Ben's Talk3G Blog

It happened.

Friday 28th October was the eventual glorious day when the etherflow was provisioned by my ISP Spitfire, following a 'fit and test' by Openreach on the 26th. The gear they've installed is rather nice; just a single fibre is used these days for transmit and receive, with 3 spares, and the fibre modem, or "BT NTE", has dual power supplies for redundancy and 21CN (21st Century Network) branding. It supports redundant fibre inputs, but the spare isn't being used ...

The most infuriating thing about mobile networks is the lack of them.

Being stuck without coverage, or usable coverage, is infuriating. So why isn't coverage better?

Well, there are going to be many reasons, including MNOs needing to maximise the return on their investment and so running networks that cover based on population density and not geographic availability.

But the one I'm singling out is the complete lack of a competitive environment for improving ...

Reviews are now widespread of the Galaxy Tab 10.1, now available to buy. This is the tablet that Samsung famously took back to the drawing board after Apple's iPad 2 announcement left the original concept for the 10.1 looking ridiculously bloated.

'Favourable' is how I'd describe what I've read. Trusted Reviews have gone as far as giving it a Recommended award, suggesting that, if you're after a tablet, this is the one to get...

So kudos to Samsung for making a nice ...

I hate WiFi.

Teeny tiny little hotspots that all too often suffer from overcomplicated access restrictions, jitter, or downright abysmal WAPs holding it all together.

Yet even in the summer of 2011, WiFi connections still rule the mobile connectivity waves. Every handset, for example, favours WiFi over a 3G connection; a crushing but brutally honest testimony to the failure of UMTS/WCDMA to deliver high speed mobility at 2100MHz.

Anecdotal evidence suggests ...

I've never travelled to a foreign city before purely to explore it. My schedule has never really allowed for such endeavours, the rare moments of holiday reserved for lying in the sun doing absolutely nothing.

Data was a concern. When you're primarily going to be in one place it's easy to ensure WiFi, but there would be no way out of using cellular roaming data on this excursion. Fully prepared to have to keep my usage of iPad and iPhone to an absolute minimum, and still pay a hefty ...