Telecoms, Technology and other Tidbits

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...

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...