Author: angel

Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile customers face the longest wait to speak to customer service operators by phone, the regulator Ofcom has found.

Virgin Media customers waited seven minutes and 40 seconds on average, while Virgin Mobile took six minutes and 44 seconds to answer calls in 2020.

EE had the shortest average wait time with one minute and 15 seconds, followed by TalkTalk.

Virgin Media said customer service was a “top priority”.

Overall, 52% of all UK broadband customers were happy with how their complaints were dealt with.

That compared with 57% of mobile users.

Virgin Media said it had been forced to change the set-up of its contact centres during the pandemic.

“We’re proud of how we rose to this challenge,” it said.

“However, we recognise there’s room for improvement, which is why we have already increased our investments in digital and customer service, including creating more than 1,000 customer care roles in the UK last year, and will be making further improvements later this year.”

Better deals
It is Ofcom’s fifth annual report exploring how well the major providers support customers and provide information about what they offer.

The regulator said while many companies were now offering better deals, customer service was still facing issues.

Other findings included:

Broadband and landline customers waited four minutes and nine seconds on average to speak to someone in 2020
Mobile customers waited two minutes and seven seconds
26% of broadband customers had “a reason to complain” about their provider or service
Only 3% of mobile customers were unhappy with their service
Most people were only without services for a maximum of two days due to faults
Soaring demand
Lindsey Fussell, Ofcom’s network and communications group director, said on the whole broadband and mobile companies had “adapted well” to soaring demand for connectivity during the pandemic.

“Some have struggled with customer service problems,” she added.

“We’re challenging them to act now, so the telecoms industry becomes the gold standard for customer service.”

Rocio Concha, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Which? said it was important for the sector to uphold the commitments they had made in 2019.

“In a time where being connected is more important than ever, providers need to take their commitments seriously and do more to meet consumers’ expectations – particularly on customer service, pricing and ease of changing contracts,” she said.

IBM says it has made a significant breakthrough in computer processors by creating a 2nm chip in its test lab.

The process used to make computer chips is measured in nanometres (nm) – with a lower number usually signifying a leap forward.

IBM claims its test chip can improve performance by 45% over current 7nm commercially available products.

It is also more energy efficient – using 75% less energy to match current performance, IBM said.

It claims the tech could “quadruple” mobile phone battery life, and phones might only need to be charged every four days.

The computer chip industry used to use nanometres – one billionth of a metre – to measure the physical size of transistors. Today, a lower “nm” number is widely seen as a marketing term to describe new generations of the technology, leading to better performance and lower power.

IBM says its 2nm process can cram 50 billion transistors into “a chip the size of a fingernail” – up from 30 billion when it announced its 5nm breakthrough in 2017.

The end result should be another performance bump for computers in the coming years.

‘A breakthrough’
Current high-end desktop chips based on the 7nm process, such as AMD’s Ryzen processors, did not become widely available until 2019 – four years after IBM announced it had cracked the 7nm process.

But mainstream commercial chip-makers such as Intel and TSMC – which makes AMD processors – have already said they plan to build ultra-low nm chip plants in the next several years.

“This can be considered as a breakthrough,” said Peter Rudden, research director at market intelligence firm IDC.

“We have seen semiconductor manufacturers moving from 14nm to 10nm to 7nm, with 7nm being a real challenge for some,” he explained.

He said IBM’s new process could be used for AI uses that today need a second piece of tech – such as a powerful graphics card- to handle some tasks. The increased power efficiency could be useful in personal devices, while increased performance would benefit huge datacentres, he added.

“This also sends a message to the IT industry that IBM continues to be a hardware research powerhouse.”

Chip wars
IBM said the test chip for its 2nm process was built at its Albany research lab in the United States.

The news comes amid an international shortage of computer chips and a bid to shake up chip manufacturing to rely less on major foundries in China and Taiwan.

Car manufacturers have been forced to suspend production due to the lack of computer parts; smartphone makers have warned product releases could be affected; and high-end computer components such as graphics cards are difficult to find and selling for high prices.

Why iPhone 12 marks dawn of a new chip technology
How will ‘chipageddon’ affect you?
On Thursday, Nintendo joined the chorus of concerned companies, saying the chip shortage was affecting production of its hugely popular Nintendo Switch console.

The worldwide shortage led US President Joe Biden to convene a special industry summit on the shortage. In the UK, the government has intervened in the acquisition of chip designer Arm by tech giant Nvidia.

And Intel’s chief executive has announced a $20bn (£14.6bn) investment in two new plants in the US, telling the BBC that having 80% of the world chip supply in Asia is not a good idea.

Donald Trump has launched a new “communications” website, which says it will publish content “straight from the desk” of the former US president.

Mr Trump was banned by Twitter and suspended by Facebook and YouTube after the Capitol riots in January.

The former president has since been releasing statements by press release – which the new website will now host.

Users will be able to like posts – and also share them on Twitter and Facebook accounts.

“It is a blog,” Kara Swisher, technology columnist for the New York Times told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “I was like ‘2002 is calling and it wants its blog back…’

“I don’t know what the overall plan is because he does have some very sharp digital advisers. It is just the beginning of his attempts to try to re-establish a louder ability to participate in digital media.”

Mr Trump’s senior adviser, Jason Miller, had previously said a new social media platform was to be launched. “This new platform is going to be big,” he said in March.

But Mr Miller tweeted on Tuesday that the new website was not the social media platform he had previously hyped.

“We’ll have additional information coming on that front in the very near future,” he said.

The website is reportedly built by Campaign Nucleus, a digital services company created by Mr Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale.

Several posts on the site repeat debunked claims that last year’s presidential election was rigged.

The new site arrived just before a decision from Facebook’s Oversight Board on whether Facebook was right to ban Mr Trump.

The panel upheld the ban – but said Facebook must review whether it should be permanent, and apply consistent rules to all users. That could leave the door open to Mr Trump’s return to Facebook and Instagram in the future.

The former president used his new site to label Facebook – along with Twitter and Google – “a total disgrace”.

“Free speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the radical left lunatics are afraid of the truth,” he said.

“The people of our country will not stand for it! These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our electoral process.”

YouTube has said they will reactivate Mr Trump’s account when the threat of “real-world violence” reduces.

Twitter, where Mr Trump had 88 million followers, has banned him permanently.

A Twitter spokesperson told the BBC: “Generally, sharing content from the website referenced is permitted as long as the material does not otherwise violate the Twitter Rules”.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps appeared to confirm in a recent interview that England’s NHS app would be used as a vaccine passport.

Travel restrictions are due to ease on 17 May, after which foreign travel can resume.

However a government source told the BBC the app would not be ready “imminently”.

It is connected to GP services in England and linked to personal health data.

People can use the NHS app to request repeat prescriptions, message their doctor and organise online consultations. It is completely separate from the NHS Covid-19 app, which is used for contact-tracing.

The NHS app is already able to display vaccine statuses, including Covid-19 jabs – but this must be enabled by GPs, and while some seem to do this by default, other surgeries ask patients to request it.

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi told BBC Breakfast that work was under way on preparing it to act as a passport – this could involve it having access to not only vaccine status, but also to most recent test results.

“NHSx [the NHS’s digital division]…are working on making that operationally possible for the 17th of May,” he said.

But in a statement, the Department of Health and Social Care said only that the app was “being considered as part of the digital route”.

It might seem that the NHS app, used by a million or so people since 2019 to book GP appointments or order prescriptions, has fortuitously given the government an instant solution to creating a vaccine passport.

Not so fast – there are a number of hurdles to be cleared.

While the app can record your vaccinations, that isn’t automatic – I’ve searched in vain to find the record of my Covid jab, only to get a message saying I need to ask my GP for access to my detailed health record. If the NHS app does become a vaccine passport, millions of people will be bombarding GPs with similar requests.

But the government has made it clear it wants a broader process of Covid certification, including recent test results, otherwise young people who hadn’t been vaccinated wouldn’t be able to travel. Integrating tests into the app promises to be complex.

Finally, there’s the process of transforming the NHS app into something that will be easy to use and trusted by border police around the world.

“If people think they’ll just be able to flash the existing app with their vaccine record at passport control, that isn’t going to happen,” one insider told me.

Getting everything ready by 17 May looks like a major bureaucratic challenge, even if the technology can be updated quickly and efficiently.

Presentational grey line
A number of countries and organisations have proposed their own vaccine passport arrangements:

European officials have announced plans for an EU-wide “Green Digital Certificate”. This would allow anyone vaccinated against Covid, or who has tested negative, or recently recovered from the virus, to travel within the region.
New York has launched a digital-wallet style Covid-19 passport called the Excelsior Pass. The White House however has ruled out a compulsory federal passport.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has launched its own app, the IATA Travel Pass which it trialled with Singapore Airlines
UK-based independent healthcare app My GP launched a simple vaccine certification feature last week, in the form of a green tick for users 12 days after their second dose of the vaccine.
In the UK, government minister Michael Gove provided a written statement to parliament today, following a trip to Israel to learn about the country’s Green Pass system.

He emphasised that there were no plans to make vaccine certification compulsory in certain domestic settings, including essential public services and shops, and on public transport, but did not focus on international travel

Apple has announced its new iOS 14.5 update for the iPhone and iPad.

The most newsy feature is its new App Tracking Transparency function – which means users will have to “opt in” if they want their online activity tracked by companies. Here are the things that caught our eye.

Unlocking an iPhone wearing a mask
Apple’s new operating system will allow you to unlock your phone whilst wearing a mask – with a gigantic catch.

Apple’s facial recognition doesn’t generally work when users are wearing a mask. Apple’s work-around involves you also owning an Apple Watch.

Apple said: “With Apple Watch on the wrist, unlocked, and in close proximity to iPhone, users can simply glance at their iPhone and they will receive haptic feedback from Apple Watch, indicating their iPhone has been unlocked.”

For anyone who doesn’t own an Apple Watch, as well as an iPhone, this feature won’t work.

App Tracking Transparency
The new update will mean a prompt will flash up when you want to download an app – asking for your permission for the app to track your online activity.

That data is currently used to create highly targeted ads based on your online behaviour by companies like Facebook.

Facebook has publically lobbied against the new change. The less Facebook knows about you, the less money it can charge for adverts.

Apple’s motives for the move have been questioned. If app developers can’t make as much through advertising, they might be more inclined to charge for services – and Apple makes money from these payments.

Like millions of iPhone users I downloaded iOS 14.5 last night and waited to find out what Apple’s brave new world of freedom from tracking looked like.

But nothing happened. There were no alerts from the hundreds of apps I have installed, asking me to agree to tracking. I tried downloading some new apps, but again: nothing, nada, zilch.

Buried in the privacy section of the phone’s settings is a switch labelled “Allow Apps to Request to Track” which was toggled on. Underneath, just one app was listed – a streaming service which I think I updated last night.

It seems that even if that is switched on, tracking stays off until the apps themselves push out a request screen inviting you to accept it.

Facebook says it is in the process of pushing out its screen – preceded by another one, explaining why tracking is a good thing and has helped to keep many small businesses afloat.

But a huge system of data collection, which sees app users tracked wherever they go, has been switched off for all who download the update.

What’s not clear is how much of it will be switched on again – by users, or even by the developers themselves. Many may decide that this kind of tracking has had its day, and they need to find a new model for advertising.

2px presentational grey line
New Emojis
Apple has introduced several new emojis in its latest update.

For example, people will be able to select different skin tones for the “couple kissing” emoji and “couple with heart” emoji.

Apple said that “Additional emoji include characters for face exhaling, face with spiral eyes, face in clouds, hearts on fire, mending heart, and woman with a beard, among others.”

Siri
Apple says Siri, its voice-controlled assistant, is becoming more diverse.

“Siri no longer has a default voice, allowing users to choose the voice that speaks to them when they first set up their device,” says Apple.

“In English, users can now select more diverse voice options. These new Siri voices use Neural Text to Speech technology for an incredibly natural sound,” says Apple.

Apple says these updates represent longstanding commitments to diversity and inclusion.

However many of Apple’s devices are made in China, where Apple has received criticism for not being more vocal about the government’s treatment of Uyghurs.

Apple’s critics say that the company should be consistent in its messaging on diversity – both at home and abroad.

AirTags
Apple’s new operating system will work with the newly launched “AirTags”.

The small disc can be attached to things like your keys or wallet. If you lose them, you’ll be able to track them with the Find My app.

This looks very similar to another product on the market: “Tile”.

Last week Apple was criticised during a Senate hearing for copying Tile’s idea.

Tile’s General Counsel Kirsten Daru said “We welcome competition but it has to be fair competition and Apple’s idea of competing is patently unfair.”

She also accused Apple of preventing Tile from using the technology behind Apple’s Find My function, giving AirTags an unfair advantage.

Apple said the product was different. “We didn’t copy Tile’s product… It’s extremely different to anything else on the market,” said Apple’s Chief Compliance Officer, Kyle Andeer.

“The rate at which we’re growing the industry is absolutely scary,” says Paul Anderson from Birmingham University.

He’s talking about the market for electric cars in Europe.

By 2030, the EU hopes that there will be 30 million electric cars on European roads.

“It’s something that’s never really been done before at that rate of growth for a completely new product,” says Dr Anderson, who is also the co-director of the Birmingham Centre for Strategic Elements and Critical Materials.

While electric vehicles (EVs) may be carbon neutral during their working lifetime, he’s concerned about what happens when they run out of road – in particular what happens to the batteries.

“In 10 to 15 years when there are large numbers coming to the end of their life, it’s going to be very important that we have a recycling industry,” he points out.

While most EV components are much the same as those of conventional cars, the big difference is the battery. While traditional lead-acid batteries are widely recycled, the same can’t be said for the lithium-ion versions used in electric cars.

EV batteries are larger and heavier than those in regular cars and are made up of several hundred individual lithium-ion cells, all of which need dismantling. They contain hazardous materials, and have an inconvenient tendency to explode if disassembled incorrectly.

“Currently, globally, it’s very hard to get detailed figures for what percentage of lithium-ion batteries are recycled, but the value everyone quotes is about 5%,” says Dr Anderson. “In some parts of the world it’s considerably less.”

Recent proposals from the European Union would see EV suppliers responsible for making sure that their products aren’t simply dumped at the end of their life, and manufacturers are already starting to step up to the mark.

Nissan, for example, is now reusing old batteries from its Leaf cars in the automated guided vehicles that deliver parts to workers in its factories.

Volkswagen is doing the same, but has also recently opened its first recycling plant, in Salzgitter, Germany, and plans to recycle up to 3,600 battery systems per year during the pilot phase.

“As a result of the recycling process, many different materials are recovered. As a first step we focus on cathode metals like cobalt, nickel, lithium and manganese,” says Thomas Tiedje, head of planning for recycling at Volkswagen Group Components.

“Dismantled parts of the battery systems such as aluminium and copper are given into established recycling streams.”

Renault, meanwhile, is now recycling all its electric car batteries – although as things stand, that only amounts to a couple of hundred a year. It does this through a consortium with French waste management company Veolia and Belgian chemical firm Solvay.

“We are aiming at being able to address 25% of the recycling market. We want to maintain this level of coverage, and of course this would cover by far the needs of Renault,” says Jean-Philippe Hermine, Renault’s VP for strategic environmental planning.

“It’s a very open project – it’s not to recycle only Renault batteries but all batteries, and also including production waste from the battery manufacturing plants.”

The issue is also receiving attention from scientific bodies such as the Faraday Institution, whose ReLiB project aims to optimise the recycling of EV batteries and make it as streamlined as possible.

“We imagine a more efficient, more cost-effective industry in future, instead of going through some of the processes that are available – and can be scaled up now – but are not terribly efficient,” says Dr Anderson, who is principal investigator for the project.

Currently, for example, much of the substance of a battery is reduced during the recycling process to what is called black mass – a mixture of lithium, manganese, cobalt and nickel – which needs further, energy-intensive processing to recover the materials in a usable form.

Manually dismantling fuel cells allows for more of these materials to be efficiently recovered, but brings problems of its own.

“In some markets, such as China, health and safety regulation and environmental regulation is much more lax, and working conditions wouldn’t be accepted in a Western context,” says Gavin Harper, Faraday Institution research fellow.

“Also, because labour is more expensive, the whole economics of it make it difficult to make it a good proposition in the UK.”

The answer, he says, is automation and robotics: “If you can automate that, we can pull some of the danger out of it and make it more economically efficient.”

And there are indeed powerful economic arguments for improving the recyclability of EV batteries – not least, the fact that many of the elements used are hard to come by in Europe and the UK.

“You’ve got the waste management problem on the one hand, but then on the flip side of that you’ve also got a great opportunity because obviously the UK doesn’t have indigenous supplies of many factory materials,” says Dr Harper.

“There’s a bit of lithium in Cornwall, but by and large we’ve got challenges in terms of sourcing the factory materials that we need.”

From a manufacturer’s point of view, therefore, recycling old batteries is the safest way to ensure a ready supply of new ones.

“We need to secure – as a manufacturer, as Europeans – the sourcing of these materials that are strategic for mobility and for the industry,” says Mr Hermine.

“We don’t have access to these materials outside of this recycling field – the end-of-life battery is the urban mining of Europe.”

An audio start-up without revenue gets valued at $4bn (£2.8bn), Facebook is launching what it calls social audio experiences, while Twitter has a new feature called Spaces allowing users to start an instant chat room.

What’s going on?

This week’s Tech Tent explores whether good old-fashioned audio is the hot new thing.

The arrival of Clubhouse has suddenly made social media giants suffer a severe bout of Fomo – fear of missing out.

They watched the app, which allows users to start audio chatrooms on any subject they fancy, acquire lots of enthusiastic users and an enormous amount of Silicon Valley buzz.

Then came the validation any hot start-up requires – a funding round, this week led by the ritzy venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is reported to have valued Clubhouse at $4bn.

But the app is still only available to invited iPhone users, so what makes it so attractive?

One early adopter, Rachel Lankester, explained why she had become addicted.

“I’ve enjoyed the inclusivity of it and how it provides access to people that I usually just simply wouldn’t have,” she said. “I’ve connected with women from all over the world on there.”

Whereas video streaming apps demand a focus on your appearance, Rachel says she enjoys “the intimacy of audio”.

She describes how it has provided her, an amateur broadcaster, with a simple way of running a radio chat show with guests and audience participation.

“I had one woman who got up at 04:00 in the morning in Australia, just so she could speak directly to my guests. I think that’s pretty cool!”

Social media consultant Matt Navarra has a theory that the pandemic, which has seen millions locked down at home searching for entertainment, has provided an opportunity for services like Clubhouse.

“We wanted something new and interesting. And so audio provides that, a new medium for people to experience content with,” he said.

On repeat?
But even though the likes of Facebook and Twitter seem to be convinced that audio is going to be important to their audiences, Matt is cautious about its mass appeal.

He points to the story of Meerkat, a video streaming app that in 2015 was “poised to take the tech world by storm”, according to one blog.

“We all thought it was going to be amazing. And then quite quickly, we all realised that most people don’t produce that much exciting live content,” Mr Navarra said.

And that’s the problem which Clubhouse and its rivals will have to confront – while they will attract small communities passionately interested in talking about their specialist subjects, many people may tune in a couple of times, get bored by what they hear, and never return.

While live audio discussion may have limited appeal, recorded audio content may be more attractive – as the popularity of podcasts has shown.

And strangely, it has always been much easier to share a video on social media than to post an audio clip, so there is a big gap waiting to be filled. Or is there?

In researching this episode of Tech Tent I came across an article of mine from 2009 with the title “Time for an Audio Revolution”.

It was written by me and describes a range of audio apps, including one called Audioboo, which allowed users to post clips – or “boos” – on social media. I went on to be an enthusiastic user, with my boos including a message from Stephen Fry about his admiration for Steve Jobs just before the Apple founder’s death – and an account of spotting a bear on the path ahead during a family holiday in Yosemite.

Audioboo never became the YouTube of audio.

It shed its founder, changed its name to Audioboom, and became a podcast platform which just this month announced its first-ever quarterly profit, benefitting from the boom in listeners over the last year.

The audio revolution, which failed to arrive a decade ago, may be staging a comeback. But don’t be surprised if it turns out to be quite a muted affair.