Tuesday, August 26, 2008

You interview the CEO: Telecom NZ Dr Paul Reynolds waiting your questions

It took some time, but it happened. We now have a discussion open in our Telecom New Zealand forum, waiting for your questions to CEO Dr Paul Reynolds.

The idea is simple: people can post their questions in the thread, and after a week I will be forwarding these to get his answers. I will then post the answers on Geekzone.

We have done this before with other major telcos in New Zealand - check the answers for Orcon, TelstraClear, and WorldxChange.

Thanks to the Telecom folks who helped us get there!

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The emerging cloud computing model is challenged by outages Read More



I don't want to spend $75 on an iPod dock out there... and I only need USB connectivity to sync and charge. So who cares about spending money on a dock, when you only need cardboard?

Materials:
  • Cardboard from a cardboard box
  • Some tape
  • Your iPod dock connector adapter (usually supplied with many iPods out there)
  • Your iPod USB 30-pin dock connector
Unfortunately, because of the lightweight cardboard, you will also need a weight, or Blu-Tac (you can see some of it up there) to hold it firm onto the table (otherwise, you'll find your iPod smashing it's head out hard!)

I'm not for aesthetics - only for practicability, not that beautiful Apple products should come with good looking accessories.

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Yesterday I posted about Telecom New Zealand's lack of a "meter" for their mobile data. Here is something that I thought would illustrate the issue well...

Let's say you rent a car on a monthly basis, for work. You agree to pay $49.95 a month if you drive up to 1,000 km per billing cycle, and $1 per km after this.

You decided on 1,000 km because you thought this could cover your average daily usage multiplied by the number of days in the month.

You get the car and notice there is no meter in it, but the rental agency tells you it's ok, they are monitoring it within their system, remotely.

You drive away. During 30 days you have no exact idea of how many kms you've done. You have to keep calling the company to find out how many kms you have driven so far, and calculate to see if you are still within the expected average.

Then you receive the monthly bill. You look through five pages for something that says "kms driven this month", but instead you find "times you started the car this month". And a charge for the rental.

Does it make sense?

No. Neither does Telecom New Zealand's "data sessions" line in the bill. They don't tell us how many megabytes or gigabytes we used during the month, only how many times we used it during the period.

Telecom, are you going to fix your systems?

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I am not a fan of spam. I try to keep things in perspective though. It is just email. I have filters that move it to my Junkmail folder without... Read More

Isn't competition in the mobile marketplace fantastic? It's a concept that unfortunately New Zealanders are missing out on due to the cosy duopoly that exists between our two mobile providers - Telecom New Zealand and Vodafone.

Optus have just launched unlimited "timeless" mobile plans into the Australian marketplace. For A$99 per month you get unlimited calling to other mobiles and landline phones in Australia as well as unlimited SMS and MMS messages. This $99 pack however isn't quite $99 - it requires the purchase of a A$14.95 mobile pack that gives you 200MB of included data.

For A$129 however you receive unlimited calling, SMS and MMS along with 2GB of data.



Now compare that to what you're paying in NZ. Competition really is a great thing.

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Cool, it's that time of the year again when the IBM Forum is on. I've attended previous events and it's always an interesting day.

Here's a bit about this event:


IBM Forum 2008 focuses on Sustainable Innovation, starting with the keynote, Ray Avery, a kiwi scientist and entrepreneur; founder CEO of Medicine Mondiale. Ray is developing sustainable products and technologies for world markets, such as his latest invention “Proteinforte”. Ray will be talking about global opportunities for high tech innovation in healthcare, education and infrastructure.

Also on the agenda, Edward Orange, Director of Lotus Software of IBM Asia Pacific, will be talking about Web 2.0 and how it can be leveraged by enterprises of all sizes to help revolutionise the way they conduct business, help employees collaborate more effectively and enhance their client outreach.

The agenda also features a session on 'Co-Web: re-mixing audio and video collaboration in the next generation of the Internet’ and ‘Demystifying SOA - driving business agility with service orientated business applications’, as well as insights into the latest advances in strategy and technology; customer stories and interactive demonstrations.


The full day event is happening in Wellington (11th August, Michael Fowler Centre), Auckland (14th August, Hyatt Hotel) and Christchurch (19th August, Convention Centre).

Registrations are open now.

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CEO of recently-acquired firm to take helm Read More

You can read the rest of my story on my WordPress blog, but the service these guys have given me is unbelievable, BAD that is.

This is my status for today for the rest follow my link below.

So if you read my previous blog you will know that our phone line died yesterday. So This afternoon I rang Orcon to find ut what is happening. I rang the 0800 number and selected landlines and waited for a response which came pretty quickly and I got a very polite response from Jamie who advised me that she had to pass me on to a different department because the other department was responsible for the port change. She also explained that the port change affected the landline and the broadband connection.

So off to another department and another woman who advised me that they were still waiting for a technician to advise the date when someone would do a port change!

I said “Are you telling me that I have no phone and that you can’t even tell me when someone will advise when they will look at it?” Correct, it might be this afternoon, they do work on Saturdays so someone might turn up then or, well they just don’t know because it is another department.

I asked if they would forward incoming phones to a mobile and they have agreed to do that, but why couldn’t they suggest that in the first place? Basically this now means that people can contact us without having to know our mobile numbers and without having to pay for the toll call, but it does also mean that we have to pay mobile call rates for the outgoing local calls, but at least we have communications.

But we have no idea when our home phone line wll be reconnected.

Since last night I have had 2 people come to me saying that they had been planning to move to Orcon and now won’t. Would you like to be in on a sweepstake as to when I will have a home phone line? Or perhaps hw many times my internet will disconnect today? Yes, funny isn’t it, I still have a Broadband connection at home even if I don’t have the phone. I just checked, so far my broadband has disconnected 18 times today.

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