Nick Jones

I’m rushing around to get all my outstanding jobs finished before I go on vacation next week. I’ve travelled around Europe a lot in the last few decades and while doing so I’ve driven alongside the Rhine or crossed the Rhine more times than I can remember. But I have never actually been on the Rhine. So next week my wife and I are going to spend a quiet week on a boat which will take us to lots of picturesque towns and wine quaffing opportunities. I will be somewhat under-networked for the week as I’m not taking a laptop. Firstly, if my wife found one in my luggage the consequences could be life-threatening, and secondly, the cellular roaming charges would bankrupt me. Hang on – maybe I’ve identified a gap in the market. I bet lots of professional people would like a netbook disguised as something innocuous which their other half wouldn’t recognise if they took it on vacation. But as I don’t yet have such a wonderful gadget my only form of communication next week will be a mobile handset. Don’t expect a lot of blogging because I still haven’t found any handset with a keyboard on which I’d want to type more than a short SMS or email.

On an altogether different topic, I’m regularly amazed and entertained by the dubious behaviour of some web sites, and today’s prize for web weirdness goes to British Airways. One of my little jobs this week is to book flights for US Symposium plus some West Coast visits I’ll be making on the same trip, so I tried the BA web site to see what they could offer. The route I wanted was London -> San Diego -> Orlando -> London. BAs web site suggested a bizzare 30 hour trip for the leg from San Diego to Orlando that went via Chicago and London. So it looks as if I won’t be using BA.

One trend I’ve noticed recently and will likely return to in a future blog is a revival in network operator interest in WiFi . Network operators seem to have got a lot more positive towards WiFi recently, probably driven by the fact that they see LTE retreating somewhat because the handsets are late and they don’t want to spend the money, and partly because the growth in data traffic is stressing their networks faster than expected. As operators become more enthusiastic about WiFi they’ll range more WiFi handsets which in turn will encourage developers and vendors to create interesting applications using WiFi, for example integrating with home entertainment systems. More WiFi handsets at lower price points may benefit people like retailers with real-estate who can experiment with WiFi as a bearer for in-store customer applications. Someone at Nokia World commented that “the cellular network is becoming the network of last resort” for data. Maybe that’s a bit extreme, but I do wonder if looking to WiFi as a quick fix for network problems is opening a Pandora’s box the operators will regret.