Disqus - Latest Comments for squawkBOX

Re: Engadget UK Giveaway: win a Samsung Galaxy S III courtesy of Expansys!

squawkBOX — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 05:47:03 -0000

I had a chance to use one of these yesterday and I LOVED it. *fingers crossed*

Re: Vodafone UK is “shocked” at the “careless disregard” of Ofcom on 4G spectrum

squawkBOX — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 06:37:37 -0000

[posted elsewhere but pasted here as relevant]

Watching the way that they bully OFCOM, HMRC and other firms, I take the comment " careless disregard for the best interests of consumers, businesses and the wider economy " by Vodafone with a pinch of salt and TBH, made me vomit a little inside.

Vodafone currently have a slight competitive advantage with them obtaining effectively free spectrum for 3G use at 900Mhz (along with o2). Everything Everywhere, now have been given a free pass to jump on the 4G bandwagon at 1800Mhz. This leaves poor ThreeUK as the only network that have purchased all of their spectrum holdings that are in use.

Personally, I'd rather have Three launch LTE services as they 'get' the modern consumer.

So as things stand at the moment, in the UK we are moving towards having LTE launched by EE before the rest of the networks can launch at the end of next year. In an ideal world, they'd all launch at the same time but because of the advantages that have been afforded by o2 and Vodafone at 900Mhz - I'm now in agreement with OFCOM and would like to see them launch their LTE services sooner.

A slight spanner was thrown in the works yesterday, with rumours that ThreeUK are in discussions to purchase some of the spectrum that is EE is required to sell-off. If they do, this triggers a change in the conditions of the smallest UK player and means that they'd get less favourable concessions at the main 4G auctions.

Tis all a little bit of a mess.

Re: Engadget's first UK Giveaway: win one of three Sony Xperia S phones!

squawkBOX — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 07:08:19 -0000

It is nice to see a UK based competition for once on Engadget. Good luck to everyone! :)

Re: Album Review: The Sound of Arrows – Voyage

squawkBOX — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:03:49 -0000

Scandipop posted two videos from the Swedish morning show 'Nyhetsmorgon' of The Sound of Arrows0 Worth a little watch. http://www.scandipop.co.uk/...

Re: M-Commerce: Got any good examples?

squawkBOX — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 04:35:20 -0000

I think the Cineworld.com service is great. I don't have any stats but the process of booking a ticket is a great experience on a mobile device.

Re: Film Review: Beautiful Lies (De Vrais Mensonges)

squawkBOX — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:49:00 -0000

Great review and it sums up my view of the film. It did drag on a bit at the end, however a similar movie would never be produced by Hollywood, so it was appreciated very much for that.

Great acting from the mother in the movie. She was good!

Re: Location-based gaming & spotting problems with the power of the crowd [Guest Post]

squawkBOX — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:05:34 -0000

The problem we have at the moment is trying to report these data blackspots. A quick look around the main networks in the UK show that they each take a different approach to this issue.

Three - www.three.co.uk/coverage Have a "report any network issue here" button on that page.

Vodafone - have a report coverage procedure on their website.

Orange - whilst they have a fantastic online map of their coverage, they tend to point you to call customer services to report faults.

o2 - have a horrid coverage map and tell you to call customer services to report a fault

T-Mobile - I gave up trying to find out what to do, as their website is awful.

The point being, is that there is no standardised way to report faults and I think you are right, we just don't all have time to call up our mobile operators to report faults.

Whilst I am not a fan of the application (it is slow and buggy), I feel the app 'Sensorly' has the beginnings of something that we need to see.

We need something similar that allows phones to map mobile coverage *AND* report faults. Whilst I agree in principle about using the existing crowd sourced data from existing applications - I'm not sure of as to how much useful information that the mobile networks can derive from them? (i.e. levels of signal, type of signal etc.)

I'd like to see an app from the network which allows (a) coverage to be monitored (b) allows reporting of faults via data or traditional circuit switched methods (i.e. SMS etc). That way if there is a fault, then it can be located automatically by the network or via manual reporting on the phone.

Of course, there are many issues, i.e. if there is a coverage fault, how do you report it? Are consumers going to be willing to spend time to report these faults?

Re: Even Wall Street Wants an iPhone: UBS, J.P. Morgan Think About Bailing on BlackBerry

squawkBOX — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:29:50 -0000

Yep, I agree. A very misleading headline. Poor journalism strikes again.

Re: Dell Streak goes Android 2.1

squawkBOX — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:04:35 -0000

I think DELL have potentially a brilliant device on their hand with the 2.1 upgrade. As a Nexus One user, I found it annoying when trying out the handset in the o2 store, as half of the features that I am used to were not present in 1.6

The form factor is brilliant as well, bigger than a mobile but smaller than an iPad. I could see myself using this for a multitude of things, from reading ebooks to tweeting.

Hopefully we will see a bigger push of the Android OS soon, as it is fantastic and not locked down by a certain fruit company!

Re: David’s semi-final 1 tips

squawkBOX — Sat, 15 May 2010 11:43:14 -0000

Whilst I love the studio version of the Belarusian song, the live version fills me with dread. The lead singer cannot sing. I predict they will do well or really badly depending on the lead singer alone.

The Icelandic entry, "Je Ne Sais Quoi" is pretty good, although it is a far cry from "This Is My Life" (Iceland) but deserves to do well.

TBH, my biggest pick out of the lot is the Albanian entry. Took me by surprise when I heard it for the first time.

I think your choice is spot on though. (PS. Poor Portugal, will they ever win?)

Re: POLL: Which Twitter Client(s) Do You Use?

squawkBOX — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:50:34 -0000

For record purposes. Other: I use the Seesmic client on Android and also dabr.co.uk

Re: Vodafone becomes bit pipe: Locked out of retailing Nexus One!

squawkBOX — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:11:22 -0000

Interestingly, I wonder if Google will still ship the handset from the US or whether there will be a local European shipping option?

Re: Poll: What’s the best network for the iPhone?

squawkBOX — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:05:23 -0000

Voda have one thing holding them back: They only use GPRS and HSDPA. They really need up upgrade all their 2G cells to EDGE...

Re: Hands-on with the 3UK MiFi wireless hotspot unit

squawkBOX — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:55:35 -0000

I'm guessing you are able to change the SSID as well?

Re: Why are 3 UK blocking Wapedia? (updated)

squawkBOX — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:53:46 -0000

This may be out of date as I no longer work for them... but I believe if you are using any of the Add Internet Max or similar addons they are filtered using bluecoat technology which is controlled by an external party.

If you are on the older X-Series addons, they don't have any filtering on them. 3 have still not got a feature available to bypass this filtering if you are on Add Internet Max.

Thankfully I'm now with vodafone who are a little better in this regards (albeit more stingy with their internet allowance for handsets).

Re: Verizon and AT&T defend the indefensible (text charges)

squawkBOX — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:58:49 -0000

QUOTE "Not surprisingly, industry association CTIA echoed the sentiments. "The U.S. wireless industry is the most competitive and innovative in the world."

Haha haha hahaha haha haha - what a load of bull. However, I suppose they are spokesgroup for the industry so they are going to say that.

Competition is brilliant for reducing prices - look at the UK when 3 entered. The US needs more of it or for some restrictions to stop the likes of AT&T buying anything thing with the word "mobile" or "cell(ular)" in it, as they have been doing recently.

Re: Thoughts on O2's iPhone 3GS offering

squawkBOX — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:55:11 -0000

I'm very interested to see how they can tell the difference between handset and tethered use?

Re: STOP PRESS: ShoZu to start charging!

squawkBOX — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:02:28 -0000

Yuck! "going forward." They should be shot for using that phrase - it is nasty.

Re: Search for N: Final Clue [It's up!]

squawkBOX — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:00:07 -0000

Well done! haha - I read on facebook that you ended up jumping in a bush to find it! I think that shows dedication!

I wonder what lengths people will go to get something (*squawkbox wanders off with potential TV show idea...) :)

Re: Search for N: Final Clue [It's up!]

squawkBOX — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:33:36 -0000

Hmm... I'm in Scotland so no chance of getting one :( Even though I have all the answers!

Good luck to those in:

London (x2)
Oxford
Dorset
South Wales
Manchester
Birmingham

Re: Special Report: Sony Ericsson Summer Announcement

squawkBOX — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:39:39 -0000

The joys of Sony Ericsson churning out more crap... They got the K800i right and kinda stopped development there...

Re: Exclusive: The search for the N…

squawkBOX — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:46:14 -0000

In true Nokia spirit: Tarrat ja T-paita minulle! :)

Its interesting Nokia are doing this, do you think they are taking a leaf out of Vodafone's book? :P

Re: Three and BT launch 'Terminate the Rate'

squawkBOX — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:56:11 -0000

I'd argue that its a ploy to really increase the cost to the end user. The mobile networks in the UK have been suffering from falling ARPU or ARPC (average revenue per user/customer) and at the moment you can get unlimited SMS, same network calls and data for around £20-£25 depending on which network. Even with that, you get a good number of cross network minutes, so this £35 is simply IMHO a way to extract more revenue from each customer.

Re: Calling 0800 numbers for free from mobiles

squawkBOX — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:33:22 -0000

To be honest, I think the issue we have is really due to the large number of number ranges we have in the UK.

01-02: Regular landlines
03 - Nationwide non-geographic code
04: No use at the moment
05: VoIP/Corp numbering
06: No use at the moment
07: Personal Numbering / Mobile
08: Freephone or 'national/local' numbers
09: Premium

Whilst I find the charging of 0800/0845 extremely annoying, there is one that I rate even more irritating. The 07 number. Anyone that has called a 'Personal' number beginning with 070 or a number from the Isle of Man (07624) will know that you'll be charged outside your bundles. There is far too much confusion surrounding them.

I would ideally like to see a standardised approach taken by all networks. For all number ranges (bar 09) to be included in any minutes and possibly for 0800 numbers to be free.

I'd also like to see a different approach to dealing with Personal numbering and those "British Crown dependencies," which appear to be very similar to UK mobiles (i.e. the twitter SMS number +44 762 480 1423 - which is an Isle of Man number, as Manx Telecom run it) but are charged at international rates.

Re: Google Latitude: An 'insidious threat'?

squawkBOX — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:31:40 -0000

"In summary, the danger arises when a second party can gain physical access to a user’s phone and enables Latitude without the owner’s knowledge. So, we expressed concerns about the settings and urged Google to set up a daily text message which would reach all devices enabled with Latitude, mentioning the status of Latitude (OFF or ON) by default."

So is he suggesting that with every app we have that tracks us, we must receive a daily SMS to indicate that its still sending information out about our location? Rubbish. Imagine if you use a number of these services.

I think a better solution would be for the industry to come together and come up with some common symbol which could be shown on the handset's front screen (i.e. similar to the SMS alert icon or 3G symbol) to indicate that the location is being broadcast.

If only the UK government cared about its citizen's privacy rights... they would be making Phorm illegal first...

Usually the European Commission are the source of wisdom on these things, I'll await their views with interest. (Viviane Reding et al...)