Ah Fridays, the end of the working week and the beginning of the weekend. I think Fridays must do something to your brain, there was something I was going to talk about in the pre-amble to the EoD but I’ve completely forgotten what it was. One of those thoughts that I often have on the way to work but never think to write down so when it comes to remembering it, it’s completely gone out of my head. Maybe it will come to me by the time I get to the end of the post.

While I’m thinking let’s start off with a special Dev EOD from Fletch:

At Plusnet we have spoken about Traffic Management for along time, we have implemented it, we got stuck in the middle of the net neutrality debate, and we are actively and openly using it, to manage our network and provide differing service offerings like Broadband Your Way Pro. But what is next? This is something that we think about a lot here at Plusnet Towers and today I’ve been thinking about it for next year’s budget!

People in the industry are talking about “monetize”, “stickiness” and “value” but what does this mean for Plusnet? If you look at all the DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) vendors (Arbor (Ellacoya), Cisco (PQube),
Procera) they are all talking about using the knowledge of your network to create value. Is this value for the consumer or just the ISP?

As new on-demand services are launched (iPlayer, SkyPlayer, Project Kangaroo, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody), the computing industry moves towards the Cloud – and every game seems to have an online element. Our view is that all ISPs will need to manage these services to avoid congestion or just let carriers continue to keep build infrastructure.

Commoditization may continue to drive down prices for bandwidth, but given the state of the investment markets and the banks, who is actually going to fund the investment required to continue to build these networks? Laying fibre and undersea cable is not cheap! If the investment isn’t there then supply will remain static and the market will start to drive prices upward. If we are at the start of an economic downturn as everyone predicts, then you also have to question who will fund the next wave of applications. (Apps is cheap right? You just need to figure out how to make money out of the userbase after you have done a land grab!)

So, today I’ve been looking at the “marketecture”… and talking to folks about results of trials. For Plusnet the next generation of Traffic Management will be about further network efficiency, how we can solve faults and queries faster, how we can manage the priority in real-time and stop peak congestion. It isn’t about “monetizing”, and “stickiness”.

If you are driving home tonight on a busy Friday and you get caught in traffic think about whether you want pay for wider and wider roads to get you from A to B. If you’re cruising through roadworks under speed restrictions, or on the M4 being passed by a Taxi in the restricted Bus/Taxi lane, are you happy being managed? If an ambulance passes you with blue lights flashing you know you want them to have priority. The Internet remains a transport network and we need innovation to manage it and make it efficient not just build it wider and wider and hope that other services will pay for it.

Right… I’m out early tonight to avoid the traffic on the way home!

Fletch

Thanks Fletch, I’m still trying to rack my brain so next is Paul from the Cancellations team:

Good afternoon on this fair Friday, Paul from Cancellations here to tell you about what the team has been up to today.

This week we have been joined by Mark from Customers Services so that he can learn the different processes we work with and further his own skills.

Daz has rejoined us this week from his stint with the sales team and with his Friday shirt on has been busy helping customers as well as giving advice to the rest of the team.

Sal has been busy as usual dealing with the business accounts and the rest of the team have been busy but you can tell the Friday feeling is there.

Kev has had the day off today (sounds nice having the Friday off but not to worry it’s his weekend on).

The gaffer (Kelly) has been her normal self and even got up and made drinks for everyone in the team.

As for myself, I’ve been fighting off a major dose of man flu but luckily as the weekend approaches I seem to have won the battle, but workwise I’ve been dealing with our colleagues in South Africa and working the relevant work flows.

Well that’s the end of the day and the end of the week (1 week nearer to Christmas).

Still not got it so here’s what the HR team have been up to this week – brought to you by Jennifer:

We’ve been busy collating reviews, giving feedback and preparing for the next module of the Management Development and Leadership Programme.

Internal recruitment has begun for a Business Sales Executive.

Work has started on preparing for an internal Employee Opinion Survey.

Absence data has been reviewed and meetings conducted with managers.

A holiday report has been produced to review where we’re all up to – who’s got loads left and who’s already been off sunning themselves.

More work has been done on reviewing all the company’s role profiles and our HR documentation.

In terms of rewards, Childcare vouchers and other benefits packages are being reviewed with a view to being launched shortly.

Our strategic roadmap has been reviewed and prep has been done for the company rally and Plusnetter of the Month.

All staff should have had or will be having six monthly reviews – we’re busy collating them.

Anyway, it’s Friday….

Don’t think I’m going to remember unfortunately as the penultimate update comes from Bob in the Comms Team:

Fresh back from yesterday’s jaunt to the dentist, I’ve mainly been catching up on things today and doing a bit of project work.

As for everybody else: Mand’s been drafting documentation and keeping an eye on the forums, Matt’s been concentrating on this month’s newsletter and Chris has been looking after problem investigation. Collectively the three of them (as no single person has yet admitted to it!) have also been up to their usual pranks by hiding one of my trainers in our trophy cabinet earlier this afternoon!

Before I (hop?) to the pub here’s today’s random link…

If you’ve a spare $40,000 to spare then the Ghostbuster’s ‘Ecto-1′ is up for sale on eBay Motors. Apparently there were two cars used in the original cult classic. This is a third that was built exclusively for the Universal Studios Theme parks – (Ed: I wish I had $40,000, I want it, although an A Team van will do nicely instead.)

Lastly for today is Julie with the CSC top 5:

The top 5 for today are

1. Router config – new customers wanting help setting up hardware for the first time and also existing customer wanting to confirm settings after making changes to thier PC’s.
2. Email setup – mainly new customer wanting the settings for thier email accounts to set them up for the first time.
3. Hardware chasing – new customers calling to confirm when their hardware will be delivered.
4. Fault updates – customers chasing up on faults and calling back after voicemails have been left by the faults team.
5. Sales enquiries – customers calling up to enquire about our packages and also to sign up over the phone.

And that’s it for today… still not remembered what I was going to say today, must have been a lie as someone not so famous once said. I know I’ll remember as soon as I get in the car…. Might save it for next week.

So have a good weekend everyone, Stephen Fry in America looks to be the pick of the TV and plenty of international football including England v Kazakhstan on Saturday. Enjoy and we’ll all be back next week…

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This entry was posted by Dave Tomlinson on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 6:55 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category EOD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.