The Future of Telecom is in Wales 125
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a CNN Money story about the future of U.K. telecommunications. British Telecom is planning on rolling out an $18 Billion new system in 2010, and the first location to get the hook up is Cardiff, in Wales. From the article: "What's really cool about what will happen in Cardiff - and eventually the rest of the U.K. - is that BT is creating an open, standards-based platform for which anyone can develop new applications. In other words, the phone has the potential to become more like the Internet with its proliferation of cool new Web sites, tools and services."
Whales have telephones? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Whales have telephones? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whales have telephones? (Score:1)
Re:Whales have telephones? (Score:2)
Re:Whales have telephones? (Score:2)
Re:Whales have telephones? (Score:1)
OK, seriously dude... when you feel the need to nitpick bad puns (is there any other kind?), then it's time to up your dose. heheheheheheh.
That's not a bad pun, THESE are bad puns... (Score:1, Offtopic)
A. Lean Beef!
Q. What do you call a cow with no legs?
A. Ground Beef!
Q. What do you call a cow that has just had an abortion?
A. Decaffeinated!
Q. What do you call a bull masturbating?
A. Beef Straganoff!
No THIS is a bad pun... (Score:1)
Down the M4.
This'll probably only make sense to UK readers.
Re:Whales have telephones? (Score:1)
Wales - a country where people live (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:2, Funny)
Unbunch thy panties, we make fun of ourselves too.
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:2, Insightful)
And as a Polish American I have heard and told my fair share of Polack jokes.
Your response makes my point perfectly. Nobody said ANYTHING bad about the Welsh. Yet you are offended. Your panties are, indeed, in a bunch.
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
A man in the front row stands up and says, "Hey wait a minute, I'M Polish." badda-boom.
An American entrepreneur took a box of Cheerios to Poland to sell them as donut seeds. chhhh!
A guy in a bar leans over to the guy next to hi
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
For years, the UK has been desparately short of skilled manual workers. Since Poland joined the European Union, Polish workers (amongst all from other accession states) can work in the UK. The "Polish Plumber"b is the plumber that (unlike the local person) you can get on the 'phone, who is keen to do the job, charges a good price, and is skilled.
I really do not know why, but the term "Polish Plumber" has come to exemplify
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
I'm looking forward to getting there someday. It's on my list of places that I want to visit. Now I just need to get it on my wife's list.
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:2)
From a non-US po
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:2)
We can and do. I'm proud to say that for the most part, americans have gotten over our prejudices to the point where we can laugh at them.
At least my generation does ( 30-35 ). I realize that I am a wetback/cracker mix, with all the jokes that entails.
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
hwyl,
mae'n enw ydy mwnci
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:2)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:2)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:2)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:2)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
When I watch a bunch of Texans singing "throw the Jew done the well" I do not think Kazakhstanis hate Jews, I feel sad for my countrymen and at the same time arrogently supperior in a funny way, but nothing negative to Kazakhstan.
If you could find a pun that attacked America I would be perfectly content (as long as it was punny)
If I were you <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3715512
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
It is much much harder to not ever put anyone else down than it is to complain when people do it to you. i.e. people always notice insults to themselves and ignore their own insults to others.
If you can honestly get rid of your prejudgement of Americans then you have some right to ask for the same lack of prejud
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:1)
Re:Wales - a country where people live (Score:2)
To be correct, Wales is a small western European principality of about 2.9 million people.
It's a principality because it's controlled by the first-born son of the English monarch, and has been since the 13th century. To be technically correct, Wales is a province of England, rather than a country in itself. Sort of like Hawaii or Puerto Rico is to America.
The IT Parallel (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a parallel here to the IT world
Re:The IT Parallel (Score:2)
Re:The IT Parallel (Score:2)
You're right. They would have produced some great-big phones alright. Gargantuan no less. It would still be a rotaty phone, it would take three people to dial it, and for no good reason, it would disconnet your calls at random. And, it wouldn't work with any non-Microsoft phones. You'd need to talk to your friends in an obscure dialect of Swahili, but soon, everyone would be speaking th
on BT... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:on BT... (Score:2)
VOIP shouldnt have any say in this.
VOIP is primarily bearer channel, while for providing services etc, the signalling channel is what is important.
But it is true that signalling protocols are also changing for the better.
Instead of the TDM based ISUP [wikipedia.org] etc, the movement is towards SIP [wikipedia.org], which should help.
Mind you, this is not a new thing. SIP was completely ready by 2000 itself. Only that it is now everybody is moving towards it.
Re:on BT... (Score:2)
If so, they can set it up so it can be viewed on sets that haven't the ability to receive broadcasts. Won't that make the TV license people happy!
Re:on BT... (Score:1)
N.
Re:on BT... (Score:1)
Re:on BT... (Score:2)
21CN is basically running fiberoptic cable to the green box at the end of your road, and you only use ADSL as far as that box. That'll let you get much faster speeds than ADSL does currently, and it won't matter how far you are from the exchange. In the longer term they may even run fiberoptic straight into your house.
Once they've done that they'll move the entire phone network onto running over a network using the IP protocol (they've already done this for
Re:on BT... (Score:1)
Re:on BT... (Score:1)
BT's TV-down-a-wire project is called BT vision, info at http://www.btvision.bt.com/ [bt.com]
The clever thing about it is that is integrates video-on-demand coming down a wire with on-air content via Freeview ("Freeview" is the UK's name for digital terrestrial TV).
Translation: if you want to watch a movie on demand, it comes down your AD
Of course it is (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course it is (Score:1)
Re:Of course it is (Score:3, Informative)
Well, they were refuling off the temporal rift left over from a previous (by ~9 episodes or ~125 years) visit.
Back on our rather mundane version of Earth, the show is filmed in Cardif, as is Torchwood, the upcoming spinoff, which also takes place there.
Re:Of course it is (Score:2)
Re:Of course it is (Score:1)
Re:Of course it is (Score:1)
Re:Of course it is (Score:2)
Nobody cares (Score:2)
Re:Nobody cares (Score:1)
Other way ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it not the other way ? ,
Infact
Won't be open because of stupid laws (Score:1, Interesting)
This is good? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is good? (Score:2)
This is different? (Score:1)
...collect-call marketing, phone fraud, slamming, robot calls, junk fax....
Re:Writing Applications in BT? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Writing Applications in BT? (Score:1)
What are they changing? (Score:1)
Right now, for example, most of the mildly interesting stuff consumers can do with their phones - call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding - is programmed right into the big computers that route calls around the network. That makes it impossible for some some teenager tinkering at his computer to develop a new phone service.
Not exactly.
Heard about IN [wikipedia.org] or CAMEL [wikipedia.org] ??
These were all designed as a way to take the power out from switches and provide a database which can be used by small switches.
Usin
Re:What are they changing? (Score:2)
If anything, an ip based system will make it easier..far far easier..to do wiretaps. it can all be done online and remotely as needed.
Hell, the phone system where I work has this capability. I can call up, enter my password and listen in on any zap line. Easy to program too.
This is probably the last big battle (Score:1)
In the very near future there will be one pipe that pump all the bits into and out of your house, be it video, phone, audio, internet or just your house alarm.
And I bet the conduit will not be a couple of copper wires. Telephone, you are so 19th century....
Re:This is probably the last big battle (Score:2)
Re:This is probably the last big battle (Score:1)
my two cents.... i admit i could be wrong...
Re:This is probably the last big battle (Score:1)
Blimey... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Blimey... (Score:1)
Re:Blimey... (Score:2)
The Welsh Development Agency (which is now part of the Welsh As
Re:Blimey... (Score:3, Funny)
NOBODY expects the sheep and mountains!
Re:Blimey... (Score:1)
Mines just been destroyed by the very effective coffee through nose delivery system.
Oh no you don't BT! (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a problem here, we already have an open standards based telephony standard, that allows custom application developers and users to customize their telephones.
While on the other hand, with SIP and IAX you can do whatever you want.. today! As we speak I have an Asterisk server with a Cepstral auto attendant connected to a PSTN gateway.. Voicemail. call forwarding, location tracking (e.g. at lunch it directs calls to my mobile/cell phone).
Knowing BT's history with pricing and service quality I'd stay fairly clear from this. (For the record, BT's customer support and internet services are appallingly bad, and compared to existing SIP to PSTN or even Skype their international calling rates are very high).
BT's problems are deeply routed in the way they do business with their infrastructure services, to mention a few: price fixing and their 'modular' internal structure... In short it means everybody offers ADSL at the same price, apart from them.. and their Billing, Broadband, Dialup and Telephone departments seem to rely in pidgeons or paper cups on strings to communicate with each other!
Just my two pennies.
Re:Oh no you don't BT! (Score:3, Informative)
BT retail is appaulingly bad and the criticisms you make are all valid.
However, the network/infrastructure arm of BT is among the best in the world.
Thanks to BT:
1). The UK enjoys 99% ADSL coverage
2). The UK has the deapest ADSL penetration in Europe (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/03/broadband _france_uk/)
3). Thanks to the recent successfull rollout of MAX DSL you can now get
Re:Oh no you don't BT! (Score:1)
Re:Oh no you don't BT! (Score:1)
No, I don't work for them and yes I do work for a great company in a position that affords me 30 minutes on slashdot once or twice a week.
Pot Noodles (Score:4, Funny)
Doubts (Score:2)
Re:Doubts (Score:2)
Notable people (Score:3, Funny)
Nice PR, but let's see it happen... (Score:1)
Old News (Score:1)
And there's been plenty more discussion about this online and in the UK media. Probably been posted or commented on here too...
It's all just data. Content should be king. (Score:4, Insightful)
Living in Ireland at the moment , I've got a telephone line (which i'm soon dropping), cable internet, and a satellite TV dish all sending and receiving data at various times. They're all branded under different names etc- NTL, Sky, Eirom etc, but they;re all just doing the same thing. All these people are doing is selling me different ways of getting information in and out of here, and they're charging me a combined total of about 100 a month to do it, too.
The sooner someone can give me a line that will serve my internet, telephony and TV needs with one 50 a month connection the better.
It seems we pay so much for our data connections, and very little for the content. That missing 50 that would no longer be leaving my pocket for the shareholders of various telecoms every month would do very nicely in the pockets of content providers, whose channels I would be able to subscribe to and whose programmes would be downloaded to my hard disk while I sleep. Maybe then they'll be more content to let me watch their content without watching the commercials.
Anyway my bottom line is- simpler infrastructures means less money paying for various telecoms, and more money left over every month to pay for subscriptions and content.
Re:It's all just data. Content should be king. (Score:2)
NTL (Score:2)
You do realise that NTL can already provide you with Telephone, TV and Internet service all down one line, right? :)
Re:NTL (Score:1)
Re:NTL (Score:2)
*goes off to check facts*
Re:NTL (Score:2)
I'm sure it'll happen eventually. Telewest has been going broke for a while now. So many of their franchise areas still don't have digital services because they can't afford to upgrade, and people leave them because they don't offer digital services, thus creating a vicious cycle of decline. A merger with NTL (or more likely, NTL just buying Telewest outright) seems very likely at this point.
That said, I am operating on information from a couple of years back, since I used to live in one of the aforementio
Re:NTL (Score:2)
The eircom line was something I got to get broa
Really looking forward to (Score:2)
New applications for phones (Score:1)
Oh great! (Score:3, Funny)
Wasn't Blaidd Drwg enough of a warning?
What, are they going to call it "Raxacoricofallapatorian Telecom"?
Why? (Score:1)
IP4 or IP6? (Score:2)
happen to know.
Also will it be using the SCTP/IP protocol which was specifically
designed for telecoms or something they've rolled themselves on top
of IP?
Re:Whales (Score:1)
It is in whales. You may have heard about the bandwidth of pigeons a while back (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/ 31/2224227 [slashdot.org]). Whales are even better. Not only do they have a vastly higher BPA (bytes per animal) than pigeons, but they can get your data to different continents!
It's the wave of the future!
Re:Whales (Score:2)
Of course it is? Why else would lunar whales [gotfuturama.com] be in such demand that they become extinct by the year 3000?
We're whalers on the moon,
We carry a harpoon.
But there ain't no whales
So we tell tall tales
And sing our whaling tune.
Re:tags (Score:1)
Re:Slashdot: (Score:1)