Telecoms, Technology and other Tidbits

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Is 5G going to take over the world – and our rusty old landlines?

I’m going to be popping over to the world famous monstrously sized (and ticket priced) Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. There’s going to be lots of exciting releases and stories on the table, but I expect the big song and dance will be made around the forthcoming 5G standard -which promises to boost 4G speeds by tenfold and its reliability. Of late though, there’s been a lot of talk about how 5G will make the IoT a reality by expanding the size of the already massive internet into something hundreds of times bigger as we connect every device we can think of to it, including fridges, freezers and underpants (I made that last one up, but I wouldn’t be surprised). But the big excitement for me (and probably because I’m from the country with the worst broadband), is the potential for 5G to replace broadband connections that currently use our landlines. For most of us, broadband speeds are unacceptable and BT and their like have been peddling ‘fibre infinity’ products f

The struggles of number porting

There is one part of my business I truly hate. It's laborious, expensive and boring. No, it's not the accounts or staff appraisals. It is the number porting process. The what? You know when you change your mobile phone provider and you want to keep your old number? Well moving that number to the new provider is called porting. You get given a PAC code and the process is seamless (mostly) and done within 24 hours. Porting also exists in the landline world. Except it's the complete polar opposite of the mobile experience. It's slow, costly and fraught with pitfalls. For example, the process of porting your old landline number to a new provider requires you to get as much information about your line from the old provider as possible. However, you'll soon find: * Your old provider doesn't have a porting desk, or even has the faintest clue as to what porting even is. * If you do find someone who can talk to you, they'll likely give you the wrong ins

When the Phone Bill on your Doormat is Higher than you Thought

Have you ever signed up to a new phone package at an unbeatable price only to find that when the first phone bill drops onto the mat, the price is simply not anywhere near what you thought you were going to be paying? Welcome to the world of bill shock. Who is Bill Shock? No it's not a late night comedian. Far from it. Bill shock is traditionally associated with hundreds of pounds worth roaming charges being applied to your mobile bill when you return home from your family trip to Florida (Fortunately that’s less likely to happen now with the new EU roaming regulations where the concept of roaming has been essentially eradicated). However, a different kind of bill shock is the one where we get suckered into the headline rate of a phone deal, only to find the price on the bill is higher (It's never lower is it? Funny that). Unlimited internet, calls, money and hugs for 99p per month for life We’ve all seen them. And we always buy into them. However, the devil is in t

Why Our Love Affair with the Cloud is Changing

There's a new thing called Cloud Repatriation in the computing world. I suppose it's the opposite of expatriation which officially means 'to withdraw oneself from residence in one's native country'. In this context however, the term refers to repatriating your servers and computing power into your office and getting it off the cloud. In simple terms, take all that effort you spent shoving your stuff into the cloud - and reverse it. 'But why!?' I hear you cry. Or perhaps you’re not, since by asking that very question you probably already know full well why. But in case you are still asking 'But why!?', let me jog your memory. Go Cloud, go go go! The concept of shoving all of your worldly digital belongings onto someone else’s kit was all the rage some years ago. It was 'safe', 'fast', 'cheaper' and 'convenient'. It seemed like a good idea, for only a few quid per month, I could have the latest version o

Brighten up Blue Monday with 20% discount for phone line rental

Brighten up Blue Monday with 20% discount for phone line rental buzzbox Telecom, a leading UK telecoms company that offers fully featured cloud-based phone systems, is helping its potential customers to brighten up their so-called Blue Monday – the saddest day of the year- by offering a 20% discount for three months for business telephone line rental, if they sign up within this week. If a business phone contract is coming to an end or a potential client is in the process of starting up a new business empire this January, buzzbox can change their existing phone service with a package rich in features (call recording, diverting to mobile, voicemail, hold music, keeping your number), at a fraction of the cost. The offer for this week, until 19 January 2018, will be 20% off a business telephone line rental for three months and thereafter it is a monthly rolling contract, which means that potential customers can cancel their contract at any time. Stuart Spice, Founder and Director o