Peter Cowley’s telecoms

 Changes as at December 2008: 

·         Fax now ceased as only 1 incoming fax in 10 is relevant and outgoing sent as scanned images by email

·         Running 2 broadband lines – Nildram and BT, with the intention of dropping to 1 within 2 months

·         Main mobile now an Apple iPhone with 1200 minutes and 500 texts, which is never exceeded.  Would only use iPhone if there was a sensible data package when roaming – with push email on, iPhone requires 6.5MB/day on average

·         Blackberry (now the Bold) dropped to £15 a month and £5/day when abroad – cheaper if abroad for less than 48 days per year

·         Now have Tomtom with integrated traffic via mobile phone (but annoyingly not the iPhone!)

·         Small Business Server being upgraded from 2003 to 2008

·         Main machine is a single Vista PC with 3 screens – one connected using DisplayLink USB adaptor

·         InFocus projector sent back for repair once a year on average and bulb glass now broken, so as they are at least £200, the projector has been “retired”

·         Now listen to Podcasts as the iTunes/iPhone integration is excellent

·         Watch even less TV in front of a TV set (maybe 30 minutes per week), but tend to have BBC News channel (via news.bbc.co.uk) running in background at all times whilst at PC

.    Have used 3G modem for over a year at £15/month - great investment as cannot tether the iPhone

As at August 2007

Landlines (three analogue ones with BT):

    ·         Home (mainly used by family for outgoing), spend around £20-25/month

·         Fax (probably used 200 times per year altogether for both in and outgoing)

·         Office/broadband carrier (used outgoing whenever I am in the office, never used incoming)

·         Main businesses conducted via 0845 064 5555 which directs via an 0208 number to www.callagenix.com which has IVR service and redirects to various of our and employees/partners landlines/mobiles and a human answering service in Stamford.

·         Employees/partners have mobiles and landlines. Some of which my businesses pay 100%.

Broadband

·         With Nildram (recently bought by Pipex, which is now being bought by Tiscali – time to move!) 

·         Classed as 8Mbit/s, but usually 5M down and 500K up

·         Wireless throughout home

Mobiles

·         Been with Cellnet/O₂ from October 1985 apart from a costly spell with Vodafone for six months

·         Main mobile, just moved to 400 minutes/500 texts at £35/month, plus 5MB of data

·         Currently no 3G phone and not sure I have the need for one (but see wishes below)

·         Blackberry (Data only plus 5MB browsing for £35/month worldwide unlimited emails).  Been using for 3½ years

·         Orange phone (bought from my eldest, with £50 voucher and 5 free texts/day) emergency use only

·         Use premium number (1200 on O2) for traffic news as my satnav is not integrated with traffic reports in the UK (though it is in Germany and Switzerland).

·         Mobile invoices come down by a factor of 2.5 over the last two years with same usage

Technology

·         Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 with Exchange server

·         Fax line goes into exchange server to produce emailed TIFFs.  Send faxes via “print to fax” and scanned documents if necessary

·         4 computers in home/office and 2 at site in Somersham

·         Currently use 8700g Blackberry (soon moving to 8820) for emails and web browsing and Alarm!

·         Use HP iPaq 6915 as main phone – gives voice, sync with exchange server, access/editing of spreadsheets and documents, GPS and BT for use with Equivital physiology monitor demos, occasional camera use

·         For long car trips, move SIM to a Nokia 6230 for use with 5 year old car kit

·         Two Vista machines on desktop with 3 screens, will reduce to one machine (possibly with 3 screens) when Vista settles down further.  Not used XP on desktop for 4 months.

·         Sony 11” 1kg mini-laptop with XP

·         Not sure how much time I spend at my desk as varies tremendously – maybe 40 hours a week on average?

Entertainment

·         Have normal Sky card plus secondary Sky card at home for kids.  Have several TVs in the house and a ceiling mounted projector.  No intention of moving to a DVR or HD.

·         I tend to watch a few clips of TV on my desktop and occasionally use integral TV in car.  90-150 minutes of TV watched per month(!) in home lounge.  Would gladly stop paying Sky if allowed!   Would probably keep paying for terrestrial/Freeview for sake of family

·         Visit cinema on average 30-35 times per year.

·         Play face to face bridge 1 to 3 times a week but never online.

·         Did use MP3 player on phone for radio pod casts and music when visiting gym, but primarily play squash and badminton now.

·         Listen to Radio 5 (and Radio 4) in car, in which I spend about 500-600 hours per year.  Never listen to commercial stations

·         Occasionally listen to live or podcast radio and very occasionally watch a DVD whilst at desk

·         Newspapers:  Had subscription to the printed Times, Sunday Times, Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph for the last 7 years.  Times stopped and Telegraph stopping in 3 weeks.  Will continue to buy the Saturday Telegraph and Sunday Times, but access all other days via the web – use £30 premium service to print Telegraph crosswords.

·         Rarely have time to read novels (planes and on holiday), but do read a fair amount of technical journals

Advertising

·         Tend to avoid clicking on Googleads where possible.  Though have paid for them for one of my businesses.

·         Rarely watch commercial television. 

·         Have little clue what Sky TV offers. 

·         Watch adverts at cinema, but have poor recollection. 

·         Rarely notice advertising in printed publications

·         Do respond to email spam and have found new suppliers at a hit rate of probably one per 100,000 spam emails!

·         Hate texting spam as often abroad

·         Have registered with TPS on home phone and pay £5/month for rejection of anonymous calls.

·         Use Yell.com though not the 118 numbers

Other sources of information

·         When in office, use RSS feeds from BBC, FT, Reuters, Microsoft and Google for general, business, technical and other new stories.

·         Have about 100 Google alerts set up.

·         Use MSN (text) and Skype (text and voice – though voice only from abroad). 

·         Have a Facebook account (private and Cambridge Computer Lab Ring).  Plus LinkedIn etc

·         Very occasionally use YouTube

·         Bought (but not yet sold) on eBay

·         Research almost all items through net and buy most of them that way – flights, hotels, technology, books, software though not clothes yet.

·         Own eleven domains. 

·         All emails routed to single POP3 address which has a Spam filter (currently collecting about 400 per day which are automatically deleted at 3am and can be browsed at any time).

·         Emails then routed to various internal recipients and mine go both to my Blackberry account (xxx@o2email.co.uk) and to the exchange server, where Outlook 2007 provides another spam filtering layer.

Wishes/comments

·         To integrate the PDA and Blackberry into one device (though would then be concerned if lost)

·         To have a better system for use in the car

·         Not sure I would subscribe to movies downloaded into the home, as I prefer the watching environment in a cinema – for the atmosphere and I easily get distracted trying to watch a movie at home, even via the projector

·         No desire to continue funding Mr Murdoch’s pension pot and would not feel a loss if no TV in the house

·         May use a 3G card in my laptop to access own server, but wireless networking becoming more widespread (albeit at a confusing billing structure and high cost).  Cost of running a 3G card too high when I last looked.

·         Keen to use laptop and phone together if phone acted as a 3G modem and the data prices were reasonable.

·         Would like to have a smaller PDA/phone, but keen on the full QWERTY keyboard (for texting and other data input) and a largish screen

·         Would look at using an eBook for technical journals and newspapers

·         Do not spend much time on public transport (apart from planes), mostly tend to be driving where keyboard input is tricky(!), so decent voice recognition system for emails (and texting) would be useful

·         Unlikely ever to need IPTV broadband speeds into the home for adult use

·         Would be happy to drop the home number.  I resist handing it out as we have 4 kids at home (2 at Uni) and if the phone is answered, messages are taken and forgotten.  Try to encourage all family and friends to use my mobile.  Feel embarrassed about giving mobile on official forms as gives impression of being transitory.  Also family feel the need to have a home phone and mobile billing premium discourages solely mobile use (though that applies mainly to PAYG users).  All will have left home/be at Uni within 2 years, so will rethink then.

·         Prepared to have a single analogue line into the house carrying the broadband and a single fixed telephone number.

·         Glad that EU have regulated intra-European call prices, though makes little difference as I was on a reduced O₂ international package anyway

·         Expect to use GPS facility on phones as applications become widespread – eg Satnav when on foot/in a hire car, possibly “Find my nearest…”, use whilst fell-walking (maybe)