February 2011 Archives

As a wave of civil unrest and revolution continues to sweep the Arab world, emergency telecommunications charity Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) is providing aid to refugees on Libya's border with Tunisia following Muammar Gadaffi's violent crackdown.

Thousands of guest workers and Libyans have already fled the country, and many of those not lucky enough to be picked up by the SAS are ending up in a transit camp approximately six kilometres inside Tunisia, said the charity.

TSF, alongside the Red Crescent - the Islamic world's version of the Red Cross - is providing telecoms services to the displaced population.

Many of the refugees claim to have been stopped at several checkpoints in Libya, where the SIM cards of their mobile phones were confiscated by authorities still loyal to the regime.

The first TSF team arrived on 24 February at the Ras Jdir frontier post (pictured) near to Ben Guerdane, the closest Tunisian town to the border crossing. A second team, sent as reinforcements from the international headquarters of TSF, is about to join them.

On 25 February, more than 200 calls were offered to the population, with 98% of those calls being placed to Egypt, which had many thousands of expats working in the oil industry.

Crowds of people are waiting in long queues to make phone calls, said the charity.

TSF is also working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Tunisian Civil Defense and the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Department.

In the rush to provide priority needs to refugees, such as food, water and medical aid, small comforts such as the ability to place a call to loved ones can be forgotten, and the importance of some little extra frills shouldn't be underestimated. Those keen to donate to TSF's work can do so online here.

A version of this story first appeared on ComputerWeekly.com

Photo courtesy: Sipa Press/Rex Features

The alarming dependence of modern Britain on technology has once again been laid bare after a break in at Vodafone's Basingstoke data centre, which is thought to have left over three million users without service today.

Network Noise understands the outage is mostly affecting the M4 corridor, although there are reports of users in the Midlands also struggling to get reception.

In an official statement put out on Vodafone's support forum, the UK's largest operator said: "We had a break in last night at one of our technical facilities which resulted in damage done to some of our equipment. This means that some customers may be experiencing temporary loss of voice, SMS and internet services.

"We are working quickly to restore these and will be back to normal as soon as we can. There has been no impact on the privacy of customers' data."

It is unknown if the outage has resulted from criminal damage and vandalism, or from equipment actually having been stolen, and beyond its statement Vodafone is keeping its mouth shut over the affair.

What is certain is that the data centre would have had millions of pounds worth of networking equipment inside it, and questions will surely be asked over Vodafone's security.

According to Twitter, there is no word on when the network will come back online; Vodafone has been attempting to contact its engineers, but they're all on Vodafone...

However, the outage hasn't gone down badly with everyone. As one poster on Vodafone's website said he had had no service on his commute from Guildford into London and had thoroughly enjoyed the peace and quiet.

Wrote the happy user: "The train wasnt full of people nattering and no one at work could reach me. More outages please, Vodafone."

That's the spirit!

Photo courtesy: Geoff Moore/Rex Features

Network Noise knows when it is beaten.

Today we doff our blogging cap to the fine people at comparison site Broadband Expert, who have been asking what the man on the Clapham omnibus thinks of Huawei's plan to enable mobile phone use on the Tube.

Broadband Expert quizzed 1,300 Londoners and found that on average 70% of people were actually in favour of the roll-out, which is being planned to coincide with the 2012 Olympics.

This figure rose the younger the respondent, with just over 80% of 16 to 17 year-olds giving Huawei the thumbs up, and 78% of 18 to 24 year-olds.

So maybe it is time to hang up my hat and admit that on this occasion, I've been swimming against the tide of popular opinion.

But I note that there is hope for luddites and those who enjoy to have a sly nap on the train. Broadband Expert's data stand in stark contrast to that collected by GoodMobilePhones.co,uk, which says that three quarters of people hate the idea.

Photo courtesy: Paul Brown/Rex Features

If your answer to the question posed in the headline is a resounding "no", then you needn't worry because they don't.

As part of a shake-up of its collaboration business, Cisco is axing a hosted email service that very few people seem to have known about.

The Cisco Mail service was launched a little over a year ago using technology Cisco acquired when it bought WebEx.

It cost between $3.50 and $5 per month for a five gig mailbox, and a buck extra if you wanted it on your BlackBerry, but it seems that has failed to pique anybody's interest.

In a blog post yesterday evening, Debra Chrapaty, senior veep and general manager of Cisco's Collaboration Software Group, said that in 13 months of testing the product had been received quite well.

"But," she added, "we've learned that customers have come to view their email as a mature and commoditised tool versus a long term differentiated element of their collaboration strategy."

Got that?

Debra continues; "We've also heard that customers are eager to embrace emerging collaboration tools such as social software and video."

So it's nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Google Apps for Business will give you 25 gig of storage for $50 per annum, according to the WSJ, with BlackBerry, iOS, Android and Outlook interoperability, then?

Ah, farewell then, Cisco Mail, we hardly knew 'ye...

Networking services provider Azzurri will be putting in a call to its stationer after being awarded a Royal Warrant by the Queen for provision of communications services.

Cisco and Avaya partner Azzurri - which more usually finds itself wrangling network installations for FTSE 100 firms - has been quietly providing both mobile telephony and other connectivity services to the Royal Household for the past eight years.

The Warrant, which lasts for five years, took effect at the beginning of 2011.

Only three Royals are entitled to grant Warrants - the Queen, Prince Philip (pictured right in full flood) and Prince Charles.

The honour is only ever granted to people or companies that have supplied goods or services to the Royal Family.

"It's a great honour for any firm to be awarded a Royal Warrant. It is an exceptionally prestigious stamp of quality and reliability and therefore we're delighted to receive this recognition," said Azzurri CEO Mark Quartermaine.

However, Azzurri is not the only channel company to have crossed paths with the Royal Family; Newcastle-based Croft Technology - acquired last year by TSG - was also been handed the badge a couple of years back

And way back in the 1990s, a senior executive at Compaq made the back pages of MicroScope after sharing a moan with Prince Edward about being hounded by the paparazzi over his private life, or, in this case, reseller management strategy.

"I have a similar problem with a magaine called MicroScope," the executive told the Prince, back then a confirmed bachelor, who no doubt felt much better at having his own problems put into context.

Photo courtesy: Rupert Hartley/Rex Features

UC Expo's new research showing that business users are turned off unified comms because there are too many social media options out there comes as little surprise to Network Noise.

Social media is a confusing world for new users, and as technology providers its the channel's duty to make the case for its use as a business tool.

But I think the channel needs to have the case made to it, first.

It's all very well trying to get business users interested in social media, but the channel just isn't banging this particular drum.

I can think of no better example than our own, here at MicroScope.co.uk.

We've been publishing our stories to our Twitter feed for nearly two years now, and we do quite well out of it.

But if you take a look through our rogues gallery of followers, a great number of them are PR agencies, news aggregators, other journalists after a story, SEO types, you get the picture.

Oh, sure, the channel is on Twitter, but a brave few pioneers aside, most of the core readership simply is not.

And most channel feeds seem to me to be little more than promotional vehicles for their owners.

It does get me wondering if social media will ever truly be the tool that it could be?

But hand on heart, I would love to be proved wrong, and to hear your stories of prospects engaged and business won through tools such as Twitter.

So, China is giving us the 'generous' gift of irritating loudmouths jabbering away on their mobile phones on the tube.

That's if comms firm Huawei gets its way.

The operation, to bring mobile network coverage to the London Underground, is being billed as a gift from the last Olympic host nation to the next.

If Huawei's bid - understood to be somewhere in the region of £50m - is successful, both the Jubilee and Central lines - which run to the Olympic Park in Stratford - will have mobile transmission technology installed by 2012, with other lines to follow.

It is thought Huawei will provide the transmission equipment alongside French firm Thales, with networks O2 and Vodafone coming on board in a partner role.

But predictably, the thought of allowing Huawei to provide mobile telephony services on the underground has not gone down too well with some people.

Tory MP Patrick Mercer has warned that the move could be a double-edged sword; while a mobile network would be helpful to co-ordinate rescue workers in the event of an accident or bombing, it also "answers a terrorist's prayers" by enabling remote detonation of explosives.

And with Chinese intelligence frequently accused of attacking western networks, he asks whether or not the UK really wants a Chinese firm providing key infrastructure. 

Similar concerns have dogged Huawei's ambitions in the US before now.

However, Network Noise's concern is less that it will be blown up by terrorists or hacked by the Chinese, it's more that the tube remains a little haven away from the connected world, where (comparative) peace and quiet still reigns. Can't we try to keep it that way?

Photo courtesy: Ashley Cooper/SpecialistStock/SplashdownDirect/Rex Features 

Following the deposition of the Egyptian government in a protracted and at times bloody revolution, the Bahraini government may have got itself into hot water as well, with international concern growing as the news filters out.

The technical bods at Arbor Networks have had their noses to the grindstone again to bring us another tasteful green infographic showing not a complete shutdown - as took place in Egypt - but a definite reduction in internet traffic.

As you can see from the above, a marked 10 to 20 per cent slowdown has been picked up, consistent with traffic fluctuations normally found during natural disasters or major sporting events, according to Arbor, which pointed out that genuine technical problems could not be ruled out.

But, net freedom advocates at the OpenNet Initiative have claimed the declines are consistent with reports that Bahrainis are being blocked from social media sites and video-sharing services.

Now, according to local reports Bahraini ISPs have taken the step of apologising to their customers for the service degradation, claiming the problems are merely due to high usage.

However, these ISPs include government-backed incumbent operator Batelco...

The news that product placement is to be allowed on commercial TV in the UK reminded Network Noise of a recent episode of US sitcom 30 Rock, starring Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey.

In this scene Baldwin - tongue firmly in cheek - shills for Cisco's "cutting edge" videoconferencing technology, declaring it "the gold standard by which all business technology is judged".

This got us to thinking about how other companies in our sector could best exploit (sorry, leverage) the imminent relaxation of Britain's advertising media laws.

Maybe Virgin Media and BT could pay to show customers struggling with their home broadband equipment on Coronation Street.

Or perhaps a plot line in the next series of Downton Abbey could feature Hugh Bonneville dealing with his HP Networking account manager after setting up a small reseller in the village.

And Ice Road Truckers would be enlivened no end if its subjects were shipping goods from Westcon Convergence.

Any other suggestions warmly welcomed.

Photo courtesy: NBCUPHOTOBANK/Rex Features

As if yesterday's damning analysis by analyst Will Gibbs at IHS iSuppli was not clear enough on the subject, executive chairman and former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, has now stuck his oar into the furore surrounding Nokia and Microsoft's decision to jump into bed with one another.

At his keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Schmidt revealed that Nokia and Google had held talks over the possibility of adopting its Android operating system.

"We would have loved that they had chosen Android. They chose the other guys, that other competitor, Microsoft. I think we are pretty straightforward.

"We would like them to adopt Android at some point in the future and that offer remains open. We think Android was a good choice for Nokia. We are sorry they made a different choice," said Schmidt.

Nokia, which has lost up to 20 per cent of its value since last Friday's announcement, is thought to be unlikely to be able to bring a Windows 7 device to market this year, although obviously nobody really knows how quickly it would have been able to move on Android.

In a tubthumping speech and Q&A session yesterday, Schmidt praised the Android platform to the skies, claiming that over 300,000 new Android devices were being activated daily with access to over 150,000 apps (as of late April 2010 it had barely 50,000).

Schmidt would not, however be drawn on whether or not Google might buy Twitter, saying only that he loved to tweet. He also said that he was not too concernced about a competitive challenge from Facebook, noting that Microsoft's Bing search engine was actually a stronger competitor, and also had some good words for Google employee Wael Ghonim, who was arrested during the Egyptian revolution.

Photo courtesy: Google

Last week, Network Noise sat down for coffee and sandwiches with Don Girskis, worldwide sales vice president and erstwhile interim CEO at ShoreTel.

Girskis stepped up to the hotseat following the resignation of long-serving John Combs last year, and during his brief stint at the top presided over a record-setting quarter and the acquisition of Agito Networks, now rebranded as ShoreTel Mobility.

Besides giving us a run down on ShoreTel's plans to post net profits during the coming months (for the first time in quite a while) and mulling the possibility of further acquisitions in the near future, Don also spent some time reflecting on his time at the top.

"It was a lot of fun," Don told us. "But although the board did ask I wasn't interested in a permanent position."

"Being a long-term CEO is not really one of my goals. But we did get a lot of good things done during that time. I'm now happy to be on the road again."

On the appointment of Peter Blackmore from UTStarcom in December, Don said: "The board wanted someone with a high level of integrity who understood the channel.

"He's also a Brit, so as you can imagine the team here is very excited to have him on board," he added.

Following last month's news that Apple was seeing constrained supplies of iPhone components, a high-profile leak to the South Korean media, detailed in the Wall Street Journal, has claimed that Cupertino is in talks with Samsung to secure a $7.8bn contract agreement for supply of, among other things, LCD panels, mobile processors and flash memory.

Apple is also thought to have laid out $3.9bn separately to acquire further stocks of LCD panels from LG, Sharp and Toshiba, suggest analysts.

The move plays nicely into growing levels of chatter in the tech community concerning the existence of a cut-price baby iPhone 'Nano', which a select few industry insiders claim to have seen.

The rumoured device is said to be about two thirds the size of the regular model, includes no 'home' button and could retail for as little as £120 all-in.

Given Apple's habitual veil of secrecy this is about as much as anybody can say with any certainty about little iPhone Junior for now, although naturally the Apple-centric blogosphere has gone bananas at the prospect, trading intimate details of features Apple fans would like to see.

But speculation aside it doesn't take a genius to figure out the pros for Apple, here.

It gives the vendor, renowned for its high-end pricing, an opening into the lower end of the smartphone space, a sector where Google's Android platform has performed well; given Apple's cachet of fashionability we see potential for success here.

It could also bring Apple some valuable leverage in the Far East, where nimble local companies are often able to quickly bring similar product (some might say knocked-off product) to market - a situation bemoaned by Nokia boss Stephen Elop last week.

In a damning assessment of the Nokia Microsoft smartphone tie-up, IHS iSuppli principal analyst Will Kidd has said that the troubled mobility firm would have made a "better choice" had it instead partnered with Google.

In a damning assessment of the partnership, announced last Friday, Kidd writes that the agreement is "likely to have a negative near-term impact on Nokia's smartphone shipments".

"Nokia is eliminating any incentive for consumers and developeras to buy into its existing smartphone products. With the Microsoft deal unlikely to yield any products for nearly one year, Nokia will have no choice except to remain awkwardly reliant on the Symbian and MeeGo platforms."

The longer-term prospects also look rocky, says Kidd, as it adds uncertainty to Nokia's overall outlook.

"This forebodes ill for Nokia, which doesn't need additional doubt in its story as it strives to maintain consumer and developer interest."

Has Nokia made a costly mistake?

Amid all the excitement of Valentine's Day and the spurious press releases that accompany that annual festival of tat, Network Noise had quite forgotten that just around the corner is the Royal Wedding.

To celebrate the imminent nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the potteries of Staffordshire have already sprung into action to produce commemorative china by the bucketload, but until now we had not seen much to get excited about from the technology world. 

So it is with great joy that we can today reveal the Union Jack smartphone pouch, Royal Wedding edition from mobile accessory outfit Proporta.

The totally blinging case will fit both iPhones and HTC model smartphones and is available from ... er ...

Well, it's available. Let's just leave it at that, shall we?

It must appeal to someone...

Surely? Anyone? Bueller?

Over the weekend KPMG's telecoms head Joe Gallagher said that the sector is in for a wave of M&A activity over the next two to three years.

"Big ticket players will be looking to joint ventures and partnerships just as much as acquisitions," he said.

"Nokia's recent announcement to partner with Microsoft is one flavour of change. Sharing of heavy network assets is already underway.

"Without doubt, responding to and driving sector convergence is leading to fast-change in an old industry," said Gallagher.

KPMG (at heart a corporate audit firm) paints high-level strategic partnerships and big-ticket acquisitions as the way forward for our sector. But it forgets that there are lots of more local deals going on that, in their way, are just as important.

Take comms provider Daisy, for example, which today announced the latest in a long-string of comms acquisitions, snapping up Bucks-based data and network services outfit O-bit Telecom, which has built a successful business in the SMB market.

The SMB sector in our 'nation of shopkeepers' doesn't really care whether or not Nokia's Windows 7 smartphone comes now, six months down the line, or (entirely possibly) never.

But the UC services provided by firms such as Daisy and its reseller network are high on their agenda and critical to the success of their businesses.

Big ticket acquisitions are all well and good, but KPMG should not discount the importance of the little guys in building out the telecoms industry into the future.

More news reaches us of networks being pushed into service on behalf of the lovesick, the lonely and the desperate.

As Valentine's Day approaches, the PR world has already built up a good head of steam as techies rush to capitalise on our base desires for gadgets and sex.

BT has got in on the act, and plans to use the Live Site big screens it has set up around Britain for the Olympics for a purpose I'm sure Seb Coe never envisaged.

This weekend and on Monday, 17 Live Site screens situated in city centres all over the UK will become Love Sites, displaying cringeworthy messages of affection for all the world to see.

Says BT group marketing and brand director Suzi Williams: "We're delighted to be playing cupid for [a] weekend. It's a great testament to how the power of communication can bring people together."

I can't help thinking I'd prefer something a little more traditional.

You can get involved, if you feel the urge, by tweeting @BTLoveSites. Don't forget to include a location hashtag. More information is available from BT.

Photo courtesy: OJO Images/Rex Features

The deal between Nokia and Microsoft to make Windows Phone 7 the primary operating system for the mobile phone maker's products is opportune for both businesses, writes Billy MacInnes.

As we have seen, Nokia's Symbian OS has been struggling in the smartphone market while Microsoft's efforts in this space have been dwarfed by the success of Apple, BlackBerry and Google's Android OS.

Announcing the deal, the companies said they would "build a new global mobile ecosystem" and "disrupt" the other mobile ecosystems.

These, they conveniently neglected to mention, have either already been built or are much further advanced than the Nokia/Windows Phone 7 one.

There's no doubting the scale that both companies can bring to the deal but there's also no getting away from the underlying perception that this is a "coalition of the losers".

It looks a bit like the last two single people at the party getting together for the final dance. 

There's also an unfortunate undercurrent in the fact that Nokia's new boss, Stephen Elop, who has been the primary driver for the change at the mobile giant, used to work for Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer.

Given the size of both businesses, it would be foolhardy to write off their ambitions for a "global mobile ecosystem", but equally, as both companies have already found out in their separate (failed) attempts to build a presence in the smartphone market, size isn't everything.

Another quarter, and another set of disappointing results from Cisco, which did its best to spin its results positively, but couldn't disguise some serious problems.

The big issue for many is the firm's consumer business, which saw a precipitous 15% drop in its sales, with the Flip video lines disappointing and its recently launched Umi video kit not getting much traction.

CEO John Chambers has been very enthusiastic about the consumer business in the past, but on last night's quarterly conference call bemoaned the fact that consumers weren't buying the equipment that Cisco wanted them to.

"We based our strategy on being able to sell added value on an architectural play in the home. As you saw in the most recent holiday season, value add higher end products got crushed and the ability to move was mainly on lower SKUs.

"So it turned out to be a tougher market than we anticipated and this last six months in particular, the things that are most important to Cisco than being able to sell are key, were not what the customers were buying."

This is quite a telling statement, and to us it says that Chambers has got it wrong.

It simply doesn't matter what Cisco thinks it is most important to sell, it is the end-users that call the shots, and if they don't like Cisco's offerings (let's face it, Umi is stupidly overpriced) then they will go elsewhere.

Architectural plays are all well and good, but the average home consumer doesn't grasp it. Cisco is approaching consumers as if they were businesses, and that is a truly ridiculous strategy.

The fact that Chambers doesn't seem to get this should be of grave concern.

Cisco's consumer strategy needs a serious shake-up, and the quiet announcement that it has dispensed with the services of business unit head Jonathan Kaplan would seem to be the first sign that there's an axeman loose in Cisco's HR department.

Loss-making social network Twitter is understood to be locked in acquisition talks with Facebook and Google, with the micro-blogging site thought to be worth around $10bn, says the WSJ.

Leaving aside the fact that $10bn is a patently ludicrous valuation, Network Noise thinks there is only one logical choice for a Twitter acquisition.

Given Facebook's cavalier attitude towards its users' personal data, it simply has to be Google.

A Facebook deal would invariably see Twitter profiles being linked to their owners' Facebook pages, probably without consent, forcing more tedious opt-outs.

It would give Facebook more control and more leverage over its users personal lives, and this is not to be welcomed.

In fact, we foresee uproar in the Twittersphere should any deal swing in Zuckerberg's favour.

Now, we're not wild about Google getting its foot in the door either, but in this case it is very much the lesser of two evils.

Connection is good, but diversity of choice should always win through.

When HP bought Palm last year, it made a lot of contradictory, flip-flopping statements over what it planned to do with the struggling mobility vendor, which culminated in a sudden u-turn over remarks made by the then CEO Mark Hurd.

But it seems now that the Palm brand has been quietly laid to rest in the mobility tomb. Just as PSG boss Todd Bradley said it would, HP has fired its opening salvo in the tablet wars with the launch of its own webOS device.

The Palm name? It didn't appear in the presentation.

Oh, and - sorry Mr Hurd but you got this one dead wrong - it also launched two smartphones.

The tablet itself, named the TouchPad, is much like the iPad, firmly pitched at the consumer mobile experience.

Will it fly? Now, Leo Apotheker was roundly mocked the other week for saying he wanted HP to be "as cool as Apple" but Network Noise doesn't think this going to achieve that. Sorry, HP, but you will always be HP, and we honestly don't see TouchPad making waves in the consumer market.

But when you take into account HP's dominance in business computing, and couple that with its vast network of channel partners, TouchPad becomes a hugely interesting play for this sector.

TouchPad features that will be of interest to business users include an integrated messaging package, front facing video camera for video calls, Quickoffice Connect Mobile and webOS Exhibition, a presentation feature that activates when the pad is connected to HP's TouchStone charging device.

HP now has something that it can put into play against the mysterious Cisco Cius and the Avaya Not-A-Tablet-At-All-In-Any-Way-Except-When-It-Is.

And HP knows computing in a way that nuts 'n bolts networker Cisco and communications specialist Avaya do not.

For these reasons we think this is a genuine challenger in the market. Watch out, the big kids have come out to play!

Following a net loss of 25,000 customers and the axing of over 500 jobs, TalkTalk chief exec Dido Harding has thrown her hands in the air and admitted to the Financial Times that the business was like a teenaged octopus.

And about time too!

In what stands as by far and away the most original statement on a company's financial health that Network Noise has ever seen, Harding said: "Like companies that have grown very fast ... we don't have control of our arms and legs, like a gangly teenager. And we have a lot of arms and legs.

"The teenage octopus will take a while to grow up."

Comments on Ms Harding's Gerald Ratner moment aside, the current brouhaha centres on the acquisition of basket case Italian ISP Tiscali in 2009.

TalkTalk has a history of acquiring troubled ISPs - having previously bought customer service disaster zone OneTel a few years back - and the integration of Tiscali has not gone entirely to plan.

Besides taking close to two years, TalkTalk buggered up the billing process for Tiscali customers last November, which caused a swathe of households to receive bills for cancelled services totalling hundreds of pounds apiece and prompting an Ofcom investigation.

The loss of customers on this scale is a serious problem for the ISP in the current climate, agree analysts following TalkTalk's progress.

Their concerns stem from the fact that rivals BT and BSkyB have both been doing very well lately.

A customer survey referenced by the FT, which was carried out by financial services house Espirito Santo, suggests that 40% of TalkTalk's customers take Sky TV and as such are vulnerable to cross-selling by the rivals.

TalkTalk will rightly be under pressure to take action, and in all seriousness, we're not convinced that glib little quips when jobs are at stake really cut the mustard..

Should the also-rans of the smartphone space, Microsoft and Nokia, team up for market domination?

Adnaan Ahmad, a London-based analyst with Berenberg Bank, thinks so. In fact, he's so confident it could work he wants to buy Steve Ballmer lunch...

Last week, Ahmad posted an open letter to Steve Ballmer and his Nokia counterpart (and ex-Microsoft boffin) Stephen Elop in which he extolled the virtues of a tie-up.

Let's face it, writes Ahmad, the days when Nokia held 50% of the European mobile market and 35% of the US are long gone, and as Elop himself has said, Nokia faces "significant challenges in competitiveness and execution."

Microsoft, meanwhile, despite having a good operating system in the shape of Windows Phone 7 (WP7), is shifting paltry numbers of handsets - 3.1 million units in Q4 compared to 33.3m Androids and 16m iPhones, according to Canalys.

The suggestion is that the two old chums put their heads together and announce a deal whereby Nokia could corner the high-end smartphone space through gaining access to the WP7 IP and the US market.

"In doing so cut your bloated handset business R&D by at least $1bn or 30%, which should add 300bps to your operating margin. Get rid of [Intel JV] MEEGO - it's the biggest joke in the tech industry and will put you further behind Apple and Google."

Says Ahmad: "Focus your high-end portfolio around WP7 and over time you can take the cost down to get into the mid-range. Push Symbian into the low to mid-range smartphone market as quickly as possible to defend market share versus Android's upcoming lowered-cost ecosystem."

The benefits for Microsoft would be vastly increased market share for its software products, according to Ahmad, and millions of dollars less spend on mobile marketing, not to mention exclusivity. And don't forget that  hooking up with a high-volume player has paid off for Microsoft before...

"And Steve, if you're successful, we will all forget your quotes from 2007. Do you remember this one: 'Apple is a cute, tiny little niche guy'," he concluded.

Photo courtesy: Rex Features

If you were worried about your mobile phone voicemail being hacked by errant reporters, then worry no more.

For a start, you're probably not famous enough, and secondly, you ought to be more worried about criminals breaking into your PBX.

PBX hacking, or phreaking, is a growing concern for many in the industry and is still not being widely discussed.

Hacked PBX systems can be used to run up phone bills running into the thousands, and according to Paul Brewer, technology solutions director at Avaya-partner Datapoint, is already netting cons over $1bn a year.

Ian Kilpatrick of convergence distie Wick Hill, who recently signed on to distribute Panasonic phone switching systems equipped with Callista's Control Phreak security package, told MicroScope that many comms resellers still didn't understand the risks of failing to protect voice activity.

"It's in their business interest to talk about it because neglecting it creates questions that reflect badly on the [voice] industry as a whole," he said.

"End-users will try to sue their suppliers if they abrogate that responsibility," he warns.

Meanwhile, Sunbury-based Retell, a manufacturer of phone recording equipment, has just launched a new tool called Sense Voice Firewall, which monitors dialled calls and disconnects calls to unauthorised numbers that are pre-set.

According to Retell, the security settings of many 'phreaked' PBX systems have - surprise surprise - not been changed since the unit left the factory.

The parallels with the hacked mobiles of celebs such as Sienna Miller, Steve Coogan and Max Clifford - who could have all spared themselves a lot of bother had they bothered to change their voicemail security settings - are clear to see.

So if you don't fancy ending up on page three ... or being taken for a couple of grand, change your bloody Pa55w0rd.

February has well and truly begun, the days are lengthening and soon there will be a whiff of spring in the air...

But first we have to make it through Valentine's Day.

The first tech firm to have the, er, honour, of attempting to pin a press release onto the annual festival of romance - which commemorates the grizzly slaying of an early Christian in ancient Rome - is the company behind the iPhone dating app SinglesAroundMe.

The matchmaking outfit, which was founded by internet entrepreneur Chris Klotz, will be launching its app on RIM's BlackBerry platform on this most appropriate of days.

Briefly, the app is the first to plot wayward singletons on a Google map in real time, and allow other users to view those nearby using their GPS.

It also includes a tool that allows potential lovers (or stalkers) to track their intended...

"Online dating is old school," says Klotz. "This is the next frontier. It's the new way to date, social networking in real time, live and interactive."

The app's creators claim it's the perfect, no-pressure way to find other singles at a time of year that can be very depressing for those that give a damn.

So, have you got a spurious Valentine's Day related technology press release? MicroScope's bloggers are waiting to hear from you!

As everyone kind of suspected they might, BT has caved to the complaints of those that lost out, and will be rolling out superfast broadband to four other towns across the UK in addition to the six previously announced.

The Race to Infinity publicity stunt (BT prefers survey) took place during the last three months of 2010, and recorded over 350,000 votes across the UK.

Reflecting the high number of votes, BT has now said it will be adding Burley in Yorkshire, Capel in Surry, Lindfield in West Sussex and Marton in Warwickshire to its list.

The next step, said BT today, is for its local network unit Openreach to survey the winning areas and plan how best to deploy a fibre-optic network. It hopes to have all 10 locations up and running by early 2012 "at the latest".

We shall see if that happens.

The Egyptian government may have switched off the internet in panic last week, but this hasn't stopped ordinary Egyptians from taking to the web.

Within hours of the shutdown, ISPs in Europe were springing into action.

Take the example of FDN, a small French firm that dug out some redundant dial-up kit that it kept in reserve, just in case it hit problems with its broadband service.

The firm checked the equipment to make sure it could be accessed on an international phone line and, more importantly, to make sure it was still working.

Then, with the help of the large North African community in France, they fed the phone number into Egypt. According to Deutsche Welle, FDN saw its first connection late on Friday and has been picking up a stream of traffic all weekend.

And it's not the only one to do so; ISPs and activist groups across the world have been ploughing a similar furrow.

Others have gone further; lists of ham radio frequencies, Facebook and Twitter proxies, free-to-access VPN networks and even tools to hide your IP address (inadvisable) are all being made freely available across the internet.

Whatever the rights, wrongs, or ultimate implications of the ongoing crisis, the determination of Egyptian netizens to be heard by the wider world backs up a point that Network Noise has made consistently; the internet is a basic tool of day-to-day existence and as such it is independent and cannot be policed in a heavy-handed manner.

As a result of the Egyptian government's actions, the worldwide network has behaved autonomously and found a way to send traffic around the problem.