| Newsletter - September 2006 Ofcom to make net switching easier Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, has proposed to make it easier for consumers to switch between internet suppliers after many people reported experiencing difficulties. Anyone who wants to switch suppliers need to be given a Migration Authorisation Code (MAC) from their current suppliers but at the moment not all companies were providing this information. Ofcom have said they are going to make it mandatory for service providers to issue this piece of information. This proposal was sent out for public consultation which means companies, organisations and the public have until October 5th to respond. Dell recalling laptops for over-heating batteries Dell has recalled 4.1 million batteries, made by Sony, in its laptops because of a fire risk. The models affected are Latitude, Inspiron, XPS and Precision; which were shipped out between April 2004 and July 2006. The largest recall in (US) history comes after users complained of the batteries overheating or catching fire. Sony themselves said that they had used it in their Vaio notebook but had not experienced the same problem. A spokeswoman for Sony said the fault was most likely linked to the way in which Dell had integrated the battery into its laptops. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) was trying to find out if the same Sony batteries were going to affect other laptops. Companies such as Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu Siemens and Lenova Group Ltd said the batteries had not affected their products. Shortly after Dell’s announcement, Apple Computers recalled 1.8 million of its laptops which used the same Sony batteries and where nine users had complained about experiencing problems of overheating. A further blow to both companies came when airlines such as Qantas and Korean Air refused to allow any laptops made by the companies on board the aircraft cabins with the batteries still in place. AOL publishes people’s searches on its research website AOL has come under fire for releasing information about its subscribers search logs last month. It was reported that 650,000 AOL users’ logs were made available on the company’s new Research website between March 2006 and May 2006. The information contained 20 million queries which included the search terms used, time of the search and whether or not the user clicked on the search results. Although the names had been removed and replaced with identification numbers many people said that the individuals could be easily recognised by their searches. AOL soon removed the offending data from their site but it was too late because the information had been duplicated onto other sites and blogs. Some bloggers said that the actions taken by AOL were ‘inappropriate’ and a complete ‘invasion of privacy’ especially where there was substantial amount of sensitive data available for anyone to ‘use or abuse it.’ Since the incident occurred, AOL issued an apology saying, “It was an innocent attempt to reach out to the academic community with research tools” and an internal investigation was being undertaken. Mobile TV BBC, ITV1 and Channel 4 have signed up for a new service which is being launched by BT to broadcast to mobile phones. The service called BT Movio will be available on Virgin Mobile from 1st October. It will be the first time that TV broadcasts will be on DAB digital radio network rather than the usual 3G system. BBC and E4 will allow users to watch programmes around the same time they are being aired on normal TV. Virgin will start the service on their new Mobile Lobster 700TV phone, free to customers who pay more than £25 a month on contract or a charge of £5 a month if you buy the handset separately; (the first 3 months will be free of charge with the BBC on a trial basis for 12 months, also free).Other mobile operators like Orange and Vodafone offer a wide range of TV programmes using the 3G network. A TV licence will be required if you are planning to watch TV on your mobile phones, otherwise you could face up to £1000 fines. On the other
hand Amazon has launched a digital TV and film
download service in USA. Amazon Unbox
will work with any PC, which has the Windows XP
system and broadband internet access. It has been said that the
service may be limited because of the non- compatibility with
media players or hand held services like the best selling Apple’s
iPod. Apple already offers customers the
opportunity to download music videos and some TV shows and has
now moved into the film market. It will allow users to download
movies, where deals have been done with Pixar, Touchstone,
Miramax and Disney. The company also
unveiled a new device which will stream music and videos wirelessly
between TV’s and computers. At the moment the service will
only be available to consumers in the US. Vodafone
have announced they are joining the fixed line broadband market,
where they will be using BT’s infrastructure.
This means the mobile giant won’t have to invest in a fixed
line network of its own. It says it will offer consumers a higher
quality of service after doing some extensive research in the
broadband market. The mobile phone company hopes to launch the
service by the end of the year. |
