* Posts by Digital Freedom

22 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Feb 2008

O2, GiffGaff network goes titsup for unlucky punters

Digital Freedom
FAIL

Outsourcing FAIL again?

Is this the result of outsourcing your network to another incompetent company? (Huawei now run O2)

Everything Everywhere's 4G party bus could run Three off a cliff

Digital Freedom
Stop

Re: Let 3/Three die

Hmm totally disagree with you there

1) Three signal is actually not too bad nowadays. It is a shame there is no 2G backup anymore. They used to use Orange but I think that facility has been disabled now (?).

2) If it wasn't for Three's market presence then NOBODY would be doing Unlimited Data

3) Three were first to release HSPA+ (HSPA Plus which is 21 Meg download speeds)

4) Three use Fibre Optic backhauls which none of the other operators use (ok Tmobile does but they are both part of the same company MBNL)

5) Three share Tmobile base stations and funnily enough are the only two to do Unlimited

6) Three keep Vodafone/O2/Oranges prices down by being a constant pain in their backsides

So even if you don't like Three, they are doing good for the UK mobile market ?

Everything Everywhere grabs UK 4G wheel, rivals thrown off bus

Digital Freedom
Mushroom

Scandal of 2011...

The great scandal of 2011 was O2 and Vodafone being allowed to "help themselves" to extra 3G carriers on 900Mhz without coughing up another 5 Billion pounds to the treasury.

With EE using their own 1800Mhz for LTE.... I think this just about puts EE and Voda/O2 on an equal footing now ?

Virgin Media finally turns an annual profit

Digital Freedom
FAIL

They want more customers but...

VM will absolutely NOT spend money on any more coax to connect new houses within reach of the green cabinets. I need some "construction" to get connected but they won't do it despite me offering to fully pay for it.

How can they run a business where everyone who wants connected can't be, because they won't run a new wire?

Crazy situation and not one person in VM gives a shit.

Solicitors from hell website unplugged by libel judge

Digital Freedom

What a sad world we live in

When the truth cant be told about these con artist solicitors.

Why can't someone download all the information and publish it overseas out of reach of more bent solicitors.

Does anyone know an HONEST solicitor?

Thought not.

YouTube takes music royalties seriously

Digital Freedom
Thumb Down

YouTube is almost ruined by miserable media corporations

The fun and sparkle of YouTube is almost ruined with the mass takedown of videoclips that actually bring people to the website in the first place.

Yeah Yeah, Whilst I know copyright holders have ultimate 'rights' over anything they own, what does it matter when people put their favourite clips online? It not like people claim its their own.

And, it's not like anyone can profit from it? I think the savage and panic stations manner of removal of "anything copyright" is going to turn the site into as much use as "friends reunited" was when the next website called facebook came out...

Im just saying the DMCA takedown thing should be used for full unauthorized works and short clips should be exempt from removal.

Instead I can see YouTube being killed off at this rate.

Cable broadband making more money than cable telly

Digital Freedom
WTF?

Virgin Media have an appalling attitude towards new custom

We live some 100 metres from the VirginMedia green cab and they refuse connect our house because it involves some new build work. Asking them how anyone actually gets connected nowadays and the reply is "We are only allowed to do 1 metre of build work maximum otherwise it's a no-go"

Laughably, my dads house - he has a VirginMedia green box bang outside his front garden but they still won't connect him either. That would probably require some 10 metres of co-ax in total.

Virgin Media piss me off by constantly mail dropping my area saying how wonderful the phone, broadband and TiVo services are - we want it - but we cant find a single employee with a cerebrum still intact that can give us an authoritive answer.

BT speeds are so pitiful round this area they would get tons of new business

I hope somebody from Virgin Media reads this and feels shame because we just want connected and you refuse. We offered to pay for the build work but still they couldn't be arsed.

Why turn away people with their wallets open ???

With Multiroom and decent Tivo/Broadband/Phone package you could easily spend £100 a month on their services each month so WHY do they tell everyone to SOD OFF all for the price of a piece of co-ax to get initially get someone connected up?

BlackBerry nicks iPhone's UK smartphone crown

Digital Freedom
WTF?

Hardly Surprising???

People waited excitedly all year for the iPhone-5 release and when the "5" failed to arrive the "4S" appeared with exactly the same external image of it's predecessor and with hardly any new features other than silly Siri - This phone is simply a total and utter letdown for people that have been literally holding back all year to upgrade. Apple have got it really wrong i'm afraid. Even my Apple fanboi friends didn't show much enthusiasm.

But even worse, still can't believe people are buying Blackberry either? Are you serious? They are extremely difficult to use. I can't believe that people would accept this crap compared to what else is on the market. Blackberry user interface falls real short of basic expectations...

Nokia execs have also been asleep on the job, far too busy taking holidays to worry about designing new phones and instead they're spending the office day choosing the metallic paint on their new company cars to notice everyone else had moved on by monumental proportions.

Can't envisage how Nokia will be able to close this gaping distance now? Miracles? anyone?

Remember the reported Nokia convention? Where their boss said "how many people here use iPhone" and more than half the attendees put their hands up... Nuff said.

Vodafone hikes PAYG call costs

Digital Freedom
WTF?

Get your PAC now...

Simply change to another network that doesn't despise its customers

Viacom vs YouTube spat slathered in F-words

Digital Freedom
FAIL

Viacom should retract legal case to save face

Viacom scored an own goal uploading their videos "anonymously" to get YouTube into trouble,

This should be thrown out of court instantly since Viacom have willingly perverted the course of justice.

O2 limits unlimited broadband packages

Digital Freedom
FAIL

Hyprocritical Advertising

You see them on telly slagging off other providers then O2 announce 10Gb cap on usage?

WTF?

"Here sir, have this wonderful new car but be sure not to drive more than 10 miles per month..."

Any ISP's seen to be "downgrading" limits are clearly in great trouble.

As for Satellite broadband I got a mail saying BIG 2Gb allowance per month. Like 3G dongles nobodys going to buy into these until the limits are increased by 10x-20x times than present allowance.

TwitPic-nicking Mail nicked

Digital Freedom
FAIL

Daily Mail having a bad month

First the World Cup 2018 scandal then Gary Lineker resigns from his column in disgust, now the stolen photographs... And this paper tells us about morals? helllllllo?

Good luck if she gets some money.

I doubt they'll pay up, but here's their chance to "put it right"...

Pirate Bay now run from Pirate Party 'mountain bunker'

Digital Freedom

Bit Torrent aint worth the hassle

Having never used "Bit Torrent" I was given a demo by some friends the other night.

What on earth are the MPAA so worried about? I really fail to see why they deem it such a threat.

Its just like the old days of P2P (2.2Kb/sec etc) Plus im sure ISP's are throttling this also...

Unless you are downloading "torrent of the day" the speeds are ridiculous, some meaning you'd wait days, possibly a week to complete. Even longer if you're one of those paranoid types who switches the pc off when not around...

Really, I am genuinely surprised at the need to come down on this like a ton of bricks.

Its obvious it takes a fair bit of effort to download a Torrent and needs people at the other end to stay online once they have reached 100% too...

Aren't the MPAA (and the like) being a "little" bit overprotective here?

Oz gov suggests world's worst copyright protection scheme

Digital Freedom

Something Very Corrupt here

How come when millions of people experience identity / creditcard / phishing fraud(s) etc

the Government do nothing.

Real taxpayers money getting stolen - nothing happens.

Some MP3's are being downloaded from P2P - laws rewritten, Government to their action stations

Hang on a minute here

So many people get ripped off, so many copyright violations occuring in life from anything to the odd canvas artist to architecture design.......and not one of these people gets 'justice' unless you want to run up 30K of legal bills to prove your point...

Yet when MusicBiz copyright is broken the Government meet up, they re-write the laws, enfore ISP's to snoop....... what next???

This is so incredibly corrupt we are such a bunch of losers for accepting this from our Government.

Put this into perspective, if we enforce Music Biz copyright I want to see the man on the street who does his designs having equal rights too.

Whats more, the law is today already suited in the Music Biz's favour, they have 100% support to sue anyone they like, so if they have a genuine gripe about somebody sharing torrents then bloody well sue them in court... why is this method not acceptable to them? WHY?

Their avoidance of the court method for individual net users makes me think they have something serious to hide away from us

Digital divide looms again over superfast broadband for all

Digital Freedom

Left Arm Right Arm?

We seem to have a HUGE problem in this country because all telco's are strategically pulling in opposite directions and its not actually helping the main cause of their existence: THE END CUSTOMER.

I am desperate and i mean DESPERATE to get FTTH or CableTV simply because ADSL@5km (512K) is enough to pull your hair out with when you're homeworking over a VPN.

If the cost of FTTH is due to "digging" then why doesn't VirginMedia pally up with BT and let them share each others trenches, ok some modifications and trench merging may be required... but the overall result is VM can instantly reach more homes without major "construction" and BT can run Fibre To The Home through VM trenches to avoid digging up peoples front gardens as they already have ducting in place.

Is it just *me* or are VM and BT deliberately dragging their heels on this one? Come on this is WIN-WIN for both companies here????

Virgin customer numbers dip

Digital Freedom

Virgin Media shoot themselves in the feet bigtime - Unwilling to connect new subscribers

No wonder their figures are looking bad, the amount of potential customers they REFUSE to connect to the network is unreal. Its actually very worrying because most of these are in cabled areas as well. (some need minor "construction" ie a couple of hours work for a fitter... but NO, its a cancelled job.

Just why do they employ fitters then?

I suffer from sub 1meg broadband from BT (5Km from exchange) My house is 100 metres away from a green VM cable distribution box, but NO they REFUSE to connect anyone in my newish street and most of us are screaming for faster broadband.

We have even offered to PAY THEM the install costs or have a third party contractors company do it but NO, they cannot be bothered whatsoever.

If I was in charge of that company things would certainly be different. You wouldnt have to spend millions but you could certainly find ways of connecting new people from existing cabinets....

BSA: Software piracy's 'tragic' impact on US society

Digital Freedom
Thumb Down

Whatever...

QUOTE "It claimed those losses translated into enough cash for local government to pay for 100 middle schools or 10,800 affordable housing units. Alternatively, said the BSA, 25,000 police officers could be hired"

Don't make me laugh, if piracy was complete ZERO and all that software was paid for in full, there is NO WAY ON EARTH they would spend it as suggested. Absolutely would NOT happen in a billion years the LIARS.

More like they would use it top up their own pensions and find obscene ways of wasting it without bringing a single piece of good to society.

I want to vomit when I read quotes like that. And no i dont agree with piracy but this is utter trollop and crass over-exaggeration.

Virgin Media ads throttled by peak time bandwidth squeeze

Digital Freedom
Stop

@Adam Foxton - What's the problem with upload?

QUOTE: "So how come upload speeds are so much slower than download speeds? The switching speed of the ICs in the modemwill be the same"

Wrong!

The Download is encoded at QAM64 by the headend unit into 38Mbit Frames that are 8Mhz in bandwidth, basically just like the DVB-C stuff. (TV Muxes)

The Uplink is DIFFERENT because the modem isnt high spec enough to generate a QAM64 signal (and the VM network couldnt accept that sort of signal back from thousands of other users on the same local circuits anyway)

The Uplink uses QPSK which is considerably slower hence the under 1Mbit speeds. There are 8 uplink "channels" and cable modems are set randomly to different talkback "channels" so they should be fairly much load balanced.

If you get a major bandwidth hog in your area on the same as your "channel" you can ring VM Customer Services and they can talk you through switching uplink modem channels to a cleaner one and this might improve your experience...

I havent had cable for 2 years plus so things may have changed but hey the basics are probably still the same.

I can't believe how arrogant Virgin Media have become since they took over NTL/TW areas. They are seriously deluded with the Sky One "problem" and the fact they refuse to connect new addresses to the network like my dads who HAS the distribution green cab box in front of his house but we cannot find one person with a BRAIN in the entire company who can say other than "Computer Says No" in a completely disinterested manner.

Another great company ruined by crap management.

Kazakh TV off-air after satellite 'breathing troubles'

Digital Freedom
Coat

Faulty Satellite

Wonder if they can get a refund off Russia for KazSat.... lol

They probably just broadcasted a load of pish on it anyway. It probably couldnt bear all the 24/7 borat type programmes and had an orbital breakdown...

my coat's the one covered in solar panels...

DAB: A very British failure

Digital Freedom
Unhappy

They really messed up DAB

DAB has been doomed from the beginning, it uses ancient coding techniques and has error correction problems and the bandwidth is so limited stations are reverting to mono... come on, that is ridiculous.

If they used some brain cells they could have used something like IP based transmission, then it could be added to and modded over the years to accomodate emerging new devices, perhaps radios with 6 inch LCD screens that show the album covers, or the DJ in the studio, need i mention it, even visual advertising to keep the music flowing....

Dont complain because years ago nobody believed everyone would have a COLOUR screen on their mobile and a camera... that was surreal so this suddenly isnt that hard to believe!!! The biz word is future proofing by upgradability.

If only they used IP based they could software-update the codecs, implement direct downloads into the radio's internal memory (ie podcasts that auto-download in the background and are playable anytime the user wishes..)

If DAB had the optional screen on the radio the ideas are endless, weather pictures, scrolling songwords, news bulletins, radio station phone numbers shown, radio+tv guide, anecdotal entertainment,

What a balls up of an opportunity id say........ Its not rocket science you know.

Roll on DVB-H if this can do the above ???

UK rattles 'three strikes' filesharing sabre (again)

Digital Freedom
Heart

46% of the ENTIRE UK are illegal downloaders ???

Some extremely interesting figures from a dot gov website:

There are 22 Million Households in the UK.

Of these households, only 6 out of 10 have Internet access.

This means we have 13.2 Million homes who are actively online.

The BPI's own figures say 6 Million of these very people are illegally filesharing, this means from a possible 13.2 Million Internet connections that 46% are participating in grey-legal-area downloading... That is incredible!

AND may I add, this 46% National UK downloading figure is despite public knowledge of facing possible legal action... Years ago it would have been HIGHER and the Net connections were LOWER so I guess 80-90% were downloading when the waters were less shark infested.

OK, putting this into context, every UK street you walk down, 1st house would be Legally downloading, 2nd house is using (allegedly illegal) filesharing, and 3rd house has no Internet....(repeat this pattern over entire UK)

WOW thats a MASSIVE 'problem' isnt it, how are the BPI going to stop this? The answer is they WONT be able to stop this. Never, if these are the figures - and they certainly seem to be...

If ISP's start disconnecting this amout of subscribers the future of the net might swing back to penny a minute dial up because if there is no multimedia to download for free then whats the point in broadband...? Why pay 20-30 pounds when you can pay a penny a min to surf ad-hoc?

ISP's have dark times ahead if they agree to this utter cack from the BPI.

If these BPI and RIAA morons introduced a Download Licence say £5 added to broadband subscription a month then they might have a hope in hell of making some money this millennium. Only add the fee if you exceed a set dl figure, say 10Gb a month...? only a guesstimate mind. I think i would certainly pay that fee for the content that out there today...

Loveheart because I will LOVE to see the massive shock-horror failure of the BPI/RIAA idiots in charge when they realise even the 3-strike wont stop the powerful downloading wagon now... BPI, wake up and grab the chance to make money now via ISP £5 fee's or lose everything, including face.

Management cull fires BT profit slump

Digital Freedom
Happy

Not surprising they are losing money

Im not surprised BT are losing money on a scale like Societe Generale(!)

All the 5 mobile operators now use direct interconnects between each other for cross network calls, so BT lost that revenue stream (massive)

All the 5 mobile operators now use their own Private Fibre Networks or 'bulk lease' tons of capacity from various SDH providers so BT lost that revenue Stream.

Most mobile operators have started using microwave radio (via dishes) as you can now get STM-1 (155Mbit) over point-to-point links. This equipment is a one off asset cost, plus licence, so BT lost that annual revenue Stream too (Backhaul)

All the mobile operators have found deals from other providers to carry mobile egress traffic to Local, National and International calls for free or virtually fractions of what BT charge so BT lost out on that revenue stream too.

It is possible to use GSH.DSL over multiple copper pairs so you can pay 10% of what a genuine leased line costs (albeit without the SLA) But nevertheless its cheap for a 2Mb/4Mb LL!

All the Local Loop Unbundling means they lose out on these revenue streams

Nobody uses payphones because they are more expensive than mobiles now.

What is now remaining is the first ISP with the true balls to do naked-DSL (which is ADSL/SDSL over the traditional method, only exception is no Phone Service provided to keep costs utterly low... Its just a matter of time now...

My heart bleeds for BT, all their self inflicted injuries all for being mega expensive (and thats on a wholesale level) Little wonder they have financial woes!

If other Telcos had more infrastructure coverage then BT would be in severe difficulties by now...