The calls for tenders for rural broadband access will likely be published this week by the Ministry of Transport, giving some insight as to where funds (including EU money) and solutions will be first deployed.
This has been a hotly debated topic, with the e-government minister Ina Gudele and the Latvian Internet Association opposed to the MoT's plans to build new basic infrastructure. Gudele favors helping households and small businesses in Latvia's poorest and remote regions get last-mile access to the existing internet infrastructure (mainly Lattelecom's DSL network).
The MoT and its Communications Department favor funding additional infrastructure (i.e. new backbone lines) sometimes to compete with existing ones, so that competition will bring down prices and make the last mile connections cheaper and more accessible.
The tenders will start with the poorest regions first and may attract interest from some WiMax-type providers, possibly Latvenergo or Latvian Railways, which both have backbone infrastructure that could be extended out into the countryside by one means or another.
P.S. Sorry for the rant about Moneybookers. I finally used PayPal to buy my Skype credit. It is best to avoid these electronic fund fumblers if possible and keep their number to a minimum if they must be used.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Moneybookers - Skype's clusterfucked partner
I just tried the supposedly simple exercise of buying EUR 10 in SkypeOut credit. For some reason, my Visa Electron card was not verified, and Skype's website advised me to try using Moneybookers.com instead. I entered all my data, opened an account, entered my card number and, remarkably, was given a verification number by SMS to Latvia. Most excellent so far, except that when I entered the verification number and pressed next, I was repeatedly told there was "an internal server error". If you are running a payment system, well, that sort of thing does not happen, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!
Anyway later the system at MoneyCROOKERS said the transaction had been completed. I don't trust these fuckwits and neither should anyone else, least of all Skype if this kind of shit happens. They also suggest Click & Buy, a site where I was ripped off for almost 200 LVL until my bank set things right. I NEVER used Click&Buy, but this site-- supposedly run by British Telecom --= was used by some ratfucker lowlife to buy various shit (services) with my Visa Gold card, which I used only once while passing through Heathrow in March (the theft started in August). So be warned, Click & Buy is frequented by fraudsters, thieves and pirates and should get its payment security in line.
This is not a good way to end a busy day. TGIF...
Oh yes, my usual use of Firefox to post to this blog also fucked up and I have to use Safari, which does not allow me to use bold, italics, etc.
Anyway later the system at MoneyCROOKERS said the transaction had been completed. I don't trust these fuckwits and neither should anyone else, least of all Skype if this kind of shit happens. They also suggest Click & Buy, a site where I was ripped off for almost 200 LVL until my bank set things right. I NEVER used Click&Buy, but this site-- supposedly run by British Telecom --= was used by some ratfucker lowlife to buy various shit (services) with my Visa Gold card, which I used only once while passing through Heathrow in March (the theft started in August). So be warned, Click & Buy is frequented by fraudsters, thieves and pirates and should get its payment security in line.
This is not a good way to end a busy day. TGIF...
Oh yes, my usual use of Firefox to post to this blog also fucked up and I have to use Safari, which does not allow me to use bold, italics, etc.
Privatization of Latvia's State Information Network Agency proposed
There is a proposal before the Latvian government to privatizedthe State Information Network Agency (VITA) which operates a data and voice network for certain government and security services in Latvia.
Part of VITA's network consists of secure, but perhaps antiquated sealed cable channels (they are said to be gas-filled, leaks trigger alarms) and some more modern stuff. This are left over from the networks run by the Soviet military and the KGB.
This seems like a wise decision, as there are very few countries in the world that actually own and run their own government communications networks. In the US and Sweden, there are government agencies for the purchase of telecommunications service from the private sector. In the US, it is the General Services Administration and in Sweden, Statskontoret or The Swedish Agency for Public Management which procures telecommunications services. The GSA's Networx services appear to be composed entirely of private telecommunications and IT services procured, but not directly operated or provided by the government.
The best solution would be to sell VITA, get its debt to the government of nearly 900 000 LVL paid off, and reconstitute the functions of the agency as a government telecommunications procurement and standards-setting institution. In other words, VITA 2.0 would define the kind of service level agreement needed by, say, the Border Guards or the health services and then put out a tender to the private sector.
Part of VITA's network consists of secure, but perhaps antiquated sealed cable channels (they are said to be gas-filled, leaks trigger alarms) and some more modern stuff. This are left over from the networks run by the Soviet military and the KGB.
This seems like a wise decision, as there are very few countries in the world that actually own and run their own government communications networks. In the US and Sweden, there are government agencies for the purchase of telecommunications service from the private sector. In the US, it is the General Services Administration and in Sweden, Statskontoret or The Swedish Agency for Public Management which procures telecommunications services. The GSA's Networx services appear to be composed entirely of private telecommunications and IT services procured, but not directly operated or provided by the government.
The best solution would be to sell VITA, get its debt to the government of nearly 900 000 LVL paid off, and reconstitute the functions of the agency as a government telecommunications procurement and standards-setting institution. In other words, VITA 2.0 would define the kind of service level agreement needed by, say, the Border Guards or the health services and then put out a tender to the private sector.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Catching up...
Well, no decision was made on Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and, in fact, it didn't really go on the government agenda, it was sort of on again off again in again out again Finnegan (some unknown doggerel written about Finnegan's Wake, the most weirdly unreadable of Joyce's major novels). Some kind of discussion of putting off the issue until appraisals were finished did take place.
Any, that didn't change the essence of the issue -- the government will, at some point, swap its 28 % direct and indirect share in LMT for getting 100 % of Lattelecom, but leaving the fixed line operator without any mobile link.
Meanwhile, Lattelecom is looking into when and how to implement IMS (Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem), a set of network architecture standards coming from the mobile world and, indeed (I am no geek, correct me if I am wrong), making it much simpler to link/converge fixed and mobile services.
Certainly a hint that Lattelecom is going to look for a mobile solution (big surprise) once it is on its own as one of Europe's few, if not only 100 % state-owned telecom. I am not as worried about that as much as before, because the recent election here shows that for at least the 16-18 month lifespan of a typical Latvian government, telecoms policy will not be in the hands of complete loonies.
Lattelecom's chief honcho Nils Melngailis has confirmed that a strategic decision must be made about going mobile and this is up to the shareholders (the state and TeliaSonera, for the moment).
I have already written that it looks very likely that Lattelecom will make a move on the Bite Group, getting a Latvian (small and growing) and Lithuanian (big) mobile operator in one big bite (sorry :) ).
Officially, Lattelecom will never confirm this until it can confirm it (i.e. if and when the deal is done), but it is pretty obvious there are not many options. LMT is written off, Tele2 is not for sale, Triatel is...well, it's CDMA 450, and may be interesting as a wireless internet provider, especially if it can beat/match HSDPA when EV DO speeds go up to 8 Mbps.
That leaves starting a MVNO and brings us back to the mother of all MVNOs -- Bite. While not exactly chasing folks down the street with its offers, it is gathering a little flock of virtual operators in Latvia and shows no signs of stopping.
Harakiri time
Speaking of Triatel, I am hereby performing imaginary harakiri for shame at missing a major CDMA conference in Riga. Our newspaper just "relaunched" switching not only its style but also its layout software and at the same time, we are heading for a) an IT supplement, b) an IT magazine c) an TOP 500 Latvian companies magazine d) the US Secretary of Labor drops in -- and I am working on all of this shit all at once. Plus a couple of reporters are sick, away, and despite the cool new look of you-know-which Latvian newspaper, we walk the edge of bardaks every day.
The Latvian blogerati
Oh well. It must be a hereditary disease, because my oldest son is semi-dropped-out of the University of Umeå in Sweden to work as a writer-reporter on what I consider a wacko leftist Swedish political newspaper. It's his thing. But the kid writes well.
Finally, we had a round table discussion of Latvian bloggers for the IT magazine. I had some of the Latvian blogerati at it -- Arturs Mednis, Kristaps Kaupe, Ingus Sturmanis and Martins Barkans, head of the news agency and media company LETA, which may also be heading the the multi-media direction.
Any, that didn't change the essence of the issue -- the government will, at some point, swap its 28 % direct and indirect share in LMT for getting 100 % of Lattelecom, but leaving the fixed line operator without any mobile link.
Meanwhile, Lattelecom is looking into when and how to implement IMS (Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem), a set of network architecture standards coming from the mobile world and, indeed (I am no geek, correct me if I am wrong), making it much simpler to link/converge fixed and mobile services.
Certainly a hint that Lattelecom is going to look for a mobile solution (big surprise) once it is on its own as one of Europe's few, if not only 100 % state-owned telecom. I am not as worried about that as much as before, because the recent election here shows that for at least the 16-18 month lifespan of a typical Latvian government, telecoms policy will not be in the hands of complete loonies.
Lattelecom's chief honcho Nils Melngailis has confirmed that a strategic decision must be made about going mobile and this is up to the shareholders (the state and TeliaSonera, for the moment).
I have already written that it looks very likely that Lattelecom will make a move on the Bite Group, getting a Latvian (small and growing) and Lithuanian (big) mobile operator in one big bite (sorry :) ).
Officially, Lattelecom will never confirm this until it can confirm it (i.e. if and when the deal is done), but it is pretty obvious there are not many options. LMT is written off, Tele2 is not for sale, Triatel is...well, it's CDMA 450, and may be interesting as a wireless internet provider, especially if it can beat/match HSDPA when EV DO speeds go up to 8 Mbps.
That leaves starting a MVNO and brings us back to the mother of all MVNOs -- Bite. While not exactly chasing folks down the street with its offers, it is gathering a little flock of virtual operators in Latvia and shows no signs of stopping.
Harakiri time
Speaking of Triatel, I am hereby performing imaginary harakiri for shame at missing a major CDMA conference in Riga. Our newspaper just "relaunched" switching not only its style but also its layout software and at the same time, we are heading for a) an IT supplement, b) an IT magazine c) an TOP 500 Latvian companies magazine d) the US Secretary of Labor drops in -- and I am working on all of this shit all at once. Plus a couple of reporters are sick, away, and despite the cool new look of you-know-which Latvian newspaper, we walk the edge of bardaks every day.
The Latvian blogerati
Oh well. It must be a hereditary disease, because my oldest son is semi-dropped-out of the University of Umeå in Sweden to work as a writer-reporter on what I consider a wacko leftist Swedish political newspaper. It's his thing. But the kid writes well.
Finally, we had a round table discussion of Latvian bloggers for the IT magazine. I had some of the Latvian blogerati at it -- Arturs Mednis, Kristaps Kaupe, Ingus Sturmanis and Martins Barkans, head of the news agency and media company LETA, which may also be heading the the multi-media direction.
Monday, October 09, 2006
LMT sale decision on government agenda
It appears the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers (the government) will put the sale/swap of Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) to Sweden's TeliaSonera on the agenda of its regular meeting October 10.
Minister of Economics Aigars Stokenbergs indicated to this blogger that the issue would be on the agenda, even though an appraisal of LMT and Lattelecom has not been completed.
The government decision would clear the way for the Ministry of Transport (owns 5 % of LMT) and the Latvian State Radio and Television Center (owns 23 % of LMT) to divest their holdings in the mobile phone operator.
Carnegie, the Swedish finance company, and Ernst & Young Baltics are working on a consensus pricing of both telecommunications companies so that LMT can be sold in a swap of participation shares/cash deal for TeliaSonera's 49 % holding in Lattelecom. Lattelecom would then (temporarily?) become a wholly state owned company. The appraisal should be completed soon.
Since the previous government coalition was more or less re-elected, it is unlikely that there will be any change of policy regarding the sale of LMT to the Swedes and the decision not to sell Lattelecom. If Lattelecom becomes a state company, it appears less likely that it will fall under a completely loonie-tunes government now that the election results are in. In effect, the decisions on privatizing the remaining state holdings in LMT will be made by a lame-duck but same duck government.
Minister of Economics Aigars Stokenbergs indicated to this blogger that the issue would be on the agenda, even though an appraisal of LMT and Lattelecom has not been completed.
The government decision would clear the way for the Ministry of Transport (owns 5 % of LMT) and the Latvian State Radio and Television Center (owns 23 % of LMT) to divest their holdings in the mobile phone operator.
Carnegie, the Swedish finance company, and Ernst & Young Baltics are working on a consensus pricing of both telecommunications companies so that LMT can be sold in a swap of participation shares/cash deal for TeliaSonera's 49 % holding in Lattelecom. Lattelecom would then (temporarily?) become a wholly state owned company. The appraisal should be completed soon.
Since the previous government coalition was more or less re-elected, it is unlikely that there will be any change of policy regarding the sale of LMT to the Swedes and the decision not to sell Lattelecom. If Lattelecom becomes a state company, it appears less likely that it will fall under a completely loonie-tunes government now that the election results are in. In effect, the decisions on privatizing the remaining state holdings in LMT will be made by a lame-duck but same duck government.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Another Vlogging Experiment
This is an experiment using blip.tv. The sound is a bit off because of the disk noise from my iMac G5
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Norwegian new media group aims at Delfi?
An Estonian newspaper has published a story saying that Norway's Schibsted media group may be looking to buy the Delfi Baltic and Russian language internet portals.
This could be a challenge to all of the conventional press and fledgling internet media in the region. In Norway, Schibsted owns the VG newpaper and multimedia portal, whose managers are said to have tired of hosting visitors to their futuristic operation, where much content is reader generated (both news, photos, video and sound/podcasts).
This may well be the media of the future, with a live, constantly changing "page" on the internet that will slowly eat away reader/user/participant attention from the printed press and ordinary TV.
One would like to think that Lattelecom is moving in a similar direction, where "My Page" generated by a broadband internet connection with user input will greet and guide everyone who logs on through a range of personal and business services. But that is probably a couple of years off and worthy of a seperate post.
The basic issue for this kind of media, if it already hasn't captured and engaged an audience, is whether it may be preempted by a programmable software agent (perhaps open source freeware or an advertising-supported version) that allows the user to define and manage his or her experience entirely from the edge of the network. That sort of leaves the operator, like Lattelecom or anyone else, holding little else but the network. After all, why, having paid for a broadband connection (flat rate) should user A (on the edge of the network) share any more revenue with the operator for providing (for payment, perhaps) user B with entertainment or information?
This could be a challenge to all of the conventional press and fledgling internet media in the region. In Norway, Schibsted owns the VG newpaper and multimedia portal, whose managers are said to have tired of hosting visitors to their futuristic operation, where much content is reader generated (both news, photos, video and sound/podcasts).
This may well be the media of the future, with a live, constantly changing "page" on the internet that will slowly eat away reader/user/participant attention from the printed press and ordinary TV.
One would like to think that Lattelecom is moving in a similar direction, where "My Page" generated by a broadband internet connection with user input will greet and guide everyone who logs on through a range of personal and business services. But that is probably a couple of years off and worthy of a seperate post.
The basic issue for this kind of media, if it already hasn't captured and engaged an audience, is whether it may be preempted by a programmable software agent (perhaps open source freeware or an advertising-supported version) that allows the user to define and manage his or her experience entirely from the edge of the network. That sort of leaves the operator, like Lattelecom or anyone else, holding little else but the network. After all, why, having paid for a broadband connection (flat rate) should user A (on the edge of the network) share any more revenue with the operator for providing (for payment, perhaps) user B with entertainment or information?
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Coming soon on Lattelecom
Watch for this in the next few weeks or months.
The number of Lattelecom DSL subscribers will top 100 000, largely as a result of the offer of unlimited free domestic calls on the Lattelecom network to anyone signing on for one of two (2 Mbps or 5 Mbps) home flat rate packages. Some 16000 subscribers have already signed up, many of them switching their current subscription terms.
Lattelecom intended to have 100 000 DSL users by year end, but it appears the final figure will be more, as the 90 000 mark has already been reached.
In October or November
There will be a higher speed, 10Mbps, maybe even 24 Mbps premium business DSL service. More areas of Riga will be jumped to 10Mbps for home users. The reason for this is that Lattelecom will start offering IP TV for "ordinary" TV watchers. This means that Lattelecom will start selling or leasing some kind of decoder device that will attach to an ordinary flat-screen or kinescope-based TV set. Everyone who signed up for one of the home deals will be offered to amend it to get higher speed and most or all of the IP TV channels. The service will be no different than the digital cable TV offered by Baltcom and IZZI. With 100 000 DSL subscribers, Lattelecom will have a strong base for catching up with these cable operators if its channel offering is attractive enough.
The number of Lattelecom DSL subscribers will top 100 000, largely as a result of the offer of unlimited free domestic calls on the Lattelecom network to anyone signing on for one of two (2 Mbps or 5 Mbps) home flat rate packages. Some 16000 subscribers have already signed up, many of them switching their current subscription terms.
Lattelecom intended to have 100 000 DSL users by year end, but it appears the final figure will be more, as the 90 000 mark has already been reached.
In October or November
There will be a higher speed, 10Mbps, maybe even 24 Mbps premium business DSL service. More areas of Riga will be jumped to 10Mbps for home users. The reason for this is that Lattelecom will start offering IP TV for "ordinary" TV watchers. This means that Lattelecom will start selling or leasing some kind of decoder device that will attach to an ordinary flat-screen or kinescope-based TV set. Everyone who signed up for one of the home deals will be offered to amend it to get higher speed and most or all of the IP TV channels. The service will be no different than the digital cable TV offered by Baltcom and IZZI. With 100 000 DSL subscribers, Lattelecom will have a strong base for catching up with these cable operators if its channel offering is attractive enough.
Mikrotik to make fixed HSDPA devices
My sources tell me that the Latvian wireless internet equipment and systems designer Mikrotik (the stuff is made mostly by Hanzas elektronika in colorfully named Ogre) will start making its own HSDPA home/office device in the medium term. Earlier, it was rumored that Bite, the mobile operator, had talked to Mikrotik (known as Mikrotikls in Latvian) about making a router for it. Now it looks like the product will be operator independent and moderately priced. In other words, you get a gadget to mount on the sweet spot (for HSDPA) coverage in your home and office, nail the thing to the wall, then set up a WiFi hotspot for the home or office computers and other devices. By the time this hits the market, we may be seeing HSDPA speeds above the current 3.6 Mbps, so this may also be the a kind of home entertainment reciever for digital IP TV, streaming media and all that stuff. Look for this thing on the market next spring. It will be another addition to the almost instant, out of the box broadband that the UMTS/GSM mobile operators and Triatel (EV DO) can provide. No wonder Lattelecom is giving away free phone calls to switch as many of its 600 000 subscribers to DSL (up to 5 Mbps) as it can.
I hope to write some musings on Lattelecom and the serial deaths of traditional telecoms business models at some later time. Now it is late and I am burned out ...
I hope to write some musings on Lattelecom and the serial deaths of traditional telecoms business models at some later time. Now it is late and I am burned out ...
Thursday, September 21, 2006
We're two years old!!!
This blog turned two years old on September 18! Missed it, just noticed today that the archive goes from September 2004 to September 2006. Have I really been doing this crazy shit THAT LONG? I guess time flies when you are having fun. Belated birthday greetings are welcome :).
Back to the Future, Baltcom, and other stuff
Baltcom is back on your mobile
Baltcom, the guys who gave us... Baltcom (as some incorrigibles still call the Tele2 mobile service) is going back into the mobile market as a virtual operator by year end in order to offer a quad-play package to its customers, who can already get digital cable TV, voice telephony and internet. It looks like Baltcom 2.0 will be operating on the Bite network and offering both postpaid and pre-paid (Golden Fish 2) services. HSDPA will probably come with the Bite network, so we may even see a quad point five service, high speed wireless internet to a nomadic device (a portable HSDPA modem attached or WiFi linked to PCs and other gadgets).
Anyway, good luck, as I am starting to lose count of the MVNOs buzzing around the Bite hive.
Avoiding the scammers
Baltcom has been on the market long enough and probably won't run into the scam that was pulled at a cost of several thousand LVL on Master Telecom, the new postpaid MVNO. People with "respectable" and apparently clean company papers and records came into sales points and order up to 20 postpaid SIM cards. They then proceeded to sell these on the street as "prepaid" cards at a big discount. Gullible fools bought them and made calls until the limit usually put on new postpaid corporate customers was exhausted and the card ceased to work. Often the sum that was used for calls was less than the price the poor sucker paid for the card, but, in any even, Master Telecom got stiffed for the costs. Other people simply took the "new" operator's best offer, called for what they were worth, then gave the finger to paying the bill. Unfortunately, Master Telecom's management say they are going to go after these people and get their money back, putting the deadbeats on a list of poor credit risks and fraudsters for the foreseeable future.
Vitaly shows up
Vitaly Rubstein, a top manager at www. one.lv, the mobile content, e-mail and social networking portal whose contacts I had lost, fortunately showed up at the Lattelecom conference on change management on September 21. We had a very interesting talk in which Vitaly pointed out that www.one.lv was building up a strong social networking site mainly for young Russians. In Lithuania, the "one" group claimed 1.2 million social networking users, mostly Lithuanians (the Russian population there is small). Anyway, what Vitaly had to say was an interesting answer to my question in the earlier post on the planned Russian-oriented FivePlus MVNO as to whether young Russian Balts really needed a "Russian" service and social network. Apparently they do.
Vitaly was also challenging a remark by Swedish internet entrepreneur and guru Ola Ahlvarsson that draugiem.lv was the most succesful (relatively speaking) social networking project in the world (725 000 users out of a population of 2.1 million).
Also chatted with Lauris Liberts, the founder of draugiem, who said the next move would be to start a multi-user game service where, apparently, draugiem users will be able to play with or against each other. Look for it in a month or two. With draugiem open to people of all languages and nationalities, Lauris also believes he will pass the 1 million member mark in the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, one's Vitaly says that Lauris made a mistake by not simultaneously launching a draugiem for Russians in Latvia, leaving the field open for his guys. Make more mistakes like that Lauri, is that what Vitaly means :).
All in all, an interesting day.
Baltcom, the guys who gave us... Baltcom (as some incorrigibles still call the Tele2 mobile service) is going back into the mobile market as a virtual operator by year end in order to offer a quad-play package to its customers, who can already get digital cable TV, voice telephony and internet. It looks like Baltcom 2.0 will be operating on the Bite network and offering both postpaid and pre-paid (Golden Fish 2) services. HSDPA will probably come with the Bite network, so we may even see a quad point five service, high speed wireless internet to a nomadic device (a portable HSDPA modem attached or WiFi linked to PCs and other gadgets).
Anyway, good luck, as I am starting to lose count of the MVNOs buzzing around the Bite hive.
Avoiding the scammers
Baltcom has been on the market long enough and probably won't run into the scam that was pulled at a cost of several thousand LVL on Master Telecom, the new postpaid MVNO. People with "respectable" and apparently clean company papers and records came into sales points and order up to 20 postpaid SIM cards. They then proceeded to sell these on the street as "prepaid" cards at a big discount. Gullible fools bought them and made calls until the limit usually put on new postpaid corporate customers was exhausted and the card ceased to work. Often the sum that was used for calls was less than the price the poor sucker paid for the card, but, in any even, Master Telecom got stiffed for the costs. Other people simply took the "new" operator's best offer, called for what they were worth, then gave the finger to paying the bill. Unfortunately, Master Telecom's management say they are going to go after these people and get their money back, putting the deadbeats on a list of poor credit risks and fraudsters for the foreseeable future.
Vitaly shows up
Vitaly Rubstein, a top manager at www. one.lv, the mobile content, e-mail and social networking portal whose contacts I had lost, fortunately showed up at the Lattelecom conference on change management on September 21. We had a very interesting talk in which Vitaly pointed out that www.one.lv was building up a strong social networking site mainly for young Russians. In Lithuania, the "one" group claimed 1.2 million social networking users, mostly Lithuanians (the Russian population there is small). Anyway, what Vitaly had to say was an interesting answer to my question in the earlier post on the planned Russian-oriented FivePlus MVNO as to whether young Russian Balts really needed a "Russian" service and social network. Apparently they do.
Vitaly was also challenging a remark by Swedish internet entrepreneur and guru Ola Ahlvarsson that draugiem.lv was the most succesful (relatively speaking) social networking project in the world (725 000 users out of a population of 2.1 million).
Also chatted with Lauris Liberts, the founder of draugiem, who said the next move would be to start a multi-user game service where, apparently, draugiem users will be able to play with or against each other. Look for it in a month or two. With draugiem open to people of all languages and nationalities, Lauris also believes he will pass the 1 million member mark in the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, one's Vitaly says that Lauris made a mistake by not simultaneously launching a draugiem for Russians in Latvia, leaving the field open for his guys. Make more mistakes like that Lauri, is that what Vitaly means :).
All in all, an interesting day.
The e-signature and the great strange beast
Well, here is, at last, the videoblog on the e-signature. It turns out I was hasty in going at YouTube, raving f----ing this and that, because the problem with this particular video was that, for some reason, while editing it to get it rightside up for YouTube (it may still not be right :( but WTF...) it turned into a great strange beast of 2.26 Gigabytes. Why, only God knows... I tossed it after re-saving and reduced it to 8.1 Mb. Anyway, YouTube does not take such humungous files, and even at the ultrafast 40 Mbps I have seen at my workplace, it still would have taken some time to upload (I suspect the up speed was some few Mbps, not 45 Mbps).
I now see the video has gone in all fucked up and sideways, the way I shot it holding my phone upright. Whatever. This is less bizarre than a lot of other stuff on the net. Just lie on your side...
Does anyone have any idea why flipping the image in Quicktime Pro would produce this bizarre shit with 2.2 GB?
Erik – sorry.
I now see the video has gone in all fucked up and sideways, the way I shot it holding my phone upright. Whatever. This is less bizarre than a lot of other stuff on the net. Just lie on your side...
Does anyone have any idea why flipping the image in Quicktime Pro would produce this bizarre shit with 2.2 GB?
Erik – sorry.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Alternatives to YouTube?
As I write, YouTube is taking eons to upload a couple of megs of video that I have of Eriks Eglitis, IT manager at the Latvian Postal Service, talking about the planned e-signature. I have clocked my connection at over 7Mbps (and on a good day, it was screaming along at 55 Mbps on www.speedtest.lv). I am getting tired of this shit. Briefly, YouTube worked for my videoblog, but now the m--f-- is slow even though it is the middle of the fucking night in the US or wherever they keep their servers.
Are there any better ways to upload, host and link videos to blogger than this? GoogleVideo is the mother of all nightmares, taking days to approve a fucking talking head.
Are there any better ways to upload, host and link videos to blogger than this? GoogleVideo is the mother of all nightmares, taking days to approve a fucking talking head.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Bite launches HDSPA (Video)
Bite Latvija has launched UMTS and HSDPA services in five Latvian cities(Riga, Jurmala, Ventspils, Liepaja, Daugavpils), with two more (Rezekne and Jelgava) to follow shortly. A business voice and data package is also offered. At the end of a year of operations, it claims 155 000 users. Here is what Bite Group CEO Maarten van Engeland had to say to Telecoms in Latvia.
Please note that the 12 % he refers to is 12 % of the total market, not the business market. At some point, Bite hopes to get around a third of the business user market.
Please note that the 12 % he refers to is 12 % of the total market, not the business market. At some point, Bite hopes to get around a third of the business user market.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
FivePlus to Latvia's Russians: davai!
Well, I think I got that right. Davai in Russian means, sort of, "on with it", "let's go" or such. Whatever .. as my readers know, I don't speak Russian, but most of the country does and many of them because they are, in fact, ethnic Russians .
Anyway, the Moscow-based company FivePlus (5+), named after the best grade (the A+) of the old Soviet (and pre-WWII Latvian) school system, will be starting as an MVNO running on the Bite network next week. For now, the website at that link is half-finished, but Russian readers may find some interesting tidbits. Looks like the pre-paid cards will be sold on the internet, just as Bite does.
As the company's CEO Eugene(or Yevgeny)Lupov, a Russian entrepreneur who spent many years in the US, told this blogger, FivePlus hopes to get around 50 000 users in Latvia by the second year of operations, which puts us somewhere in 2008. In the first year, he sees 20 000 users (by early fall 2007, I would guess).
The first thing that comes to mind is -- what took these guys so long? Everybody talks about Latvia's Russians in one way or another, often in politicized, often in strange terms (how are you treating your Russians is sometimes asked of Latvians by foreigners in the same tone, like have you been abusing your housepets?). Well, the Russians are mostly fine, thanks, so fine that there is a substantial middle class that buys and consumes most of the stuff that well, the middle class consumes anywhere.
And, of course, the Russians have not forgotten their language, culture and that they are part of what has become a global non-state community (from Brighton Beach to Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv) looking to a still rather influential and controversial and multifaceted nation-state (Putin's Russia, Arabs with balalaikas if you watch the oil price, or whatever.) So it was about as surprising as a daily sunset that somebody has shown up with mobile services aimed at this market in Latvia.
A better time might have been when Latvian Russian Russianess was under pressure, such as when thousands of kids were in the streets sorta protesting the school reforms around two years ago. It probably would have worked to stand in the crowd hawking the ethnic Russian phone card the same way that Bite Toxic cards were given out to schoolkids of all ethnicities. But that could well have backfired. Even looking political is a major risk, and, besides, you can't make too many generalizations about the politics of Latvia's Russians. After all, the Fatherland and Freedom nationalists and the even more radical "All For Latvia/Visu Latvijai" youth nationalists have some ethnic Russian leaders.
Anyway, the hot youth market is probably lost. Your barely 20s are mostly bi-or trilingual, they are part of the MTV Generation and probably don't identify very much with Russia (long, boring trip to see great-aunt Lidiya in 1993 and then your dad took off for a week to Novgorod in 2000 when the dear old lady died, some lady named Ljubova shows up in 2003, knew your mom in from Pioneer camp, whatever that was, near Kiev, 1982, but that's not Russia, is it? ). Bring home a 5 + these days and get your MTV cut off for a month. So, basically, this is a service for the 40+ people at best.
Content is going to be another issue, or rather getting good commercial and user-generated content. All kinds of Russian pop singers, comedians, etc. seem to be coming to Riga all the time (judging by the posters on walls) and there is a Russian Drama Theater, radio and TV in Russian, Russian websites and print media. The problem is getting some of this to fit on mobile phone screens and to get phones on the market that support Cyrillic text entry (again, a problem I have never dealt with, though I understand there is much use of Roman phonetic spelling, which doesn't exactly boost the Russian language as it is supposed to be written.). But FivePlus has hinted they will sell phones specially adapted for their services.
Tariffs will also have to be as cheap, if not cheaper than landlines and somehow competitive with Skype and the like.
So, we shall see if FivePlus can give itself a good grade a year from now.
I would appreciate any comment from my Latvian Russian readers who probably have a better handle on this than I? I mean, can you read Chas on your phone while sitting in a park in London?
Anyway, the Moscow-based company FivePlus (5+), named after the best grade (the A+) of the old Soviet (and pre-WWII Latvian) school system, will be starting as an MVNO running on the Bite network next week. For now, the website at that link is half-finished, but Russian readers may find some interesting tidbits. Looks like the pre-paid cards will be sold on the internet, just as Bite does.
As the company's CEO Eugene(or Yevgeny)Lupov, a Russian entrepreneur who spent many years in the US, told this blogger, FivePlus hopes to get around 50 000 users in Latvia by the second year of operations, which puts us somewhere in 2008. In the first year, he sees 20 000 users (by early fall 2007, I would guess).
The first thing that comes to mind is -- what took these guys so long? Everybody talks about Latvia's Russians in one way or another, often in politicized, often in strange terms (how are you treating your Russians is sometimes asked of Latvians by foreigners in the same tone, like have you been abusing your housepets?). Well, the Russians are mostly fine, thanks, so fine that there is a substantial middle class that buys and consumes most of the stuff that well, the middle class consumes anywhere.
And, of course, the Russians have not forgotten their language, culture and that they are part of what has become a global non-state community (from Brighton Beach to Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv) looking to a still rather influential and controversial and multifaceted nation-state (Putin's Russia, Arabs with balalaikas if you watch the oil price, or whatever.) So it was about as surprising as a daily sunset that somebody has shown up with mobile services aimed at this market in Latvia.
A better time might have been when Latvian Russian Russianess was under pressure, such as when thousands of kids were in the streets sorta protesting the school reforms around two years ago. It probably would have worked to stand in the crowd hawking the ethnic Russian phone card the same way that Bite Toxic cards were given out to schoolkids of all ethnicities. But that could well have backfired. Even looking political is a major risk, and, besides, you can't make too many generalizations about the politics of Latvia's Russians. After all, the Fatherland and Freedom nationalists and the even more radical "All For Latvia/Visu Latvijai" youth nationalists have some ethnic Russian leaders.
Anyway, the hot youth market is probably lost. Your barely 20s are mostly bi-or trilingual, they are part of the MTV Generation and probably don't identify very much with Russia (long, boring trip to see great-aunt Lidiya in 1993 and then your dad took off for a week to Novgorod in 2000 when the dear old lady died, some lady named Ljubova shows up in 2003, knew your mom in from Pioneer camp, whatever that was, near Kiev, 1982, but that's not Russia, is it? ). Bring home a 5 + these days and get your MTV cut off for a month. So, basically, this is a service for the 40+ people at best.
Content is going to be another issue, or rather getting good commercial and user-generated content. All kinds of Russian pop singers, comedians, etc. seem to be coming to Riga all the time (judging by the posters on walls) and there is a Russian Drama Theater, radio and TV in Russian, Russian websites and print media. The problem is getting some of this to fit on mobile phone screens and to get phones on the market that support Cyrillic text entry (again, a problem I have never dealt with, though I understand there is much use of Roman phonetic spelling, which doesn't exactly boost the Russian language as it is supposed to be written.). But FivePlus has hinted they will sell phones specially adapted for their services.
Tariffs will also have to be as cheap, if not cheaper than landlines and somehow competitive with Skype and the like.
So, we shall see if FivePlus can give itself a good grade a year from now.
I would appreciate any comment from my Latvian Russian readers who probably have a better handle on this than I? I mean, can you read Chas on your phone while sitting in a park in London?
Thursday, September 07, 2006
The half-mothers agree to seek a price (Video)
TeliaSonera and the Latvian government have agreed to an appraisal of Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and Lattelecom by two independent appraisers, Carnegie, the Swedish investment bank (for TeliaSonera) and Ernst & Young for the Latvian government. This is what TeliaSonera senior vice-president Kenneth Karlberg had to say:
After this interview was recorded, it was learned that several other applications to privatize LMT had been made, something which could complicate the situation.
It is expected, barring further complications, that the appraisal reports will be presented just after the October 7 elections in Latvia. The entire transaction - most likely a swap of Lattelecom shares plus some cash for the state's 28 % holding in LMT – could be completed within a year.
After this interview was recorded, it was learned that several other applications to privatize LMT had been made, something which could complicate the situation.
It is expected, barring further complications, that the appraisal reports will be presented just after the October 7 elections in Latvia. The entire transaction - most likely a swap of Lattelecom shares plus some cash for the state's 28 % holding in LMT – could be completed within a year.
Bite bites back?
Look for Bite to launch its HSDPA semi-commercially around the Ides of September. Then, or maybe at the commercial launch, look for them to build out their network outside of Riga. Bite, it seems, is buying UMTS base stations just for this purpose. This will get it a jump ahead of Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT), which got the jump on Bite by launching its HSPDA last week. Wonder when Tele2 will make a move? Have they taken over the role of the dozing giant from LMT? Triatel is also going to juice up its version of EV DO and get more megabits ( currently 1 Mbps) over the radio. It also hints that it has a good slice of places outside Riga covered. Looks like soon you will just have to stick out an antenna and look for the best and fastest wireless internet deal in the neighborhood.
Oh, and Dizzy IZZI has done a mirror-image of Lattelecom. They are giving away cable internet (well, the barely broadband cheapo XS version) if you take their digital cable TV service. It is the same thing as Lattelecom giving away nation-wide free telephony IF you subscribe to their DSL internet service. Things are getting merrier all the time.
Oh, and Dizzy IZZI has done a mirror-image of Lattelecom. They are giving away cable internet (well, the barely broadband cheapo XS version) if you take their digital cable TV service. It is the same thing as Lattelecom giving away nation-wide free telephony IF you subscribe to their DSL internet service. Things are getting merrier all the time.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Checking out Sweden, surprising with Latvia
I am in Sweden for a couple of days, looking at the mobile services markets for some stuff I may write for the paper or some freelance customers. I was at this Kista Mobile Media Showcase (more than 60 companies contribute to keep this running) and was pleasantly surprised to hear that they were surprised by how far along Latvia is with mobile penetration, mobile services (like HSDPA) and the IT industry in general. The Mobile Media Showcase is thinking now of going to Latvia and looking at some cluster-to-cluster cooperation possibilities.
At least some good may have come of this. Otherwise, I spend 30 minutes at a Nordea branch (with my little number tag) just to talk to people who couldn't operate the data system so that I could terminate an old Postgiro/Plusgiro account that I no longer need. Well, to have geniuses (in mobile service) you have to have idiots for contrast somewhere.
Back in Latvia Tuesday night in time for Nordic Mobile Media 06 , will cover as much as possible and blog anything of note.
At least some good may have come of this. Otherwise, I spend 30 minutes at a Nordea branch (with my little number tag) just to talk to people who couldn't operate the data system so that I could terminate an old Postgiro/Plusgiro account that I no longer need. Well, to have geniuses (in mobile service) you have to have idiots for contrast somewhere.
Back in Latvia Tuesday night in time for Nordic Mobile Media 06 , will cover as much as possible and blog anything of note.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
LMT makes the first move on HSDPA
Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) launched HSDPA with up to 3.6 Mbps of download speed on its 3G network in Riga and the Riga area on August 30, beating Bite Latvija to the starting gate.
Bite had said last spring it would start both 3G and HSDPA services simultaneously in September.
The LMT HDSPA service will initially be free of charge, with the price set once user behavior is observed during a test period. The main beneficiaries are expected to be users of the LMT iBirojs package (a HSDPA card, a data connection via SIM card, and a laptop for a single price) and laptop owners who either get the card or a USB plug-in HSDPA modem (also needs a SIM card). Both pieces of equipment are supplied by China's HuaWei.
The demo of the service at LMT headquarters looked pretty good, with data download peaks at around 2.4 Mbps and full screen video off the internet at 900 kbps.
The launch, even as a "test" leaves Bite in the lurch. If it goes commercial with a flat rate HSDPA service (as it seems to have done in Lithuania) it will tempt LMT to undercut that rate just enough (and counting on its nearly 900 000 subscriber base) to make Bite look like no so great a choice. It could also go into a "free" test period and engage in a staring contest with LMT as to who prices first. And we know who the 400 kilo gorilla is in this staring contest.
On the other hand-- did the gorilla move because it was stung by a bee (bite in Latvian)?
Bite had said last spring it would start both 3G and HSDPA services simultaneously in September.
The LMT HDSPA service will initially be free of charge, with the price set once user behavior is observed during a test period. The main beneficiaries are expected to be users of the LMT iBirojs package (a HSDPA card, a data connection via SIM card, and a laptop for a single price) and laptop owners who either get the card or a USB plug-in HSDPA modem (also needs a SIM card). Both pieces of equipment are supplied by China's HuaWei.
The demo of the service at LMT headquarters looked pretty good, with data download peaks at around 2.4 Mbps and full screen video off the internet at 900 kbps.
The launch, even as a "test" leaves Bite in the lurch. If it goes commercial with a flat rate HSDPA service (as it seems to have done in Lithuania) it will tempt LMT to undercut that rate just enough (and counting on its nearly 900 000 subscriber base) to make Bite look like no so great a choice. It could also go into a "free" test period and engage in a staring contest with LMT as to who prices first. And we know who the 400 kilo gorilla is in this staring contest.
On the other hand-- did the gorilla move because it was stung by a bee (bite in Latvian)?
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
YouTube - F**KED?
I was going to do another videoblog and had some nice material off the Nokia N-80 of Eriks Eglitis, the IT honcho of the Latvian Postal Service talking (in English) about the new e-signature. One mistake I made was to shoot the video with the phone upright with the result that the image is sideways. I found a way in Quicktime Pro to to rotate it, saved it and tried an upload to YouTube (where I usually put the video components of this blog). On the first attempt, it looked like despite the rotation and save, the image was still sideways. So I deleted and have been trying several times to upload it again (now from a fast link here at work). But YouTube is totally unresponsive, the activity monitor on my Powerbook G4 shows no upload even though the website says it is uploading. I wonder if this is affecting any other Latvian bloggers or bloggers using YouTube as their video repository generally. I notice that the rather strange and colorful crowd on blogiem.lv, the site being developed by Latvian IT specialist Kristaps Kaupe, sometimes use links to YouTube.
If I am using the f-word too much, well, it is a coincidence. First some fraudsters seem to have f**ked with my creditcard, now YouTube is f**ked (as far as I am concerned). It is, as Clint Eastwood said in the movie Heartbreak Ridge - a clusterfuck.
If I am using the f-word too much, well, it is a coincidence. First some fraudsters seem to have f**ked with my creditcard, now YouTube is f**ked (as far as I am concerned). It is, as Clint Eastwood said in the movie Heartbreak Ridge - a clusterfuck.
Friday, August 25, 2006
BT Click and Buy – fuck yeah!!!
This is to warn that the allegedly secure payment site BT Click and Buy is being used by fraudsters. I am now in the process of cancelling a Visa Gold card that has been used to make purchases for an amount close to LVL 200, most of it for amounts of 40 GBP each. I have used this card, in person, to make exactly one purchase in Britain in March or April, either coming or going to the US. Other than that, I have made few purchases with this card, aside from tanking up my Skype account for EUR 10 or so. And Visa Gold is supposed to be a "safe" card??? It will be interesting to know how this happened, maybe one of those card data base leaks?
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Back to the abacus (and hide you iPod) in Ventspils?
Some weird news from the port city of Ventspils. It seems that the Economic Police and the Business Software Alliance staged a raid on iLink, a company that says it hosts mission critical applications for some cargo-handling and transit companies in the port.
Reports conflict - the police say they found both evidence of illegal software and music and ringtones for which no licences were immediatly available. The company says that it had no illegal software and that the police overreacted to the music, which iLink employees may have copied from legal CDs. Howver, the authorities apparently interpreted the law, which allows making a backup copy, as being limited to a copy on the same medium(a CD), not an Mp3 file.
Whatever happened, iLink officials, some of whom were dragged off to the Ventspils police headquarters and detained, said the police hauled off most of the company's servers and other equipment, crippling the ability of several major transit companies to run their IT systems. In other words, these enterprises will have to revert to using abacuses, as they did during the Soviet era (although iLink dates back to some kind of Soviet agency started in 1979).
According to other reports, there were no signs as yet of scores of Soviet-time abacuses being recovered from attics and taken down to the docks by the managers responsible for recording incoming and outgoing cargos.
Some sources say that the BSA and police raid is part of a continuing conflict between different factions behind most of the Ventspils transit companies, with Ventpils mayor Aivars Lembergs on one side of the rift and other shareholders opposing him. In other words, Lembergs' people allegedly incited or influenced the raid on iLink.
The worrisome thing is whether the police did seize what may have been legitimate ripped Mp3 music along with the servers in Ventspils and will now have a precedent for snatching iPods and the like. As someone once said: "Does anyone seriously believe a person will buy a USD 300 iPod in order to put USD 15 000 of songs (the 15 000 songs at iTunes USD 0.99 apiece)?
Reports conflict - the police say they found both evidence of illegal software and music and ringtones for which no licences were immediatly available. The company says that it had no illegal software and that the police overreacted to the music, which iLink employees may have copied from legal CDs. Howver, the authorities apparently interpreted the law, which allows making a backup copy, as being limited to a copy on the same medium(a CD), not an Mp3 file.
Whatever happened, iLink officials, some of whom were dragged off to the Ventspils police headquarters and detained, said the police hauled off most of the company's servers and other equipment, crippling the ability of several major transit companies to run their IT systems. In other words, these enterprises will have to revert to using abacuses, as they did during the Soviet era (although iLink dates back to some kind of Soviet agency started in 1979).
According to other reports, there were no signs as yet of scores of Soviet-time abacuses being recovered from attics and taken down to the docks by the managers responsible for recording incoming and outgoing cargos.
Some sources say that the BSA and police raid is part of a continuing conflict between different factions behind most of the Ventspils transit companies, with Ventpils mayor Aivars Lembergs on one side of the rift and other shareholders opposing him. In other words, Lembergs' people allegedly incited or influenced the raid on iLink.
The worrisome thing is whether the police did seize what may have been legitimate ripped Mp3 music along with the servers in Ventspils and will now have a precedent for snatching iPods and the like. As someone once said: "Does anyone seriously believe a person will buy a USD 300 iPod in order to put USD 15 000 of songs (the 15 000 songs at iTunes USD 0.99 apiece)?
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Strange attempts to grab GRADE
Someone is making a move on GRADE, the business process analysis and simulation tool first invented by Latvian IT people at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics in the early 1990s. The claim has been made to the Latvian Prosecutor's Office that GRADE was, at one point, financed by Software House Riga (SWH, a kind of predecessor to Dati, SWH Technologies, Exigen Latvia and now Dati/Exigen) using around USD 1.5 million of a USD 3 million so-called G-24 loan granted way back when. The theory is that since the G-24 loan was never repaid (part of it went down with the infamous Banka Baltija in 1995), a claim can be made on the rights to GRADE and to what is considered a derivative toolset used by Exigen.
Here are the facts as I understand them: GRADE was developed in cooperation with a German company, Infologistik, owned by Latvian-American Janis Gobins, the "godfather" of Latvian IT. GRADE is wholly owned by Infologistik and has been licenced to a number of users, including, at one point, Siemens and now Exigen.
Exigen, in turn, used some of the same Latvian specialists that invented GRADE to design its business process optimization tools. In other words, these tools had the same "intellectual parents" as GRADE and, very probably, used similar conceptual frameworks. But they are legally distinct intellectual properties and tools (the Exigen tools, besides analyzing business processes, can also be used to reprogram them, that is, cut out useless steps in electronic workflows etc, and implement these changes).
So, according to the version I have heard (from the Godfather), this attempt to get at GRADE or any of Exigen's tools is bound to fail. However, knowing the loonie-factor of various Latvian authorities, including the Prosecutor's Office, I don't exclude that Exigen may have to fight some kind of nuisance action against it.
In any case, it is a reminder coming back to haunt us of the total clusterfuck that was made of much of the so-called G-24 loans (provided by 24 sucker countries mostly to a bunch of post-Soviet con artists and with as much oversight of spending as you would get with a group of drunken sailors in honky-tonk opium den/brothel in Shanghai in the 1930s).
Here are the facts as I understand them: GRADE was developed in cooperation with a German company, Infologistik, owned by Latvian-American Janis Gobins, the "godfather" of Latvian IT. GRADE is wholly owned by Infologistik and has been licenced to a number of users, including, at one point, Siemens and now Exigen.
Exigen, in turn, used some of the same Latvian specialists that invented GRADE to design its business process optimization tools. In other words, these tools had the same "intellectual parents" as GRADE and, very probably, used similar conceptual frameworks. But they are legally distinct intellectual properties and tools (the Exigen tools, besides analyzing business processes, can also be used to reprogram them, that is, cut out useless steps in electronic workflows etc, and implement these changes).
So, according to the version I have heard (from the Godfather), this attempt to get at GRADE or any of Exigen's tools is bound to fail. However, knowing the loonie-factor of various Latvian authorities, including the Prosecutor's Office, I don't exclude that Exigen may have to fight some kind of nuisance action against it.
In any case, it is a reminder coming back to haunt us of the total clusterfuck that was made of much of the so-called G-24 loans (provided by 24 sucker countries mostly to a bunch of post-Soviet con artists and with as much oversight of spending as you would get with a group of drunken sailors in honky-tonk opium den/brothel in Shanghai in the 1930s).
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
A baby Latvian blog is born :)
Some guys have launched a Latvian language blog, telecomblog.lv. I am most flattered that they have linked a feed of this blog to theirs. The idea is excellent, just all you Latvian readers...whoa, what was I about to say...? Yeah, go ahead and rush right over and check this blog out. Just come back, for fuck's sake :), OK? Looks like I gotta watch these guys and they watch me. All that means there will be more info, more voices and thoughts about our favorite subject, telecoms & IT in Latvia.
It also brings to mind that a certain newspaper has sorta blown the chance to, hehe, adopt and Latvianize the blog of one of its journalists. Well, we shall see how far the theory of first mover advantage goes. Actually, I hope to share information and opinions with these guys. Good luck! Right on!
It also brings to mind that a certain newspaper has sorta blown the chance to, hehe, adopt and Latvianize the blog of one of its journalists. Well, we shall see how far the theory of first mover advantage goes. Actually, I hope to share information and opinions with these guys. Good luck! Right on!
Friday, August 18, 2006
Need some consulting/freelance work?
Hi everyone out there.
I have just learned that some background consulting work I was doing has stopped. If anyone out there needs some advice, writing, translating or other freelance work about telecoms in Latvia or or conditions here in general, please let me know (give your e-mail or other contact details in a comment or to j_kaza@yahoo.com. I need to replace around EUR 250 a month in income.
I don't ask for help often, just keep reading me.. :)
I have just learned that some background consulting work I was doing has stopped. If anyone out there needs some advice, writing, translating or other freelance work about telecoms in Latvia or or conditions here in general, please let me know (give your e-mail or other contact details in a comment or to j_kaza@yahoo.com. I need to replace around EUR 250 a month in income.
I don't ask for help often, just keep reading me.. :)
Thursday, August 17, 2006
The promised videoblog
Well, here is the videoblog, a bit raw. YouTube is getting slow and jerky on streaming, though the turnaround is very fast. Google video sucks very very badly in this regard. If I had used Google, this would be Monday next week. BTW: check out the open source video player and aggregator Democracy. Very good. I download my evening's viewing on the laptop at work.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Whipping the DSL dogs and giving away voice
Lattelecom popped two new household connection packages, both of which include free calls throughout the network in Latvia providing you sign up for a DSL line for 18 months or renegotiate your old subscription on the new terms.
About three years ago, I told Lena Suhonen, then CEO of Lattelekom as it was then called, that this would happen. I wasn't blogging then, so take it on trust.
One package, which includes internet up to 2 Mbps, costs LVL 13.90, and another, with internet speeds of up to 5 Mbps, costs LVL 16.90 per month. Both include unlimited calling in Latvia.
My only confusion is about the internet speed. A Lattelcom service operator said both speeds applied to the internal network, that is, Lattelecom supported or hosted sites, such as Apollo and draugiem.lv . That means that little or nothing has changed. 2Mbps is what I get on the internal network on my HomeDSL which I have jacked up to 1 Mbps by paying and extra fee. Now, if it is 2 Mbps and 5Mbps to the "real world", you have me hooked, although I wish the fuck Lattelecom would speed up my Riga Centrs district DSL service to 10 Mbps like they have for folks living in the burbs (Swampvillage, New Village, etc, this is a joke for my Latvian readers).
Anyway, the reason all this is happening, and why Lattelecom is whipping them DSL dogs in the race, is --yes, it is a race. I think we will see fixed wireless HSDPA popping up -- Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) is already offering an "unwired" home phone, so why not add an HSDPA card to it? Bite will be first, look for some nice HSDPA & laptop packages that will offer more speed than the deals presently offered by Tele2 (GPRS in the sticks plus a laptop for LVL 35 a month? OK, 3G in most of Riga) and LMT (3G downtown, EDGE on the edge of the sticks, perhaps elsewhere, and GPRS in the middle of nowhere).
And speaking of the burbs, I may have said early that every Tom, Dick and Ivan who can tack up ethernet cable is offering 100 Mbps for LVL 4.95 per month (that is 100 Mbps to the porno movies and warez on the server in the basement, anything else is pure luck). Some serious operators had 10 Mbps before Lattelecom thought of it, and Baltcom is zapping up the speeds on its network. Can the wired part of IZZI be far behind?
With Skype and SIP services appearing everywhere, voice is a lost cause and the money will be made in whatever one can chisel out of the content zapping along the broadband connection. Now that domestic calls are free as in "paid all inclusive" I wouldn't be surprised to see Lattelecom launch a very low-cost, VOIP type international service, cutting tariffs almost to nil to, say, Sweden where it has a POP and a high speed data cable of its own.
Also look for some nice business service packages that will include pay by use business software and outsourced services on the net, plus, of course, leasing and installing the hardware. On the DSL side, rumors are moving closer to truth on a jump to 24 Mbps on some parts of the network, plus pure DSL connections (no voice phone line needed, but voice services may be included since with a NGN, you can configure the service quality to each user's needs) coming along in the next set of home packages.
Finally, the non-quote of the week about my recent post (since nobody said it) was with regard to my post on Lattelecom negotiating to buy Bite. It was wishing that I wouldn't blog about rumors that are true. Source unattributable.
I may videoblog some of this later. Wanted to do so today, but had to rush to the summer place to a) connect my kid's laptop, which buggered off (for my British readers :)) the wireless network (ethernet cable to the WiFi router solved it). Note: Packard Bell = no online manuals. b) I had to finish mowing the grass while it was still light out. After the drought and the short torrential rains over the last few days, the grass has freaked out and is growing visibly to make up for like 10 weeks of lying their lookin' like it was fixin' to die (some did).
That's all, folks!
About three years ago, I told Lena Suhonen, then CEO of Lattelekom as it was then called, that this would happen. I wasn't blogging then, so take it on trust.
One package, which includes internet up to 2 Mbps, costs LVL 13.90, and another, with internet speeds of up to 5 Mbps, costs LVL 16.90 per month. Both include unlimited calling in Latvia.
My only confusion is about the internet speed. A Lattelcom service operator said both speeds applied to the internal network, that is, Lattelecom supported or hosted sites, such as Apollo and draugiem.lv . That means that little or nothing has changed. 2Mbps is what I get on the internal network on my HomeDSL which I have jacked up to 1 Mbps by paying and extra fee. Now, if it is 2 Mbps and 5Mbps to the "real world", you have me hooked, although I wish the fuck Lattelecom would speed up my Riga Centrs district DSL service to 10 Mbps like they have for folks living in the burbs (Swampvillage, New Village, etc, this is a joke for my Latvian readers).
Anyway, the reason all this is happening, and why Lattelecom is whipping them DSL dogs in the race, is --yes, it is a race. I think we will see fixed wireless HSDPA popping up -- Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) is already offering an "unwired" home phone, so why not add an HSDPA card to it? Bite will be first, look for some nice HSDPA & laptop packages that will offer more speed than the deals presently offered by Tele2 (GPRS in the sticks plus a laptop for LVL 35 a month? OK, 3G in most of Riga) and LMT (3G downtown, EDGE on the edge of the sticks, perhaps elsewhere, and GPRS in the middle of nowhere).
And speaking of the burbs, I may have said early that every Tom, Dick and Ivan who can tack up ethernet cable is offering 100 Mbps for LVL 4.95 per month (that is 100 Mbps to the porno movies and warez on the server in the basement, anything else is pure luck). Some serious operators had 10 Mbps before Lattelecom thought of it, and Baltcom is zapping up the speeds on its network. Can the wired part of IZZI be far behind?
With Skype and SIP services appearing everywhere, voice is a lost cause and the money will be made in whatever one can chisel out of the content zapping along the broadband connection. Now that domestic calls are free as in "paid all inclusive" I wouldn't be surprised to see Lattelecom launch a very low-cost, VOIP type international service, cutting tariffs almost to nil to, say, Sweden where it has a POP and a high speed data cable of its own.
Also look for some nice business service packages that will include pay by use business software and outsourced services on the net, plus, of course, leasing and installing the hardware. On the DSL side, rumors are moving closer to truth on a jump to 24 Mbps on some parts of the network, plus pure DSL connections (no voice phone line needed, but voice services may be included since with a NGN, you can configure the service quality to each user's needs) coming along in the next set of home packages.
Finally, the non-quote of the week about my recent post (since nobody said it) was with regard to my post on Lattelecom negotiating to buy Bite. It was wishing that I wouldn't blog about rumors that are true. Source unattributable.
I may videoblog some of this later. Wanted to do so today, but had to rush to the summer place to a) connect my kid's laptop, which buggered off (for my British readers :)) the wireless network (ethernet cable to the WiFi router solved it). Note: Packard Bell = no online manuals. b) I had to finish mowing the grass while it was still light out. After the drought and the short torrential rains over the last few days, the grass has freaked out and is growing visibly to make up for like 10 weeks of lying their lookin' like it was fixin' to die (some did).
That's all, folks!
Monday, August 14, 2006
Lattelecom + Bite true??
Lattelecom is talking to the owners of Bite (formally, TDC of Denmark, in reality, a private equity consortium that owns around 88 % of TDC) about a deal that would see Lattelecom buying the whole Bite Group (Latvia and Lithuania). The purpose -- to give Lattelecom the much needed mobile component once it loses its half-mother TeliaSonera and its snobbish cousin Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT), like the robot child in Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence, will get a real 100 % mother.
With Bite, Lattelecom will have a strong pan-Baltic mobile presence and room, in Latvia, to experiment with wireless internet (both fixed and mobile) using HSDPA that Bite will be launching soon. Its Vodafone roaming deals are attractive for business users. Both companies will be able to merge their internet/mobile TV offerings (Bite says it will have 22 channels of TV over HSDPA).
Certainly, mobile will be an uphill fight in Latvia for Bite, but with cross-selling of Bite and Lattelecom products (maybe a hybrid wireline/less broadband concept) there should be some synergies.
As for LMT, it may find that it has a tough love mother in TeliaSonera that will push it to get off its Scrooge McDuck bags of past and recent earnings and do some strategic future planning and genuine fast movement on the market before those huge profits become the lunch of faster competitors and disruptive technologies.
By the way, this information isn't from Lattelecom nor the half-mother. It has been earlier mentioned in passing as a pipedream on Dzirnavu Street, but purely hypothetical. But do make some calls, Elisabete :) :).
With Bite, Lattelecom will have a strong pan-Baltic mobile presence and room, in Latvia, to experiment with wireless internet (both fixed and mobile) using HSDPA that Bite will be launching soon. Its Vodafone roaming deals are attractive for business users. Both companies will be able to merge their internet/mobile TV offerings (Bite says it will have 22 channels of TV over HSDPA).
Certainly, mobile will be an uphill fight in Latvia for Bite, but with cross-selling of Bite and Lattelecom products (maybe a hybrid wireline/less broadband concept) there should be some synergies.
As for LMT, it may find that it has a tough love mother in TeliaSonera that will push it to get off its Scrooge McDuck bags of past and recent earnings and do some strategic future planning and genuine fast movement on the market before those huge profits become the lunch of faster competitors and disruptive technologies.
By the way, this information isn't from Lattelecom nor the half-mother. It has been earlier mentioned in passing as a pipedream on Dzirnavu Street, but purely hypothetical. But do make some calls, Elisabete :) :).
Thursday, August 10, 2006
LMT to test the HSDPA "snake" & some secret history
Why the weird title and why has HSDPA become a "snake"? No, Latvian readers who notice the hemp plants (kaņepes) of this summer standing tall, that is not the reason.
HSDPA becomes a snake in any mobile operator's garden for the simple reason that once you have HSDPA and Skype and other HSDPA or WiFi enabled laptops and phones on the network, voice calls with simply by-pass the GSM/UMTS pay per minute networks.
This, of course, can be technologically hampered, but that is the sort of thing that will simply anger customers and propagate various hacks of whatever it is that HSDPA connections do to prevent VOIP from working.
Clearly, it is every customer's dream and every operator's nightmare that using HSDPA or a Wi-Fi enabled phone, people will be able to Skype from mobile to mobile "free" just the way they do using Skype and other VOIP technologies through broadband providers who don't go apeshit over VOIP or haven't realized that they should.
So Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT), apparently getting the jump on Bite (which is launching HSDPA in September) has just announced it is "testing HSDPA" and that HSDPA cards will be available with its iBirojs (iOffice) laptop plus mobile internet package.
Well, good morning axehandle, as the Swedes would say (god morgon yxskaft). Now let's see whether Tele2 will also try to preempt any first mover advantage that Bite would have had going fully commercial with HSDPA in few weeks.
But my warning to all, if you do that, the snake is loose...
Old history
The neverending tale of whether anyone is out to get the remarkable Mr. Nils Melngailis (no allusion to the Remarkable Mr. Ripley is intended) continues. It now seems that the half-mother TeliaSonera was angered by Nils insisting that MicroLink (now Lattelecom technology) be divided among all the children and half-children. The half-mother, well aware long ago that monkeys would dance on the rings of Saturn before the Latvian government allowed it to buy both Lattelecom and LMT, wanted Elion, its more that 50 % owned Estonian telco, to buy all of Microlink. That would have left Lattelecom with almost jack shit in terms of IT implementation and consulting resources (Verdi having quietly gone to an obscure grave).
OK, as it turned out, according to some versions of what happened, Lattelecom did nearly end up with jack shit anyway after many MicroLink folks saw their trans-Baltic teams and other good stuff torn apart into three pieces. But now TietoEnator Latvia honcho Maris Ozolins has come aboard to put Humpty-Lattelecom-technology-Dumpty back together again, or at least mend some of the bigger cracks (since I don't think the big egg was totally shattered).
But aside from that, Melngailis was actually acting as a my-corporation-first manager, no matter what the shareholders said, since they would get the best value from a strong Lattelecom, both in terms of dividends and, when the time came for the half-mother to give it up, a high barter value for the rest of LMT.
Also, as I have written earlier, Melngailis has the vision of moving Lattelecom far beyond just a fixed voice operator, a description better written on a tombstone of f**ked companies rather than as a modern telco mission statement.
HSDPA becomes a snake in any mobile operator's garden for the simple reason that once you have HSDPA and Skype and other HSDPA or WiFi enabled laptops and phones on the network, voice calls with simply by-pass the GSM/UMTS pay per minute networks.
This, of course, can be technologically hampered, but that is the sort of thing that will simply anger customers and propagate various hacks of whatever it is that HSDPA connections do to prevent VOIP from working.
Clearly, it is every customer's dream and every operator's nightmare that using HSDPA or a Wi-Fi enabled phone, people will be able to Skype from mobile to mobile "free" just the way they do using Skype and other VOIP technologies through broadband providers who don't go apeshit over VOIP or haven't realized that they should.
So Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT), apparently getting the jump on Bite (which is launching HSDPA in September) has just announced it is "testing HSDPA" and that HSDPA cards will be available with its iBirojs (iOffice) laptop plus mobile internet package.
Well, good morning axehandle, as the Swedes would say (god morgon yxskaft). Now let's see whether Tele2 will also try to preempt any first mover advantage that Bite would have had going fully commercial with HSDPA in few weeks.
But my warning to all, if you do that, the snake is loose...
Old history
The neverending tale of whether anyone is out to get the remarkable Mr. Nils Melngailis (no allusion to the Remarkable Mr. Ripley is intended) continues. It now seems that the half-mother TeliaSonera was angered by Nils insisting that MicroLink (now Lattelecom technology) be divided among all the children and half-children. The half-mother, well aware long ago that monkeys would dance on the rings of Saturn before the Latvian government allowed it to buy both Lattelecom and LMT, wanted Elion, its more that 50 % owned Estonian telco, to buy all of Microlink. That would have left Lattelecom with almost jack shit in terms of IT implementation and consulting resources (Verdi having quietly gone to an obscure grave).
OK, as it turned out, according to some versions of what happened, Lattelecom did nearly end up with jack shit anyway after many MicroLink folks saw their trans-Baltic teams and other good stuff torn apart into three pieces. But now TietoEnator Latvia honcho Maris Ozolins has come aboard to put Humpty-Lattelecom-technology-Dumpty back together again, or at least mend some of the bigger cracks (since I don't think the big egg was totally shattered).
But aside from that, Melngailis was actually acting as a my-corporation-first manager, no matter what the shareholders said, since they would get the best value from a strong Lattelecom, both in terms of dividends and, when the time came for the half-mother to give it up, a high barter value for the rest of LMT.
Also, as I have written earlier, Melngailis has the vision of moving Lattelecom far beyond just a fixed voice operator, a description better written on a tombstone of f**ked companies rather than as a modern telco mission statement.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Wackaloonie summer stories...
My paper, for those of you who don't read Latvian, is front paging a rumor that Ingrida Bluma, CEO of Hansabanka, a big and prestigious Swedish-owned bank in Latvia, may be leaving her job to take up a post at Lattelecom.
The rumor is qualified by a) Bluma saying that it ain't true, but then again, she doesn't plan to die at Hansabanka (she's a young and healthy lady, mid-forties) b) a high Lattelecom source (but not the Man) saying that the apparent reason for the rumor is a recent Hansabanka customer party where there was drinking as if the devil may care (the Latvian is uz velna paraušanu) so you can expect rumors and shit to spread after that.
Even the Minister of Economics, Aigars Stokenbergs, who oversees the Privatization Agency which holds the state's 51 % of Lattelecom says he knows nothing of this. Also Erkki Raakuste (a man's name, not Finno-Ugric for "bird flu" --men running through the streets shouting erkki raakuste! and blasting free-roaming poultry with flamethrowers ain't gonna happen) the main honcho of the Hansabank group denies it and says Ingrida laughed at the rumor.
Meanwhile, the source who told my colleague of this say he was not at the party and not drinking. Go figure.
Oh yes, and the The Man (Nils Melngailis) also no comments the rumors.
In fact, none of this makes any sense. One claim is that TeliaSonera wants Melngailis out because he is acting too independently and competing against the soon-not-to be half mother. And therein lies the the problem. Like it or not, Lattelecom is the currency (49 %) that TeliaSonera will be paying for the government's share of Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT). With both parties just barely agreed on an assessor to valuate both companies – LMT and Lattelecom – somebody would have to be a fuckwit to diss the CEO of Lattelecom and devalue one's own currency. Sorta like holding US hundred USD bills and writing graffiti on them, dark glasses and weird horns and noses on General Grant's face. Them bills is not going to be accepted as payment...
Where there is a certain capacity for wacko, byzantine and fuckwit schemes is, of course, the Latvian government and whatever loonie interests seem to have the upper hand behind it, EXCEPT that Stokenbergs and his crew, to my mind, pass the Alfred E Neuman test, that is Not Insane!. So they are not doing it and have many reasons to keep Melngailis as The Man.
In short, the whole rumor is one of those wackazoonie summer stories newspapers print in the boredom of mid-August (what the Swedes call, stories of the rotting month rötmånadshistorier). I just hope that we haven't burned any bridges to the Hansabanka leadership with this, but hey--whatever...
Music listened to while writing this: Rush Spirit of Radio, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Combination of the Two, The Byrds, I Wasn't Born to Follow, The Doors, LA Woman, The Eagles, Take it Easy.
The rumor is qualified by a) Bluma saying that it ain't true, but then again, she doesn't plan to die at Hansabanka (she's a young and healthy lady, mid-forties) b) a high Lattelecom source (but not the Man) saying that the apparent reason for the rumor is a recent Hansabanka customer party where there was drinking as if the devil may care (the Latvian is uz velna paraušanu) so you can expect rumors and shit to spread after that.
Even the Minister of Economics, Aigars Stokenbergs, who oversees the Privatization Agency which holds the state's 51 % of Lattelecom says he knows nothing of this. Also Erkki Raakuste (a man's name, not Finno-Ugric for "bird flu" --men running through the streets shouting erkki raakuste! and blasting free-roaming poultry with flamethrowers ain't gonna happen) the main honcho of the Hansabank group denies it and says Ingrida laughed at the rumor.
Meanwhile, the source who told my colleague of this say he was not at the party and not drinking. Go figure.
Oh yes, and the The Man (Nils Melngailis) also no comments the rumors.
In fact, none of this makes any sense. One claim is that TeliaSonera wants Melngailis out because he is acting too independently and competing against the soon-not-to be half mother. And therein lies the the problem. Like it or not, Lattelecom is the currency (49 %) that TeliaSonera will be paying for the government's share of Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT). With both parties just barely agreed on an assessor to valuate both companies – LMT and Lattelecom – somebody would have to be a fuckwit to diss the CEO of Lattelecom and devalue one's own currency. Sorta like holding US hundred USD bills and writing graffiti on them, dark glasses and weird horns and noses on General Grant's face. Them bills is not going to be accepted as payment...
Where there is a certain capacity for wacko, byzantine and fuckwit schemes is, of course, the Latvian government and whatever loonie interests seem to have the upper hand behind it, EXCEPT that Stokenbergs and his crew, to my mind, pass the Alfred E Neuman test, that is Not Insane!. So they are not doing it and have many reasons to keep Melngailis as The Man.
In short, the whole rumor is one of those wackazoonie summer stories newspapers print in the boredom of mid-August (what the Swedes call, stories of the rotting month rötmånadshistorier). I just hope that we haven't burned any bridges to the Hansabanka leadership with this, but hey--whatever...
Music listened to while writing this: Rush Spirit of Radio, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Combination of the Two, The Byrds, I Wasn't Born to Follow, The Doors, LA Woman, The Eagles, Take it Easy.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Summer breeze
This is what the short Latvian summer is all about, a summer breeze, blue sky and warm sun. It will be over soon. Brought to you with the magic of telecommunications: a Nokia N80, Bluetooth, wireless internet by Triatel, video image storage by YouTube. Filmed in Carnikava, Latvia, Sunday, August 6, 2006.
Hope you enjoyed it. But some of you lucky folks live in semitropical climates?
Hope you enjoyed it. But some of you lucky folks live in semitropical climates?
Saturday, August 05, 2006
The Bite Honcho speaks
Bite presented its half-year figures, which were on the mark (LVL 1.9 millon EBITDA loss), 108000 users, 87 % of the population and 50% of the territory of Latvia covered. Not bad for nine months work and some LVL 15 million invested.
Here is what Bite honcho Maarten van Engeland had to say:
And now for what I think will happen. As I have mentioned earlier, I think that Bite will enter the household broadband market with a fixed wireless HSDPA offering. To get 3.6 Mbps for about the same price as Triatel (1 Mbps) and to jump to as high as 14.4 Mbps (more likely around 8 Mbps) is not a bad deal at all. If Bite can keep reasonable quality on this service and pump, say, full-screen TV (22 channels to ordinary TV sets), it will be one hell of a disruptive offering for everyone.
Like Triatel, a home HSDPA gadget is out of the box, no waiting. Speeds will match wireline. Bite's best TV shows may match that which people actually watch out of Baltcom's 100+ channels and on IZZI's digital cable. HSDPA TV may be a bit pricey, but we shall see. Finally, I hope Bite doesn't fiddle with the bitstream and allows Skype to run over the HSDPA connection. On the other hand, doing that sort of hands customers the shovel with which to dig the pay-per-minute operators' grave.
MISTAKE!!
The www.latvia.lv website did not cost LVL 808 000. Fuck no! Caught that error BEFORE it got into the paper, but blogged it :(. Don't believe everything you read. It cost more like 80 000 something. So just one Hummer(?). Sorry Ina.
Here is what Bite honcho Maarten van Engeland had to say:
And now for what I think will happen. As I have mentioned earlier, I think that Bite will enter the household broadband market with a fixed wireless HSDPA offering. To get 3.6 Mbps for about the same price as Triatel (1 Mbps) and to jump to as high as 14.4 Mbps (more likely around 8 Mbps) is not a bad deal at all. If Bite can keep reasonable quality on this service and pump, say, full-screen TV (22 channels to ordinary TV sets), it will be one hell of a disruptive offering for everyone.
Like Triatel, a home HSDPA gadget is out of the box, no waiting. Speeds will match wireline. Bite's best TV shows may match that which people actually watch out of Baltcom's 100+ channels and on IZZI's digital cable. HSDPA TV may be a bit pricey, but we shall see. Finally, I hope Bite doesn't fiddle with the bitstream and allows Skype to run over the HSDPA connection. On the other hand, doing that sort of hands customers the shovel with which to dig the pay-per-minute operators' grave.
MISTAKE!!
The www.latvia.lv website did not cost LVL 808 000. Fuck no! Caught that error BEFORE it got into the paper, but blogged it :(. Don't believe everything you read. It cost more like 80 000 something. So just one Hummer(?). Sorry Ina.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Latvia portal opens, blogsite develops
A new portal, www.latvia.lv partly funded by European Union regional development funds, was officially opened on August 3. The site consists mainly of links to Latvian ministries, municipalities and other sites containing a wide range of information about Latvia, Latvian history, society, media, regions, tourism, etc. etc. The site, sponsored by, let's call it the e-government Ministry (it has some god-awful tongue -twisting name both in Latvian and official English) and put together with the help of the Latvian Institute, will continue to add links as time goes on. The whole thing cost LVL 808 000 so far (unless I am mixing up figures) and will cost an additional LVL 57 000 to upgrade so that people can log in with their e-signature cards. The first ones have been produced and given to all members of the Cabinet of Ministers. Ordinary citizens will be able to order their e-signature smart cards after the signature becomes legally binding on September 1. Each user will also be able to personalize a "workspace" with links to just the e-government services he or she may need.
The e-signature card, by the way, has a happy version of some South Park character, see above.
While at the portal presentation, a lady noted to me that her portal www.vietas.lv also contained lots of information, was commercially financed and apparently didn't cost as much as half a dozen Hummers. While she asserted that it always popped up on Google, vietas isn't what comes to mind when you are looking for Latvia, especially as a foreigner planning one's first trip to the Balkans now that the wars are over :) :).
Meanwhile, my other blogsite, the Latvian language blogs.24x7.lv is turning into (your name or nick) blogiem.lv (which means "for blogs".lv). The site is energetically run and maintained by a young Latvian IT specialist, Kristaps Kaupe. His IT skills are good (though he could borrow some simplified linking and quoting icons instead of presuming everyone speaks HTML :) ) and he writes some geeky stuff in Latvian. Kristaps political views, however, are , in my opinion, pretty much loonazoid, a word I made up to suggest, well, pretty strange. The thing is that if you read Latvian and check out the blogs, they seem to have attracted both his geeky and loonazoid friends and acquaintances. So there are folks discussing arcane IT stuff as well as simply utterly weird stuff called BUNGLE GUZZLE ZUNGLE or something like that, where the dude never writes more than two enigmatic sentences. But, according to Kristap's counter, this one is often in the top five....ZIGGLE BUGGLE NOOGLE....
Anyway, I think of myself as a hipster who kept a lot of 60s attitude, but maybe I am missing some wavelengths here, or the drugs have moved on to new spaces and places.. 8/.
The serious point being, we are seeing a blossoming of all kinds of subcultures in what is a real Latvian blogosphere, not only blogiem.lv, but other sites, and there is a significant shift of attention (of which we can only give around 16 hours per day) to these new user generated content sites and communities.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Mobile pesterware campaign starts for 8 digits
My operator, Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT), and, presumably, all the others, have started a pesterware campaign ahead of the November 1 final and irrevocable switch to eight digit numbering for all mobile numbers. Basically, it means put a 2 in front of any existing mobile number.
What is pesterware? It is now a recording that sounds if you do not dial with a 2 in front, or an SMS for sending a SMS without the 2.
Actually, it is not a bad idea, because anyone who wakes up and can't dial his favorite contacts on November 1 can be told ...we told you so.. again, once more, yet again, one more time, just so you remember, repeating for you to write down....
Download of the month by mid-October -- the female voice talking about the 2, then she gets strangled and makes horrible gargling and gagging noises, followed by 900 000 cheering LMT customers. Yours to download for LVL 0.35.
What is pesterware? It is now a recording that sounds if you do not dial with a 2 in front, or an SMS for sending a SMS without the 2.
Actually, it is not a bad idea, because anyone who wakes up and can't dial his favorite contacts on November 1 can be told ...we told you so.. again, once more, yet again, one more time, just so you remember, repeating for you to write down....
Download of the month by mid-October -- the female voice talking about the 2, then she gets strangled and makes horrible gargling and gagging noises, followed by 900 000 cheering LMT customers. Yours to download for LVL 0.35.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Dullsville, mainly...
Not much happening, just a couple of things. Look for Bite Latvija to announce some kind of financial figures toward the end of the week (together with user numbers, that should be interesting). Also, in the medium term, look for Baltcom, the cable TV, internet and voice telephony operator to ramp up its internet speeds, at least for those customers on or near its optical network. Good international speeds should be available via Baltcom Fiber, the owner of a trans-Baltic optical cable with humungous capacity (most of it dark).
Also, a major US company has set up a global software development center here for its specific products. Now they are hiring for a major expansion. You use one of these products very often (outside Latvia) when paying for something. It makes sure the payment clears securely plus some important data is captured for other interested parties (such as the retailer). I am not naming name because I learned that one of my rival reporters (on a paper that sorta competes with my day job newspaper) actually reads the blog :). Good for you, Elizabete :).
I will publish details a) once my paper does the story or b) if they spike it for whenever, as is often the case...
Also, a major US company has set up a global software development center here for its specific products. Now they are hiring for a major expansion. You use one of these products very often (outside Latvia) when paying for something. It makes sure the payment clears securely plus some important data is captured for other interested parties (such as the retailer). I am not naming name because I learned that one of my rival reporters (on a paper that sorta competes with my day job newspaper) actually reads the blog :). Good for you, Elizabete :).
I will publish details a) once my paper does the story or b) if they spike it for whenever, as is often the case...
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Broadband for everyone else :)
There is an intended double meaning in the title of this post, because I want to summarize what I said in the video about the rural broadband project (for everyone out in the bogs and forests) as well as for everyone else (my readers in Latvia, who don't follow my mumblings in what could be perceived as a terrible American accent :)).
What the Communications Department of the Ministry of Transport says in going to happen is that there will be a series of tenders (or "lots" as part of one big tender) for broadband access points (that is, terminations of broadband carrier network branches) where local (i.e. operators seeking end-user customers in the swamps and forests) can then hook up their last-mile distribution systems. These will most likely be wireless solutions of some kind (point to point radiolinks, whatever calls itself WIMAX these days, maybe CDMA 450 EV DO).
All of this will happen in the fall and will start from the poorest regions of Latvia (Rezekne) and move up the socioeeconomic ladder until the LVL 4 million in European Union support funds is spend (this is a public/private partnership model, the actually spending is assumed to be more). The process will continue with the next round of EU funding.
The MoT model does forsee building some parallel infrastructure to the Lattelecom network, perhaps using Latvenergo, Latvian Railways or Latvian State Radio and Television (LVRTC) infrastructure as a base for extending nodes out to the remote and poor areas. Lattelecom says it has most region (rajon) cities and towns covered by its DSL network, although there may be some gaps and cases where a single customer in a multi-dwelling building can't be served at a reasonable cost ( LVL 1000 to run a cable to the whole building, would cost less if 10 --15 customers signed up, maybe Lattelecom would even absorb the cost).
All of this, of course, is a bit of a zoo, since Lattelecom and Triatel are already cooperating to hook up rural customers, running wireless last-mile for voice, Triatel is operating on its own for wireless internet, there are other local solutions here and there. So customers are not completely and hopelessly left unconnected, except for some exceptions that prove the rule.
What the Communications Department of the Ministry of Transport says in going to happen is that there will be a series of tenders (or "lots" as part of one big tender) for broadband access points (that is, terminations of broadband carrier network branches) where local (i.e. operators seeking end-user customers in the swamps and forests) can then hook up their last-mile distribution systems. These will most likely be wireless solutions of some kind (point to point radiolinks, whatever calls itself WIMAX these days, maybe CDMA 450 EV DO).
All of this will happen in the fall and will start from the poorest regions of Latvia (Rezekne) and move up the socioeeconomic ladder until the LVL 4 million in European Union support funds is spend (this is a public/private partnership model, the actually spending is assumed to be more). The process will continue with the next round of EU funding.
The MoT model does forsee building some parallel infrastructure to the Lattelecom network, perhaps using Latvenergo, Latvian Railways or Latvian State Radio and Television (LVRTC) infrastructure as a base for extending nodes out to the remote and poor areas. Lattelecom says it has most region (rajon) cities and towns covered by its DSL network, although there may be some gaps and cases where a single customer in a multi-dwelling building can't be served at a reasonable cost ( LVL 1000 to run a cable to the whole building, would cost less if 10 --15 customers signed up, maybe Lattelecom would even absorb the cost).
All of this, of course, is a bit of a zoo, since Lattelecom and Triatel are already cooperating to hook up rural customers, running wireless last-mile for voice, Triatel is operating on its own for wireless internet, there are other local solutions here and there. So customers are not completely and hopelessly left unconnected, except for some exceptions that prove the rule.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Sunday, July 23, 2006
My impressions of July 22, Shitbomb a church for Christ day...
Just to advise those interested in this off-topic, have a look here.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Broadband issues come up again
The Latvian telecoms and IT community seems to be taking two sides on how best to spread broadband to rural and remote areas. The Communications Department of the Ministry of Transport, headed by Raimonds Bergmanis, stands by its idea of using European Union (EU) funds in a public-private partnership to built out alternative infrastructure to Lattelecom's backbone network and ADSL nodes (in most Latvian cities and towns).
The Latvian Internet Association (LIA), however, has written a letter to the European Commission (EC) urging that this approach not be supported. Its managing director Viesturs Pless says funding should go to supporting "last mile" connections to end users. In the letter, he writes that there is no need to distort the market The Latvian Information and Telecommunications Technology Association also leans toward a solution that would favor end-users, but has taken no hard position.
Bergmanis counters by saying the EC had approved of the infrastructure-oriented project (this blogger has seen the letter). He believes that competition would be advanced by building out some measure of alternative infrastructure. In the transit market, Bergmanis notes, foreign operators have a real choice of transiting voice or data through Lattelecom, Latvenergo, or Baltcom Fiber. This will lead to lower tariffs for the end user.
Pless of LIA argues that support for end users will stimulate demand, which in turn will stimulate the operators to upgrade their infrastructure to meet it. In other words, if some degree of subsidy encourages 10 rural households and businesses to request broadband connections from the nearest node, the operator (most likely Lattelecom ?) will find a solution, such as a wireless link.
The Latvian Internet Association (LIA), however, has written a letter to the European Commission (EC) urging that this approach not be supported. Its managing director Viesturs Pless says funding should go to supporting "last mile" connections to end users. In the letter, he writes that there is no need to distort the market The Latvian Information and Telecommunications Technology Association also leans toward a solution that would favor end-users, but has taken no hard position.
Bergmanis counters by saying the EC had approved of the infrastructure-oriented project (this blogger has seen the letter). He believes that competition would be advanced by building out some measure of alternative infrastructure. In the transit market, Bergmanis notes, foreign operators have a real choice of transiting voice or data through Lattelecom, Latvenergo, or Baltcom Fiber. This will lead to lower tariffs for the end user.
Pless of LIA argues that support for end users will stimulate demand, which in turn will stimulate the operators to upgrade their infrastructure to meet it. In other words, if some degree of subsidy encourages 10 rural households and businesses to request broadband connections from the nearest node, the operator (most likely Lattelecom ?) will find a solution, such as a wireless link.
A link to an important off-topic
It is back to business here, sticking to matters of telecoms and IT, but to continue the issues I raised in an earlier post, I may, from time to time, update my formerly moribund (that's nearly dead if you are wondering) blog about Latvia in general. I will be posting some more stuff on the political culture and mentality behind the decision to ban the Riga Pride 2006 as a very serious blow to freedom of speech and assembly in Latvia. The link is here.
Monday, July 17, 2006
An important aside on free speech in Latvia
I rarely depart from the subject at hand, but now I fear that Latvia will make the world news not because, say, Tele2 is about to claim it has 1 million users (nearly half the population, infants, infirm, geezers and such included), but because of yet another free speech scandal brewing because of a planned Gay Pride march for July 22. There is considerable pressure to forbid this march (as the Moscow police, a great example, recently did when gays tried to march there). For me, this is fundamentally an issue of free speech, even to those whose views may be offensive or strange to the majority. Indeed, free speech rights are precisely about the rights of minorities to express their views in public, to declare dissenting, radical and even repulsive ideas. We all lose our freedom if we leave it to governments, pressure groups, so-called religious groups and authorities to influence or dictate what we may or may not say in public.
As for my personal views, I am philosophically a libertarian, I support gay rights and have, just for fun, started blogging on this from time to time in Latvian, even making up what appears to be a new Latvian word for libertarianism - libertisms. And strangely enough, I am doing in on a blogging platform maintained by a Latvian IT and political blogger, Kristaps Kaupe, who is one of the anti-gay actvists with his hardline nationalist organization. I hope Kristaps appreciates that his own platform, which has a number of what I would call weird (and not only politically, just plain strange) blogs, is actually a model of a consensual libertarian community where all views are welcome.
To likely 10 % of my readers who may happen to be gay or lesbian, please don't assume that any craziness (banned marches, dumb-ass statements by the government or city council, anti-gay mobs and riots) coming out of Latvia represents what all Latvians think. I certainly don't. Everyone is welcome on this blog as long as we mainly talk about telecoms and IT. Alas, I don't have the time to keep my long dead Thoughts From Latvia blog updated, we could go on about politics there and while my Latvian-language libertarian blog is unique (I think, and Kristaps says Google confirms it), I am not about to start another Teenage Mutant Libertarian Reptiles blog to try to stick out among the hundreds of confessionals of my first time with Ayn Rand and the like.
As for my personal views, I am philosophically a libertarian, I support gay rights and have, just for fun, started blogging on this from time to time in Latvian, even making up what appears to be a new Latvian word for libertarianism - libertisms. And strangely enough, I am doing in on a blogging platform maintained by a Latvian IT and political blogger, Kristaps Kaupe, who is one of the anti-gay actvists with his hardline nationalist organization. I hope Kristaps appreciates that his own platform, which has a number of what I would call weird (and not only politically, just plain strange) blogs, is actually a model of a consensual libertarian community where all views are welcome.
To likely 10 % of my readers who may happen to be gay or lesbian, please don't assume that any craziness (banned marches, dumb-ass statements by the government or city council, anti-gay mobs and riots) coming out of Latvia represents what all Latvians think. I certainly don't. Everyone is welcome on this blog as long as we mainly talk about telecoms and IT. Alas, I don't have the time to keep my long dead Thoughts From Latvia blog updated, we could go on about politics there and while my Latvian-language libertarian blog is unique (I think, and Kristaps says Google confirms it), I am not about to start another Teenage Mutant Libertarian Reptiles blog to try to stick out among the hundreds of confessionals of my first time with Ayn Rand and the like.
E-minister, Communications Department head trade barbs
Alleged foot-dragging and delays in moving ahead with an European Union (EU) mandated program to bring broadband internet to rural and underdeveloped areas in Latvia, the possible loss of LVL 4 million in EU funding for this purpose and charges of "populism"were traded between Latvia's "E-minister" Ina Gudele and Raimonds Bergmanis, the head of the Ministry of Transport's Communications Department.
Gudele says that LVL 1.7 million have already had to be reallocated to related projects, since broadband development has failed to move ahead. She doesn't believe there is time to take action before the end of 2007, when the EU funding could be forfeited. Bergmanis says that tenders for rural and remote area broadband can be prepared by the end of the year and said that Gudele, a non-partisan minister appointed with the support of the Green/Farmers' Alliance (ZZS), was engaging in pre-election populism. He said that his plans for broadband involve spending LVL 11 million and raising funds in a public-private partnership with the hope of engaging other participants besides Lattelecom.
This blogger has learned that Gudele will be asking Minister of Transport Krisjanis Peters to explain whether these remarks by Bergmanis, who is a high ranking civil servant, reflect the views of the Ministry. Behind the scenes, both the minister and Bergmanis have had harsher words for each other. Although the election is less than three months away, Gudele's complaint to Peters could make more trouble for Bergmanis, who, it is understood, has been criticized by other members of the Cabinet for the slow/non-implementation of the broadband concept written up by Bergmanis' department as early as 2004. The E-minister has suggested that oversight and policy making in IT and telecommunications (Bergmanis' field) be put under one authority. This could be seen as a strong suggestion that the new government that will be formed after the election should put this all under the E-Ministry and have Gudele's successor take over Bergmanis department. Another issue is whether Bergmanis have the confidence of the new minister if his department is reshuffled.
Gudele says that LVL 1.7 million have already had to be reallocated to related projects, since broadband development has failed to move ahead. She doesn't believe there is time to take action before the end of 2007, when the EU funding could be forfeited. Bergmanis says that tenders for rural and remote area broadband can be prepared by the end of the year and said that Gudele, a non-partisan minister appointed with the support of the Green/Farmers' Alliance (ZZS), was engaging in pre-election populism. He said that his plans for broadband involve spending LVL 11 million and raising funds in a public-private partnership with the hope of engaging other participants besides Lattelecom.
This blogger has learned that Gudele will be asking Minister of Transport Krisjanis Peters to explain whether these remarks by Bergmanis, who is a high ranking civil servant, reflect the views of the Ministry. Behind the scenes, both the minister and Bergmanis have had harsher words for each other. Although the election is less than three months away, Gudele's complaint to Peters could make more trouble for Bergmanis, who, it is understood, has been criticized by other members of the Cabinet for the slow/non-implementation of the broadband concept written up by Bergmanis' department as early as 2004. The E-minister has suggested that oversight and policy making in IT and telecommunications (Bergmanis' field) be put under one authority. This could be seen as a strong suggestion that the new government that will be formed after the election should put this all under the E-Ministry and have Gudele's successor take over Bergmanis department. Another issue is whether Bergmanis have the confidence of the new minister if his department is reshuffled.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Some Nokia N80 impressions
But for one bizarre restart and one incident where an attempt to transfer music with the Nokia Music Manager for Mac locked up the Powerbook (had to force a shut-down), the little gadget (my Nokia N80) is working rather nicely. Haven't tried to use it with the Powerbook for internet access as my Triatel connection has reappeared from the dead.
What I am really waiting for is a Skype for Symbian app that I can download for the N80, then use it in WiFi mode to make Skype and Skype-out calls. As I understand it, there is one hack for Skype on Symbian that supposedly works in a bizarre push-to-talk mode. I would prefer to log into a nice app with all my Skype and Skype out contacts and just call them as I do from my other computers (the N80 is, after all, a computer disguised as a phone and hiding a 3 megapixel camera). Speaking of the camera, I have included a shot from it (angle toward the shed of my summer place, reclining in a swing sofa).
Triatel back from the dead?
Suddenly on a cool Saturday night, my Triatel wireless internet in Carnikava came back to normal life (doing as high as 450 kbps, depending on what speedtest tool one used). It had been running sporadically at less that GPRS speed, when it was running at all, for almost a week. This failure of Triatel (the company says the net was overloaded, so much demand for the service) also led to an impulse purchase of a Nokia N80, so that I would have something to use for EDGE access with the Triatel down. I think I would have bought the N80 anyway, since I was offered an excellent deal, significantly below retail.
The N80 is a bit of a hassle to use with my Apple Powerbook G4, it managed to crash Mac OSX (using Nokia Music Manager for Mac, designed for the N91 but supposed to work with the N80).
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Triatel trips over its own success
Believe it or not, I am writing this offline. My Triatel connection out at the summer house in Carnikava has suddenly shifted from satisfactory state-of-the art (300 to 600 kbps) to 1980s nostalgia, when I used to access The Source or Compuserve at 300 baud.
The reason for this is that lots of people got the same idea as I – why not grab a Triatel wireless modem and stay online at the summer place for around LVL 20 a month? So now the base station is overloaded and I get faster connections on GPRS (wish I had an EDGE phone now ☹ or maybe even 3G, but I’m waiting for HDSPA). Triatel promises that it will fix things in around a week, by July 21. This is actually kinda good news for Triatel, since it is good proof of their concept.
The reason I have this connection is that I am testing it for my paper (and sorta this blog, I guess). So as far as contacting customer service, I had to explain that this was a borrowed test unit and I was not your Joe-Blow (or average Janis-the-user) in Latvia, which somewhat tainted my customer relations experiment, calling the Triatel service number. The head of services, also a reader of this blog, got back to me and explained the problem. I assume that the average customer is also treated well. So we shall have to wait for the return of the happy days of near-wireline DSL performance.
Another curious thing I learned was that IZZI, a reseller of Triatel’s EV DO internet services, has pre-empted an idea I was going to put in my Latvian-language review – that of selling a “Summer Internet” package for a reasonable flat rate and a deposit to make sure you don’t let the dog or the crows get the wireless modem. IZZI doesn’t advertise it, preferring to sign on customers for two-year contracts, but if you ask them pretty please, please, please, they will apparently give you a gadget for the summer. Good for them.
However, the whole experience is a reminder that if you want the always-on lifestyle (or rather, the on-whenever and wherever I want it lifestyle), keep some kind of backup, such as GPRS or EDGE. At least you will be able to check your e-mail if there is some kind of megaf**kup of your main system, such as there was with DSL, and as there now is with the overburdening of the Triatel node here in Carnikava.
I am now trying to post this using a deathly slow 16 kbps GPRS connection…EVERYTHING IS FUCKED. If this doesn’t work, I will crawl to the Lattelecom landline and dial up ☹ ☹
The reason for this is that lots of people got the same idea as I – why not grab a Triatel wireless modem and stay online at the summer place for around LVL 20 a month? So now the base station is overloaded and I get faster connections on GPRS (wish I had an EDGE phone now ☹ or maybe even 3G, but I’m waiting for HDSPA). Triatel promises that it will fix things in around a week, by July 21. This is actually kinda good news for Triatel, since it is good proof of their concept.
The reason I have this connection is that I am testing it for my paper (and sorta this blog, I guess). So as far as contacting customer service, I had to explain that this was a borrowed test unit and I was not your Joe-Blow (or average Janis-the-user) in Latvia, which somewhat tainted my customer relations experiment, calling the Triatel service number. The head of services, also a reader of this blog, got back to me and explained the problem. I assume that the average customer is also treated well. So we shall have to wait for the return of the happy days of near-wireline DSL performance.
Another curious thing I learned was that IZZI, a reseller of Triatel’s EV DO internet services, has pre-empted an idea I was going to put in my Latvian-language review – that of selling a “Summer Internet” package for a reasonable flat rate and a deposit to make sure you don’t let the dog or the crows get the wireless modem. IZZI doesn’t advertise it, preferring to sign on customers for two-year contracts, but if you ask them pretty please, please, please, they will apparently give you a gadget for the summer. Good for them.
However, the whole experience is a reminder that if you want the always-on lifestyle (or rather, the on-whenever and wherever I want it lifestyle), keep some kind of backup, such as GPRS or EDGE. At least you will be able to check your e-mail if there is some kind of megaf**kup of your main system, such as there was with DSL, and as there now is with the overburdening of the Triatel node here in Carnikava.
I am now trying to post this using a deathly slow 16 kbps GPRS connection…EVERYTHING IS FUCKED. If this doesn’t work, I will crawl to the Lattelecom landline and dial up ☹ ☹
Monday, July 10, 2006
Beserker gadget slays 17 500 DSL connections
A beserk network gadget, perhaps driven mad by the unusual heat, was responsible for the failure of some 17 500 Lattelecom DSL connections (25 % of all subscribers), disruption of some automated teller machines and the 1188 information service at the weekend.
According to the heat-insanity theory, the air conditioning in the network equipment facility was insufficient, but there could have been other, undetermined causes. According to Lattelecom network director Valdis Voncovics, hacker or denial of service attacks were not a cause of the outage.
Lattelecom may have to pay compensation to some customer with service level agreements, but was lucky that the breakdown took place the night between Friday and Saturday instead of a workday, when more business customers would have been seriously affected.
Lattelecom now plans to realign its network architecture to make it easier to isolate malfunctioning network equipment. Had the gadget – some kind of network card with routing functions – simply failed, its load would have been shifted to other equipment more or less automatically, but since the gadget was still technically alive, but pumping deranged and disruptive data into the network, this did not occur. Indeed, Lattelecom had to call in extra specialists (in addition to the duty staff late at night) to determine just WTF was going on.
Something similar occured last year, when one of ISP Latnet's Cisco boxes went totally batshit during a workweek and knocked some heavy customers – Latvian TV, Latvian radio, the Customs service, etc., off the net.
According to the heat-insanity theory, the air conditioning in the network equipment facility was insufficient, but there could have been other, undetermined causes. According to Lattelecom network director Valdis Voncovics, hacker or denial of service attacks were not a cause of the outage.
Lattelecom may have to pay compensation to some customer with service level agreements, but was lucky that the breakdown took place the night between Friday and Saturday instead of a workday, when more business customers would have been seriously affected.
Lattelecom now plans to realign its network architecture to make it easier to isolate malfunctioning network equipment. Had the gadget – some kind of network card with routing functions – simply failed, its load would have been shifted to other equipment more or less automatically, but since the gadget was still technically alive, but pumping deranged and disruptive data into the network, this did not occur. Indeed, Lattelecom had to call in extra specialists (in addition to the duty staff late at night) to determine just WTF was going on.
Something similar occured last year, when one of ISP Latnet's Cisco boxes went totally batshit during a workweek and knocked some heavy customers – Latvian TV, Latvian radio, the Customs service, etc., off the net.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Major ICT systems failure at Lattelecom?
Much of Lattelecom's high speed DSL internet service and some other functions failed on Friday, July 7 with the service breakdown lasting into Saturday. According to Latvian television, "tens of thousands" of DSL customers were affected and there was disruption of the 1188 information services. Valdis Voncovics, head of network services at Lattelecom, spoke of a "complex failure" but denied that it was related to a hacker attack or the like.
The incident, which I will probably have to do a post-mortem about for my paper, is yet again a signal that any serious internet user has to have a back-up connection. On Friday evening, I was using the Triatel link at my summer house and the only problem I had was getting to the 1188 page. The next day, at a sauna-like meeting in Riga (the Occupation Museum Society), I checked my e-mail with my GPRS phone. For business purposes, an EDGE or 3G device would be better. I didn't know of the DSL breakdown until the news on Saturday evening. More on this, perhaps, later,.
The incident, which I will probably have to do a post-mortem about for my paper, is yet again a signal that any serious internet user has to have a back-up connection. On Friday evening, I was using the Triatel link at my summer house and the only problem I had was getting to the 1188 page. The next day, at a sauna-like meeting in Riga (the Occupation Museum Society), I checked my e-mail with my GPRS phone. For business purposes, an EDGE or 3G device would be better. I didn't know of the DSL breakdown until the news on Saturday evening. More on this, perhaps, later,.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Weirdness that should be true, maybe...?
There is an odd rumor flying about, nothing more, that Bite Latvija, ahead of its planned fall launch of HSDPA, approached Mikrotīkls (known internationally as Mikrotik), the Latvian maker of wireless internet routers, access points and other equipment, to enquire about the possibility of building HSDPA capable wireless routers.
This would mean that Bite, in addition to planning on selling HSDPA PC cards, and hoping that HSDPA phones and other handsets will come along, is also positioning itself to compete against wireline DSL.
The gadget Bite had in mind would be an access point incorporating a HSDPA chipset (probably from Qualcomm) and a router/hotspot transciever. This would be the sort of thing one could take home or to an office, take out of the box and plug and play. At 2 Mbps to start with, and possibly higher speeds later on (say in the 8 Mbps range), the «nomadic» HSDPA connection would be competitive speed-wise with Lattelecom DSL where it hasn't been speeded up to 10 Mbps yet, as well as in country towns, rural areas, etc. when and if HSDPA coverage is available, but wireline still inadequate.
Building this access device in Latvia would also be a kind of patriotic gesture by Bite (although the price and quality of Mikrotīkls stuff would be decisive).
This would mean that Bite, in addition to planning on selling HSDPA PC cards, and hoping that HSDPA phones and other handsets will come along, is also positioning itself to compete against wireline DSL.
The gadget Bite had in mind would be an access point incorporating a HSDPA chipset (probably from Qualcomm) and a router/hotspot transciever. This would be the sort of thing one could take home or to an office, take out of the box and plug and play. At 2 Mbps to start with, and possibly higher speeds later on (say in the 8 Mbps range), the «nomadic» HSDPA connection would be competitive speed-wise with Lattelecom DSL where it hasn't been speeded up to 10 Mbps yet, as well as in country towns, rural areas, etc. when and if HSDPA coverage is available, but wireline still inadequate.
Building this access device in Latvia would also be a kind of patriotic gesture by Bite (although the price and quality of Mikrotīkls stuff would be decisive).
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Bizarro signs of the times
Now that the turbulence around Lattelecom Technology (ex-MicroLink) may be coming to an end, I must mention something bizarre I saw while being driven through downtown Riga (returning from something I covered for my newspaper). There was a Schinder (German for gatherer of excrement, suctions outhouses and septic tanks, Latvian šinderis) vehicle, an old Soviet-era tanker with a big hose for sticking down the shithouse (that is what they do). It had a Lattelecom Technology emblem on its door. At first, I thought WTF!!, but then I heard that some ex-MicroLink vehicles had their new emblems removed (some problem with colors or something). Apparently, someone had pasted a (discarded?) sticker on the door of this, let us say, less than high tech vehicle. Of course, if you suck lots of bad data into a storage facility, is there any difference (except for the smell, drove behind a leaking šinderis once, yuck)??
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Lattelecom headhunts TietoEnator honcho
Māris Ozoliņš, CEO of Swedish-Finnish TietoEnator's Latvian subsidiary, is moving to become head honcho of Lattelecom Technology, formerly known as MicroLink.
The IT unit of what is becoming the Lattelecom group will play a critical role in the group's future strategy and Ozoliņš was probably the best choice (though at a bad time). He brings very useful skills and experience from serving the IT needs of banking and finance, including designing entire card and payment systems (which is what the Latvian unit of TietoEnator does, among other things). But why a bad time? As this blog has noted (I also telegraphed the CEO change a few posts ago :) ), the integration of MicroLink, its sudden name change, has been less than smooth. Jānis Bergs, the head of MicroLink in Latvia and a member of what was once the pan-Baltic MicroLink's upper management team, left to go into business for himself (buying out a small unit of MicroLink in Latvia). He had been expected to stay on with Lattelecom Technology. It appears he and other long-time MicroLink staffers were disappointed that the pan-Baltic company was divided up among the three Baltic telcos in which TeliaSonera owns controlling or substantial interests (though not for very much longer in Lattelecom).
Ozoliņš, however, is seen as a strong team builder and will probably save what can be saved at Lattelecom Technology and get the company back on track.
In fact, even as the ex-TietoEnator honcho was cleaning out his desk, Lattelecom Technology signed a contract to set up and run an information system for the national statistics agency in the Ukraine, based on the system it designed and operates for the Latvian Central Statistics Bureau.
The IT unit of what is becoming the Lattelecom group will play a critical role in the group's future strategy and Ozoliņš was probably the best choice (though at a bad time). He brings very useful skills and experience from serving the IT needs of banking and finance, including designing entire card and payment systems (which is what the Latvian unit of TietoEnator does, among other things). But why a bad time? As this blog has noted (I also telegraphed the CEO change a few posts ago :) ), the integration of MicroLink, its sudden name change, has been less than smooth. Jānis Bergs, the head of MicroLink in Latvia and a member of what was once the pan-Baltic MicroLink's upper management team, left to go into business for himself (buying out a small unit of MicroLink in Latvia). He had been expected to stay on with Lattelecom Technology. It appears he and other long-time MicroLink staffers were disappointed that the pan-Baltic company was divided up among the three Baltic telcos in which TeliaSonera owns controlling or substantial interests (though not for very much longer in Lattelecom).
Ozoliņš, however, is seen as a strong team builder and will probably save what can be saved at Lattelecom Technology and get the company back on track.
In fact, even as the ex-TietoEnator honcho was cleaning out his desk, Lattelecom Technology signed a contract to set up and run an information system for the national statistics agency in the Ukraine, based on the system it designed and operates for the Latvian Central Statistics Bureau.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Some Latvian/international IT rumors
The little birds tell me:
Exigen is looking to land a deal with the New Zealand Inland Revenue to improve document handling and communication (internal and external) by reducing paper-based correspondence. This is in line with Exigen's business of designing and "building" (in Latvia) international corporate and organizational IT solutions that streamline business and administrative processes.
Latvian-based Mikrotikls, known as Mikrotiks internationally, is doing a WiFi on commuter railways pilot project with Concourse, the US installer of WiFi at several US airports. Concourse was recently acquired by the aspiring global WiFi network of networks Boingo.
Mikrotiks has provided wireless routers and other equipment for some of Concourse's airport projects and in the pilot project in Chicago, it will be providing similar equipment (on trains and along the rails). The pilot project will cover a 9 mile stretch of track near the Windy City.
Exigen is looking to land a deal with the New Zealand Inland Revenue to improve document handling and communication (internal and external) by reducing paper-based correspondence. This is in line with Exigen's business of designing and "building" (in Latvia) international corporate and organizational IT solutions that streamline business and administrative processes.
Latvian-based Mikrotikls, known as Mikrotiks internationally, is doing a WiFi on commuter railways pilot project with Concourse, the US installer of WiFi at several US airports. Concourse was recently acquired by the aspiring global WiFi network of networks Boingo.
Mikrotiks has provided wireless routers and other equipment for some of Concourse's airport projects and in the pilot project in Chicago, it will be providing similar equipment (on trains and along the rails). The pilot project will cover a 9 mile stretch of track near the Windy City.
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