Into Tech

While we’re wasting out time arguing about the pros and cons of various ISPs, it’s easy to forget that not all of Britain is as tech-savvy as our modern internet-oriented world might suggest.

ONS’s recent Internet Access report states that 35% of UK homes don’t have access to the Interwebz and a full 9% are still persisting with dial-up connections. Still, these figures are improved from a few years ago, when almost half the UK was going without and the take-up of broadband has since been steadily on the rise.

With increasing attempts to turn internet access on in the sky, there’s been some concern about people making VoIP calls from airplanes, just as there is a concern over mobile phone use in the sky being too “annoying.” Some of the companies providing internet-in-the-sky have claimed that they would block VoIP calls, but that’s going to be pretty difficult. As we’ve pointed out in the past voice is just data and you can always find a way to disguise the data, such that it won’t be blocked. And, indeed, that seems to be exactly what’s happening. Andy Abramson talks about how he got around AirCell’s VoIP blocking when talking to a friend who was on one of these wired airplanes. There’s always going to be away around those things, so unless Congress really decides to ban all voice calls on phones, why not wait and see if people chatting really is a problem?

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Over the last year or so, a number of airlines have announced that they (finally! really!) will be installing internet access on airplanes for customers to use. Some have announce very aggressive rollouts, but Joe Brancatelli over at Portfolio has noticed that the rollouts all seem way behind schedule — and quotes an exec at American Airlines (one of the airlines who promised an aggressive rollout) saying that there’s clearly something wrong with the technology. Brancatelli tries to get Airgo, one of the main providers of WiFi-in-the-sky service to comment on the delays and: “Aircell isn’t talking and refused repeated requests for an interview. Instead, its public-relations agency referred me back to its press releases, most of which said Aircell would be operating by now.” He also notes that, despite public claims from various airlines that they’ll aggressively wire up a bunch of airlines, those same airlines either haven’t submitted an application to the FAA to wire up certain aircraft, or only just submitted them. In other words, despite public posturing, your WiFi connection in the sky may take a bit longer to arrive.

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While the FCC and certain broadband companies like to insist that there’s real competition in the broadband market, right here in the heart of Silicon Valley, there’s little evidence that this is true. If there were real competition, they might take customer service seriously. In the past few days I’ve had two separate issues with AT&T that suggests that the company treats customer service as not just an after thought, but something to effectively be shunned. Given my long history in killing off broadband providers who give me service, perhaps it’s only fair that they do their best not to serve me, but these two experiences seemed worth shining some light on.

First, a quick history. That link above goes through all the broadband providers I went through (and killed off) in the 2001 time frame. After that, I ended up with Comcast cable modem service until 2004. In October of 2004, Comcast turned the cable modem service to my house off every day at 10am for no clear reason. Every day I would call, and the response would be: “Oh, this is scheduled maintenance. Service will be back by 4pm.” I would ask if I should expect the service to go down the next day as well, and be told that they had no idea. Apparently, the “schedule” for scheduled maintenance was a tightly held secret — but it went on, every single day, for at least the month of October. I moved in November of that year, and swore off Comcast after that experience. My only other option was AT&T. I ordered AT&T DSL and was promised it would be installed within a week. A week came and went, and I called AT&T. They told me the order had been canceled because (despite what the first person told me) DSL wasn’t actually available at my location (right in the middle of Silicon Valley). Why they didn’t call to let me know of the cancellation was not explained.

I asked why the first person had told me service was available, and the woman told me to hold one while she checked her other computer. That computer told her that DSL was available at my location, despite what the first computer said. Apparently, AT&T does not have a single map of DSL availability, preferring to load a series of different local availability maps on every computer.

A year ago I moved again, and DSL has been working more or less okay at the new location. However, last Thursday it died in the afternoon and was down until around midnight. When it came back it was super slow — maxing out around 64 kbps. I waited until Friday afternoon and decided I should call to ask what’s up. That’s when I discovered that AT&T makes it damn near impossible to find a phone number. The AT&T website has no phone numbers listed at all. When I clicked on the “contact” link, I was given a one-line form to discuss what my problem was. When I hit submit, I received a blank page. No matter how many times I tried, I always got the blank page. Eventually, and I don’t remember how, I got to an error page that listed a bunch of phone numbers. I called the one listed with “Residential: 1-877-737-2478″ since this is a residential account.

Thus began a rather insane process. After waiting on hold, the call proceeded as follows:

• Automated system demands I enter in my account number and asks me to describe my problem. It doesn’t recognize “slow internet” service, so I just say “can I speak to an operator?” It asks me more questions instead. Eventually (after a long hold) it sends me to a live human being.
• AT&T Rep asks me for my account number (despite having punched it in already). She tells me she cannot find my account. Then she asks where I’m located (which, I would think would be obvious from the area code of the account number). She tells me she needs to put me on hold.
• Rather than putting me on hold, she actually transfers me. I get an automated system that demands I enter in my account number and asks me to describe my problem. It doesn’t recognize “slow internet” service, so I just say “can I speak to an operator?” It asks me more questions instead. Eventually (after a long hold) it sends me to a live human being.
• The woman asks me (again!) for my account number. Then she asks why I’ve called her. She works in sales. Tells me she needs to transfer me, but tells me in the future to call 888.321.2375 for tech support. She transfers me.
• I get an automated system that demands I enter in my account number and asks me to describe my problem. It doesn’t recognize “slow internet” service, so I just say “can I speak to an operator?” It asks me more questions instead. Eventually (after a long hold) it sends me to a live human being.
• The next woman asks me (again!) for my account number. She tells me she cannot find my account. Then she asks where I’m located (which, I would think would be obvious from the area code of the account number). I say California, and she says she doesn’t serve California, only a region of 9 southern states (hasn’t it been more than a year since AT&T & BellSouth merged?). She transfers me — after personally promising me the next person I speak to will be the correct person. She also tells me that, contrary to the earlier person (and the AT&T website) the real number to call is: 800.310.2355.
• I get an automated system that demands I enter in my account number and asks me to describe my problem. It doesn’t recognize “slow internet” service, so I just say “can I speak to an operator?” It asks me more questions instead. Eventually (after a long hold) it sends me to a live human being.
• By the way, at this point, I’ve had the “hold voice” repeatedly pitch me on upgrading my service, mentioning that if I do, I can get access to “AT&T’s award-winning customer service.” I am getting curious as to exactly what “award” this is.
• Before the next woman can say much beyond hello, I explain the saga, and mention that she is the 4th person I’m speaking to and ask her please, if she is the right person to help me fix my slow DSL in California. She says she will try, and (again!) asks for my account number. She does some searches and then admits: she really wants to help, but she’s in billing, not tech support. She promises to transfer me (and kindly gives me a small credit on my account). She also tells me that the proper phone number to call in the future is none of the above, but 877.722.3755.
• Unlike the last few people, she actually says on the line and answers the same exact questions in the automated system for me. This is something of a consolation, though I’ve gotten good at entering the info.
• Finally, tech support! I give the guy my account info (again!) and he logs into my modem and he diagnoses: your connection is slow. I could have told him that. Wait, actually, I did tell him that. He doesn’t know what to do, but says that tech support will call me back later. I thought he was tech support, but whatever.
• An hour later, I get an automated call from AT&T tech support, telling me to call them back at (yes, a different number): 888.312.2450.
• I call back, and amazingly am put in contact with a competent tech, who doesn’t treat me like an idiot, who even gets me logged into the DSL modem myself, explains the different system readings, and notes that my modem seems to have capped itself at 64kbps. He says it could be a few different things, but the most likely is a broken phone cable from the jack to the modem. I switch the cables, and voila, it’s working again.

Total elapsed time since the first phone call, about 3 hours, but only about 1.5 hours total on the phone. It was definitely a bit of a hassle, but eventually I found someone smart and competent, and I figured that maybe I just had a bad experience with AT&T. Little did I know. By Monday evening, my Friday experience would seem fast and simple.

I have some travel coming up, and was realizing that I may not be in EVDO coverage for some of it. So I thought it might be good to make use of the AT&T WiFi that’s included as a part of my account. It’s supposed to work at McDonalds, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble and some other places as well. While I had signed up and used the WiFi service a few years ago, it’s probably been at least two years since I last tried. On Monday, I figured I’d hit up a McDonalds at lunch and test it out, to work out any “kinks” if there were any. I honestly figured it would be fine.

I got my chicken sandwich (sans mayo) and sat down to login. Yippee. I even was sitting next to an outlet, but quickly discovered that the outlet had been turned off (boo). Okay, so I get the (extremely slow) proxy server that asks me to login. I type in my login info, and it gives me a message: “We’re Sorry - Your Login Has Been Rejected.” Then it tells me to call: 888.888.7520 “for further assistance.” So here’s how that call went:

• Dial the number from my mobile phone. It rings for a while and then says “I see you’re calling from…” and repeats back a phone number I don’t recognize, starting with a 512 area code (which is Austin, Texas). I’m in California on a California mobile phone, so I have no idea where that comes from. I say no.
• It asks for my account number. I’m not at home, so I don’t have my bill to read off the account number. I don’t have internet access so I can’t log in to get my account number. The system tells me my only options are to say my account number or to say I’m trying to sign up for service. I say “neither” a few times, and the system gets impatient with me, and then demands I answer from a specific list of problems what my issue is. All of the issues have to do with home DSL, not WiFi hotspots — which seems odd, given that this is supposedly the WiFi hotspot support number.
• Finally, it transfers me to a human who again asks my account info. I give it to her. She cannot find my account. She puts me on “hold” which again is actually a transfer. I again go through the dance with the automated call system — which demands I choose between giving my account number or signing up for service, followed by a list of service options that have nothing to do with WiFi hotspots.
• After a while on hold, I get another person, who also insists my account does not exist. She transfers me to tech support (or so she says).
• I go through the same pointless questions, and speak to another person. I explain the situation, noting that she’s the 3rd person I spoke to. She explains that she’s not in tech support, but in customer retention.
• I have now come to the conclusion that AT&T’s “call transfer” system is actually a big roulette wheel that will dump you on any random person with a phone. I doubt most of them even work for AT&T.
• I am transferred again. The fourth person I speak to, after going back and forth, tells me that she does not handle California customers (this sounds familiar).
• I am transferred again. More messing with the annoying automated system, and I eventually get a guy who tells me that he cannot help me unless I can tell him my account number. He insists that when he looks up my user name, he gets a different account owner and a different address than the one I tell him. That’s comforting.
• Rather than transferring me, he says he can only give me the phone number to call for billing, where I should see if they can actually tell me my account info over the phone. Phone number: 800.288.2020. I ask him what number I should call after that to get back to him once I have the account number. He says to just ask to be transferred to DSL tech support.
• I call the billing number, and speak to my 6th person of the day. After a great deal of effort, she finally reveals to me what my account number is (thank you!). She then, as requested, transfers me to DSL tech support.
• My seventh customer support person of the day, after I’ve been on hold and have entered the proper account number, asks me for my account number anyway — and then explains to me that DSL tech support has nothing to do with WiFi hotspots, but he will transfer me.
• My eighth customer support person tells me that the WiFi access on my account was canceled twice. Once last September and once in January. Why twice when I don’t think I ever canceled it even once? He has no clue.
• Well, can I sign up to have the service included on my account? No. That’s not his department. He needs to transfer me to customer support instead of tech support.
• Transferred again. On hold again. Enter my info again. Now speaking to my 9th AT&T rep. After explaining the situation, I am told that it is impossible for them to add WiFi hotspots to my account over the phone. Instead, I need to (get this) sign up via the web at home.
• I hang up, and notice another open WiFi network — so I login, and go to the website he pointed me to: FreedomLink.com to sign up. Once there, I am directed to a page where I am told: “AT&T Wi-Fi Basic service is FREE and already included if you subscribe to AT&T High Speed Internet…. No ordering required! Simply use your AT&T high-speed Internet membership ID and password at any AT&T Wi-Fi Basic hot spot.”
• That seems to conflict with what the last few folks told me, so I pick up the phone again and call. After the same old process of entering info and being put on hold, I explain my situation to the 10th representative I am speaking to. She says she will get everything solved and puts me on hold. Every five or 10 minutes she comes back and says she’s “getting the info I need” and will be back soon.
• I begin to notice the batteries on both my laptop and my cell phone are on their last legs.
• After nearly half an hour on hold, the woman comes back and tells me that she has found the phone number I really need to call. It’s 877.722.3755 (the second time I’ve heard this number!) but that when I reach it, I need to ask for “Tier 2 support.” She promises that she will take care of this part for me and will get me to the right person.
• I mention to her that my batteries are almost dead anyway, and she says “Isn’t that always how it is?” to which I respond: “No. Normally, it does not take 2.5 hours and 10 people to get me the info to log into my account.”
• Eventually, she gets me on the line with another woman, and tells her I need Tier 2 support and then hangs up. This new representative (the 11th I’m speaking to) asks me to repeat the whole situation to see if I really need Tier 2 support. I tell her my batteries are dying, and I really need Tier 2 support, and I need it as fast as possible.
• She puts me on hold for 25 minutes — where the hold message is pure silence, punctuated ever 10 seconds by the most annoying voice in the world commanding: “PLEASE WAIT.”
• She finally comes back, says: “I have connected you to tier 2 support” and hangs up. Except she hasn’t connected me to Tier 2 support. She has transferred the call, so I’m in another hold queue.
• Ten more minutes go by and someone finally picks up. As he finishes saying hello, the battery in my mobile phone dies and the call is over.

This is now 4:10pm. I had arrived at the restaurant at 1pm.

• I drive home. I pick up my home phone and call one more time. After waiting on hold and inputting my information, I speak to my 13th customer rep of the day. He insists that the information is wrong on my account, and that I have the wrong username, though it’s the same username that I had used to log into my AT&T account as I was speaking to him (now that I’m on my home WiFi, which since Friday, has been working fine).
• He says that my username is actually different, but he refuses to tell me what my actual username is. Apparently, that’s not allowed. Instead, he has me dig out my last AT&T bill, and buried on page 4 there is a username which is different from my regular username. He insists that this username will allow me to log into the WiFi hotspots
• I’m no longer at McDonalds so I cannot test it, but perhaps I can now log into WiFi. I will have to go back to McDonalds later this week to try.

This is AT&T customer and tech support at work. I am left wondering if anyone who works at AT&T has ever called its “award winning” customer service line to get actual support. If there were actual competition in the broadband market here in the heart of Silicon Valley, I would switch providers. But my choice now is to go back to Comcast, who might kill service every day for a month for unscheduled scheduled maintenance or deal with AT&T’s roulette wheel of customer and tech support.

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The traditional picture of the British family spending its evenings slumped in front of the TV has changed dramatically, according to a new report from the watchdog Ofcom, published today. The box is still on, but the people on the sofa are talking on the phone, texting furiously or surfing the internet - increasingly using a laptop with a mobile broadband connection - while they keep one eye on the screen.

Despite doomsayers who believe the web will eventually kill off TV, viewing has not yet collapsed. The average Briton spent 218 minutes - or over three and a half hours - a day watching television last year, two minutes more than in 2006 but down on 224 minutes in 2002. In comparison, the average internet user spent 24 minutes a day online when at home last year, up from just six minutes in 2002.

But what has changed is that the TV no longer has the viewer’s undivided attention, according to Ofcom’s annual Communications Market report. Three quarters of 20- to 34-year-olds regularly use their mobile when in front of the TV, while more than a third of 25- to 44-year-olds often check the internet at the same time as watching a programme.

Television is finding itself increasingly usurped among the young. While TV remains the “media activity” that British people above the age of 20 say they would miss most, 16- to 19-year-olds say it is a mobile phone they couldn’t live without.

The report shows the UK’s continuing love affair with the mobile. More people send a text every day than access the internet and there are more phones in circulation than there are people in the UK. Nearly 60 billion text messages were sent last year - up 36% on 2006 - and mobile phone users talk on their phone for an average of 10 minutes a day, double the usage recorded in 2002.

The mobile phone and other distractions mean young people are watching fewer TV shows, with 16- to 24-year-olds glued to the set for about 150 minutes a day in 2007, 10 minutes less than five years ago and more than an hour less than the UK average. People over 65, in contrast, spend five hours a day watching TV.

Instead, younger people are spending more of their time online but with download and streaming services such as the BBC’s iPlayer reporting record demand, many are merely choosing to watch their favourite TV programmes when they want by getting content from the web. Nearly a third of all internet users watched video clips and webcasts last year with the number of UK users of YouTube hitting 9 million this April alone - up 50% on a year before.

Throwing off the shackles of the TV schedulers is not just the ambition of people with an internet connection. Almost a quarter of UK households - 6 million - had a digital video recorder by the end of last year, up 53% on 2006. DVRs allow people to store their favourite shows for viewing later. Their success is bad news for advertisers who use commercial television to get in front of a mass audience. Of those with a digital recorder, 88% always skip past the ads, according to Ofcom.

But when they do watch “traditional” television, the taste of 16- to 24-year-olds is remarkably similar to that of those over 65. Both like entertainment and contemporary music shows while 16- to 24-year- olds watch slightly more soap operas and factual programmes than pensioners. The big difference between the age groups, according to the report, is in the area of news and weather programming.

Among pensioners, 14% watch TV news and weather programmes, compared to just 7% of 16- to 24-year-olds.

The Ofcom report shows that online advertising hit £2.8bn last year, up 40%, and eclipsing spending on the traditional terrestrial channels ITV1, Channel 4, S4C and Five for the first time. Given how much more time people spend watching TV than using the internet the figures look incongruous, but the Ofcom report does not take into account the amount of time British consumers spend online at work.

In fact, take-up of residential internet services is slowing as the digital divide between rich and poor becomes ever more obvious. Most households that have a computer are already online with PC penetration running at 72% in the UK and internet penetration close behind at 67%. Broadband take-up - at 58% of UK households - has slowed not least because younger consumers such as students are opting to buy mobile phone “dongles” that give internet access and are often cheaper than a lengthy broadband contract. Over 2 million Britons now use mobile internet services, with sales of dongles nearly doubling between February and June this year to over 130,000 a month.

Why we should turn off our electrical appliances

British households are wasting the annual output of a large power station by failing to switch off their flatscreen televisions, set-top boxes, and internet networks when they are not being used, according to Ofcom’s latest Communications Market report.

The equivalent output of the 1,500MW Didcot B power station in Oxfordshire could be saved each year if every home with a set-top box switched it off at night; that would conserve enough electricity to make 80bn cups of tea.

Consumer electronics account for about a third of home energy use, according to the Energy Saving Trust, but that use is forecast to balloon to 45% by 2020 as more people buy more gadgets.

The rise in average residential energy bills to just over £1,000 a year has made people more energy aware, but only when it comes to buying obviously power-hungry devices such as fridges and freezers, according to Ofcom.

Almost three quarters of Britons, when quizzed by the regulator, classed themselves as caring about the environment, and more than half said they had compared the green credentials of white goods before making a purchase. But only 39% of people think about the environmental impact of a new TV, DVD player or computer.

When they get it home, meanwhile, most people leave their new kit switched on all the time, unnecessarily wasting electricity.

Three quarters of people rarely switch off their set-top box, according to Ofcom, and that figure jumps to 83% for owners of a wireless home network. Plasma screens are particularly power hungry, according to the regulator, with the average set using three times the power of a normal TV when in use, and twice the power when left on standby.

The average satellite set-top box gobbles up four and a half times the power of a flatscreen LCD television in the same state. Even a Freeview box uses twice the power of a flatscreen TV when left on standby.

Almost half the country’s mobile phone users, meanwhile, waste electricity by charging their handsets overnight, when in fact most models only need to be plugged in for about two hours. People aged between 16 to 24 are particularly guilty of this, with 80% doing it at least some of the time.

Virgin Media could be offering customers broadband at up to 200Mb per second by 2012, roughly 40 times faster than the average speed currently enjoyed by British web surfers, according to the cable company’s chief executive, Neil Berkett.

Dramatically increasing the speed available over its network would also give Virgin Media a lead over bitter rival BT, which is spending £1.5bn on improving its network so it can offer 40Mb to 60Mb per second to 10m British homes in time for the London Olympic.

Berkett’s prediction came as Virgin Media announced it lost a total of 19,500 customers over the three months to end June. Analysts were cheered, however, by the company’s success in generating a profit before financial charges of £333m, up from £315m last year, and persuading 53% of its 4.7 million customers to sign up to a so-called “triple play” of television, broadband and home phone. Virgin Media added a net 54,600 broadband users during the three months, well below the 200,000 secured by BSkyB and the 103,000 that BT gained in the same period. But Berkett said the vast majority of those new customers signed up for its fastest broadband service, currently at 20Mb and Virgin Media wants to get even faster to differentiate itself from the competition. It is already rolling out 50Mb and, with plans to switch off its analogue TV service in the next two years, which will free up capacity, speeds will increase.

“BT are talking about 40Mb in 2012; we have got 50Mb now and by 2012 we would have the technical capability of delivering up to 200 Mb per second. We are leading next generation access in this country,” he said. Such a service would be faster than anything available in the most advanced internet access markets of Japan and Korea and well above the current average UK speed which Ofcom estimates at 4.6Mb.

Faster speeds may also help kickstart a residential broadband market that has slowed as homeowners rein in spending and opt for cheaper broadband services.

Britain’s broadband boom is stuttering as consumers grapple with rising price and the crumbling housing market. Four of the UK’s big six providers yesterday announced that the past three months saw demand for high-speed internet access down on the previous quarter and down on last year.

With many households looking to rein in spending and able to access the internet at work, the industry believes growth over the summer is likely to be even slower.

Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk business is the UK’s third largest ISP. Yesterday it cut its prediction for annual broadband customer growth by 50%, to between 200,000 and 250,000, after saying it signed 44,000 new customers in the three months to the end of June - compared with 126,000 last year, and 109,000 in the first quarter of 2008.

Chief executive Charles Dunstone said: “It is a combination of fewer housing transactions, because buying a house is a key time when people change supplier, and more people buying mobile broadband instead of fixed line access.” The market is also maturing, he said, with more than 60% of UK households having broadband.

Orange, owned by France Telecom, is the UK’s sixth largest ISP. Yesterday it admitted it actually lost 44,000 broadband users in the quarter, more than the 31,000 it lost in the three months to end March, and the 5,000 who defected last year. Orange now has just over a million customers.

Market leader BT, meanwhile, added 103,000 new broadband customers in the three months to end June, down from 150,000 in the previous quarter, and 174,000 last year. It now has 4.5 million broadband users.

Chief executive Ian Livingston said that new technologies it plans to roll out over the next few years would greatly increase download speeds and could push growth - but that is a little way off. BT shares were clobbered yesterday, having their biggest one-day fall since the dotcom bubble burst, as investors saw a dramatic drop in first quarter cashflow and revelations that margins at BT’s closely watched IT services business have gone backwards, and its pension fund has gone into the red.

Livingston, who only took over from Ben Verwaayen at the start of June, tried to reassure the City that despite having a net cash outflow of £734m over the three months to the end of June, several hundred million more than expected, BT is still on track to generate £1.4bn by the end of the year. The fact its pension scheme has gone from a £2bn surplus before tax last year to an £800m deficit this year, meanwhile, is due to inflation affecting the way the fund is valued, he added.

Analysts were unimpressed. “Protestations from the company that the year will turn out OK may not carry much weight in the current environment, and the share price would seem to be reflecting doubts over the sustainability of the dividend,” said Martin Mabbutt at Nomura. “Poor start to the year” was the headline on a post-results note to investors from Citi.

Gloom surrounding BT was deepened by news that profit margins in its IT operation, BT Global Services, were slightly down on last year and will be lower for the year because of currency fluctuations. BT maintains that the unit (40% of group revenues in the first quarter) can make profit margins of 15% within two to three years, and it is cutting costs. But with first quarter margins of 9.5% down from 9.8%, investors remain highly sceptical; shares in BT closed down 23.7p at 173.9p, wiping £1.8bn off the value of the company.

Another broadband provider, BSkyB, said yesterday that it had added 200,000 customers (half already taking its satellite TV) in the past three months, compared with 229,000 in the previous quarter and 259,000 last year.

Sky announced a drop in annual profits to £60m from £724m because of a £616m plunge in its 17.9% stake in ITV, but said it remains on track to increase its 8.98 million pay-TV customers to 10 million by 2010, with a third also taking broadband.

With more than 1.6 million broadband customers, Sky is now at the heels of fourth-placed Tiscali, estimated to have lost customers in the past quarter. The Italian-owned firm is for sale, with Carphone Warehouse and Sky potentially interested. Tiscali and the UK’s second ISP, Virgin Media, report next week.

With mobile Internet access becoming more popular, O2 is aiming to capitalise by offering free home broadband for a year to anyone signing up for its £20 per month Mobile Broadband package.

The new Broadband Home And Away [is that a whiff of Aussie soap I smell?] package means that anyone with the Mobile Broadband [that's 3GB of data per month and unlimited Wi-Fi access] also gets O2’s Home Broadband free for a year, offering unlimited downloads, a free wireless router and 24×7 UK-based customer service. Unusually, O2 says the offer is open to existing O2 Mobile and Home Broadband customers too, not just newbies.

Sally Cowdry, marketing director, O2 UK said:

IDC paints an interesting picture of our future with the results of its latest survey, which says that 1.4 billion people, almost a quarter of the population, will use the internet regularly in 2008.

By 2012, 30% of the population will be online through a total of three billion devices that include PCs, games consoles and mobile phones.

It’s likely to have a growing impact on our day to day lives as almost half of all internet users will purchase online in 2008 of the 40% worldwide that currently have internet access.

DNS fix zoned out

After reading articles about the net’s latest security problem, I made sure I installed the Microsoft update. Result: I could not access any web pages until I rolled my computer back, at which point everything was fine.
Jane Knight

JS: The bulk of this week’s mailbox came from Zone Alarm users who lost their internet access following last week’s Windows Update. The update was part of a netwide security effort led by Microsoft, Cisco and Sun to deal with a fundamental design flaw in the Domain Name System (DNS) discovered by Dan Kaminsky. The DNS translates memorable names (eg, doxpara.com) into the numbers used to route traffic (eg, 66.240.226.139). Anyone who can control that can send visitors to almost any site they like. Basically, hackers could take over the web.

The project involved patching or upgrading many of the net’s DNS servers and routers as well as server and PC operating systems, and it went astonishingly well. Zone Alarm seems to have been the only major failure, and the company quickly produced a patch. If you don’t have that, a workaround is to set Zone Alarm Internet Security to “medium”.

However, Zone Alarm users should uninstall Windows Update KB951748 from Windows XP, restart their PC, apply the Zone Alarm patch from
download.zonealarm.com then reinstall the update. KB951748 can be uninstalled using the Add or Remove Programs applet after ticking the box at the top that says “Show updates”.

The problem could affect products from more than 80 vendors and potentially all operating systems. Kaminsky has put a DNS checker on his website so that people can find out if their DNS server is vulnerable.

Replacing Zone Alarm

I’m concerned that Zone Alarm had all these problems while other firewalls seemed to cope OK. Are there any other free personal firewalls you can recommend?
Sally Taylor

JS: The DNS fix randomises the source port used for DNS queries: it seems the Zone Alarm firewall assumed they’d come from only one port. That may well be a one-off problem, and if you’re otherwise happy with the product, you may not gain anything by switching. This is particularly true if you have the paid-for version rather than the cut-down free version.

However, I prefer the Sunbelt-Kerio Personal Firewall for Windows XP. This starts as the full product but turns off its advanced features after 30 days, and nags you unless you pay for it. Comodo and Jetico also offer decent free firewalls. The final choice is partly a matter of taste.

Printer quest

I am looking for a very light portable printer to replace an old Canon BJC80 for conferences and fieldwork. Is there anything new out there cheaper than the new Canon Pixma iP100?
Dan Rigby

JS: Not that I know of. Sadly, all the Canon BJC ultraportable printers seem to be unavailable, and the Canon Pixma iP90v and iP100 look like the best alternatives. They’re about the same size as the BJC but heavier - it weighs 4lbs instead of 3lbs. HP has rivals such as the OfficeJet H470 Mobile Printer but at similar prices. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Corporate iPhone?

I’d like to get an iPhone to access my work emails. Unfortunately the IT department only supports BlackBerrys.
Richard Hickson

JS: Try asking if they support anything besides BlackBerrys. If they support Microsoft Exchange “push email” and synchronisation features, then these work with devices that have ActiveSync This includes some Windows Mobile, Nokia and Palm Treo phones, and the new iPhone 3G. If they support non-BlackBerry devices via BlackBerry Connect, this works with some Windows Mobile, Nokia and other phones, but not the iPhone, at the moment. However, IT departments generally like to eliminate variations, because standardisation simplifies support and therefore saves money. If they only support BlackBerrys, it might not make financial sense to change to the system to support a single iPhone.

Backchat

· Jane McNicol wanted to move her iPod libraries to a new PC. On the Ask Jack blog (blogs.guardian.co.uk/askjack), Doctor reminded her that “if you do not intend to use your old PC, remember to de-authorise that machine as Apple will only allow you to have five machines authorised at any one time”. He also mentioned Xilisoft’s iPod Rip, “a brilliant piece of software that will transfer all your files from your iPod into your iTunes library” (xilisoft.com/ipod-rip.html).

Get your queries answered by Jack Schofield, our computer editor at jack.schofield@guardian.co.uk