That Spark outage…

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One of the fun things about TUANZ is you never know where the next media storm will come from, on Saturday I was in Wellington talking to the real heroes of NZ rural broadband – the regional wireless ISP’s (more about them later)

Here’s the latest update from Spark: 

Cyber criminals based overseas appear to have been attacking web addresses in Eastern Europe, and were bouncing the traffic off Spark customer connections, in what is known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

The DDoS attack was dynamic, predominantly taking the shape of an ‘amplified DNS attack’ which means an extremely high number of connection requests – in the order of thousands per second – were being sent to a number of overseas web addresses with the intention of overwhelming and crashing them.  Each of these requests, as it passes through our network, queries our DNS server before it passes on – so our servers were bearing the full brunt of the attack.

While the Spark network did not crash, we did experience extremely high traffic loads hitting our DNS servers which meant many customers had either slow or at times no connectivity (as their requests were timing out). There were multiple attacks, which were dynamic in nature.  They began on Friday night, subsided, and then began again early Saturday, continuing over the day.  By early Sunday morning traffic levels were back to normal and have remained so since. We did see the nature of the attack evolve over the period, possibly due to the cyber criminals monitoring our response and modifying their attack to circumvent our mitigation measures – in a classic ‘whack a mole’ scenario.

Its good to see Spark coming out with this statement as it deals with a lot of the ‘chatter’ that is out there, one question has been top of mind for a lot of people – Why just Spark? 

Here’s their reply: 

 

Why only Spark?

We can’t say what other networks experienced.  However, cyber criminals often look for clusters of IP addresses to use in any particular DDoS attack.  That makes it more likely that these IP addresses belong to the customers of a single ISP – even more likely with a large ISP like Spark.

And here’s a clue as to the ‘how’ of the attack: 
 
 

How did they get access through the Spark Network?

Since the attacks began we have had people working 24/7 to identify the root causes, alongside working to get service back to normal. During the attack, we observed that a small number of customer connections were involved in generating the vast majority of the traffic. This was consistent with customers having malware on their devices and the timing coincided with other DNS activity related to malware in other parts of the world. 

However, while we’re not ruling out malware as a factor, we have also identified that cyber criminals have been accessing vulnerable customer modems on our network. These modems have been identified as having “open DNS resolver” functionality, which means they can be used to carry out internet requests for anyone on the internet. This makes it easier for cyber criminals to ‘bounce’ an internet request off them (making it appear that the NZ modem was making the request, whereas it actually originates from an overseas source). Most of these modems were not supplied by Spark and tend to be older or lower-end modems.

What remains clear is that good end user security remains an important way to combat these attacks. With the proliferation of devices in households, that means both the security within your device and the security of your modem.

And a bit about what they had to do: 
 
 

What did Spark do?

We have now disconnected those modems from our network and are contacting all the affected customers. We have also taken steps at a network level to mitigate this modem vulnerability.  We are now in the process of scanning our entire broadband customer base to identify any other customers who may be using modems with similar vulnerabilities and will be contacting those identified customers in due course to advise them on what they should do.

With respect to malware we continue to strongly encourage our customers to keep their internet device security up to date, conduct regular scans and regularly update the operating software and firmware on their home network. We also continue to advise customers not to click on suspicious links or download files when they are not sure of the contents.  

We have also taken steps at the network level to make it more difficult for cyber criminals to exploit the DNS open resolver modem vulnerability and we’re using the latest technology to strengthen our network monitoring and management capabilities. For security reasons we can’t detail these steps, however this is an ongoing battle to stay one step ahead of cyber criminals who are continually using more and more sophisticated tactics.

 It has all the elements of a spy thriller and is a timely reminder of the importance of securing our networks, Spark have the added burden of being the ‘default provider of last resort’ which means they are more likely to have both older equipment out there and dare I say it, some of the less ICT literate customers.
 
Its a scary world out there – Stay Safe

That Spark outage…

/in /by

One of the fun things about TUANZ is you never know where the next media storm will come from, on Saturday I was in Wellington talking to the real heroes of NZ rural broadband – the regional wireless ISP’s (more about them later)

Here’s the latest update from Spark: 

Cyber criminals based overseas appear to have been attacking web addresses in Eastern Europe, and were bouncing the traffic off Spark customer connections, in what is known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

The DDoS attack was dynamic, predominantly taking the shape of an ‘amplified DNS attack’ which means an extremely high number of connection requests – in the order of thousands per second – were being sent to a number of overseas web addresses with the intention of overwhelming and crashing them.  Each of these requests, as it passes through our network, queries our DNS server before it passes on – so our servers were bearing the full brunt of the attack.

While the Spark network did not crash, we did experience extremely high traffic loads hitting our DNS servers which meant many customers had either slow or at times no connectivity (as their requests were timing out). There were multiple attacks, which were dynamic in nature.  They began on Friday night, subsided, and then began again early Saturday, continuing over the day.  By early Sunday morning traffic levels were back to normal and have remained so since. We did see the nature of the attack evolve over the period, possibly due to the cyber criminals monitoring our response and modifying their attack to circumvent our mitigation measures – in a classic ‘whack a mole’ scenario.

Its good to see Spark coming out with this statement as it deals with a lot of the ‘chatter’ that is out there, one question has been top of mind for a lot of people – Why just Spark? 

Here’s their reply: 

 

Why only Spark?

We can’t say what other networks experienced.  However, cyber criminals often look for clusters of IP addresses to use in any particular DDoS attack.  That makes it more likely that these IP addresses belong to the customers of a single ISP – even more likely with a large ISP like Spark.

And here’s a clue as to the ‘how’ of the attack: 
 
 

How did they get access through the Spark Network?

Since the attacks began we have had people working 24/7 to identify the root causes, alongside working to get service back to normal. During the attack, we observed that a small number of customer connections were involved in generating the vast majority of the traffic. This was consistent with customers having malware on their devices and the timing coincided with other DNS activity related to malware in other parts of the world. 

However, while we’re not ruling out malware as a factor, we have also identified that cyber criminals have been accessing vulnerable customer modems on our network. These modems have been identified as having “open DNS resolver” functionality, which means they can be used to carry out internet requests for anyone on the internet. This makes it easier for cyber criminals to ‘bounce’ an internet request off them (making it appear that the NZ modem was making the request, whereas it actually originates from an overseas source). Most of these modems were not supplied by Spark and tend to be older or lower-end modems.

What remains clear is that good end user security remains an important way to combat these attacks. With the proliferation of devices in households, that means both the security within your device and the security of your modem.

And a bit about what they had to do: 
 
 

What did Spark do?

We have now disconnected those modems from our network and are contacting all the affected customers. We have also taken steps at a network level to mitigate this modem vulnerability.  We are now in the process of scanning our entire broadband customer base to identify any other customers who may be using modems with similar vulnerabilities and will be contacting those identified customers in due course to advise them on what they should do.

With respect to malware we continue to strongly encourage our customers to keep their internet device security up to date, conduct regular scans and regularly update the operating software and firmware on their home network. We also continue to advise customers not to click on suspicious links or download files when they are not sure of the contents.  

We have also taken steps at the network level to make it more difficult for cyber criminals to exploit the DNS open resolver modem vulnerability and we’re using the latest technology to strengthen our network monitoring and management capabilities. For security reasons we can’t detail these steps, however this is an ongoing battle to stay one step ahead of cyber criminals who are continually using more and more sophisticated tactics.

 It has all the elements of a spy thriller and is a timely reminder of the importance of securing our networks, Spark have the added burden of being the ‘default provider of last resort’ which means they are more likely to have both older equipment out there and dare I say it, some of the less ICT literate customers.
 
Its a scary world out there – Stay Safe

Comcom 2 Chorus 0

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This morning the Court of Appeal rejected the Chorus appeal of the High Courts earlier ruling upholding the Commerce Commissions process interpreting the 2011 Telecommunications Act.

In a nutshell this means that the whole process of moving to ‘cost plus’ based pricing for wholesale, regulated copper broadband services just got 1 step closer.

We’re glad to see this happen, but we really just want to see Chorus get on with it. 

This saga has come to represent why New Zealand needed to move from the old privatised ‘monopoly utility’ to a structurally separated, regulated, open access model. that required a move from the old ‘retail minus’ wholesale model to a genuine and non-discriminatory ‘cost plus’ model. 

The reason for this was simple, retail minus simply cannot exist in a structurally separated model, Spark (Telecom) must have the same input costs as everybody else or the only possible result is a market of ‘stunted dwarves’ whose margins and profitability are set at the whim of the dominant player. 

Tune out the spin and you’re left with two conclusions, firstly the Government actually got the 2011 Act pretty much right and secondly that the day must come when Chorus investors must seriously question the board and management as to the wisdom and cost of the strategy they have chosen to follow. 

UFB now with 5% added fibre…

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The National party has today announced that the UFB program will be extended to cover 80% of NZ towns using additional funds from the ‘Future Investment Fund’ 

The process has yet to be defined but promises to bring UFB to more towns:

“Te Puke, Motueka, Morrinsville, Kerikeri, Huntly, Thames, Matamata, Ōtaki, Kawerau, Waitara, Kaitaia, Dannevirke, Alexandra, Stratford, Whitianga, Cromwell, Taumarunui, Picton, Foxton, Kaikohe, Marton, Te Kuiti, Katikati, Temuka, Waihi, Waipukurau, Warkworth, Carterton, Dargaville, Opotiki, Snells Beach, Te Aroha, Wairoa, Paeroa and Westport.”

— ICT Minister Amy Adams

TUANZ welcomes this extension of the UFB to more of NZ’s heartland, the UFB will deliver world beating internet access to New Zealand homes and businesses.

Today’s announcement is welcome because it continues to reduce the copper gap, that is the people who get left out of the UFB, its not a big issue now but it will be an ever widening gap as more people sign up for the UFB and enjoy speeds of 100mb/s or greater.

The process still needs fleshing out with detail but it will hopefully learn the lessons from the original UFB tender process.

The focus must now move to products, services, applications and uptake.

Updating the ‘Hype’ cycle…

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I spend quite a bit of time watching various technology stories emerge and I’ve learnt that you need to develop a couple of skills if you are going to maintain both your focus and sanity.

It is very easy to believe everything that you read and soon you come to realise that:

a.   A lot of the breathlessly announced new technologies never see the light of day

b.   A lot of progress is incremental and each subsequent release brings an increasing sense of disappointment as products and services approach the boring nirvana of some kind of long term ‘steady state’ existence

c.   How do you pick the winners?

There are a couple of models that I have found really useful over the years, the first is Geoffrey Moore’s ‘Crossing the Chasm’ model which helps to explain why so many products never make it beyond the early adopters and then I came across the Gartner Hype Cycle which I came across through my long term addiction to Wired magazine.

So I’m very curious to what the 2014 edition of the hype cycle contains:

The 2014 Gartner emerging technology Hype Cycle graph

The 2014 Gartner emerging technology Hype Cycle graph

 

Gartner have actually analysed over 2000 emerging technologies and placed them on this curve and they’ve been doing it for over 20 years so they have pretty unique depth in this space.

I love this model for several reasons, one is that it makes sorting the wheat from the chaff a lot easier, the second is that I now cynically wonder what the real purpose of a lot of announcements truly is. You know that they are usually about money, When concepts are at the ‘innovative trigger’ stage it can be about research grants, then attracting angel investors and venture capital, once the delightfully named ‘peak of inflated expectations’ is reached its often about attracting investors to an IPO or increasingly now part of a ‘crowdsourcing’ push this is followed by the aptly named ‘trough of disillusionment’ where it maybe about keeping grumpy investors or bankers on side long enough to reach the golden shores of the ‘slope of enlightenment’ which lead to the ‘plateau of productivity’ and its then our money that they’re after as consumers.

So what do you think of their picks?

 

2Degrees future?

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In the last 24 hours 2 stories have broken that cause me to pause and look a bit closer at 2Degrees, from a TUANZ perspective we have encouraged the competitive impact of having a 3rd mobile network and we have walked much of the journey with 2Degrees.

So here are the stories, the first is a blog post by Australian (Global?) telco commentator Paul Budde which asks a number of hard questions about 2Degrees and challenges a number of key assumptions about their performance and their future prospects.

“Five years on and to a certain extent it is a bit of a wonder that the company still exists.

Most operations launched, similar to 2Degrees but in other parts of the world, have since been gobbled-up by others or have simply disappeared.

Of their one million or so customers perhaps as much as 80% are people visiting the country, many only for a few weeks or months.

if the country believes it is in the national interest to have effective competition in the mobile market the only way to achieve that is to change the market structure through regulatory intervention.

Over all the years we have discussed these issues nothing has happened at a regulatory level to improve the market structure in New Zealand, and this would indicate that it is most unlikely the government will step in any time soon to address the situation. That being the case, it is with considerable certainty that we predict very little future for 2Degrees, and this is a very sad story indeed – from the perspective of economic development, competition and jobs.”

— Paul Budde – Buddeblog

The second story broke in this morning’s edition of industry newsletter TechDay about Indonesia’s largest telco being about to buy a 27% stake in 2Degrees as the second largest shareholder in 2Degrees after Trilogy Partners looks to sell out.

“Indonesia’s largest telco is reportedly about to buy a 27% stake in 2degrees.

Earlier this week, Syarif Syarial Ahmad, the chief executive of Telekomunikasi Indonesia International, or Telin – a subisidiary of Telekomunikasi Indonesia, or Telkom – was reported in Indonesian media as saying the company was negotiating with an unnamed New Zealand telecommunications operator.

Sources within 2degrees have confirmed to Techday that the Kiwi telco is in negotiations with Telin and Telkom.

Meanwhile, Netherlands-based Tresbrit BV owns 27.07% of 2degrees, according to Companies Office Records, sparking speculation that it could be the party exiting 2degrees. Tresbit took over the shares of UK-based Communications Ventures Partners in 2011.

Speculation has been running high for a while that 2degrees was likely to be sold. The company was a late entrant to the Kiwi mobile market, entering a market that was a duopoly between Telecom – now Spark – and Vodafone, and despite some positive inroads, has largely struggled to compete alongside the two, much larger players.

”

— Techday NZ

 

Read together both stories are in sharp contrast to the quite celebratory piece that appeared in the print edition of last weeks NBR, its not online but I’ve got a scan of the articles here. and here.

This is a story that is going to develop so I’m not going to speculate much further about what’s happening at 2Degrees, what I want to quickly reflect on is what this means for our overall market structure and system.

There have been 2 really big telco issues this parliamentary term beyond those set in train by the 2011 Telco Act (ie UFB, RBI, Copper Wars & the Chorus Crisis) and they have been the Vodafone purchase of Telstra Clear and the 700Mhz spectrum auction.

In both cases we have seen light handed approaches from the political and official realms often citing the success of 2Degrees as proof of a robust competitive market. The Vodafone / Telstra Clear deal has created a seriously capable, vertically integrated telco with no regulatory constraints or oversight and the spectrum auction again has taken the cash over the wider needs for a balanced mobile market moving forward.

There are additional issues around the long term success of the Maori spectrum and subsequent investment in 2Degrees. 

Personally I’ve been a 2Degrees customer for the last 5 years and I want to see them prosper, we need agile and innovative challengers, I hope the new investor shares this desire.

Onto RBI 2.0…

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Well I’ve had a night to sleep on yesterday’s announcement and I’m still pretty excited, its a clever piece of policy work, by extending the TDL (Telecommunications Development Levy – successor to the much derided TSO) the Government has given itself an extra $150 Million to play with that is fiscally neutral (I think they’ll be hoping that the Telco’s paying the TDL won’t notice that they’re going to keep paying a wee bit longer.

Politically its very smart as it does 3 things, firstly it gazzumps Labour’s $9.6 million contestable fund for very similar rural initiatives, secondly it deals with genuine heartland concern about broadband and mobile coverage and finally it is actually quite ambitious for rural New Zealand.

To be really successful it needs a target and I think it needs to be an ambitious target – funding projects that will have the capability within 10 years to deliver 1 gigabit/second to rural New Zealand.

Thats not a pipe dream. it can be done today with 2 technologies fibre and point to point wireless and by 2024 5G should be gigabit capable as well. 

As a former rural New Zealander (I’m just currently an economic exile in #gigatownporirua) one thing that really pisses me off is hearing that old technology is good enough for country folk. Its up there with the now 30 year old refrain about farming being a sunset industry, I’m glad its such a long sunset as without the ‘white gold’ boom we would be in a far worse position.

Farming is developing into a very sophisticated data intensive business, it is the starting point for the worlds food based supply chain and consumers increasing demand for more detail about their food & where it comes from. But not only that, rural New Zealanders are entitled to all the good stuff that comes with ultra fast internet, tomorrow see’s the launch of Spark’s ‘Lightbox’ service and I’m sure plenty of rural Kiwi’s are up for a bit of ‘Global mode’ too.

The devil as they say is in the detail and it will be the same with yesterdays announcement, there are many questions to be asked and a lot of capacity to be rebuilt. In its first broadband schemes the Government favoured large monolithic structures run by contract, in fact it believed that contracts would work better than regulation.

Councils and small regional operators were sidelined by both the UFB and the RBI and massive waste and overbuild has occurred, the situation in Palmerston North is a prime example where pioneering work was done by James Watts and his team at inspire.net and he had an effective partnership going with the Palmerston North City Council, James was even running fibre to the farm 7 years ago.

Now the Government recognises that local is often best and will need to re-engage players who still have much to offer. This will require both sides to re-establish dormant relationships and a number of plans can be dusted off and updated.

Who will run the new scheme? is it best suited to MBIE or could it function out of CFH with an expanded mandate? Nearly all of the old team at MED who used to run these projects have moved on or retired.

I think it could well take several years to get back in shape for this challenge, the current RBI advisory structure needs to be revisited and updated to provide genuine governance and oversight.

We also need to make sure that it remains consistent with our market structure, that is that new access networks are structurally separated and open access and the the correct regulatory settings are applied.

I’ll leave with the insights I’ve just gained from the engineer behind the very successful Northpower fibre rollout. 

“Our beyond UFB plan is to roll gigabit capable fibre out to all our electricity subscribers within 10 years, the GPON technology we use can reach out 30km and we can push it further if needed.”

— Graham Dawson – Northpower

$150 Million Boost for Rural Broadband & Connectivity

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This afternoon the Government announced additional funding for rural broadband and connectivity, the detail is here:

https://www.national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/detail/2014/08/26/$150-million-boost-for-rural-broadband-initiative

National’s Communications and Information Technology spokeswoman, Amy Adams, today announced a re-elected National-led Government will establish a new $150 million fund to extend the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI).

Ms Adams made the announcement in Greymouth with Prime Minister and National Party Leader John Key.

“The RBI is making an immense difference to the way our rural firms do business, the way our kids learn and the way our health services deliver to us as patients,” Ms Adams says.

“Already, nearly 250,000 households and businesses have access to faster broadband under the RBI. However, National wants to see more rural homes and businesses benefit from faster, more reliable internet.

“Therefore, if re-elected, we will legislate a three-year extension of the current Telecommunications Development Levy of $50 million a year to create a new $150 million extension of the Rural Broadband Initiative. The levy is currently set at $50 million a year until June 2016, and will now be extended at $50 million a year until June 2019.

“Of that $150 million, National will make $100 million available through a contestable fund for communities to improve their connectivity through fixed broadband to homes and businesses. We expect communities, councils and service providers will bid into the fund.

“The criteria for the fund will focus on enhancing connectivity across areas outside the Ultra-Fast Broadband footprint.

“This extension will mean a greater number of rural New Zealanders will be able to improve their connectivity.”

In addition to improving broadband in rural areas, National will also create a $50 million fund to extend mobile coverage in the more remote parts of New Zealand, and fill black spots on main highways and in key tourist areas. 

“State Highway 6, which runs along a significant proportion of the West Coast, would be a top candidate for this fund. So would State Highway 73, the main route between Christchurch and the West Coast. Both are major tourist routes and improvements to mobile coverage would be welcome,” says Ms Adams.

“Mobile phone coverage is an essential form of connectivity, and can be even more important in our rural and remote towns, where it has benefits from a public safety perspective.

“Boosting mobile phone coverage also has the ability to help grow productivity in our regions.

“Today’s announcement is part of National’s programme to deliver world-class connectivity to drive innovation, create jobs and grow New Zealand’s economy.”

Ms Adams says the Telecommunications Development Levy was set up primarily to provide higher-quality broadband and internet connectivity for rural New Zealanders. The levy is paid for by large telecommunication providers.

“The levy means more New Zealanders – particularly those in rural and remote areas – can stay connected to the rest of the world. It has funded the creation of the $300 million Rural Broadband Initiative, along with other projects like the relay service for the deaf and hearing impaired.  Its extension will allow further major improvements in rural broadband to the benefit of all New Zealanders. ”

 

 

TUANZ welcomes the focus on rural connectivity, especially the $100 million contestable fund which recognises the fact that many innovative solutions are going to be needed to get serious broadband into all the places in rural NZ that really need it.

my recent travels have shown me that the RBI has yet to make a real impact and even when it is available it’s is decidedly average in its performance, because it is basically delivering last decades broadband at best and often less than our innovative regional wireless ISP’s have been doing for years.

The expansion of rural wireless coverage is welcome by all kiwis who use the state highway system, but it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t penalise any operator, otherwise we maybe heading for a need to review how rural mobile roaming operates.

I’ll blog more on this later, but I’ll leave you with this thought, will this lead us to rural gigabit access within the next decade?

Who’s in charge?

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A few different experiences lately have got me thinking about digital leadership and just whose job should it be?

A recent discussion on twitter also canvased the issue as well, I think the whole ‘gigatown’ campaign highlights the difficulties around trying to stimulate UFB uptake and awareness when Chorus itself comes from the culture that up until recently when suddenly there was Government money involved, actively denied the need for anything better than ‘everyday broadband’ which was seen as being around 256kb/s.

The UFB is a bold initiative that is already driving NZ up the global broadband rankings, the US is still getting excited that fibre might be coming to Cupertino – the home of Apple. Within a decade it will be the norm in every New Zealand town.

In 2008 TUANZ called for the creation of a Government entity dedicated to providing digital leadership similar to role played by the IDA (the Infocomm Development Authority) in Singapore.

Xero founder and all-round digital good guy Rod Drury has been vocal in his call for NZ to have a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) something that is get picked up as an idea by a number of political parties but sadly not yet by the Government.

And when you get down to it digital leadership does seem to come back to the government for many reasons:

1.0  They are the collective voice for NZ inc

2.0  They are the biggest beneficiary of NZ being a keen adopter of ICT through everything from increased productivity generally down to lowering the cost of delivering government services

3.0  They are the biggest aggregated purchaser of ICT services in the country, who else has the money to do INCIS, Novopay etc

4.0  They are now once more a significant investor in ICT and hold stakes in a variety of ICT related entities (for example CFH, Chorus, Kordia, REANNZ & N4L)

5.0  Their policies direct how the NZ digital landscape develops at both an infrastructure and commercial level

6.0  They set and operate the regulatory regime, the spectrum regime, the resource management regime, the educational curriculum and broad economic policy

7.0  They are our interface to wider international agreements and environments for issues like copyright, trade, RS&T and international standards

8.0  Various arms of government also contain more people who are paid to look at the future than you find in the ‘real’ economy where we are focused on surviving today and coming back for more tomorrow

Steven Joyce is a man I like and respect but he is wrong when he says that having a GCIO (Government Chief Information Officer) is as good as having a NZ inc CTO reporting directly to the PM. We do need a GCIO mainly to manage number 3 on the list, the CTO needs to have an overview of everything.

And the CTO needs to be able to look at the big picture stuff like the ‘Internet of Cows’, ‘3D printing’, ‘Digital Inclusion’ or ‘delivering Rural Gigabit’.

What do you think?

 

 

 

The importance of serious play

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Yesterday when I was telling the story of Primowireless and their uniquely Taranaki product development process I was reminded about the importance of a strong play ethic.

History is littered with advances that occurred as a result of just playing around with things, sadly our current ‘safety’ oriented ‘PC’ culture seems to be very afraid of play and its consequences, and our corporate culture is not far behind.

I think it’s no coincidence that the gaming culture is not far beneath the surface at Primo, I saw the same thing when I first met the guys from Paradise.net in the 90’s or when we launched ‘Access 2’ as a gamers ISP in Melbourne.

Wellington got CityLink mainly because Richard Naylor ‘played’ with fibre and strung it between council buildings using the overhead trolley bus wires.

So what else should we be playing with, Rural Broadband ? International Connectivity ? Public WiFi ? or low income digital access ?

The thing about playing is that you ignore the rules and assumptions and you can focus on the ‘what ifs?’ and the ‘why nots?’

We have a very risk averse culture in both the public sector and our larger corporates, personal reputation management blinkers senior executives such that the idea of ‘play’ on the company’s time (or dime) is beyond a sacking offence.

Yet if we want to get a digital No8 wire spirit of innovation going its something we’re going to have to do.

And you know what’ll we’ll have some fun doing it…