An item on my to-do list for the past year or more has been to learn all about VoIP; as of this afternoon I’m pleased to say that I’ve learned enough to at least make a functioning office VoIP service work!
I’d purchased “Asterisk – The Future of Telephony” via Amazon.com early last year, my primary motivation being to work out if an all-VoIP setup was feasible for a small technology business. When the time comes for us to move offices I wanted to see if it’s possible to leave the traditional (and, in Australia, overpriced) fixed telephony network behind. It’s been around 8 weeks since I started playing around with Asterisk in my spare time, and frustratingly it soon became an obsession. The only way I managed to keep my sanity was from reading through the waves of postings on the ‘net from folks who have embarked on a similar journey, so I wanted to devote this and some future blog postings to documenting some of the challenges I faced, and most importantly how and what I did to get it working. Click to continue »
Hong Kong has long been one of my favourite cities in the world, and it’s been terrific to be up here for the past week working with the Catalist Group and meeting prospective investors and customers. On the mobile front, however, I’m temporarily experiencing life as a “Normob”: or to clarify, as a normal mobile user.
I first became aware of Normobs via Chris Kettle and some other friends who attended a mobile event in the UK where the term was bandied about. But this week I’ve experienced life first hand as one, and I’m reeling from confusion.
Unlike some countries – Australia and Singapore, for example, Hong Kong doesn’t have major identity requirements in order to provision prepaid mobile access; it’s primarily walk into a store, pay HK$100 (around A$15) and walk out with an activated SIM card. Text and voice work fine, and the rates aren’t bad either – HK$0.10 per minute for local calls (around 1.5c) which has enabled me to call into our VoIP service just fine. But mobile data? Forget it.
(This is despite the HKCSL prepaid packaging advertising mobile broadband as one of the benefits of the prepaid service – an anomaly which was confirmed to me by one of the retail assistants, who just shrugged when I pointed to the packaging with a “but it says here that…..”).
So here I am, with…..voice. And text. Only. Like it’s, I don’t know, 2002 or something.
I can’t hit the Google search portal, or mobile Facebook. Or use Google Maps, or Gmail. Most of the Symbian apps on my E51 are utterly useless sans data access and I’ve found myself with spare time on the MTR wishing my handset would do something. Anything. But it’s now just a mobile phone.
And I’m, temporarily at least, a “Normob”.
I’ve posted here periodically about my enthusiasm for Blackberry, specifically the Bold 9000 that I’ve had since the beginning of the year. One of the reasons I held on to my old 7100 for so long was that I was waiting for Telstra to release a NextG Blackberry, which they finally did. And then I was mulling over whether to get the Bold or the Storm, a decision which was ultimately made for me by Vodafone’s exclusivity with the Storm in Australia.
Of course, during this period I didn’t use the 7100 as a primary device – at least I hadn’t for quite a while. Instead I’d revolved through the Locatrix handset de jour – whether it be an iPhone, N95, or whatever – as my primary handset. The Blackberry was only a secondary device, for the sole purpose of e-mail. And then in February I migrated to the Bold as my sole device, and its been mostly a happy marriage.
However I have been travelling so much this year and – quite belatedly – working with local SIM cards to reduce roaming costs wherever I can. This has meant, however, that I’m accumulating a shed full of “other” numbers which I maintain active, and use whenever I’m in the relevant country. This week, for example is a HKCSL 3G prepaid service, which I’ve had in my trusty E51.
Ironically, this has meant that I’m back to a dual-device personality – being as attached to e-mail as I am, the Blackberry is usually in my pocket. But locally working with the Hong Kong number – we’ve got an office DID here now, so its how I’m connecting with the team in Australia to save money – I’m carrying and using a second phone. As a primary device, this week, anyway.
So ironically, it’s Black to the future – despite my passion for the Blackberry solution, it’s still not meeting every use case I come up with.
So any plans for dual SIM devices, Research in Motion?
If you had’ve suggested a couple of years ago that we could be blogging – or using literally any Web2.0 application – while sitting on a train, I would have been dubious. But here I am, en-route to Varsity Lakes for a board meeting, writing a blog post on a train.
Connectivity is via 3G (NextG, if you want to be specific) and the latency/bandwidth is quite good. I can even use Whereis Everyone to check my location on a map – which is kind of cool to get a sense of the journey.
I did something similar last month, once I got my UK 3G problems resolved. The Vodafone top-up-and-go solution worked remarkably well, once I had the original device and SIM replaced. Of course network coverage was varied, but on the train ride to Claygate from Waterloo I was chatting with my brother in Sydney quite comfortably.
So there you go, a blog post from a train. Sure beats driving!