager and another user called Robin Harrod also lost their saved emails on several occasions, yet AOL somehow managed to claim that Fleming's had been the only such incident they knew about. Great.

And the moral of the story is: if you want to keep your emails, back 'em up yourself - web-based providers are under no obligation to do so.

According to the ever-sturdy Mail on Sunday, BT has pulled out of its bid for Pipex. As have BSkyB and Virgin Media. Which leaves Carphone Warehouse all on its lonesome.

What will happen? Will Dunstone also pull out (and where has his celebrated blog gone)? Will his "low-ball offer" be accepted? The problem here for us journalists is that no company will ever give official comment on how much it's bidding for Company X, which in the case of Pipex is not even confirming that it's up for sale in the first place. To do so would be suicidal, given the complex nature of such machinations.

Of course, companies do sometimes give off-the-record information, but that puts the hack into a tricky position. If they're happy to whisper, can you trust what they're whispering, or is having you repeat those whispers just part of their strategy? Always a dilemma, and in this case I'm not too sorry that no-one will comment. Que sera sera...

For those who've taken the line that the net neutrality debate is a storm in a teacup and nothing to worry about, comes the news that top Canadian telco Rogers has actually started to degrade the user experience for those sending and receiving encrypted data over its networks. So if you're using a VPN over Rogers' service, have fun.

And people really think the same thing couldn't happen with other ISPs? Maybe the law really will protect the user in the UK (as Ofcom claims), maybe it won't - but the threat is real.

So, the Federal Communications Commission over in the States has confirmed that it doesn't want mobile phones to be usable on planes, but it seems it'll be OK to have onboard Wi-Fi. Er, VoIP anyone?

Seriously though, do people really want phones or Wi-Fi on planes? The collapse of Connection by Boeing seemed to suggest not (though that was a Wi-Fi thing only), but it would be interesting to know people's views on this...