http://mr.geek.nz/2006/08/10/what-do-xtra-broadband-and-tui-have-in-common/

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3760760a13,00.html

Can somebody with some knowledge please offer to become an IT/Business writer for The herald or at least offer some editorial advice to their current journos? I realise not everybody understands the geek world and mistakes do happen but these are now occuring way too frequently.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=3&ObjectID=10393515'


"Woosh - whose chief executive Bob Smith resigned yesterday - said it had secured rights for more than 2.3 gigahertz of spectrum owned by Sky, which would enable the provision of internet television on its wireless network throughout the country."


For the record the spectrum Woosh have secured is in the 2.3GHz band. I believe sky owned around 10 or 15MHz of 2.3GHz spectrum therefore the story should say "10MHz of 2.3GHz spectrum owned by Sky"

Tex Edwards seems to be taking every chance be can at present to point out what many of have known for years - that Vodafone own all of the 900MHz GSM spectrum in NZ. Funny how he didn't also point out that telecom own 100% of the 800MHz spectrum in NZ as well but maybe he didn't know that.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU0607/S00490.htm

Around 1990 NZ decided to auction off 3 TACS bands (the analogue system used in the UK) and the 2nd AMPS band (Telecom already owned the AMPS A band). The TACS spectrum was available for GSM use and spectrum was purchased by Telecom Australia, Telecom NZ and BellSouth. Telecom also purchased the 2nd AMPS band however the commerce commission ruled this was anti competitive and they had to either give up the AMPS B band or their TACS spectrum and Telecom chose the TACS spectrum, possibly because of the influence of Bell Atlantic who did not believe the proposed GSM standard would ever take off and that the AMPS spectrum offered the best option. This 3rd TACS band was then retained by the Crown and remained unused. 

BellSouth then went on to build their GSM network while the other 2 TACS/GSM bands were unused until Vodafone formed an alliance with TelstraSaturn and proceeded to buy the Telstra 900MHz GSM spectrum, with commerce commission approval. Roll on 2002 and the Ministry of Economic Development were feeling happy with themselves after rolling in the big $$ in 2001 for their 2100MHz 3G spectrum so decided to sell the 900MHz spectrum because not a single other carrier was interested except for Vodafone.

Tex Edwards was obviously so heavily focussed on rolling out a 3G network because GSM was "old technology" that he didn't even lodge an objection with the commerce commission (neither did anybody else) over the sale and therefore the spectrum was sold to Vodafone which gave them 3x25MHz bands of spectrum and will potentially offer them an amazing opportunity in the coming years to roll out a 900MHz WCDMA/HSDPA network which will offer far greater coverage and capacity than a 2100MHz WCDMA network.

I only have one thing to say Tex - we're sick of your continual moaning. If you put as much effort into building a network over the past 5 years as you done talking about it and complaining about the regulatory environment in NZ then you could have stood a real chance of being a significant player in the mobile market in NZ. You need Vodafone and they don't care about you.

Yet more dramas for the company.. Is this an attempt by the current owners (who you have to feel a bit sorry for continually bailing out a lame duck) to change the direction of the company with the purchase this week of a ADSL provider?

I've got a Brother 1820C fax machine which has a dreaded "machine error 41 message"

http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/inkjet/23050

Basically brother have built lots of faulty printers and faxes that bring this error up and a quick Google search shows this is a fairly large scale problem!

I've just tried to contact Brother NZ to see what they will do about it. Thanks but no thanks, I don't want to pay $1.99 per minute for an 0900 number.

Their other means of contact is a web form

http://www.brother.co.nz/public/support/helpdeskEnquiryForm.asp

This has to be the worst piece of web design anywhere. Only alphanumeric characters and numbers are permitted. This means you cannot use any non alphanumeric characters including simply full stops, commas or anything else that are common in English , . ' that is not an alphanumeric character. This resulted in me taking over 10 minutes submitting my enquiry until it would finally work since I tend to use punctuation in my writing and not try and write a letter in txt speak!

As a NZ Herald reader I am concerned about how quickly accurate reporting seems to have got in the way of a good story. Yet again today there are mistakes in an IT story, apparently Woosh now operate a WiMax network!

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=3&ObjectID=10392786

Come on guys, get your facts right..

Make sure you watch the whole ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn57rgNEt-4



PS: I can't seem to get imbedded YouTube videos to work.. Can somebody let me know how to fix this? Pasting the embed by itself obviously doesn't work..

Surely this has to be the quote of the day


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=93&objectid=10392084

(discussing TelstraClear's new 3G rollout)

"Woosh chief executive Bob Smith said he was comfortable with the capabilities of its network compared with the TelstraClear proposal"


Way to go... your crippled TDD-CDMA network is no match for a HSDPA/HSUPA enabled WCDMA network that will offer a truely mobile phone service and nationwide roaming. But if you feel your network is on par then good for you! :-)

Hardly a geek topic today but I'm sure I'm not the only person out there who has observed the small fact that virtually every petrol price increase in the past 12 months has been lead by BP? How can a company have such a brain dead marketing policy that has now created this perception in the market place? Shell have very carefully positioned themselves as the exact opposite who have lead the way in reductions.

Don't get me wrong - I know petrol (probably) has to increase in price. This doesn't hide the fact however that out of out four main fuel companies BP is continually the first to increase prices. I'd suggest everybody boycott BP or at least make sure you make their staff very aware that you strongly dislike their current pricing strategy.