Mondays are usually quiet news days but this week it’s definitely ‘bad news day’ with a number of stories highlighting security issues. You can never be sure that it’s because there are more security glitches happening these days or because we are being more open about them.The first was an announcement by European Commission (EC) following a phishing attack which allowed cyber criminals to steal account data, and perform a number of fraudulent transactions. Individual emails were sent to users of the ETS registries which...

In a story that almost mirrors the biblical tale a puny (in terms of size and muscle) Australian ISP has battled with, and beaten, the burly media and content rights holders of Hollywood and beyond. And the battle, played out in the Australian Supreme Court, could have massive repercussions worldwide.Presiding judge Justice Cowdroy cleared the ISP, iiNet of allegations that it had authorised subscribers to violate copyright laws and ordered the applicants, 34 rights owners represented by the Australian Federation Against...

Hello again everyone, I'm just back from  Singapore, where, alongside our very busy event we ran two training courses, the Business Process Framework Overview and the Process Framework Workshop. True to form, these very popular courses were very well attended wiith over 20 students on each. As always, the class was composed of people from a range of backgrounds with a variety of experience and interests - Service Providers, ISVs, Consultants and so on,  but in Singapore I noticed again a trend that has...

What would you do if your nearly new, state of the art GSM HSPA nationwide network stopped running? And what would you do if a week after you still had no idea what caused it? When officials of Telecom New Zealand’s XT network find out they may be in serious demand worldwide as disaster management consultants. That is if they work out what actually happened.This is not a scenario you hear about very often these days. Of course, networks fail during time of national disaster as we saw in Haiti recently, but restoring them...

Our Management World Asia event in Singapore last week threw up a load of interesting topics.  Some of the topics that caught my eye included The keynote presentation from Telenor was an eye-opener.  Although a Norwegian company, it has over 70million subscribers in Asia and has just launched a new operator in India which could add a huge number of subscribers to this already large presence.  What was particularly interesting was the whole area of mobile banking.  Telenor have purchased a bank to address the fact...

Have you ever read something that is so obvious you wonder why you hadn’t thought if it yourself?  After reading a newly released list of 2010 Predictions from Deloitte for the coming year in our industry, you come away wondering why you’re not charging $1,500 an hour for consulting because you’d thought of it already but never bothered to write it down!Amongst a list a really quite exciting predictions I took umbrage to one that said the smartphone would continue to thrive in 2010.  Blow me down, who’d have thought that?...

While at Team Action Week in Lisbon this week, I pondered what topic to highlight in this blog.  Not to worry about food...there are plenty of my favorite Portuguese foods available here.  Especially, a salt cod and potato casserole called bacalhau a Gomes de Sa, that features of layers of salt cod, potatoes slices, sauteed onions topped with other favorites such as hard-boiled eggs and olives.  My mouth is already watering for another helping. I wish I could learn how to prepare them! Aha, that's it.  I could write...

It's Friday, and for many it's been a tough week battling adverse weather and preparing for TAW in Lisbon or MW Asia in Singapore. Here's some interesting and sometimes bizarre news generated from our own industry sector. Enjoy...French campaign to abolish piracy caught piratingThe French agency tasked with enforcing strict anti-piracy regulations has been left severely embarrassed after the revelation that its logo contains pirated material.
The Hadopi agency unveiled its new logo at a ceremony presided over...

Hello everyone, and if it's not too late best wishes for the coming year. Britain has just come out of its worst spell of weather for quite some time and as usual with the first snowflake the Country stopped working. Road, rail and air transport all came to a halt, schools and businesses were closed whilst the population largely stayed indoors and complained.  This quiet time however, gave me a chance to look ahead to see how our training pipeline was looking. A quick glance at the training courses we have...

Indications are that we are emerging from 'the recession we had to have'.  If that's truly the case then 2010 could be quite a year for telecommunications investment in infrastructure and systems. According to IDC, two themes will dominate events in the ICT markets in 2010 - recovery and transformation.  And these are two areas the TM Forum has been concentrating its own efforts on. Members not already well positioned to take advantage of the IDC predictions will not have to look far to get help.In terms of the...