5G ... a new hope or a phantom menace ?

I've been involved in 5G preparations and roll-out for over a year now. It seems to be going rather well for our Telco friends. Verizon launched in it's 10th US city and EE are planning to be in 16 UK cities before the end of the year.

Of course, the 5G won't cover the cities, only very small parts of the cities - typically a few square miles in and around the financial and retail centre of each. The 5G signal also doesn't penetrate walls, trees, buses, or anything reasonable solid that might stand between you and the small 5G antenna. Unless you are in the retail store of the carrier whose 5G smartphone you have, it isn't going to work.

The 28GHz high frequency bands used to achieve the fastest 5G speeds simply don't allow for much more than a few hundred metres between your phone and the cell tower, in a straight line, on a clear day. If you throw in a street corner, some foliage, and a few other people using the signal, then that drops to not-very-far-at-all.

So the Telcos need to put out 1,000s more small 5G radio cells, either on existing posts or their own new posts. And to give you the speed of network to support that gigabit per second speed, all of those poles need to have fibre-optic connection back into the Telco core network. That sounds expensive, because it is. Estimated at 3x to 5x more expensive than rolling out 4G.

So that's why only city centres, and business parks are likely to see 5G anytime soon. The problem of patchy mobile coverage, not-spots and woeful data speeds whenever between cities will worsen.

When asked, the Telcos will tell us that 5G can also work at lower frequencies. 3.5 GHz and even 700MHz have been auctioned for Telco use of 5G in UK and Europe. But despite the glitzy 5G moniker, running it at 3.5 GHz has all the downsides of your home WiFi signal, with very few benefits. 5G radio does allow you to squeeze 15% more data through than 4G LTE. Not exactly a quantum leap.  700MHz will at least give you a few miles of coverage area, even if when you do get online, you might be underwhelmed by the speed.

Should those of us not resident within a mile of London's Oxford Street or Downtown Manhattan despair ? Well, not entirely. The smartphone experience is driven by the tasks you try to achieve, and where you try to achieve them.

The good news is that we all mostly stopped worrying about whether emails and attachments would get to our boss from the train home. If it didn't go immediately, it would go as we slopped for stations in built-up areas. And that non-real-time aspect was key.

We can happily download a Netflix episode in the time it takes to leave Waterloo station, safe in the knowledge that the black-spots through Vauxhall and Sunbury wouldn't affect your viewing. And that is the point. Our real-time expectations are buffered because clever companies that had to deal with patchy coverage have optimised the user experience by using the network when it was available, and allowing brief periods of network disappearance to not affect the fun.

Not every use case works that way. Watching a game live on your smartphone would be great, if you could rely on the network. If you can't then it will be a frustrating experience. Maybe Golf would be okay, but football (soccer), rugby, or anything where missing a few seconds can ruin the experience, needs a real-time uninterrupted feed. Video-conferencing also needs that. Not that many people want to engage in person-to-person facetime-ing whilst on a train, or in the street. But content and audio sharing, as part of a web-conference, for management updates, training programs and workshop sessions is how much of the service industry works today. That can't be done with patchy service, regardless of how fast the connections is when it is up.

The poster-child use-cases for 5G are just that. Aspirational posters about what the future promises. They are about as realistic as the 1960s posters of flying cars and 3 day working weeks. Remote surgery, self-driving cities, minority report-style human computer interaction. None of these have gone past prototype stage. In the meantime the (non-5G) Internet of Things (IoT) is gradually gaining momentum, with networks of sensors and connected objects providing homeowners and companies with key data streams that help them run their lives, homes or businesses. Almost none of these need 5G. Most, in fact, need a cut-down forms of 4G, stripped back to just good coverage and quite low data rates.

Although not as news-worthy as augmented reality headsets and drone deliveries, these IoT applications are likely to have more impact on our daily lives than 5G will, for the next 5 years. Every time you are given an hour slot for an amazon delivery, every time the bus stop screen tells you when the next bus is due, every time the signposts tell you which car parks are full and then the car park tells you which floor has spaces. That's the Internet of Things, and none of it needs 5G.

How Amazon might not be 'Primed' for Christmas

Amazon launched 24 years ago and has a tight grip on Christmas. It sold over $60bn of product in the Christmas period last year.

Since launching in the UK in 1998 as a bookstore, it rapidly moved into CDs & DVDs (remember them?). By 2001 it was selling toys and games.

My first order was in 2006. A book about keeping a fish tank, and a 2nd hand Wham! Album (don't ask).

Since then my love affair with Amazon has blossomed through homewares, sports & leisure, DIY, clothing... I imagine that aside from food, petrol and coffee, Amazon gets me almost everything else.

As a long time Prime member, I'm so delightfully happy to shell out the £79 annual fee, just to save money on Christmas postage. The fact that Amazon Prime Video and Twitch are bundled makes me and my clan extra happy.

But the rot has set in, and Amazon seems to be going the way of most big companies, and losing the long held trust of its fan base.

There have been two recent rulings against Amazon by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) to reel in the marketing exuberance at Amazon.

In April 2018 Amazon were found to have misled consumers in four different ways relating to the use of claimed savings against RRP and retail price, as well as misleading customers about savings promised to customers who sign up for Prime. So far, so sneaky.

In August 2018 Amazon were found to have misled customers regarding their "One-Day Delivery for Christmas" advertising.

The ASA upheld the complaint on the grounds that an advert promising "get unlimited One-Day Delivery with Amazon Prime" was likely to be interpreted as One-Day delivery on any Prime labelled item. In fact, the ASA found that a "significant proportion of Prime labelled items were not available for delivery by the subsequent day.

Here is the current wording of the 'Prime' sign-up advert. Still a little unclear, I think.

On top of this, we have the frustrating scenario where items don't arrive within the estimated time window. Sometimes a full week later than agreed to at the moment of purchase. So when my Samsung headphones, which I rely on for 4-6 hours daily went missing, a next day replacement was what sent me to Amazon for my replacement. That was on November 9th. We're at the 13th now, and according to Amazon I should expect the delivery sometime before the 17th.

That's not next day delivery. And since then I've walked past at least 3 high street stores stocking the same headphones at a slightly higher price.

Christmas is very nearly here again, and so are 3 birthdays before that. I'm going to continue to use Amazon and the lovely free postage. But I'm sure as heck going to give Amazon an extra week of contingency, to make sure items arrive on time to be wrapped and presented.

'Prime' is just starting to feel a little .. sub-prime.

When Google ruined Voice UI

When Google ruined Voice UI

There are plenty of good examples of a company making a tone-deaf move to attempt to develop its business. Whether it is Tennis’ ATP keeping sexism alive and well, or brands making tone-deaf discriminatory adverts, there are plenty of unfortunate and badly thought through business choices.

In April 2017, Google made a change that wasn’t at all discriminatory, but it was mind-bendingly annoying. They moved my shopping list from the Google Keep app on my Android phone to the Google Shopping List in Google Home / Express, and some folks were pretty unhappy about it. Google haven't ported much of the Keep functionality into the new shopping list, and of course they've stuck and ad next to every item, and cluttered the rest of the screen with ads too.

Ron Amadeo from Ars Technica highlights the differences

It took me a few weeks to even realise that had happened. There wasn’t a notification of the change. Because my shopping list in Keep was shared by two other people, the fact that my shopping list items, added through Google assistant, weren’t making it to my Keep ‘Shopping List’ went unnoticed. I originally thought that someone else had deleted the entries. Maybe we didn’t need more toothpaste after all?

Eventually I twigged. Google was putting shopping list items in a new place, the Google Home Primary Shopping List – whatever and wherever that is.

After a little more ‘Googling’, I found the list online and also potentially through the ‘Google Home’ Android app. I downloaded that, and not being at home at the time, it was as good as useless. I don’t own any ‘Google Home’ devices, and digging through the UK version of the app didn’t get me to my Primary Shopping List. So the webUI is now the only way to see my shopping list – which is pretty useless given the terrible data coverage in the majority of UK large grocery shops.

So, I wanted to go back to using Keep for my shopping list, and there is simply no way to do this with voice unless you want to faff with IFTTT recipes and Keep lists that aren’t called “Shopping List”.

Simply put, Google has hijacked the “Ok Google, add something to my shopping list” function. It is obvious why they’ve done this in the US. They want to be able to sell adds which pop up next to the Primary Shopping List items and point you to retailers like Target & Walmart, who could fulfil your needs. That would generate a reasonable sum in advertising revenue and possibly through vendor kickbacks for successful sales. But not in the UK. Google Express isn’t yet in UK, and at best is a niche solution in US where Amazon Prime does a far better job of connecting shoppers with product, in all categories.

In the meantime, while Google messes around with our user experiences for critical apps like note-taking and voice UI, in a way that is irrelevant and frustrating to UK consumers, Amazon are taking over. Alexa works brilliantly, Amazon Fresh is bringing well priced fast delivery grocery shopping to UK homes, and premium video content to our TVs.

Voice UI is certainly the future of the smart home, and when I’m shaving it’s the perfect moment for me to add shaving foam to my shopping list using my voice. My Google assistant will no-longer be used, I’m putting my Echo Dot in the bathroom.

Voice UI - the future of your morning routine

We're told that the next frontier for human-computer interaction is Voice UI.

When it doesn't make sense to hold a device or controller, but you need things to happen or content to appear, Voice UI is going to be your friend.

To most people today, Voice UI is a frustrating and flawed experience. Only Amazon seem to have got it nearly right with Echo/Alexa. But give others time to catch up and refine their voice recognition and we'll have a host of usable, maybe even vital voice interactions:

In the car - to control audio entertainment, to communicate and to navigate whilst keeping hands on the wheel and eyes on the road:

"Which is the quickest way to work today? I need petrol and a Starbucks"

In the kitchen - recipe directions, appliance control with doughy hands:

"I've added the eggs, what's next? Oh, and set the oven to 190 for half an hour then to 150 for 90 minutes"

In the lounge - media control, atmosphere settings, dimming the lights, drawing curtains, bumping the heating up a notch:

"Find a Schwarzenegger film, but family friendly. Movie-night room settings please."

In the bathroom - infotainment, house control, day planning:

"Show me my meetings. Ok, move the review with Jim to Tuesday. Show me news related to my morning meetings today. 
Has the dog been fed yet?"

In the bedroom - sleep maximisation, based on sleep phase, calendar and sunrise time:

"Early start tomorrow, up between 7 and 7.30, unless Dave sets an early meeting. Dark now"

At work - setting reminders, adding to lists, communicating:

"Remind me to get milk on the way home. Add parmesan to the shopping list. Text Jake to ask about beers on Thursday. Call the Doctor before 5.30."

On holiday - logistics and planning, poolside with sun-creamy hands:

"Where are the kids right now? Tell them dinner is at 8. What can we do tomorrow? Ok, book the scuba trip for 3 of us."

In presentations - for setup and note taking:

"Connect everyone to the WebEx. Dial out to John's mobile. Record the role-call, update Salesforce."

Whilst travelling:

"Tell me when to start walking to the gate. Text Jenny when I land and when I get to the hotel."

Whilst exercising:

"Set pacer to 7 minute miles. Alert every half mile and if heart rate goes above 180."

It'll take a bit of getting used to, and we need to find a better way to initiate the listening mode than saying key phrases. The software needs to be context aware, handle natural language, understand inference, know my preferences and have access to my data, apps and other devices. It also needs to respond only to my voice, and keep all this private and secure. If they can add some personality to the experience, that might not be a bad thing either!

Your new affordable voice assistants: Google Home, Apple Homepod, Amazon Echo

I'm starting to like the way the future looks and sounds. To steal a strap line from our second favourite smartphone company... un-box your phone. Start talking to it, rather than tapping on it, and see where it can take you.

A Bluetooth Christmas Tale

Last Christmas was a Bluetooth Christmas. A few of the presents under the tree were Bluetooth enabled.

The list of Bluetooth devices was as follows:

- Bluetooth Toothbrushes

- Bluetooth Lifx Lightbulbs

- Bluetooth Rev Remote Control Cars

- Bluetooth BB-8 Starwars Droid

We're now into April, and let me tell you how it's going...

BB8 and the remote control cars were played with for a week, maybe two. The most fun we had was playing car soccer with the Rev cars and BB8-minus-head as the ball. They are now in a drawer waiting for a rainy day.

The Bluetooth Toothbrushes are still being used as electric toothbrushes, and have been a success in that they enforce the two minute brushing routine. But after the first 3 days, having your phone and app in one hand, whilst arranging brush and toothpaste in the other, was too much hassle. Alas, the pyjamas Santa gave the kids didn't have pockets for the phone. So however engaging the Oral B app might be for children of a certain age, it just didn't get used.

Let's talk home automation now. There were two primary reasons behind the Lifx lighbulbs. Firstly, I was sick of reminding my children to turn off their bedroom lights. Secondly their trusty IKEA bedside lamps were worrying unstable. So I thought... help them set schedules for their smart-lights to come on and go off, and let them create perfect mood lighting for bedtime reading and homework sessions.

How wrong I was. Children #1 and #2 got the hang of schedules, proximity and the unfathomable Lifx app. So that works almost as intended. Except when it doesn't. I don't know how the lights are left on, but sometimes they are, and when the lights are left on, I turn them off at the switch. Which renders them completely unresponsive to impatient children who expect to drive them only through their phones. And in the 'off' state the lights don't respond to schedules or proximity.

That's pretty annoying when Child 2 has set up Amazon's Echo to control lights via voice. But however hard you shout at Alexa, it can't switch the light on at the wall.

Child #3 had his light installed in a bedside lamp because of limited head-room in his high loft bed. Said lamp has one of those utterly ridiculous switches that require you to finger the light fitting hidden under the lamp shade. So rather than flick the wall switch as I pass to turn the light off, as I used to do, I'm now fumbling to turn the damned thing off most mornings.

On top of this, on installation, the children 'claimed' their light bulbs, meaning they are the only ones authorised to change the schedules, or logic. If I claimed them, then they wouldn't be able to set their own schedules, which means more admin for me, and less autonomy for them.
So without faffing with the settings through the kids' phones, I can't re-organise the lightbulbs into sensible groups, so that I can turn all the lights off when we all go out. I have less control than I did when wall switches were all the rage. I would have done better to buy clapper switches, which have been around since 1985.

I'm a father in this industry. Hell, I'm even selling connected home solutions to Telcos. These automated, connected homes are going to have to be a lot smarter and a lot easier to use than the current diaspora of disconnected, poorly-thought-through devices and apps.

Fortunately, the carriers have a real opportunity here. The likes of BT, Virgin and TalkTalk have the capability to simplify, consolidate and market complete smart-home solutions, including the lightbulbs, the heating, the security and the gadgets. With one app to control it all, with an apple-esque interface, allowing easy configuration but with advanced menus for the connoisseurs. Google, Amazon, Lifx, Phillips and Samsung will struggle to cover enough bases to deliver the smart home and the local support we're going to need to get it all working. So come on Telcos, now is the time to bring this all together.

As for next Christmas. It might be a non-Bluetooth affair.

IOT for concerned families

As a confirmed IOT early adopter, I've often been asked what IOT is and why it's important to everyday folk. I'm only just beginning to work it out.

A year ago I was really struggling to give non-telco people a good reason to connect up their houses, cars and family. The naysayers were divided into a few groups.

1. The "didn't need it before, don't need it now" group
2. The "my phone is all I need" group
3. The "it's not worth the money" group

Group 2 have a point, because almost everyone has a smartphone which allows for a human-centric network of assurance and security. But that's a very manual method.

Group 3 certainly have a point, as not many people have yet to turn a profit from buying smart home heating e.g. Nest, or solar panels for that matter. The returns tend to kick in after 8-10 years.

Group 1 are the hardest to convince. No one really needs the new fangled IOT. If we did need it desperately then it would have taken off a long time ago. For 9 out of 10 people on the planet, the IOT is solving distinctly 1st world problems.

This year my viewpoint changed. With aging parents becoming increasingly vulnerable and in need of care, the IOT offers a valuable data stream for a busy family.

A UK survey of elder-care revealed that the cost of care has risen to at least £590 per week. The government only contributes towards this if your savings are less than £27,000. So many families will be looking at steep care costs from the parental age of 65 onwards. This is happening in parallel with sky-rocketing living costs thanks to Brexit and more and more children living at home until their 30s.

Putting off residential care by providing better awareness of elder well-being to allow aging-at-home is becoming mission critical for the middle-aged generation.

The IOT is now ready to support families with a variety of non-intrusive, security and safety services, overseen by family members.

Motion detectors can track normal movements of the elderly around their home, alerting carers for anomalies. If there is less movement than normal, or movement is only shown in one or two rooms, then an alert can be shown. And these are intelligent alerts that use machine learning to understand normal behaviours, normal deviations, and significant changes in activity. They can also track deterioration over time. If an elderly Parkinson's sufferer is taking longer and longer to prepare food, or wash, then this can be evident from the data. Longer term trends like this can be very difficult to identify. With this new data, carers can make informed decisions and sensitively raise issues with the elderly.

Panic alarms have been provided to the elderly for many years, but only recently have these devices been cost effective and miniature enough to be used everyday, inside and outside the home. Now the panic button can be voice enabled, so that immediate remote triage can be achieved, reducing false alarms, and delivering the right carer visit or emergency service. This significantly reduces the cost of providing the service, and also speeds up the correct resonse action.

The ability to install easily, with remote configuration and support, to easily add devices, and to enable carers to monitor the system remotely, means less wasted time. This translates into more quality visit time for family members, and more visibility of care needs as time ticks on.

For that alone I'm grateful for the IOT, and will take advantage of the benefits to carers that it brings, as our family moves into the next phase of life.

The Internet of Things and the battle for your airwaves

The Internet Of Things is coming to a home like yours. But do you know which things are trying to connected to the internet, and to each other ... and how?

Sure you do, right? 

The first things we connected were computers and smartphones, connected either in-home through your broadband router (fibre or copper), or out-of-home through a wireless connection (WiFi or 3G/4G wireless).

And now it's safe to say that your games console, smart TV and maybe even your heating controls are internet connected through that home broadband link, and connected in-home with a LAN cable or WiFi. And some people are using Powerline technology to create a LAN through the electricity cables around your home.

So there's a fair amount of connectivity going on already, and at least a few wireless protocols clogging up the air waves. 

Look a little deeper and you'll see some short-range wireless chatter happening. Aside from the Infrared or RF-frequency that your TV remote is kicking out, there'll be a host of keyboards, mice, headphones speakers and game controllers competing for their place in your household airwaves.

Most of these short-range connections will be using the 2.4GHz or 5GHz spectrum band. This is unlicensed and free to use, unlike the 900/1800/2100MHz spectrum bands which the government auctioned off to the mobile phone networks in 2000. A further auction for 4G spectrum bands at 800MHz and 2.6GHz was completed in 2013, further slicing up the airwaves for 'Mobile Broadband' use.

What that all means is that in the big picture is that the two most common bands for short-range connectivity including Bluetooth, console controllers, smart light bulbs, heating controllers, garden moisture monitors, fitness trackers, home gym equipment heart-rate straps, etc... is somewhat congested. 

And by the way... you're not the only people using those bands. Ofcom have also allocated portions of these bands for military use and outdoor TV broadcasts.

The many different wireless protocols do a pretty good job of not interfering with each other, and being digital, they should either work perfectly or not work at all. But if you have a leaky seal around your microwave door, there could be interference that no protocol can fix. A 1000 Watt microwave has shielding to ensure the chef doesn't get cooked, but the shielding isn't 100%.  Your WiFi router is probably kicking out less than 1 Watt, so the potential for disruption by a 1000 Watt microwave is quite high.

In my experience, right now, there is plenty of 'white space' spectrum to have every device connect successfully in this short-range space. But if the Internet Of Things continues to accelerate and create the 50+ billion devices by 2020, this will bring unprecedented load to the white space spectrum. 

If you already have to hold your Garmin Bike Computer close to your Cycle Power Meter to pair them, or you have the occasional glitch with your Bluetooth mouse, or you can't move your phone far from your wireless speaker without the music breaking up, then you may be seeing the start of congestion in your home airwaves.

What can you do about it? Not much, I'm afraid. But there are a couple of tricks...

1. Enable 5GHz on your WiFi router. The 5GHz is not as congested, and isn't affected by Microwave ovens. The devices that can talk 5GHz for WiFi will be happier and the 2.4GHz devices will have a little more breathing room too.

2. Switch to a low channel (1 or 3) for your 2.4GHz WiFi. This is below the wavelength that a Microwave operates at, so should be less prone to discruption.

3. Make use of extra WiFi accesspoints, connected through LAN cables and/or Powerline homeplugs to extend WiFi coverage, rather than use WiFi repeaters or higher power directional WiFi routers.

And if you don't think you can make a difference by cleaning up your WiFi environment, here's a little story to amuse and educate...

In 2015 I was working for a company that had a division which tested WiFi routers for performance. Most of the UK broadband providers had this company check their routers before releasing them to the public. The company owned a house in Berkshire which was furnished like a regular English home, but purely used to test WiFi performance. The router was placed in a set number of locations, at various orientations, while laptops and smartphones were placed throughout the house running specialised software to measure the WiFi strength. 

On a normal day, the results were completed predictable and repeatable. After hundreds of routers had been tested, the team had a solid methodology for reproducing the measurements. They even had WiFi-shielding curtains in every room to reduce any external WiFi influences.

One day the lead engineer came back from lunch to repeat a test on a well known router brand, and this time some readings were different. Only by a factor of 3%, but still different. As this was highly unusual, he checked that none of the devices had been moved, they were all running correctly and that nothing else had changed. He was flummoxed, until his colleague returned from the bathroom and casually suggested to him that he 'Close the toilet seat before he flushed'. The engineer, being a clean living sort, said that he always did. Then the penny dropped. 

On this occasion, the engineer had left the toilet seat up. The reflective surface of the toilet seat had sent the WiFi waves bouncing in different directions than they were bouncing before his lunch. Problem solved, and a new stricter toilet seat protocol was introduced!

The moral of the story... keep a clean-living approach to your WiFi connections, and if you start getting connection problems, invest in some WiFi-shielding curtains.

Christmas is different this year

With Christmas on our doorstep once again, it's time to spend time with friends and family, enjoying a well earned break and some festive traditions. This year, some of those traditions have changed.

All the good stuff is still there for us to enjoy. It's the only (Christian) period of the year where every house is festooned with decorations, a tree, lights, and a feeling of cheeriness. nearly every meal is indulgent, nearly every drink is mulled.

In years gone by, these delights, and the enjoyment of the season was offset somewhat by the unpleasant side of Christmas. The crowded shopping centres, the battleground of supermarkets and the sheer effort of getting ready for the big event.

"Having a list... checking it twice" was not the job of Santa anymore, but of diligent parents with a family to buy presents for, and at least a few crucial meals to plan. Did you buy gardening gloves from Waitrose for Granny last year, or the year before? How old is niece number 2 now, and is she a fairy princess or a climbing trees type of niece? 

But in today's world of Amazon Prime... or even eBay Free&Fast... much of the drudgery of Christmas shopping has been consigned to memories of yesteryear. 

Making good use of Google sheets, sync'd across all my devices, I was able to keep track of the 30+ presents that needed buying, and with mobile apps for Amazon and eBay, plus mobile-optimised webshops becoming the norm, every spare moment was an opportunity to work through the list, and get everything ordered. Always for next day delivery, and as such, so much easier to track.

Working out what to buy was made much easier through Whatsapp messages with each of my children. Even Granny has got the hang of emailing links to present ideas on the web. In fact my family shares ideas throughout the year, mostly through whatsapp links - which are often discussed around the dinner table afterwards. And to my surprise, a lot of the messages are more along the lines of "This would be so cool for Grandad", rather than "I want this for Christmas".

I've also retained my self-appointed title as savviest shopper. For every present a price comparison is a few clicks away. Finding a great present, and being sure you've paid the best price, without cris-crossing a shopping mall over and over is delightfully satisfying.

Unlike fresh fruit or groceries, present buying is perfectly suited to the online experience. In grocery shopping, some control of quality and quantity is handed over to the store ... think choosing a ripe avocado, or receiving a mini shampoo bottle because you didn't notice it was 50ml not 500ml. At Christmas, present buying is a breeze. Assuming you stick to trusted brands, getting the right product is not dependent on whoever is picking that product at the warehouse. In fact, the process is mostly automated. Taking humans out of the loop is a very good thing.

This year, in particular, I've been somewhat housebound on account of a recent hip replacement and a doctor-enforced 6 week break from driving. But has that ruined my run-up to Christmas? Not a jot. In fact, it's given me the ideal opportunity to test-run a 100% online Christmas. And it's been a breeze.

As long as Ocado arrive on 23rd December, as promised, and as long as they haven't run out of parsnips, my Christmas is in a perfect state of readiness. In fact, it was that way by December 4th. Since then I've merely been seeing even cooler presents, and replacing them on my list.

It's a rosy picture but not without some downsides. The boot of my car, and also my conscience, is full of Amazon cardboard and packing paper. Amazon seems incapable of delivering more than one product per unnecessarily large box. I ordered three wall calendars, 30x30x1cm. Each of them arrived in an A3-sized 15 cm deep box, filled with packing paper. The sustainable forests that produced that cardboard, wept.

I'm also worried about the last mile distribution. I'm on first name terms with a variety of delivery drivers. Most of whom have been kind enough to mention how well I'm doing, having started to receive deliveries whilst propped up on crutches, to now being crutchless. But all of them were driving diesel vans, mostly old ones, often leaving them running whilst dropping the parcel. I imagine the current push for cleaner air in and around London is being set back considerably by this.

In years to come, I'm hoping that big data analytics can be put to task to optimise these delivery runs, whilst electric vehicles eventually replace the oil-burners. Hey, even drone deliveries might make a dent, if they become safe and cost effective.

So, small quibbles aside, I'm looking forward to a mostly stress-free holiday period having got ready for it with the least wasted effort, the most efficient e-commerce, and all well within budget. That all makes for a very merry Christmas.

Will the £1BN spent on G.Fast get us back to "TV which actually works" ?

Slightly behind the curve on this story, as a result of getting a hip replacement a week or so ago. And that will be a critical point to remember as I rant my way through the next 300 or so words.

After coming down from my lovely morphine-induced high I left hospital with a shiny new hip and a bagful of painkillers. Like many men, my pain threshold is rather low and, as such, I was in a foul mood for a little over a week.

Things that contributed to my foul mood:

- BT TV not working 
- BT Broadband not working
- BT Home Hubs not working

... and when I say not working, I don't mean not working at all. What I mean is that these services work fine most of the time. In fact I'm quite happy with my suburban FTTC service at around 36 MBPS. 

But what got me so riled up, whilst spending 14 hours a-day confined to the sofa was the internet news telling me that we'll soon have gigabit internet through G.Fast, whilst simultaneously experiencing a fibre broadband service that randomly stops working.

TV used to work. You turned it on, and unless there was a howling gale, it worked. All the time, with no drama. No troubleshooting, no settings, no routers and no wi-fi. 

Now we have a vastly superior delivery mechanism for glorious streamed HD content, which occasionally just stops, you know, for a minute or two. That, to me, seems a backwards step. It's a good job the emergency services don't rely on broadband, or 4G for that matter. Oh, wait... they do.

If the government wants to invest £1BN in something, it should invest at least a little of that in a proper Ofcom group to assess the reliability of the current BB & FBB end-user service that customers of BT and its competitors are actually offering.

In the same way the EE wants to shift focus from population coverage to geographical coverage. I'd like Ofcom to switch from speed and coverage measures, to "does it work all the time" measures.

Everytime you see a message saying "connection lost", "download failed" or "not connected to the internet". That is clear evidence that your provider has dropped the ball. Count up those occasions, for everyone in the country, and Ofcom would have a decent idea of how reliable each service provider is.

Come on Ofcom, I know its important to tinker with BT to find the best ideological division of its groups, but what we consumers care most about is whether what we've been sold, and what we're paying for actually works. Not some of the time, all of the time.

And when I'm still on the maximum allowable dosage of codeine & paracetamol, I care about this A LOT!

My Telco is doing WHAT with my data ?

Telecom companies have some of the richest, deepest data sets of all industries. Because the business model involves contracting customers to monthly plans or providing pre-pay SIMs which people rarely change, the Telcos understand their customer better than almost all other industries.

You might buy a car once every two or three years, or take a holiday a couple of times per year. That gives the automotive and travel industries a little data about what you like, and what you might buy next time. But Telcos have access to a constant stream of data from your smartphone, set-top TV box and internet connection. 

The only industry that gets close to the level of data that Telcos have is Retail. The supermarket loyalty card has revolutionised the retail experience. Anyone who has had a book of vouchers through the post from Tesco, and been delighted that there are special offers on exactly the products they buy frequently, has been touched by this new data-driven approach.

Telcos are in a race to offer 'quad-play'. That is home phone, mobile, broadband and TV... bundled together from one supplier. In UK you can choose from BT, TalkTalk, Virgin or Vodafone. And it's not just the extra revenue they will get from you from each service that interest them, it's your data that is the gold mine they are prospecting for.

So what data do Telcos have on you? Well, the answer is a little disturbing. If you take all four services from, say, BT. Then BT can extract and store your data from each of their systems. Those systems contain records of your calls, your TV viewing habits, your location and your internet activity levels. With a little extra effort, they can extract details of: everything you've watched, live and on-demand; whether you watched the ads or skipped them; what you google and which websites you visit; where you travel frequently and which route you take.

If that wasn't creepy enough, they can pull data together from each of these systems and identify a profile based on other people's behaviour to understand even more about you. The observations that they can make are sometimes based on probability, but the accuracy of the profiling is enough for the Telco to make better decisions on how to keep you as a customer and sell you more services.

Here's a very short list of some of the things they know about you, or could derive from multiple data sets.

Sounds a little scary... right? Well, it's not as bad as it seems. For one thing, the Telco companies are not terribly interested in you. As long as you pay them your monthly fee or top-up regularly, that's their main concern. They might try to sell you some related products like more TV channels, cloud storage or phone insurance. They'll use the data for that. But most of the value in your data is in selling it to other companies.

Just in the TV data which Telcos have access to, there is a revolution underway. TV viewing ratings used to be collected by panels of viewers with special equipment. In UK the BARB panel was around 5,000 households. All the TV ratings were extrapolated from this small group of panelists. Now, every TV box can record every program watched, every button press, every play/pause/record action. All this data is sent back to the Telco in real-time. This gives highly accurate real-time data to share with advertisers, to share with production companies, and to add to all the telephone, mobile and internet data the Telco holds.

The system works so well that leading TV providers are able to insert targeted adverts into your live program feed, which specifically target you as an individual. They know it's you watching, and not your wife or your kids, because the way that you use the remote control buttons is as unique as your fingerprint.

Telcos have a system called DPI (Deep Packet Inspection), which allows them to look inside the IP packets which make up all internet traffic. DPI data shows exactly which web pages you've visited along with time-stamps, details of cookies, usernames (not passwords), and purchases. 

So combining this with your viewing behaviour, the Telco can tell a TV advertiser exactly whether their TV advert directly resulted in a visit to their site and a purchase. It's the most information an advertiser has ever had about the effectiveness of their advertising channels. And for that, they pay handsomely. Even basic personal data is worth a few pence per customer in the multi-billion pound data brokerage business. If that customer is in a high earning job, or high spending period of life, that value rockets to around £1. Multiplied by the millions of customers that Telcos have, this represents a tidy earner for the Telcos. And that is yesterday's model. Today's real-time model changes the game. 

In India, an insurance company is working with a Telco to give away free life insurance. In a market where only 3% of the population has life cover, there is a huge opportunity. The life insurance company has seen that it can get detailed lifestyle data from the Telco that it previously couldn't find. In poor communities, families don't have regular income, bank accounts, credit cards or even loyalty cards. But they all have a mobile phone. The mobile phone is the only way to get information about this sector of the population. 

Of course, the insurance company is betting on a proportion of those taking the free basic life cover to upgrade to a paid life cover. With the mobile phone derived customer data, the insurance company can make accurate cost/benefit analysis on each application for paid cover. Previously the risk was too great and the cost of cover too high. Now, the risk is calculable and the cost can be tailored to the individual.

Telcos are, in general, sensitive to the power they have with all this data. There is often strong governance about what data can be used within the Telco and what can be shared outside the Telco. As the intelligent systems being deployed by Telcos start to use these data sets, your experience with the Telco should improve. They won't post you as much junk mail, or spam you with as many irrelevant offers. They will be able to fix network or device problems before you're even aware of the problem, and they should be able to tailor your service to your needs at a competitive price.

But if that doesn't settle your nerves, there is European legislation coming in 2018, which will allow you to ask any company to delete all the data that it holds about you. Simply and quickly, you will be able to revoke their access to your data. When UK leaves the EU, it's anticipated that we will have similar legislation too.

And if you are very worried about what your data says about you, then I'd advise you to clean up your act. The data reflects your reality. If your reality is such that your data is, at best - embarrassing, and at worse - incriminating, then you only have yourself, and your data, to blame.

The search for Smarts part 2

Since my original post 'The search for Smarts', my Garmin Fenix2 came back to life. 

The achilles heel of Garmin's chosen charging technology is the contacts on the rear of the watch. With occasional muddy/sweaty use virtually guaranteed, the contacts can misbehave. Without being visibly 'dirty', the contacts can pick up some kind of oxidation, which doesn't allow the watch to charge through the charging clip. That results in a dead watch which you think is fully charged.

To fix the problem simply requires a wipe of the contacts with an abrasive fabric, wet-dry paper or the serrated edge of a coin, and the watch will happily recharge.

So, that's what happened and my Fenix2 is back to normal and my search for a new smart watch is on hold again.

In the intervening period a report was released about the state of the smart watch market in 2016. Despite the impressive marketing budgets behind many smart watch offerings, the market has declined by 51% year-on-year for the quarter. The figures were heavily driven by Apple and Garmin.

Q3 2015 was the first full quarter that the Apple Watch Series 1 was commercially available, and it took almost 70% market share in that quarter. The Apple Watch Series 2 was only available in 2 weeks of this quarter, so it's too early to say whether the 72% decline in Apple Watch sales will be offset. 

Garmin is the run-away winner in the segment, shipping 5x more watches in the quarter than in that quarter in 2015. The sport-specific smart watch market which Garmin dominates is a play-ground of micro-niches which Garmin understands and has tailored their bewildering array of watches towards. Whatever kind of athlete you are in your free time, Garmin has a watch for you. The Apple Watch, however, is a one-size fits all offering. (ok, two-sizes, but you get my point). Your Apple Watch doesn't mark you out as a triathlete, an ultra-runner, a gym-goer or a mountain climber. The Garmin on your wrist leaves no-one in any doubt which sporting preference you have.

And here's the key point in the decline of the smart watch market. Your watch is a functional accessory. It isn't your means of communication, your window on social media, your media player or your entertainment whilst commuting. It sits on your wrist as an overt display of your life-style preferences. There is a reason why people chose to wear a Rolex or a Casio, and that reason is 'difference'. The non-smart watch market is well established, with a huge range of options at both ends of the price scale. Are you a Gold Rolex or a Patek Philippe kind of guy? Are you a Casio CA53W or a Casio F91W guy? Up until mid 2015, nobody was an Apple Watch guy. And now, most people who wanted to be an Apple Watch guy already are. Everyone else is not-an-Apple-Watch-guy.

I would love to see Apple and their smartphone competitors continue to develop the rather impressive technology in smart watches over the coming years. They need to do more to tempt people away from the simplicity of a Casio, or the prestige of a luxury watch. 

I'm an CA53W guy, in case you were wondering. 

For or against the pay-wall

The Telegraph's online news site was my go-to as a counterpoint to the near ubiquity of the BBC here in UK. I was perfectly happy with The Telegraph, and would put up with attention grabbing adverts, advertorials, promotional features, because the news I wanted to read was free.

Today, The Telegraph online news service introduced a 'Premium' service, asking £2 per week for access to this 'Premium content'. At first glance, it seems that anyone with an opinion, or with a sense of humour, or even simple story telling chops has been put behind this pay-wall.

Flat news is important, and can be glanced over to keep abreast of happenings. For those subjects about which I feel a deeper level of interest, I want to know what other people think, I want to be entertained, and I want to have my views challenged. All of this, on The Telegraph, is now behind the pay-wall.

I should mention that the adverts, advertorials and promotional features are still there. 

I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox, an inferior browser with a quirky attitude to hyperlinks, purely in an attempt to remove the epidemic of almost full-screen automatically placed ads. I was fed up of scrolling multiple times to get to the meat of the articles in pages full of inappropriate, repetitive, invasive ads.

The Telegraph's paid-for apps for phone and tablet also never appealed to me. Perhaps because most of the content was available for free through the online web service. They are marginally more appealing now, but only because the online experience is now unpleasant.

Sure, I could spend £2 a week to 'unlock' Premium content, or I could go the whole-hog and drop £6 a week on Premium with Digital - and have the same content nicely arranged, with no ads in a swish app. But here's the problem...

I don't want to pay now for something I used to get for free. I'm looking at a Telegraph news page where nearly half of the articles (and 90% of the ones worth reading) are locked. As a non-suscriber, I don't want to be shown everything that I can't have, as a constant reminder that my purse-strings are pulled too tightly. I want to have what Telegraph provided for me for years, for free. If they're not going to do that, I'll go elsewhere. I'm sorry, Graham Norton and Simon Heffer aren't enough to keep me loyal. 

What I'll do instead is go to the trouble of configuring Google News with my interests, dig deeper into BBC News, and cherry pick from Huffpost, The Guardian, and more specialist press - all of which are free-to-me.

So sorry Mr Chris Evans (Editor not DJ)... you've lost me, possibly forever. If too many others fail to immediately re-value their Telegraph news feed - by £104 per year, the Telegraph will have created a bigger problem than falling newsprint customers. They'll rapidly fade into online obscurity.

Rely on google for travel planning at your peril

Today's mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get from Ascot to Paris... without drama.

"I accept", I thought to myself, and immediately jumped onto Google to devise a plan.

Google says it'll be between 25 and 45 minutes drive from Ascot to Slough station, at that time of day. Arrive in time for the 17.10 express to Paddington. Five stops on the underground, and glide into St Pancras International with 45 minutes to spare before the 19.01 Eurostar to Paris.

You've got to love the Open Data concept making all this timetabling information available. I do also love Google maps for tracking every journey unobtrusively and delivering by far the best 'Sat Nav' I've ever used.

Confident of a solid plan i left the house on the dot of 16.20, leaving time for the Legoland traffic, parking, paying and getting to the platform. Leaving plenty of time for the express 18 minutes to Paddington giving 45 minutes before the Eurostar was due to leave. So far, so good.

Cue the crackly voice over the tannoy.. "We regret to inform passengers that the 17.10 to Paddington has been cancelled".

Oh crap.

"Passengers wishing to travel to Paddington, please go to platform 5 for the stopping service leaving at 17.14." A stopping service that takes 38 mins, NOT 18 mins.

Ok google, what do you have to say for yourself? Lulling me into a false sense of security, assuming UK trains run when they should.

Don't panic reader, my 2012 New Year resolution comes up trumps again. That year I decided to be everywhere 15 minutes early - on top of any contingency needed. That one resolution has single-handedly reduced my daily stress ten fold.

So, with the 24 minute train delay, minus my 15 mins, I arrived at St Pancras 6 minutes before the check-in closed.

Now, here's a suggestion, Google. We all mostly understand probability. Why not take the published reliability figures for every train service and overlay a UK-rail-delay-modifier?

"The likelihood of this train running on time is 87%. Your arrival is expected at 18.15, but you may arrive 24 minutes later. You can save 24 minutes and take the risk, or have a 99.5% chance of arriving by 19.39."

For casual beers-with-friends arrangements, I'll take the risk. For a connection to Eurostar, a customer meeting, or a West End show, I'll play it safe.

The data is there to be used. The algorithm is trivial. So, come on Google... we're relying on you now!

And I shouldn't have worried. The 19.01 Eurostar was delayed anyway. Of course.

Tesla's level 5 autonomous driving and why I nearly fell over

Self-driving cars again, huh? So much noise on that channel, and here is Tesla knocking out news that isn't news. All the new Teslas will be equipped for level 5 autonomous driving. They're at level 3 right now, where a human has to sit behind the wheel and be able to take over at any time. Level 5, however, is 'no human needed'.

Of course, the level 5 isn't yet activated, because that's not allowed yet. But it'll soon be painfully obvious that cars are better than people at driving, and the legislation will adapt

Yep, before long you won't need to drive. You could read a book, take a nap or even not bother going and let your car do the work.

Two and a half days waiting for your kids?

And thats when I nearly fell over. I was on my way to collect my middle child from an after school club when it hit me. With this new Tesla, I could just send the car. Hold the phone!

The lives of those of us fortunate enough to be burdened with one or more progeny are blighted by the need to ferry young ones hither and thither, as we attempt to enrich their out of school learning. Football practise, music lessons, school trips arriving back late, play dates... you get my drift.

But here's a Tesla that could do that for you. Send the car, stay on the sofa, and enjoy a restful evening. Hey! Why not just give the kid the Tesla app and let him send for the car when he needs it.

The Tesla is a better, safer, less impatient, more focused driver than I am anyway, so why take the risk of driving myself. If Granny wants to pop over and Grandad doesn't want to drive her, send her the Tesla. She can even tune it to Classic FM if she wants.

I want level 5 and I want it now.

But wait. Aren't those trips in the car some of the only times you get to chat with your kid one to one? Those precious 15 min therapy sessions, locked in a moving car with no blaring screens and no headphones in ears? The delighted retelling of a successful sporting conquest, the sharing of angst and frustration from a particularly bad day, the reminiscing back to past times when an 'oldie' (from 2011) comes on the radio.

I hope that Tesla and their self-driving-car  competition don't rob us of our last precious moments of shared parental time before the kids themselves have learnt to drive, or learnt to Uber, or learnt to do whatever it is they have to, to get around in the next decade.

In the meantime, I'm going to relish these pick-ups just that little bit more.

No VR until this...

Despite the huge buzz around VR, I'm not convinced, and I'm not buying. Oh... and no one else is buying it either.

VR has, and always has had, a big problem. It requires you to put something on your head that makes you look ridiculous. It closes you off from the world around you and leaves you oblivious to real world events.

The only place that most people would accept these problems is in their own bedroom or, more likely, bedsit. There will always be a good number of early adopters who will buy the next new thing, for gaming and for ... erm... well, thats it. Just gaming.

The day I buy VR is the day that the headset is a pair of glasses. Not dopey google glass glasses, but a regular Ray-Ban or Oakley. Because we're so very good at miniaturisation, it wont be too long before your regular sunnies will happily overlay real life with an HD screen and enough battery life to give you a couple of hours of entertainment.

Black Mirror's video-recording eye-balls made compelling viewing, and brought about some fun discussions about the moral aspects of video recording. It rather skipped over the aspect that i found most appealing... the ability to lie down, press a button and watch your own personal entertainment, without finding the best seat on the sofa, the best viewing angle and the perfect sized screen.

Put the screen in the kind of glasses that we actually want to wear and the nature of entertainment will have been changed dramatically. Only recently have we unplugged the TV to carry it around with us. The next step is to wear it, everyday, everywhere we go.

Brexit... it's Y2K all over again

Brexit will be as big a challenge as Y2K was back in the late 1990's. 

The threat of 'The Millenium Big', where computers just weren't ready to handle 4 digit year codes was an all-consuming passion for CIOs and CTOs of the day. Estimates put the cost of fixing the Y2K bug at between $320bn (IDC) and $600bn (Gartner). Brexit could, for Europe and UK, be a very costly exercise.

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) due to come into force on 25th May 2018 specifies the way that organisations should handle the data that they hold. This extends to consumer rights to transfer their data from one company to another and to delete all data held. Organisations will be held to task with fines up to €20m for poor data management and data breaches.

When the UK invokes article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty it will have 2 years to complete it's 'Brexit' of the European Union. No country before has left the EU, and only one (Greenland) has left the block, then the European Economic Community (EEC).

The proposed Repeal Act proposed by Theresa May will define the strategy in law for removing UK from the European Communities Act 1972. A number of current EU laws will be adopted by the UK on 'Day Zero' to simplify the exit. But many of those are likely to be altered in the 2 year period following.

As a separate entity outside the European legislative area, UK will not be subject to the GDPR and it is thought that there may not be a 'safe harbour' agreement in place protecting the use of UK data within the EU. Companies operating in both UK and Europe, or just in UK with customers, partners or suppliers in Europe will need to rapidly consider measures to protect computer assets and data.

Companies will have to consider systems segregation between UK and EU, which will almost certainly require separate physical instances to be created. Data may have to be repatriated across the UK/EU divide, to ensure it sits in the right legal framework for its use. Processes which span national borders will have to be overhauled, often with the advice of legal experts. Revised trading and tax rules between EU and UK will have to be built into systems, and businesses may have to re-engineer their operating models so as not to be penalised.

All in all, Brexit is going to be costly for any organisation with an interest in or dealings with Europe, and for IT players, just as with Y2K, there is an opportunity for short-term windfall projects to manage the changes.

Whether you are for or against Brexit, it's going to create sizeable opportunities for the IT firms who can capitalise on the large-scale changes that Brexit will bring.

Hadoop, huh! What is it good for? Absolutely... everything!

You may come across Hadoop in your everyday tech-world job, and you might even understand what it is. But one thing's for sure, people in our business tend to get very excited about the next new thing.

A few years ago, Hadoop was the next new thing. Google open-sourced it's GFS code in 2003, and Apache began to develop the HDFS and Map Reduce ecosystem. The promise of handling petabytes of data was an intoxicating elixir to anyone sitting on a lot of data. 

By 'a lot of data', we don't mean some big financial record files, or customer databases, we mean BIG. Start from 4 terabytes, because below that your normal file system, Microsoft or Oracle relational database can handle it - on a server with a bunch of disks attached. 

4 terabytes is a lot of data. It is equivalent to the data held in 132,000 regular 500 page fiction books. Stack those books up and your pile would be 8 miles high. Dig down, and 8,000 miles gets you to New Zealand. And that's where Hadoop gets going.

In 2010 Facebook was using 2,300 Hadoop clusters, which can all work together, to store 40 petabytes. Now a petabyte is 1,000 terabytes. That's a pile of books which will almost get you to Mars. So you can see that this really is an astounding amount of data. 

But it's not just words on a page, or lots of numbers that are being stored in Hadoop. The Hadoop File System is great at holding data of all sorts. Where in a regular relational database, you need to know what you want to put into the database before you put it there, Hadoop is like a magic dumpster. You just throw anything you like in there and worry about getting it out later.

I say it's magic because, unlike a regular dumpster, the data doesn't decompose over time, and it can be sorted and 'mapped' to help you find what you're looking for down the line.

But, don't think of Hadoop as either a Dumpster or a Library of books. Think of it more like a shopping mall. It's somewhere people can go to find what they are looking for. Sure, you need an idea of what's there before you start looking, and you might need the help of a mall map. But everything about that mall can be uncovered. Whether it's a comparison between price-tags on similar t-shirts, how many lattes Starbucks sold yesterday, or what the teenagers hanging around in the parking lot are saying to each other. Any and all kinds of information can be stored and retrieved.

This is why it is so compelling for companies to create a data lake, with as much data in it as possible. Where previously your departments held the data and didn't share it, now everyone is sharing all their data, and the correlations, relationships, inaccuracies, trends and insights are ready to be discovered. 

Imagine if a retailer in the mall wanted to know who was buying their products, who was buying competitors products, at what price, and what they were saying to their friends about it, and which shops they visited before they made the purchase, and when they were going to come back, and what would make them choose that store? 

It would be an unfair advantage. And that's what companies get from Hadoop and their data lake. It's an unfair advantage over their competitors who don't have it. The treasure trove of Big Data is hard to fathom, and even harder to implement, but will prove itself over time to be the best way to understand and run your business.