It’s been quite a while since I lost posted an entry in this clutter; I’ve been wondering about all the different topics I should mention for over a week. Mentioning each of them would take a long time, so let me start with the summary.
I did quit my previous company and since then I wrote the resignation letter, I feel very calm and relaxed; I am discovering the Zen attitude. I started as a Network Administrator for a financial company specialized in Credit Card Processing today and everything went very well.
Last week, I visited my cousin in Brittany, she’s such a nice person I really enjoy; and even the weather was great.
Soon, I’ll post a few updates regarding the other subjects.
Oh, did I mention that I was getting a bit confused with my gallery? I decided to upload a few pictures to flickr because it is much easier to use tags than managing a hierarchy according to the photo style. So here are the latest photos.
SELECT IF(UNIX_TIMESTAMP("2009-03-20 11:44:00")<UNIX_TIMESTAMP (NOW()), "SPRING", "WINTER") AS SEASON;
The bicycle friendly map of Luxembourg and around has been updated.
More information is available on this page.
Google Maps version (beta).
“>The Internet in Kazakhstan So I looked at it …
Here in Luxembourg, I spend about $150 monthly for one of my broadband flat rate Internet access: about 2% of my gross revenue.
In Kazakhstan, unlimited Internet access is far from being affordable, especially with an average monthly salary of $400. For example, a flat rate 2 Mbit/s ADSL price is over $4500, per month, and does include neither the 14% tax, the activation fee nor the modem. The alternative solution, using cable, provides a 10 Mbit/s access that is about a thousand times higher than in Western Europe: over $35,000. Of course taxes, activation and modem are excluded.
A report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe explains more about Internet governance in Kazakhstan (seek to page 119).
reviewed or finished – many are already obsolete.
So let me be lazy and put a few pictures I took two years ago when I left to Vancouver where I visited somekool.
PS: find the boat?
Awesome easter, thanks to CouchSurfing!
I just had too many requests on that week end, so unfortunately I had to refuse some; but we ended up meeting all the groups and had a nice BBQ. It was very international with some people from Luxembourg, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Finland, United States and New Zealand. We had the opportunity to share some food, chocolates and teas.
The next day, I left with the two american girls to the North, riding our bicycles to Vianden.
The picture below is an invoice from my cellphone operator.
If you open it, you’ll notice that I underlined one of the data transfer while I was in Germany: 0.5945 Euros (excl. VAT) for 3 kB transferred, charging a price up to 233 EUR per MB transfered (incl. VAT) (~300 USD). To compare, local data connections can be charged as 3 EUR/GB if used within one day.
In this example (using the worst roaming condition and best local price), roaming charges are up to about 80 000 times more than local connections.
Operators are making a so huge fortune with data roaming that they’ll never want to change the system; and European members states will support them as they collect the VAT (between 15% and 25%, depending on the states). Since the European commission somewhat managed to limit roaming charges for voice calls, will they increase their data charges in order keep their profit as high as possible?
I think there will not be any real Europe as long as it’s based on national operators that are not willing to deploy a European-wide network. On the other hand, what would people think in Australia if they were charged for roaming charges between states? That would definitely kill or damage many businesses.
As a user and consumer, I prefer to switch a wifi network (either public, available in a café or on the Fon community) where I can even use a Voice over IP client on my phone and pay only a few symbolic cents/minute instead of Euros. How will operators react when massive people switch to an alternative like those? Will they file for bankruptcy or attempt to make wifi illegal?
In addition to this, the Luxembourg based cellphone operator Tango launched a special offer named unlimited surf pack: it includes 5GB of data. So how unlimited is it? It’s available 24/7, so marketing people described it as unlimited. Nice joke!
As a summary, this Eurobarometer study on roaming says a lot, despite it is not focused on data roaming.
