Google+ could kill broadband connections in (rural) UK!

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Got my invite to Google + last night, and have spent a happy few hours unwrapping its presents - it's just like Xmas, but this is actually fun! However.....

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com




I spy a huge problem for anyone on a halfway crap broadband connection, or even the USC.

Google+, for those who don't know, is Google's next attempt at social networking like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and more all rolled into one, and right now it seems to be gathering fans and positive feedback from the limited number of people who have been let in on the first round of invites. The invite system has had to be closed down within just a few hours because of the massive demand, but many of the people already in are the hardcore early adopters who are putting this through its paces as I write.

So, I've played on it quite extensively over the last few hours, and Google are saying that so far only a few features have been rolled out - there is obviously much more to come. The one that I can see causing immediate problems for broadband is Hangouts.

Hangouts let you invite, at present, up to 10 people into a video, audio and chat room. Like Skype on steroids really. Judging by what Matt Cutts (he of Google fame) is saying in Robert Scoble's profile, there are plans to make Hangouts way more funky yet - more people, more features etc. All of these will require bandwidth at the user's end. Not only can you do video chats, but you can also group view YouTube videos and comment on them. And that's just for starters....Wait till people are in 5 hangouts at the same time; I had 7 open at one point to see how good my multi-tasking is (!) and the connection just couldn't cope, despite my pleas!

Bear in mind, I'm looking at this for clients at the moment and not for fun, then the possible business uses are endless. And hence the likely use of bandwidth is only ever likely to increase as Hangouts are broadened and functionality is added. Chuck it into a friends and family environment and the likelihood is that this could totally hammer bandwidth on your average so-called fast broadband connection in the UK, up and down.

Just because right now it only has a Youtube button doesn't mean that within days or weeks Google won't add "share your own video", "record this group" and multiple other possibilities. This means that, as of tonight, the USC is totally insufficient for the likely places that Google's social network is going. And the general feeling right now seems to be that Hangouts are going to be the 'must have' app that sees Google+ taking off.

Whilst Wave and Buzz fell at an early hurdle, it seems Google has learned from those mistakes and there is much in Google+ which gives early indications that Google have no intention of getting "social" wrong again. It would also seem that Google are going to use Google+ to force the fibre agenda forwards, and that anyone who hasn't worked out that Google need fibre to get everyone maxxing out on Google properties...well....it's time to get IT fast!

Facebook may well push an upgrade out quite quickly on the back of this - Facebook chat has been pretty shoddy to date, showing FB up as an almost analogue property. With Skype belonging to Microsoft, and Google launching chat and video on day one in Google+, Facebook seems to be a bit of an outsider at the moment on the VOIP and video front. But Facebook has a fair amount of clout and money and has undoubtedly been working on this for some time because it is a much-needed and wanted feature for any social network.

This video conferencing feature, plus the ability to group view and share videos will start to consume bandwidth. And those who cannot chat with at least 9 of their mates/colleagues/family members will inevitably feel left out. I don't yet have any info on the bandwidth that Hangouts consumes, but having tracked down quite a few of the Google development team in the last few hours, I hope an answer will be forthcoming quite shortly...


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Let's make IT simple in the Bit Society

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Read more! Ah, another week hearing about, and seeing first hand, how few people get IT. So, let's encourage folks to catch up.....We have all these great IT and money-saving ideas out in the Big Society so let's share them.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



1. Stop printing business cards to hand out willynilly to all and sundry. Print a few only and put a QR code on the back.



That is the QR code for this website. Right click and save to promote the site!

Next time you meet me, I'll probably be wearing the QR code with my contact details. It may be on the bottom of my boots as I seem to be spending my life on either my knees or bum at the mo ;o)

(Want to make your own QR code?
Want to read a code on a smartphone? Use Scan on iphone or zxing on android - there are multiple others).

2. Stop printing out documents. Apparently some MPs have, to date, been able to get docs printed and couriered to them. Now, they have to read them online. Good. We all should read online where possible.

(However, the paperback version of Quakebook is now available on Amazon.co.uk and you *must* buy that!)

3. Much as we want to keep the Post Office afloat, do you really need to post that form/letter/document? Could you just email it instead? I spent an happy hour persuading my Council to email me all my Council Tax info instead of posting me it multiple times. The lovely IT man set to and it turned out the system could do precisely that. Hopefully, now, the potholes may move up a notch or two on the budget priority list with the spare money this could release if applied to every householder, before I fall off the Ducati.

4. Set up a website for your Parish Council, District Council etc that does not say ring this number on an expensive phone line to request a copy of xyz document. If we can use DropBox, so can our local government. This should be used in particular for planning applications where the amount of paper relating to a complex application could have been used to produce biomass for the buildings in the development for the coming year(s).

Further suggestions from you are welcome!!

Let's make IT simple in the BIT Society.








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Cart before the horse

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Read more! Seems to me, as I sit in a sunny Surrey garden pondering the many discussions yesterday in The Smoke, we are not doing things in the right order with broadband in this country. The government have recognised the need and found a pot of money - all well and good, but...
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



The next step, surely, should be for each region to calculate how much money is required for the solution(s)and where any money assigned to the area will do most good in generating, as quickly as possible, the remainder of the money required?

This is how a business would work... Which product should we develop and put out to which market for maximum ROI, particularly during a recession when times are tough?

One wonders what criteria are being used to decide which region gets what considering the vast majority of the regions do not seem to have a pre-defined plan for what they will do with what they are given. Some do seem to have realised the BDUK money is for rural areas where there has already been market failure to deliver broadband 1.0; others do not seem to gave truly grasped even that basic point.

Once awarded funds, surely the very first step should be for the council to appoint a suitably knowledgeable panel to assess appropriate solutions available with said pot of gold, or have we taken to developing products blindfolded and in the dark now?

Not having more than the most vague idea of what is possible per £, the approach appears to be putting out a similarly vague procurement doc with untold extra limiting factors to see who may be interested in laying their hands on the dosh. Or who the Council is left with after excluding a substantial number of potential solution providers due to the (quite unnecessary) restrictions.

Hard evidence is available from around the world that FTTH is profitable with some networks going in to profit at the moment of switch on. However, a business-like approach appears to be lacking here. Which provider and/or solution is providing a business plan and road map showing how further areas of Market failure will be funded once the pilot area is complete? Because this is not a one off task but rather an ongoing one for each area. It is unlikely further central funds will be available; ergo each region should be deploying solutions which seek to generate the monies required for further investment.

This could be done by ensuring that any solution is set up to run as a commercially viable entity, rather than just lobbing the money at a solutions provider looking to bank all profits themselves. Councils are more accustomed to having an annual budget made available to them, rather than operating as a business needs to where next year's spend comes from the wise decisions of previous years. In this instance, and knowing what work lies ahead, the required approach would seem to be obvious for any business-minded person.

But obviously logic and common sense has gone out the window! In fact, we seem to be watching an abject failure to put Big Society into action. Us little folk who need and know this stuff plus the biz people with required acumen to create business plans are being steam rollered and ignored by the very agencies Big Society was supposed to give ears and a brain to.



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Watch Northumberland

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Read more! If the £250k for rural broadband in Northumberland is spent on anything other than FTTH, then this country seriously needs to get its act together and rethink what on earth we are doing with the limited EU funds still available to us.
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



The money from the EU should not be signed off by either Govt or the EU unless it is being spent upon bringing Fibre To The Home to these outlying areas with nowt, first, and then using that connectivity to reach back into market towns and areas of higher density population. This 'outside in' approach that some of us have been pushing for for years does appear to be in GreySky's thinking judging by James Saunby's response in a BT-sponsored debate.
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The next generation reach for the sky...but what are we doing to them?

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Copyright: LAnnison 2009

Remember: Next Generation Access - it's not about YOU! Seems odd to me that a nation which had an Empire, a future, and innovated to such an extent that we were held in respect by the rest of the world has lost its bottle so much that we now seem to be known more for the stiff upper lip. The "quiet English way of objecting" is to take most things lying down, not make a fuss...whilst we are held hostage, and walked all over. I saw this at work in a restaurant when a bloke emptied an entire pot of salt over his as yet untasted dinner because the kids had unscrewed the salt pot lid as a joke. "Everything all right, sir," asked the waiter. "Yes, lovely, thank you". Are we really so spineless?

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Whether or not you care about the current kerfuffle about Tower Bridge, that is what has triggered this post. As ever, my joining up of dots may leave you struggling a tad to follow me, but....

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This harsh geography is not conducive to fibre lay.....

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Read more! I have to admit my jaws ceased to meet on overhearing this the other day....not that title statement, but what followed. Libby Bateman, you are a very astute young woman! And if anyone headhunts her from Eden, you will find yourself facing Rory's Reivers and many more who value her, who will fight tooth and nail to keep her here where she belongs, doing what she is incredibly good at, and putting hundreds of overpaid people to complete shame. In our region as well as in most others. Libby is Big Society personified - learn from her.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Location: Rheged. When: coupla days ago. Present: someone with a "Responsibility for making life-changing decisions about broadband for some of us". (I actually like this person, but ....well, another blog post will be writ on that matter.)

(Paraphrased) Libby: Laying fibre across Cumbria is a nightmare of an engineering task. "Apparently." According to the telcos. In tiny little trenches. But look what runs right through our region? The Settle-Carlisle Railway. So, over 100 years ago with no mechnical assistance whatsoever and in the most difficult of climates, they could build a world-renowned railway, with viaducts such as Ribblehead, tunnels and bridges, the longest, steepest hauls on UK rail, through some of the harshest [yet most beautiful] landscape there is. And yet now they are claiming no-one can lay fibre here?

You have to admit, she has a point. So, you short listed folk, get this. If you don't lay fibre across this county, we'll take to you to the bloody cleaners for incompetence and failing to learn from the past. Not just in the last century and more, but the last decade too.

You will NOT repeat Project Access's utter failure on our doorstep again. Not with this region's history for DOING MAJOR ENGINEERING WORKS right. We are not Numbrians. We are proud of our heritage and want to leave our legacy for future generations too.


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Dumbing smart meters down

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Read more! What is a smart meter? Is it simply a digital meter that feeds info back to the utility companies so they can lay off meter readers? Or is it something more?


This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


Despite having seen 'smart meters' that have built-in wifi, GSM etc, which create a mesh network or more, and having blue prints for ones with built-in femtos etc, which join up dots because they are a device which can be fitted in every house and therefore do far more than one job, apparently we should dumb smart meters down to a single use.

Apparently, a smart meter is now a dumb meter, according to the conversations yesterday on Twitter. No doubt, shortly, the UK will be building future-proofed dumb grids as well, and failing to learn from smart grids around the planet.

I am beginning to despair at the UK's aspirations. Isn't our bar already low enough?! We have an opportunity to fit into each and every home a 'device' (let's bin the word 'meter' as that seems to confuse folk) which can serve multiple purposes which solve many of the connectivity and utility problems we currently suffer.

Or we could spend £umpteen zillion, at householder's and Treasury expense, to teach the people of this nation how to hit the off switch when they leave a room. Genius. Not.

How smart are *we*?!
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How low can we go in the UK?

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Read more! I am going to take the latest PIN from DCMS to bits. Every which place I am wrong, correct me. There are plenty of people who read this blog who could just for once come out of the woodwork and contribute, instead of leaving my pet trolls to do so alone. This Framework has been causing discussions in many circles for at least 2 weeks before it was officially announced, and it is IMHO time to get this country back on track before it is too late.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



This is the PIN (Prior Information Notice) for DCMS and BDUk for around £2Billion.

The primary purpose of this Prior information notice (PIN) is to inform the market of a prospective opportunity in connection with the UK Government's broadband policies and objectives.

The delivery of high speed connectivity to businesses and residential consumers and communities is required to address the UK’s economic growth and development agenda. The topography and/or demographic characteristics of certain geographies will require investment to deploy broadband infrastructure and this, together with the lack of competitive pressure, means that market-driven private investments alone will not achieve ubiquitous connectivity.

1. All topographies and demographics require investment to deploy broadband infrastructure. END.

2. Lack of competitive pressure....ah, are we now re-wording the term 'market failure'? If that is truly the case, then let's ask ourselves why and according to whom? Could it be that there is a certain incumbent who is ensuring that the pipes are so damned thin there is no pressure (scarcity vs abundance)? No access to the pipes - could that be inhibiting competitive pressure? No market - says whom? Perhaps we should revisit who is touting this so called "lack of competitive pressure"? And is it real when so many people seem ready to invest, dig, connect etc?

3. Could we please determine a time frame in which "market-driven private investments alone will not achieve ubiquitous connectivity?" Because given a few more months without public sector investment from the Treasury's coffers, communities large and small will pull their fingers out and connect each other. Bit like railways, electricity etc. Many of which were not publicly funded nor were there so-called incumbents preventing their every move. Communities still beat the private investments to delivery - in both the rural villages I have lived in during the past 37 years, electricity was delivered by individuals not market-driven investment from shareholder owned companies or incumbents. In fact, we had electricity before Manchester, and Lord Glenamara (who became Chairman of Cable and Wireless) wrote about it in his book. Market-driven? Hell no. Innovator, edge of the network, experiment-driven. Are you really going to skew the market by giving ALL THE MONEY to a behemoth, oil-tanker sloth that doesn't love each community it connects but only the profits it can reap for its shareholders?

Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) has been created within the Department of culture, media and sport (DCMS) to be the delivery vehicle for the government's policies relating to stimulating private sector investment using the available funding. Further details on BDUK, its objectives and activities can be found at: http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/8124.aspx.

I'd love to query the lack of capital letters in a major tender for £2Bn....but it would be more interesting to query that publication and BDUK about their achievement of those objectives to date.

BDUK is seeking to establish a framework agreement of suitably qualified prime contractors capable of delivering local broadband projects as required by local bodies or groups of local bodies. "Local bodies" potentially includes local authorities, local enterprise partnerships, devolved administrations and other public sector bodies.

Wait just one minute. Haven't we been here before? With first gen broadband? Can I not recall OGC asking for 12 suppliers for broadband solutions? And the massive outcry there was at the time about the failure to permit new entrants etc in to the game? Didn't we end up with something that (sorry, Paul) was called OGC BS (Bullshit or Buying Solutions, take your pick), and which resulted in a total failure to deliver first gen and IT solutions through 'preferred suppliers'? Isn't that what we have here, again? Are we really, so soon, going to repeat a similar futile exercise? Cut out all the innovators, new entrants, solutions providers already on the ground and digging into the ground? Seriously?

And who is defining 'Suitably qualified prime contractors'? A bank? Are any of these prime contractors going to be assessed on :

Failure to deliver consumer and business broadband requirements to date
Over-priced access for any third party to infrastructure built using public money
Failure to keep Britain in the broadband game through innovation

Prime contractors will need to be capable of delivering a range of broadband and related requirements, including (but not limited to):
— The design, build, integration and operation of wholesale broadband networks at a county, multi-county or regional level. Such areas could be of potentially up to the order of 500 000 premises,
— Broadband solutions that meet outcomes-based specifications rather than being tied to specific technologies and platforms,
— Open access wholesale services including for retail service providers (e.g. Internet Service Providers) to include as part of retail broadband packages for business and residential customers.
It is currently anticipated that: the framework agreement will be for a duration of two years with the possibility of up to 2 one-year extensions; and the contract notice for this framework agreement will be issued by the end of June 2011.

Right, one at a time. If these prime contractors were capable of delivering such a range of requirements, why have they not already done so?

Hasn't the noise from grassroots level reached BDUK about the huge dissatisfaction over the four pilots? From choosing the wrong contractual body (eg county councils who are being hit from all sides by public sector cuts, who have little comprehension of broadband tech or usage, and who are busy trying to tie in PSN, council and education networks into an 'innovative pilot' (cough, splutter) that brings telehealth, education and e-gov into homes, businesses, schools, GPs etc) to demanding £100M in the bank to connect a tiny village to show how it can be done elsewhere - do you not get it yet???

Have you not assessed what wholesale broadband networks are in place eg CLEO in Cumbria and Lancashire, and thought, "Hey, maybe we don't need to re-invent the wheel?"

Have you not mapped the existing infrastructure and said, "We don't need to spend £2Bn putting in a framework agreement - that would be a pure and simple waste of public money. What we need to do is force the existing infrastructure owners, the consumers and communities (however large or small) and our so-called Big Society government to join the dots."

Have you not considered that "outcomes-based specifications" is a totally lunacy when no-one can possibly know what is round the corner? Are you going to specify that one of the outcomes is that everyone can watch iPlayer or BBC News on the move, or are you going to accept that probably less than a year down the line bog standard TV will become old hat when everyone can livestream from their jumper?

Have you actually thought out why an ISP is required? Connect me or my neighbours into a DVP and why do I need an ISP? To be regulated? Oh, get on. Read the Dumb Network and work it out. ISPs are so yesterday, as is DRM etc.

We need dumb fat pipes. We have been saying it for years. Some people may need services, such as VM and Sky TV, but give people access and they will find their own content, make their own content, bundle their own packages and services, develop their own apps, create innovative apps as we see in Chattanooga, and much, much more.

Whilst local bodies may elect to deliver broadband via other procurement routes,

Except we, BDUK, may force them down a route where this is impossible, eg by issuing a Framework agreement that all local bodies must adhere to if they want any of the pots of money the Treasury has cajoled out of the likes of the BBC Licence Fee etc

BDUK expects that a majority of the available funding will be accessed via call-off contracts from this framework agreement. There is the potential for the framework agreement to cover projects with a total value of up to 2 000 000 000 GBP or more.
Further details on this opportunity will be provided at the industry day (see below). This further information may include information on: the scope of the framework agreement; the award procedure to be followed; anticipated timetable; funding; etc.estimated cost excluding VAT 2 000 000 000 GBP
Division into lots No

Division into Lots? No bloody chance. That would be opening the door to discussions with people who may be right, and prolong the agony for all concerned far beyond the next election.
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Thinking Down and Dirty

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Read more! Last week, courtesy of Jazz at @geonetworks, I had an interesting trip down the sewers within sight of the Olympic Stadium in East London - probably the closest I will get to the Olympics. Here follows some info, photos and thoughts from that trip.......

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



We met outside a rather posh hotel in Liverpool Street and during that brief wait, I found myself talking to @superglaze aka David Meyer, who some of you may know from ZDNet. I thanked him for getting the answers I had asked for from JANET about why they had upgraded their core network to 100Gbps. Those answers from JANET are well worth a read if you think a USC of 2Mbps is sufficient......

We took a taxi to Bow and prepared ourselves for the descent into the unknown. White suits, rubber gloves and a rather funky pair of fisherman's socks, all encased in waders. A safety briefing from our inimitable guide, Rob, who I suspect should have his own radio show, and we were hooked up to clamber down the ladder into one of the two barrels which had been closed off for our visit and other maintenance work.

Superglaze gazing downwards....

Once in the barrel, we could see the four ducts coming in from street level. (My iPhone packed up as a camera at this point so further underground photos can be found on geonetwork's Flickr stream....)

These four ducts have 144 cables in each - as should *any* ducting being laid in 2011 and beyond, with 288 in each duct in areas like Docklands and other high density areas. 1 is used for customers and 1 is used for testing. The other two are there for upgrades and to check for degradation faults.

Geo networks has 107km ([Corrected from 50km] of ducting laid in London and 3000km [Corrected from 2000] across the UK. Those ducts are tested against everything you can think of - rats, beer cans, sewage etc. (The ducts are that diameter because rats cannot get their jaws round them to gnaw!). The ducts are laid about 5+ feet up the walls of the sewers to keep them out of the way of "rags", high water level, and jetters. Jetters are like high pressure water jets which come in to clear blockages, and also drag any blockages back along the sewer to remove it, which means loose lay - as H20 have attempted - can be an issue as the fibre can get caught in the machinery. The cinders which we crunched over on the floor turned out to be tarmac which has washed down the gutters over the years. (I suspect it would be preferable not to recycle it, but there's a challenge for someone if we run out of oil to make tarmac to fill in potholes...!)

When choosing where to lay the ducts, Geo first use maps of their network, maps of other networks, and Google Earth and Streetview to analyse the best route above ground. Within the sewers, ducting is usually laid on the opposite side to manholes and entrances to avoid any possible accidental damage. So, in the sewer we were in, the ducting was laid down the right hand side as all further manholes were on the left in the 4 miles to the main processing plant. At the time we went below, across the entire London Geo network, there was a mere 4m of ducting which required re-affixing to a wall. Normally, there is a 4hr time limit to fix customer problems but Geo has had 100% uptime since the vast majority of it was laid in the last 5 years.

Rob told us about Santos, which sounds remarkably like Google's infamous TISP fibre April Fool; but this is a serious solution. The plan is to bring fibre to homes and buildings by bringing the fibre not to the nearest manhole in the street, but through the sewers into the basement etc of the building and then breaking out. This is a particularly great solution for towerblocks etc.....However, rural folk have not been forgotten and there are plans for fibre sewer entry through mini sewers rather than these enormous sewers we were standing in.

When the figures of what was being carried through each duct were provided, I did debate whether I could become a 'sewer rat' and just live down there. 80 wavelengths each carrying 100Gbps, giving a total of 8 terrabits per second - so near and yet so far! 2 years ago, there were a mere 32 wavelengths of 10Gbps each. The IEEE is keeping everyone on their toes by ratifying new standards so the fibre within reach (no, you just wouldn't want to!) was G.652 metro for short hops and in rural areas you would use G.655 for longer hops.

There are no joints within the sewers where possible, and once we got to the huge metal bulkhead door and the false bottom floor maneouvred by chains, you could fully understand why! At that point you began to understand the power of the 'water' that would soon be flowing back where we were now standing.

The engineering within the sewer was astounding. That false bottom and the bulkhead were Victorian and still fully functional, although Rob hammered it home that raising that false floor to drop raw sewage into the Thames was probably treason - definitely a "Here's your P45" offence anyway.

Sir Joseph Bazalgette , who designed the sewers by assessing London's waste problem, guestimating the size London might grow to within the lifespan of the sewers and then doubling his estimates, was a bloody genius who, as Rob pointed out, did not have civil servants, limited budgets, accountants, or quantity surveyors saying, "Those 2p bricks are too expensive, let's use cheaper ones" as he would have today.

Bazalgette's foresight and generosity in diameters and overflow systems works today. Whilst he never foresaw high-rise buildings, nor the phenemonal sprawl that London has 'enjoyed', Bazalgette's approach to raw sewage should be applied today in next generation network planning and build.

We are only going to do this once, and we should be doubling the most generous guestimates of data need, as Bazalgette did with sewage. C'mon, are we so dim as to ignore Victorian engineers who were the envy of the world?

Possibly the worst part for me was seeing the completely numb metal plates that have been placed over the incredible arches the Victorians built to ensure that the overflow level is raised to ensure it will be far higher during the Olympics and will not flood the River Lea, which is part of the Olympic waterway. Future generations will look at these and wonder at a generation who seemed to have little pride in their engineers, and were held hostage to a lack of joined up thinking, profits and built-in obsolence.

The barrels we were standing in sit atop a duplicate set of barrels for the overflow system - a double-barrelled set up! Makes you look at drains in a totally different way once above ground - it's very much an 'iceberg' - far more below than at street level. The arches and walls begin at a height of over 4 ft from the floor and only once the water level passes these walls does the overflow cascade into the lower levels. Each arch is a triumph of Victorian brickwork, now hidden under 21st century cost-cutting exercise.

One of the other Victorian 'niceties' of the system were snow shutes built into the roads. Down these were shoveled snow by the road cleaners, thereby removing it entirely from the London road network, unlike today where the place seems to grind to a halt if an inch of snow falls.

We learn about the install process - plan route, install plastic hangers for the duct, fit duct in gentle curves to ensure no breakage of the glass fibre, blow fibre, connect customers. It all seems so simple. And we know it is, when you remove the chancers who do not have the ethics of our forebears who left a legacy for us in railways, canals, sewers etc. We hear about this current failure to enhance ours and the next generations' lives in a disturbing way....

Often, when planning a route through the sewers, the Geo and Thames Water teams find themselves up against sections of sewer where bombs fell during the 2nd World War. At the time, because obviously, there were other things going on above ground that needed attention urgently, a wall was built around each end of the destroyed section and a pipe shoved through to keep the sewage flowing. In the 60 intervening years, we have done little to nothing to fix those sections of sewer barrels.

Our moral fibre appears to be lacking. Are we building 'best networks' for the next generation, or 'best networks for profits"?

All in all, a highly enjoyable day courtesy of Geo and I will find out the name of the Geo gent who introduced me over a glass of water afterwards to the concept of "From POTS to PANS" - Pretty Awesome New Stuff, which has had me thinking far too much!! (I think it was from Intel some 10-15 years).

It all highlighted why we need to learn the lessons from the past.

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