hitting the wire*

Chaos and Anarchy in SA Telecoms?

I was fascinated by the piece in the Sunday Times where Chris Barron  interviewed Paris Mashile Chairman of ICASA.  It is called "Anarchist doesn’t want to be fascist". 

what makes a good telco / voice & data service provider?

I'm about to pester a whole bunch of people who have the misfortune of having provided me with their email addresses at some time in the past.  I want to know what people want most from their Telco or in Storm's case, their Voice & Data Service Provider.

If you don't get a mail from me and would like to contribute, please don't sulk - use the comments option here or drop me a mail (daveg (at) storm (dot) co (dot) za)

1     If there was one thing you'd most want your Telco or Voice/Data Service Provider to get right, what would it be?
2    In your opinion, what do they do well when it comes to service?
3    What do they do badly or what irks you?
4    What do they offer/do that is not necessary, not needed, time wasted, not liked?
5    What little or obscure thing(s) do they do that have a "bigger than effort" impact (both negatively and positively)?
6     If you read these words: "telco" and "great service" - what name pops into your head (don't think too hard - it must be an unconscious association - and "no one" is an acceptable answer!

that's me. over to you.

pimp my poo?!

Every now and then one of the deluge of joke mails flooding my inbox has a gem.

Strategic planning – creating the future today.

I’m not sure what b-grade movie I was watching but the phrase “peeling rubber and chucking bits of real estate around” has stuck in my head as a description for someone in a tearing hurry. The start of 2007 felt like that to me. Chilling one minute, the next, feeling like a border-collie on uppers, chasing my colleagues toward deadline after deadline.

Every year around this time, Cape Town and the Boland are hit with a heat wave. The sun fires up the turbo-booster and the Cape Doctor, the trusty South-Easter fails us. The mercury bubbled up to 48° Celsius in Paarl last week. My specs misted over as I climbed out of my car at 6pm on Thursday – last time that happened I was in Dubai in July! Not the kind of weather to get your grey cells racing.

But race them we did... 

I think I just lost my heart to a phone!

oh dear.

I noticed a report that Apple had released a mobile phone, but have been too frantically busy since clocking back in at work Monday that I have not bothered to check it out.

All I can say is that I'm still a great fan of Nokia (despite or maybe because of owning a SE p910i at the moment - can't wait for for my contract to be up!) but this phone takes the cake.  Trust Apple to come up something this sexy.  Hot damn, I'm in love.  With a phone for Pete's sake!

Phone (with funky touch screen IP phone like functionality), Internet access device, and widescreen iPod rolled into one!  Oh and it has a camera too.

Now all I want is to find out mkII comes with WiFi/Bluetooth SIP phone functionality and I'm sold.

that's me finished.  and the year is only starting!

UPDATE:

Found my way to Robert Scoble's blog last night (that's the guy who I hear made Microsoft look way less Ogre-like in the eyes of many techs in the software industry by way of his blog) - he has a few sobering comments on the iPhone.

It may well be early days and are we fair to expect Apple to blow Nokia out the park with their very first shot at a phone?  I suspect this device and its offspring will gather the same sort of cult following the Mac's have.