2006/04/21

Microsoft drums up Sender ID support to combat spam - IT Week

Microsoft drums up Sender ID support to combat spam - IT Week

Sender ID is no doubt a good idea, unfortunately it does has drawbacks, mainly for Emails that are forwarded i.e. a user legitimately say receives mail through a domain, but uses another server to send the Email.

It is possible to set-up records for that scenario, but it rather defeats the security of Sender ID.

MarkMonitor report there are now more than two million .com and .net domains that publish their Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records for Sender ID verification, up from 750,000 in March 2005. Unfortunately most of the domains publishing Sender ID records are spammers.

2006/04/20

Visit TalkTalk - Join Talk3 International Calling Plan To Get Free Broadband

Visit TalkTalk - Join Talk3 International Calling Plan To Get Free Broadband

Carphone Warehouse have announced "free" broadband to their TalkTalk customers. Of course it isn't free, it's just the costs are bundled in with other services like line rental and talk plans etc and of course an 18 month minimum contract.

That doesn't mean it's not a good deal.

However it is likely to start the next phase of a broadband price war, others will follow suit, NTL being a likely contender now they've acquired Virgin Mobile and can utilise the brand offering Voice, Internet, video and mobile packages (quadruple play). Currently at least TalkTalk is only offering a double play, though they do have mobile offerings.

Since Carphone Warehouse has only recently started unbundling exchanges (and they're spending £110m on it this year), they'll be signing-up customers on non TalkTalk converted exchanges which means they must be buying service off BT or another LLU operator. This will be a costly exercise as it will be losing them money, however as a land grab exercise it's likely to be very successful.

Currently TalkTalk have the 3rd largest number of residential customers (millions, NTL with 2.4m+ and the rest BT), but they only have around 75,000 broadband customers.

Carphone Warehouse are definately a telecoms player to watch.

Digit news - Seagate announces 15,000rpm hard disk

Digit news - Seagate announces 15,000rpm hard disk

15K rpm disks have been around for a while, Seagate offers them in the Cheetah range, however these are the first to support over 100MB/s.

They utilise perpendicular recording technology which has been around in 2.5" drives, but new for 3.5" drives. Each platter can hold 73GB and a drive can have up to 4 platters. They should be available in June, but no pricing is available as yet.

Digit news - Apple reports $410 million profit

Digit news - Apple reports $410 million profit

Apple made a profit of $410m on revenue of $4.36bn last quarter which was the 2nd highest ever of Apple. It included the sale of just over 1.1m Macs and 8.5m iPods.

Though it will probably go to pay off their bills to Apple Corp, maybe ...

2006/04/19

Ofcom Website | Ofcom confirms changes to 0870 calls

Ofcom Website | Ofcom confirms changes to 0870 calls

Ofcom is making changes to various number ranges in-line with proposals they set out earlier.

0870 numbers (which currently exhibit a charge of about 8p per minute during the day) will drop such that they are no more than geographic numbers (as in 01/02 numbers). They will be removed from NTS determination (number translation services). This means it's no longer going to be able to generate revenue for 0870 users form inbound ingress.

Users are able to charge more, however then a caller announcement has to be made (at no cost to the caller) before the charged call goes through.

The changes come into play in 2008.

There are no planned changes to 0844/0845 numbers.

0871 numbers will fall under ICSTIS regulations (who govern premium rate numbers) regarding pricing, but by the end of 2006 there will be NO adult services of any type on 08 numbers.

By June 2006 any NTS numbers will need to be clearly along side normal numbers.