So its time for my holiday, so no blog activity for a few weeks as I lose my office ties and go  to Hong Kong/China/Macau - itinery is pretty fluid, I do have a return to office date that I can’t miss though.

Well tell a lie, I’m taking my smartphone, but work don’t have that number, and I’m leaving the office Blackberry and laptop behind.    I considered takign the laptop, but (most annoyingly) found my SLR and lenses + laptop do not both fit within the allowed cabin baggage allowance (mainly down to weight of a few large glass lenses rather than size, and a heavy laptop model (17″ widescreens do weigh more).   So instead of a laptop I am taking 8GB of various sized SD cards, a Canon Ixus, a Nikon SLR + 2 lenses, a smartphone, speakers.    The current cabin baggage allowance does annoy, in the old days a laptop bag + bagpack for SLR wasn’t an issue.   I will take a TV cable for the cameras to check the photo’s clarity on the big screen.

This “losing office ties” system generally leaves me refreshed - its not really the lack of technology that does it, more the fact the office can’t contact me for a few weeks - and the freedom from callout and work pressures.

In fun things to do in China, it will be buy buy buy on all manner of technological goods.!

Backnote:  I just spent 2 weeks in Hong Kong, including a side trip to Macau.

Hong Kong shows how IT and systems in general should work and well.    Perfect example is the Octopus card.     Oyster in London is similar but not as ubiquitous.     In Hong Kong you can use in all forms of public transport except taxi’s using one prepay card.    Can also use it in all 7-11 shops, most supermarkets, most vending machines, McDonalds…    Very very useful.    Most useful on bus’es where cleverly you just pay a set fee based on the bus (and where it is on the route), regardless of where you get off.   With my lowest bus fare costing me a massive 5p, and 90p at most… you get the picture.   Everyone has a card (even kids) and all use it.

My belief is the entire UK should adopt a similar system for paying for transport at the least  - you realise just how efficient it is when you drive locally around a city in England (not London) with no Octopus, and see how long the bus has to wait while people pay.    In Hong Kong that doesn’t exist - so adoptign such a system could be considered to assist with gridlock.   How many delays are caused by people paying for buses - I don’t know, but it certainally would improve some routes.

Of coruse its not just the Octopus.

Mobile coverage is amazing, the tube has 3g coverage throughout the ENTIRE network.    Totally amazing to see, people are polite and generally don’t talk so you can hear them in HK so its not as annoying as I thought it would be     Also the fact I kept a msn conversation up with someone I was meeting via my cellphone and was able to get them to meet me as I came off the train (they were also on mobile msn) (as it is cheaper than calling a HK number on a UK roaming phone).     Another example was on the boat to macau - 30 mins from HK, still perfect 3g data coverage, so was checking my email on the boat with my mini-keyboard.

More HK meanderings later in the week!

This week the main office topic of conversation between the senior technicians at lunchtimes was on the topic of the next-gen console war.

All of us came to the conclusion that we’ll be buying Nintendo Wii’s - if not for ourselves to watch our partners looking like idjits dancing around in front of the telly playing tennis.   The controller is truely unique, and may unhinge Sony.   If it can make a table of 12 IT Pros all want one then what will happen to the rest.   We all for example have different handheld systems, some having DS’s, some PSPs, and some none at all - but ALL want the Wii.

Lets look at the maths…. Sony releases 400,000 units in year one, Nintendo estimates 10 million I believe.

Myself, I think Microsoft and Nintendo may survive, and Sony may go to the dogs due to:
1/  Not enough product
2/  Too expensive product
3/  Nothing new in product.

Microsoft will survive as they can afford to.   Sony may take a massive loss of market share on PS3, which on top of the massive loss from all those battery recalls - I see a problem.

Why are ISP’s going under so reguarly right now? As in E7even.com and similar recently - I know the answer:

The main reason is a lot seem to be under the opinion that they can sell to end-users at below their actual cost price on the basis that they can grow market share at a rate fast enough to offset this in the hope of either later rising prices, or the wholesale cost decreasing through volume from BT (who still own the underlying ADSL technology used in the majority of ISPs environments). An ISP charging a tenner a month cannot survive due to their costs being greater than this.

There is an Excellent page on the Economics of broadband at Adsleconomics.org.uk - although it does miss some key up-front charges an ISP has to pay - which are ~40 + vat/user as a one-off charge, which you avoid if the user already has BT wholesale DSL on a line.

So, basically if you are buying a service for £20 or less a month, expect issues, bandwidth contention and big problems. The new combined packages also are interesting in how they are funded in my opinion (the Sky, Orange and CPW offers) - though they all do have bandwidth limitations/fair use policys.

I can see why AOL are leaving the access market (they are trying to sell their UK DSL operation currently) given their packages currently - Their lowest packages provides 1Mbit/sec with unlimited use for £14.99 a month with free connection and free wireless router. You look at the costs in the link above, with the cost of the router, setup of DSL on the line - I cannot personally see how they can be doing this and making any money at all on it at all. Even their 8Mbit/sec product is only 29.99 a month for unlimited service - which will be fine if most users don’t use the service, but if more than 1/100 people are using the maximum bandwidth, service to all will suffer, or AOL’s cost base will have to increase even further in order to provide a decent service to users.

Unlimited services have had their day, and long-term I do not see any service that provides them to survive unless BT drastically change their Wholesale pricing for ADSL. Even if they half the price, it is still a issue.
A question to BT - why do you charge more per Mbit/sec/mo for a ISP’s central pipe than tier-one Internet transit provision? With current prices on CBC at £200/Mbit/sec/Mo - you’d be getting a bad deal on IP transit if you currently paid > £75/Mbit/sec/Mo from a tier-one ISP (this is excluding access circuits admittedly - but these should not be an issue to an ISP anyhow as they are in the Redbuses of the world, so Gig ethernet delivery is almost free).

Actually I can answer the above with a theory - BT are looking to offset their loss of voice traffic to the likes of Talk-talk and other CPS carriers by getting additional revenue from new-wave products such as broadband - if you look at their balance sheet you will see exactly this right now - the question is should the market allow this - as they seem to be making a lot of money from broadband now - maybe too much?

So who will survive long-term? In my opinion it will be the big boys who can afford the losses and the small guys who actually charge a sensible amount for what they offer. IE, the BT, Tiscali (who have been building their own wholesale network), Orange, Sky of the world will survive - along with the sensible small ISP’s who actually have specific bandwidth limits. That is unless BT reduce wholesale costs due to competition from the Bulldog(C&W), Tiscali and other wholesale networks. Be wary of any ISP charging under 20 pounds a month - this is unrealistic unless you only have a tiny usage limit. Carphone (CPW) is interesting to me at least - as they are charging very little for what they offer - and they are also rolling their own network - they may survive, but they could also crash spectacularly - its a very risky operation for a company not that experienced in running their own national network.Whats interesting about all the companies rolling their own networks is that some money will always go back to BT for the Local loop. In my opinion this should not be managed by BT at all (even in the new Openreach) - it should be completely 100% split into entirely different company, and maybe even handed to the regulator with even BT having to buy service off this new company. BT would not be want to do this unless forced I imagine - Openreach is a funny beast, and I suspect we will hear stories of BT being preferred to other carriers for some years now.

BT have done a good job providing broadband to almost all of the country (there is only 10,000 households in all of Scotland (including islands) without access to broadband apparently) - this competition may result in a digital divide longer term - with busy towns having rival wholesale provisioning and thus lower cost bases and say streaming video/unlimited service and some exchanges which only have the BT wholesale provision left behind? This is already happening with CPW and Sky right now as their offerings are only available on exchanges where they have kit to my knowledge. (Sky certainly wrote to me to tell me my exchange was not going to be supported).

Personally at the moment I pay 27.99 a month for my broadband with AAISP - but if they had to raise prices to maintain its current service, I’d be happy to pay it. And yes, I do pay per Gb - but I have a generous off-peak period where I’m not charged (as long as all customers use this sensibly its not an issue). I also use them due to their customer service not being droids and being honest with all their issues - most ISPs put stuff under the carpet too often for my liking.

I suspect a lot more ISP’s will go under in the next 12-24 months - I reccomend no-one who needs reliable internet access should sign up to an ISP at less than £20 a month unless its with BT or another big carrier, nor should you sign up to any with a one year contract unless you **know** they will be there in 12 months. If you do not heed this, please at least pay on your credit card annually so you have some protection. Also avoid unlimited deals like the plague and read the T&C’s carefully - as some unlimited deals are only 30-40Gb/mo.