The most recent articles from Computing

CIOs must embrace collaboration tools

Angelica Mari — 2008-12-04T17:01:00.000Z

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 4 December 2008 at 17:01:00

Author Don Tapscott gives Angelica Mari his reasons for promoting social networking tools and says transparency is the key to security

IT leaders should never refuse staff access to collaboration tools such as Facebook in the workplace, according to one of the foremost business gurus on the growth of Web 2.0.

Don Tapscott is a consultant and author of Wikinomics, a hugely influential book that looks at the way in which internet-enabled mass participation is changing the global economy.

He has recently launched his latest volume, Grown-Up Digital, the result of a $4m (£2.6m) private research study which highlights the importance of so-called “digital natives” in shaping the future of business.

Tapscott said attempts by firms to improve productivity by banning tools such as Facebook – for example, budget airline Easyjet barred access to the site and other messaging systems as it was suffering from low bandwidth – are counterproductive, as well as demoralising to staff.

“The generation coming into the workforce has much better tools to do business and we should be embracing them, not banning them,” Tapscott told Computing.

“To ban sites such as Facebook is demoralising to the young people in the company. It is the same as saying to them: ‘We don’t understand your tools and collaboration methods and mainly, we don’t understand or trust you’,” he said.

Even if Facebook is not being used as a corporate social network, it should not be banned as something to be used during staff downtime, said Tapscott.

“People do all kinds of things when taking a break, so what are we going to ban next, coffee breaks? Or access to sports sites – because people spend a lot of time viewing such web sites – because it uses up a lot of bandwidth?

“You cannot possibly ban 21st century collaboration tools. It would be the equivalent of banning telephones because there are too many wires to install. This is not a particularly sympathetic view, but I would tell those businesses to get more bandwidth.”

In Tapscott’s view, many chief information officers (CIOs) do not understand the potential of tools such as Twitter, wikis, blogs and collaboration networks, as well as the cost involved in introducing systems that bring value to the business.

“There are many tools that can really aid effective collaboration and they are not necessarily costly. Those systems are every bit as important as customer relationship management systems or enterprise resource planning platforms,” he said.

An initiative introduced by floor staff at US electronics retailer Best Buy, dubbed Blue Shirt Nation, is cited by Tapscott as an example of how collaboration tools can drive efficiency in the workplace.

The web site was created by two members of Best Buy’s staff to build a user-driven social networking site for employees and promote an environment for exchanging cross-functional ideas, sharing of best practices and stimulating the creation of new approaches or services. It currently has more than 25,000 members and contradicts the worries over security expressed by IT leaders across the industry.

“The Blue Shirt Nation community is not secure and could probably be hacked. So what?” said Tapscott.

“We have a funny view of security and risk. Sometimes, to have better security and then reduce risk, we should do the exact opposite of what we have been doing. We should take our risk models, data and algorithms, create open-source standards and share them create a Linux of risk models. The only way to have better risk management is via better monitoring, more transparency and openness of standards,” he said.

Tapscott echoes the European Commission’s calls for “smart actions” to aid economic recovery and urged governments and the private sector to address pressing issues such as the digital divide.

“It is in everyone’s interest to have high-speed connections everywhere in the world, so I am calling for the creation of a digital masterplan that will see governments, private companies and civil society organisations all working together towards that goal. People will hear more about that soon,” he said.

Tapscott’s top tips for CIOs

• Hire more young people. “You don’t want your business looking like Italy demographically.”

• Start using next-generation tools. “If you are not using Twitter, Digg or blogging, it is about time you got started.”

• Empower your workforce. “Don’t have a big master plan – let people self-organise, invest and bring their own tools to increase productivity.”

Ofcom puts broadband speeds at heart of 2009 plans

Martin Courtney — 2008-12-04T16:21:00.000Z

Martin Courtney, Computing, Thursday 4 December 2008 at 16:21:00

Communications watchdog lays out key priorities for next year

UK ISPs will tomorrow implement a voluntary Code of Practice designed to stop them misleading customers over broadband speeds and improve customer service.

They will act the day after telecoms watchdog Ofcom published still-to-be-defined proposals for enforcing consumer protection policies that punish mis-selling and help customers switch broadband providers.

Ofcom’s draft annual plan for 2009/10 will also examine the mobile broadband market, with a view to deregulating controls in the hope that competition amongst mobile operators will bring per-megabyte prices down further.

More than 40 ISPs including Be, BT, Demon, Pipex, Plusnet, Sky, Tiscali and Virgin Media, have agreed to provide more accurate estimates about achievable data speeds in their promotional material, following widespread complaints about slower-than-advertised bandwidth in the past.

“ISPs were advertising 24Mbit/s and 8Mbit/s maximum speeds when those speeds were not available,” said Scott Morrisson, research vice president at analyst Gartner.

“It was not made clear to customers that there was no uncontended bandwidth back to the internet, even if they could get 8Mbit/s from their house to the exchange,” he said.

Communications Consumer Panel chairman Anna Bradley said the new code addresses the concerns that were raised with Ofcom and the ISPs last year about broadband speeds.

“[There is a] mismatch between the speeds that consumers think they are buying and what they actually get,” she said.

Ovum analyst Matthew Howett said switching has been a big item on Ofcom’s consumer agenda for a long time, and the Code of Practice should be viewed in line with other work for consumer protection.

“Ofcom has mainly focused on mobile mis-selling to date, but it is now shifting to fixed line mis-selling, which is considered to be just as much of a problem,” he said.

BT Retail said the company has today made clarifications to its fair usage policy to make it clearer about what circumstances it employs traffic management and where there are limits on downloads.

“BT is as much a victim of switching problems as anybody else – the number of those has fallen, but there are still some unscrupulous operators who demand that customers pay fees up front before they release the MAC codes needed to switch accounts,” said a BT spokesman.

Ofcom also plans to focus on mobile broadband. The European Commission is already piling considerable pressure onto mobile network operators to reduce prices, which - combined with an expansion in the number of mobile virtual network operators - means the mobile broadband market is closer to reaching the level of competitiveness that Ofcom requires if it is to deregulate.

“If [mobile broadband] price points get to the stage where mobile operators are no longer perceived as an oligopoly acting in a cartel fashion, providers could be allowed to set their own prices more freely and competition would settle the rest in much the same way as it has in the fixed telecom world,” said Morrison.

Ofcom’s 2009 plan will also focus on making sure BT adheres to the open access promises which brought about the establishment of its Openreach division, as well as formulating regulation for next-generation broadband services, making better use of wireless spectrum, and concluding its investigation into the pay-TV market.

Morrisson said the UK still lags behind many other countries in next-generation broadband availability such as 24Mbit/s ADSL2+ and the converged voice, data and video services this supports, which means providers have little option but to compete on price and line speed.

“Fibre to the home and very high-speed DSL (VDSL) is only available on one estate in Ebbsfleet, whereas other European countries have 10-20 per cent of homes already passed by fibre or VDSL solutions,” he said.

BT has made ADSL2+ available to communications providers and BT Retail expects to make ADSL2+ available to as many people as possible in the first half of next year, said BT’s spokesman.

On a quest to build a connected society

Gareth Morgan — 2008-12-04T02:00:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, Computing, Thursday 4 December 2008 at 02:00:00

BT Design’s JP Rangaswami talks to Gareth Morgan about his pivotal role in the telecoms giant’s efforts to deliver universal broadband and his plans to tap into the creativity of the open source community

For the best part of the past decade, JP Rangaswami has been one of the highest profile IT leaders in the UK, first as global chief information officer (CIO) at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DKW), more recently at BT as CIO for its Global Services division.

But following a recent move to the BT Design unit, where he is managing director, Rangaswami says he’s left IT behind even if he is keen to stress he hasn’t abandoned technology, merely broadened his scope. As part of BT’s embrace of convergence, it was necessary to move beyond the traditional approach, where IT and networking were regarded as separate, he says.

“If you start talking about CIOs, it is like you’re making a judgement that IT won. That’s not a message that our network guys want to hear, and it’s not one we want to promote,” he says. “We’re serious about the convergence of IT and networking, and these subtle messages are an important part of reinforcing that.”

Rangaswami is clearly also passionate about the company’s NHS work (see below) it fits with his motivations for joining BT in the first place. After a decade of working at a large bank, he wanted a move into an area that would continually excite, challenge and inspire him.

He saw the concept of universal access to affordable connectivity as the most exciting challenge in technology capable of improving the lives of everyone, as this connectivity could underpin radical improvements in healthcare provision and welfare. BT’s plans to build its 21st Century Network (21CN) seemed to embody that quest for affordable connectivity, he says.

When he joined BT in 2006, no other global telecoms firm could match its vision for delivering a converged network, says Rangaswami hardly surprising given the corrosive impact of the dot-com bust on the sector and the huge capital outlay required to build a completely converged network. And he is in no doubt that building 21CN and delivering valuable services on the back of it remains a huge project for BT.

Rangaswami sees BT Design playing a critical role in making 21CN a success. The unit enforces two key measurements of project success that drive improvement across the telecoms giant. One is the extent to which it can deliver what the customer wants first time; the other is the degree to which it can reduce the cycle time for delivering innovation.

Underpinning these are a series of principles governing expected margins, and cost reduction through the use of offshore development as well as having to comply with regulator Ofcom’s ruling on prices for various services.

Rangaswami is adamant that sticking to these principles will ensure BT is moving in the right direction. And to improve BT’s ability to deliver value for its customers, Rangaswami is keen to embrace lessons from the open source community.

Understanding the dynamic of how communities prioritise their efforts and how consensus is achieved in often febrile atmospheres is playing a central part in BT’s efforts to spur innovation. And the only true way to understand that process is to participate in those communities, says Rangaswami.

Through its July acquisition of web telephony company Ribbit, BT has gained a foothold in a vibrant open source community, which it hopes will be a hotbed for new products and services in the telephony market. “You never hear of an open source project that has failed,” says Rangaswami.

BT confident relations with NHS will improve over time

The most obvious pain point for BT Global Services is its contracts with the NHS, which form part of the £12bn National Programme for IT.

BT’s involvement has been under the spotlight following problems at one of the main trial sites in London for the vital care records application. And last week, Computing revealed that the NHS had already rebuffed one bid from BT to add the troubled Southern region to its portfolio of deals after the original co ntractor, Fujitsu, had its contract terminated.

But Rangaswami is adamant that the situation will turn round soon.

With any major contract there is some “heavy lifting” that needs to be done at the outset, he says. The profits come from migrating to a standardised software setup, cleaning that up and normalising operations, and that takes time. Rangaswami is confident that both parties will soon see benefits from the deal.

“If you look at all the firms that have been involved in the programme, we’re still in there, we’ve stood to be counted, and I’m very proud of that,” he says.

Case study: Clifford Chance

Angelica Mari — 2008-12-03T14:11:00.000Z

Angelica Mari, Computing, Wednesday 3 December 2008 at 14:11:00

Law firm implements Sun platform and reduces datacentres to gain efficiency and cost synergies

Law firm Clifford Chance hopes to achieve performance improvements via the use of virtualisation and a consolidation exercise that will reduce the number of servers used by the business by 90 per cent.

The decision to start the migration to a consolidated environment was prompted by the need to provide a scalable platform for the firm’s global practice management system (GPMS).

GPMS is the firm’s core application for the management of billing cycles worldwide. It performed well initially but was struggling to meet growing demand for its services and started to hold back the business, according to Clifford Chance.

After these limitations became apparent, the business realised there were benefits to be had from moving to a standardised server environment, such as improved performance and reduced cost and complexity.

The law firm then began a consolidation exercise worldwide, which is expected to cut costs by reducing the number of global datacentres from 10 to four. Use of virtualisation will enable the business to reduce the number of physical servers it supports by around 90 per cent.

Clifford Chance performed a proof of concept in May, using a Sun Sparc Enterprise M5000 server. This was followed by tests of the GPMS system running on Sun’s M9000 servers in its main datacentre in London and in its disaster recovery site in Germany.

The tests led to the decision to use three Sun servers for its application tier at both sites and one for its development and test environment. Fujitsu acquired and shipped the hardware to the datacentres in England and Germany.

Deployment of the new platform is expected to complete by early 2009. When the new setup is up and running, Clifford Chance expects to more than double the GPMS performance.

A boost in employee productivity and an increase in customer wins, as well as improved energy efficiency and a reduced carbon footprint are among the benefits anticipated post-implementation. Full return on investment on hardware costs is expected within two years.

NYnet brings benefits of high fibre diet to the EU

Dave Bailey — 2008-12-03T13:11:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Wednesday 3 December 2008 at 13:11:00

Broadband initiative to highlight how optical fibre deployment boosts rural businesses and the public sector

The North Yorkshire-based NYnet public-private sector partnership has been chosen as consultants to a major new European Commission initiative known as the B3 Regions: Regions for Better Broadband Connection (PDF).

Designed to improve network connectivity to the internet and other IT systems throughout the European Union, the initiative launches today in York, and will run for 26 months sharing best practice from eight other EU-based partner organisations. It will be funded to the tune of €3.5m.

NYnet said that the initiative seeks to "redress the imbalance and combat the documented social and economic disadvantages of poor internet access by transferring existing good practices, as demonstrated by NYnet, throughout the EU member states".

NYnet was chosen after its implementation of an optical fibre network which allowed service providers to supply broadband to about 330,000 residential customers, and 50,000 small to medium sized firms and small office/home office locations, in the region, covering Craven, Hambleton, Harrogate, Richmondshire, Ryedale, Scarborough, Selby and York.

"We have a ring of 12 core points of presence [POPs] located in North Yorkshire's main market towns, connected by optical fibre with a total bandwidth capacity of 32Gbit/s," said Andy Lister, marketing director at NYnet.

"If we exceed that, I know that Cisco has electronics that can up that to 320Gbit/s on the fibre we have by just swapping out the end electronics devices. "

Lister added that NYnet's 12 POPs are connected to another 28 smaller POPs which could supply bandwidth from 100Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s to public sector sites and business parks, which would then pass on bandwidth between 2Mbit/s and 100Mbit/s to end users.

NYnet would provide better value for public sector services than is currently obtainable, and farm out excess capacity to the private sector, according to the organisation.

Lister explained that one of the problems for rural areas is that businesses pay more for network access than in urban areas. "A business in, say, Scarborough, which is no backwater, could pay between two and eight times more for services than a similar one in Leeds," he said.

Lister added that having good network access benefits the whole community in the long term. "Connecting the rural business parks near our POPs means we can provide connectivity at prices comparable with those in urban areas, which means you can set up a business here in an area which is nice to live in. It also reduces the chances of our graduates leaving North Yorkshire and moving to the south east," he said.

B3 Regions will tackle the difficulties of implementing remote broadband infrastructure, following EU research which found that only 60-70 per cent of remote/rural businesses and households in the EU have broadband, compared with over 90 per cent in urban areas.

"NYnet was chosen because of the extremely innovative way it overcame the infrastructure and access issues related to rural broadband in North Yorkshire, " said B3 Regions head of legal Roberto Moriondo.

"This model could now provide a solution to help resolve the issues of social inclusion in similarly remote areas elsewhere."

NYnet was formed in March 2007 with £4m of start-up cash from the Yorkshire Forward regional development association and £1.1m from the EU.

A backhaul network connecting 12 POPs has been created with tiered service level agreements to providers.

Should CRM be more sociable?

Martin Courtney — 2008-12-03T13:01:00.000Z

Martin Courtney, Computing, Wednesday 3 December 2008 at 13:01:00

As vendors rush to add more social networking bells and whistles to their CRM products, some experts warn that users must tread carefully when venturing into online communities

Business leaders are understandably eager to find ways of exploiting the social networking phenomenon to their advantage. For many, the legions of social network subscribers, each seemingly willing to impart precious snippets about their personal tastes and interests, present a fertile hunting ground for potential customers, and a marketing mogul’s dream.

But using social networking to sniff out potential leads is not without its risks. For those businesses that successfully straddle the line between providing valuable services and respecting customers’ privacy, the rewards could be huge, while other, less circumspect firms could quickly find their reputations shredded.

From an IT perspective, software vendors have been quick to seize on the opportunity. Giants such as Oracle and Salesforce.com have tweaked their customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to tap into these social networks.

The latest version of Oracle’s Siebel CRM suite, Siebel 8.1.1 and CRM Gadgets for Sales, includes a My Contacts Gadget, for example. This is essentially an applet that allows companies using Oracle’s CRM software to mine details that subscribers have posted on social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace.

My Contacts is based on OpenSocial, a common application programming interface (API) developed by Google, MySpace and others that allows developers to embed applications within social network site pages.

The software interrogates enabled applications to ask social network sites for information, such as those named as “buddies” or “friends” within different groups, then returns the matches. The company using the CRM application can then contact those individuals to build a relationship.

The idea, according to Oracle executives, is to use consumer social networks as replacements for email. Yet those same executives also insist the move is mostly about building customer-based social networks where the customer wants to express an opinion and ask questions about a product or service to other people using the same product or service. And Oracle, they claim, has the best data set to help those customers get answers to those questions.

Getting in your Facebook

Likewise, Salesforce.com says that its Force.com platform, which features an applet called Faceforce.com that links Salesforce.com’s CRM tool with Facebook – is not about sales lead generation, but having a “deeper customer relationship” based on communities.

Salesforce.com does not divulge how many third-party developers are currently building applications around Force.com for social network integration, but lauds the example of the My Starbucks Ideas applet that allows Starbucks customers to post ideas on the types of changes they would like to see in Starbucks cafés.

The initial reaction from early adopters of these tools appears positive. They feel that social CRM can strengthen customer relationships as long as people are comfortable with the concept.

Gary Slater is head of business systems at Business Link North East, a government-funded service designed to help businesses “start up, survive and grow”, and an existing Oracle customer. He believes organisations are crying out for an alternative to email for communicating with potential customers and that the viral referral of products and services presents a huge marketing opportunity.

“Pitching email is not getting us any money,” he says. “Online communities provide rich information and a knowledge base of customer conversations. Plus, if we do a good job, customers will tell each other about it. It costs the organisation almost nothing because it is down to customers themselves and the return on investment is potentially very big.”

Slater believes that the whole ethos of marketing has altered in parallel with the advance of Web 2.0 technology, and organisations need to adapt their sales methods accordingly. “Vendors have to be aware of the conversations that customers have with each other,” he says. “There has been 20 years of indoctrination in marketing that says you control the brand, and you put the message out. But the world has changed.”

Martin Nitsche, head of CRM for private and corporate clients at Dresdner Bank, says that people do not like traditional forms of advertising or marketing any more, and are more likely to see contact made through social networks as something positive rather than just another form of spam.

“Many customers will not see that as marketing but as a service, like share offers that are sent out by SMS, for example. One hundred per cent of our customers are using social networks, and we get about 30 to 60 per cent of our business through referrals. They may not come from Xing or Facebook, but there is return on investment there.”

Nitsche says that social networks are the preferred communication platform for a whole new generation of customers, and every organisation has to adjust to the technology that they prefer to use. “Staff use Flickr at home and then they go back to a 20-year-old interface at the bank. Applications now have to be socially sexy, simple and Web 2.0. Will we use social networking for corporate customers? They are human as well,” he says.

Inducing social network subscribers to interact with companies can still be an uphill struggle, though. Oracle will offer incentives to those willing to join its customer-based social network sites, but regardless of how attractive these prove to be, businesses need to tread carefully to avoid infringing people’s privacy, says Gary Curtis, global managing director of technology consulting at Accenture.

“Most social networks do not want advertising to be that prominent, and most companies would make that experiment with trepidation and great caution,” he says. “Equally, you can network with anyone you can get an introduction to – it might be a customer or a client, a colleague or friend in a competitive company. It simply facilitates informal contact that is collegiate and helpful.”

Richard Boardman, managing director and founder of independent CRM consultancy Mareeba, believes the benefits of integrating CRM and social networks from the customer perspective are negligible. He suspects the recent Oracle and Salesforce.com moves are just an attempt to generate publicity by jumping on the social networking bandwagon.

“Both companies are talking about a raft of integration with social networking sites, but I don’t really follow what they are trying to achieve,” he says. “Social networking sites are the antithesis of corporations, very difficult to control and built by people themselves to host their own content.”

Accenture’s Curtis does not rule out the integration of CRM with social networking sites becoming a widespread and accepted practice in the future, though. After all, the IT landscape has a habit of changing very quickly.

“We might have had the same conversation when the internet first appeared and the idea of something commercial was repugnant,” he says.

Storm warning

Daniel Robinson — 2008-12-02T12:43:00.000Z

Daniel Robinson, Computing, Tuesday 2 December 2008 at 12:43:00

Consumers will no doubt be blown away by RIM’s first touch-screen BlackBerry, but usability issues mean business users are likely to be less keen, writes Daniel Robinson

The BlackBerry Storm is the first handset from Research In Motion (RIM) to feature a touch-based user interface akin to that of Apple’s popular iPhone. This may draw lots of attention from consumers, but business users are likely to stick with more traditional BlackBerry designs.

Available now from Vodafone, the BlackBerry Storm lacks a keyboard and instead has a larger 3.25in screen designed for fingertip control of functions, with just the standard phone call/end keys and a BlackBerry menu and escape key on the front bezel. It also has improved music and video capabilities, such as the ability to play movies and synchronise with an iTunes library.

While the Storm also has the usual corporate features, such as the ability to enroll with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) for push email and administrator control, it seems to be aimed more at consumers.

The Storm has 3G network support, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS hardware for location-based applications, but it lacks Wi-Fi, which is included in many rival devices such as the iPhone. There is, however, a decent 3.2-megapixel camera.

The Storm’s touch-screen and gesture recognition are bound to invite comparison with Apple’s iPhone, and the two input systems are quite similar. With both devices, users can scroll up and down menus and email lists by swiping the screen, and tap the screen to zoom in within applications such as the browser. The main menu has icons just the right size to be easily tapped with a fingertip, and both devices automatically change screen orientation if twisted around.

Where the Storm differs is in its clickable screen, which lets the user press down – like clicking a mouse button – to select an option. This feature means it is possible to scroll through your emails and menus without accidentally opening one or unintentionally triggering a function, which we h ave found to be a continual bugbear with other touch-enabled phones.

The clickable screen should also make an onscreen soft keyboard more usable, but we did not find this to be the case. The click feedback helps, but we could only tap out text at a fraction of the speed possible with a real keyboard – even the thumb keyboards of other smartphones. The problem is that it is tricky to hit the right key, and although the Storm lights up the key it thinks you want to press, this forces you to look carefully at the keyboard before you push down.

Using the soft keyboard gets easier with practice, but we still doubt that professionals who rely on a BlackBerry for everyday email access will be satisfied with this. We showed the Storm to several colleagues who already use other BlackBerry devices, and most expressed their dislike of this input method.

In fact, the Storm has two separate onscreen keyboards. If you hold the device in portrait orientation, it shows a SureType keypad similar to that of the BlackBerry Pearl, where each key has two letters and the phone uses a predictive algorithm to work out what you are trying to type. Twist the device round to landscape mode, and the Storm uses the longer side of the screen to display a full Qwerty layout instead.

As with Apple’s iPhone, the touch-screen is fine for dialling voice calls with an onscreen numeric keypad, as the keys here are larger. RIM has also wisely included physical buttons to mute the sound and lock and unlock the screen.

One of the touch-screen’s useful applications is multi-touch support. If you place one finger at the start of a block of text and another at the end, the Storm highlights everything in between, making it easier to cut and paste.

The BlackBerry Storm is about the same size as RIM’s older BlackBerry 8800 model, at 112.5mm long, 62.5 wide and 13.95 in depth. Apple’s iPhone is slightly longer, but thinner, while the Storm is noticeably heavier than the iPhone and other BlackBerry models at 155g. Nevertheless, it can still be carried in a jacket pocket.

Recent BlackBerry models have had good displays, and the Storm is no exception. Its 480x360 pixel screen rivals that of the iPhone for brightness and vivid colour. Vodafone supplied our review unit with a selection of media such as movie trailers, and we found the on-screen playback quality of these impressive.

We experienced some issues when testing the BlackBerry Storm. While we were able to get a 3G Vodafone network connection in central London, this dropped off to GPRS speed in other locations and sometimes lost the signal altogether.

We also found that the motion sensor, which detects the orientation of the device, often caused the Storm to change screen format when we did not want it to.

BlackBerry’s web browser also caused us some frustration with links. We found that on some news sites, for example, tapping on a headline simply zoomed in, rather than opening the link to the article itself. The browser has a cursor mode, whereby a mouse pointer can be moved around the screen by fingertip control, but switching to this did not fix the problem.

The Storm comes with a variety of applications, such as a version of the Documents to Go suite from Dataviz, which enables users to view and edit email attachments sent as Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint files, including Office 2007 formats.

It also includes the Vodafone Music Store, which allows users to buy and download music.However, while the Storm’s built-in media player can supposedly synchronise with a user’s iTunes music library, we could not find a way to do this, nor any mention of it in the documentation.

Many other applications look as if they are ready installed, such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Google Maps, but touching their icon actually triggers a download from the web. The same is true for most of the messaging applications, such as ICQ, Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger.

However, RIM’s own BlackBerry Maps application for navigation is built in, as is BlackBerry Messenger.

The Storm has 1GB of built-in memory, but this can be expanded to 16GB using a microSD slot for Flash cards, located next to the SIM card slot behind the handset’s rear cover.

Powering the Storm is a 1,400mAh lithium battery pack rated by RIM at 15 days on standby and up to 5.5 hours of talk time. However, the charge level indicator on the screen seemed to deplete faster than previous BlackBerry models we have tested, resulting in our having to recharge the unit every day or two during tests.

Vital statistics

3.25in screen – 480x360 pixels at 184ppi
Touch-screen supports single-touch, multi-touch and gestures
1GB of onboard memory storage – microSD/SDHD memory card slot for up

to 16GB of additional storage
Support for 3G (HSPA) network and GPS
3.2-megapixel digital camera
Weighs 5.5oz/155g

Q&A - ntl:Telewest Business managing director Stephen Beynon

Dave Bailey — 2008-11-28T14:24:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Friday 28 November 2008 at 14:24:00

The cable provider's chief talks about the future of next-generation broadband access in the UK

The debate about how next-generation access (NGA) to broadband is rolled out to residential users has assumed an ever increasing importance. Another Ofcom consultation with industry and users on how the UK should proceed finishes today.

The recent Caio report commissioned by the Treasury and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform concluded that government intervention and subsidies should play no part in NGA delivery.

A key player in the future of broadband Britain is cable provider Ntl:Telewest Business. Stephen Beynon has been managing director of the firm since March 2005, and Computing asked him how he thinks the UK will proceed.

How and who do you think will be bankrolling next-generation access given the current economic climate in the UK?

Stephen Beynon : It will be the private sector, I don't think with the commitments this government currently has, that it can finance a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) commitment. The problem is that you can't just roll out a little bit of fibre – you have to do full deployments.

We've had success with 40Gbit/s across our core network - in fact at we have a growing business supplying backhaul capacity, but the core is not a problem – it's all about access and everybody has this problem. What to do about the last two-and-a-half kilometres?

What we're seeing at the moment is a big unbundling effort by ISPs. Everybody has got their equipment into 1,000 to 1,200 exchanges – but everybody has gone into the same exchanges. So residential customers are being upgraded from, say, 2Mbit/s if you're lucky, to relatively higher network speeds, and this is causing demand to explode in copper networks, which in turn puts pressure on others to upgrade their core networks.

Has a similar problem this affected ntl:Telewest?

Our peak usage has increased 700 per cent with the actual peak being eight o'clock at night. Even at three to four o'clock in the morning it's not the case that there's zero network traffic flowing at all – there's a lot of peer-to-peer traffic at that time.

The DSL operators will have similar times of peak usage and all this is on the existing copper infrastructure. The big question is what happens next. BT provided its answer when it announced a £1.5bn investment, which will be mainly fibre to the kerb and providing 50Mbit/s using VDSL in 2012.

We're launching a 50Mbit/s service this year over co-axial cable from our 38,000 street cabinets, and you have to remember that our business data networks are deployed on the same infrastructure as our consumers.

What are ntl:Telewest's experiences of the trend towards more flexible working in the UK?

I think flexible working - as in home working - is beginning to take off, and we're deploying SSL virtual private networks (VPNs) for firms to help these workers connect to their corporate sites and also have on net voice calls. We have a deployment with Haringey council, who are really pushing this, and it's resulting in better attendance and also lower sick leave for staff.

The recent announcement from Openreach about wholesale price reductions for key access and backhaul packages will ripple through the system, dropping Ethernet business prices, and leading to rapidly rising demand. We currently have double digit quarterly compound growth in existing demand for Ethernet from our own customer base, and it's flexible working that's driving this demand.

There's also another form of flexible working that's driving Ethernet demand, and that's flexibility in the office. A good example is the Heart of Hounslow health centre, which is going to be a flagship polyclinic. This health centre has had a multimillion-pound investment to make sure it is fully utilised – so one day part of the clinic is set up as a child health surgery and the next day the same space will be used to address a different area of healthcare. You can't do that without being able to re-configure the communications network quickly.

Another point about flexible working is that people's increasing use of home technology is leading to a situation that people say: "Why isn't it like that at work." People connecting over video links and using more social networking applications could overstress the current bandwidth with the result that the service available through the local loop network infrastructure might not be up to scratch.

Virgin Media recently launched a mobile broadband service, teaming up with T-Mobile, while BT also launched such a service, piggybacking on Vodafone's network. Why do you think that happened?

A lot of mobile broadband dongles being shipped are for use indoors, rather than business use, and I think 3G is a clear threat to DSL-based fixed-line services. If you have the right coverage, then the challenge is to make sure that your backhaul capabilities are good. Remember a mobile operator has about 13,000 cell sites for UK coverage. Upgrading backhaul connectivity for these sites is a £50m a year problem – putting fibre down is a £1.5bn a year problem. The mobile operators are all engaged in deploying backhaul capacity which will give better mobile broadband speeds, and this will make life tough for the DSL operators.

IT minister calls for Europe to dig for victory in broadband

Dave Bailey — 2008-11-27T12:40:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Thursday 27 November 2008 at 12:40:00

Stephen Carter urges countries to "open up the trenches" in quest for universal access to broadband

The UK's minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, Stephen Carter, has called for a Europe-wide initiative to give citizens universal access to broadband.

Carter has urged Europe to "metaphorically, and also perhaps literally, consider digging or at least opening up the trenches for universal access for broadband".

Speaking ahead of tomorrow's European Council meeting in Brussels on the Electronic Communications & Networks Framework, Carter said that "whether by wire, satellite or any other means, broadband is the crucial underpinning for a competitive global Europe".

While UK communications regulator Ofcom and the government agree that there should be no "two-speed" infrastructure in the UK - such as fibre for densely populated metropolitan areas and "make-do-and-mend" for rural areas - how that is to be achieved is still being discussed. Ofcom's latest consultation exercise concludes on 2 December.

The Caio Review, commissioned in September by the Treasury and the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, concluded that next-generation access involving large optical fibre deployments should be delivered without government subsidies or intervention.

Ofcom leans towards the main push towards next-generation access being provided by the private sector, with larger carriers investing in fibre, led by the incentive of substantial non-interference with such rollouts.