from mastRIP.com

3G got Planning for the mast on Advance Tyres, Glasnevin Avenue. But our appeal to An Bord Plenanla, has just overturned the planning decision.
Congratulations to everyone… Goes to show what we can do when we stick together. further information will be posted in the next few days

back when we sought the sensible siting of a mast in Baldoyle in 2005 the Glasnevin group began their campaign. Their fight and story is a lesson to us all to fight the good fight and to stay the course. well done. phone companies your customers are citizens with rights! wake up, engage and meet prior to planning to discuss where these masts are to go. a quadrupling of network in the name of competition is a joke nobody is laughing at.

This appeal win seems to be another case where ABP overturned an inspectors report, and it seems to be restricted to the revisions to a previous successful planning application. I am seeking extra info on this.

a viral txt message is doing the rounds on the vodafone network in Ireland, the viral message asks recipients to txt 10 friends (on vodafone network) the news that vodafone 2 vodafone txts are free for life. when you have sent the tenth message you are promised €5 extra credit, then the message signs off as being from vodafone.

this message has been seen since Saturday (20/01), and hit an 087 phone here this afternoon, I smelled a rat as to grant the €5 credit vodafone would need to be reading your outbound txts and that would be illegal without court order to gardai.

its in fact a fraud committed by persons unknown and vodafone benefit from revenue made of the gullibility of some of their customers to the offer. vodafone after 3 days have not put a press release here on their website (18:55 22/01/2007). Vodafone cust care are aware and have asked me to forward the txt to 50005 for the data protection commissioner, this i am assured is not to grass up my stupid friends that sent the txt but to gather a general count of how many txts are whizzing around. BEWARE OF VIRAL TXT SPAM - vodafone a little PR on the web would help.

[update] this is happening to o2 as well (see comments) also among a group of 7 tonight 5 had got these txts

[update] 50005 is not data protection. its a vodafone number see digitalrights.ie on txt spam

[first posted to wavelinks 7 in May 2001]

15 Billion Text messages a month are clocked by the world’s 600+ network
operators.

SMS - Short Messaging Service or Text (aka ‘Txt’ in the classrooms of
Ireland) has come of age.

It really took off with the arrival of pre-paid mobiles in Europe. Cost conscious teenagers (and adults) are happily thumbing away 160 character messages (msgs) to each other. 10P per message for the sender - no cost for receiving.

Txt allows you to keep it short in a busy world, the awkward keypad entry is less of a discomfort because the message length is a maximum 160 characters. This has aided the evolution of a new sub language of ‘txt speak’, i.e. ‘R U able 2 C me now?’ = ‘are you able to see me now?’

TV networks and radio stations are beginning to opt for Txt as the preferred medium of interaction while the telex, fax, phone and even e-mail fade to the background.

News delivery and m-commerce are making their way on to mobiles with text services, bypassing the less preferred WAP technology that lacks Text’s low cost, e.g. a IEP10 pre-paid card will buy 100 txts, but the same IEP10 lasts only 50 minutes on WAP. Plus, Txt is more interactive: with the send and receive function, the end user can enjoy 200+ messages before top up, while a WAP user rarely interacts with anything more than a dumb Web server. Expect to see more B2B and field use of Txt by Irish businesses in the coming years.

Put those shades on - the future of Txt is very bright. Read more …..
http://www.smspress.com/ | http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/sms.html

from wavelinks#6 april 2001

WAP, SMS and PDAs are discreet; voice calls on mobiles in public places are not. In fact, they are becoming more intrusive socially than smoking ever was.

Over the past five years (1996-2001) I have carried out a personal non-scientific study into mobile phone usage on the Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART). The focus of the study: the number of incoming calls, outgoing calls and phone configuration (including address book, SMS & WAP). Usage peaked in late 1999 with up to 40 calls a carriage on a 20 minute journey. The most annoying statistic is that no more than eight users would be involved. Sit beside one of these phone-aholics and you will be treated to every graphic detail of business or social activity a one-sided conversation has to offer.

The right to own a mobile and use it just about anywhere seems to regarded as an inalienable right. Social etiquette regarding its usage has lagged behind this fast moving technology. The early adopters, the younger demographics of our population, have set no boundaries of usage. Where once we learned social graces from our elders, young upwardly ‘mobile’ morons are stepping outside the boundaries of excitability and SCREAMING “HELLO I’M ON THETRAINNN, 2 HOWTH, LUV”.

Just as smoking has been banned in many public areas, it may be prudent for legislators to limit the spaces where intrusive calls can happen, or phone rage could become a phenomenon we could do without.

Failing legislation, the gap in the market might be filled by the ‘vigilante phone jammer’. C-Guard Cellular FireWall is a jammer device that transmits low power radio signals, which cut-off communications between cellular handsets and cellular base stations. The jamming effect can be digitally controlled to form quiet zones in confined places. Source http://www.cguard.com/

Armed with one of these I could disconnect an entire carriage of mobile users, and generate income for the poor unfortunate phone user from dropped calls. The only downside of jamming is what follows, a chorus of “hello? HeLLO HELLLO? Are you there?” Watch for the news headline - ‘Mobile Morons Zapped By Jammers’

–

looks like the yummies in the SUVs have yet to be forced hands free, perhaps the law should enshirne that yummies can multi task and young drivers speed the rest of us have low insurance - sure aren’t yis all right then..