FTTH - TV stopped by rain!

They say the rain in Spain falls mostly on the plain, well the rain in Portugal falls mostly on the roof of Feira Internacional de Lisboa - so hard in fact that it's halted a recording for the new Total TeleVision.

This however is the only fly in the ointment for a great event, with over 2,500 people the atmosphere is buzzing - and what's even more impressive is that most of these people do seem to be totally engaged, in the conference, in the expo, and of course lining up to be interviewed by Brian Dolby!

Maybe the weather has kept them in-doors, but that said it was sunny 10 minutes ago!

Fire up the Quattro

A certain part of London is either experiencing uncharacteristically high mobile penetration, or muggings are on the rise.

"We've been stopping a lot of people who have a lot of phones, recently," commented one of Her Majesty's finest, on Saturday morning.

The amount of suspicion in his tone suggested that the good people of southwest London probably aren't yet affluent enough to arbitrarily acquire multiple handsets, and instead more folks are using less-than-honest means to get their sticky fingers on the latest smartphones.

The policeman was stood outside a community centre encouraging local residents to have their handsets security tagged with their postcode and house number. It makes the phone traceable if it is handed in or recovered by police, he said.

With the number of mobile players these days offering phone insurance and online back-up services, daubing on a phone with an ultra-violet pen seems a little antiquated.

Nevertheless in the spirit of gonzo journalism I lined up to have my phone tagged, whereupon I suddenly remembered I'm moving house, which means my postcode and house number will soon change. So instead I chose my parents' details, which although being a fixed address, is nowhere near southwest London.

Cue a minor interrogation about why I would pick a seemingly-random part of the world for a security tag on a new smartphone, during which I realised that if I do happen lose my phone, it will take an unprecedented level of cooperation between police forces in different parts of the country - and my parents - to ever see it again.

Never mind.

Barcelona buzz

Here we are again, in the press room at the Barcelona Fira furiously typing away to make sure we don't miss a thing from this year's Mobile World Congress.

So far, there's a lack of buzz about the place... but admittedly it's 10am on day one, so maybe it's not surprising that there are plenty of spare seats. We should be able to tell in a few hours how busy MWC 2010 is compared with last year.

Check out Total Telecom later today for all the latest. We've got press conferences to come from Nokia, Microsoft, Nokia Siemens Networks and more.

And if you're in Barcelona, leave us a comment to let us know how you're finding this year's show.

Connected Britain

I went to a panel debate last week, hosted by the London Transport Museum, on the subject of how connectivity is affecting where and how people live in the UK.

It was extremely interesting, and raised some very good points. The panel was chaired by BBC journalist Evan Davis and included writer and broadcaster Janet Street-Porter, futurologist James Bellini, Robert Ainger from Orange and The London Mayor’s Transport Adviser Kulveer Ranger.

Today, Orange put out a press release about the event, claiming the conclusions of the panel were essentially that "rather than destroying human interaction, technology will enhance it".

It's certainly true that that view was expressed to a certain degree. But I would say some of the panellists also expressed concern that an increased reliance on technology and working from home will in some ways also alienate people, and create more loneliness. That side of the debate did not seem to make it into the press release! Also, the panellists noted that they were really talking about a small minority of people who currently work in offices: A lot of people do not and have no choice but to go where the work is.

For me, the elephant in the room was the current state of Britain's connectivity. There seemed to be the assumption that in a few years time we would all be able to live where we wanted because high-speed broadband Internet would be available everywhere. As things stand, I am not sure we can assume that!? Who is going to build all this rural fibre? When are the spectrum auctions actually going to take place? And is the 2-Mbps promised under Digital Britain really going to be enough?

I think we've got some way to go yet...