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Events, information and more from Barcelona, Spain.
ComCom: Don’t forget mobile roaming rates
Mobile phone termination rates are under intense scrutiny by the New Zealand telco regulator, the Commerce Commission, which has pressured Vodafone and Telecom into a binding undertaking to lower the amounts charged for landing calls on their networks. It'll be interesting to see if this leads to lowered retail pricing for voice calls, so that people can use their mobile phones a bit more for the purpose they're designed for. Thanks to high call charges, New Zealanders have been weaned off voice calls, something that's apparent mobile usage figures from the GSMA, a mobile telephony industry organisation. For the third quarter of last year, New Zealand is said to have the sixth lowest amount of monthly minutes on average per user, after the Philippines, Cambodia, Sao Tome and Principe, Morocco and Kenya. The global average is 288 minutes according to the GSMA, but New Zealander mobile phone users don't use anywhere near that number. I don't think it's because Kiwis are a taciturn bunch either. While there's some debate as to what MTR regulation or forced lowering of these will achieve, the ComCom really should get together with its international counterparts in Australia, Asia, the EU and the US and have a think about roaming rates for mobile phones. I was reminded of how high these are by analyst Derek Kerton's story in RCR Wireless recently. Kerton attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and tried his best to avoid getting stung by high roaming rates, but failed. Think about some of the numbers he quotes in his story. American charges for domestic cellular voice calls are on average eight US cents per minute; head to Western Europe, and the charges rise to US$1.30 per minute or so. As Kerton points out, that's a 1,625 per cent mark-up. Data charges jump even more when you head overseas - Kerton's example shows a 341,300 per cent increase - so the best advice for travellers is to leave their mobiles at home, especially Internet-enabled smartphones or face financial ruin. A Vodafone New Zealand customer on the You Choose 600 plan going to Spain like Kerton did would be looking at paying $2.47 a minute for voice calls and between $10 to $30 a megabyte for data. Receiving calls cost $1 per minute, and SMS are 80 cents each to send. The You Choose 600 plan costs $225 a month for 600 minutes, which cost 37.5 cents each, so the mark-up isn't quite as staggering as in Kerton's example, but we're still talking about a cool 657 per cent bump up for voice calls made overseas. Telecom XT customers on any post-paid contract are charged between $3.40 to $4 a minute for making calls, and a dollar a minute to receive them. Texts costs eighty cents to send as on Vodafone, and data is $20 a megabyte. Let's say you're on the One Rate 400 plan that costs $150 for 400 minutes, or 37.5 cents each; using your XT mobile overseas means a 907 per cent cost increase for voice calls. Ouch. Update I've been told that Vodafone offers roaming in Australia for NZ customers at national rates. Technorati Tags: GSM,UMTS,3G,Vodafone,Telecom,MTR,termination rates,global roaming,regulation,New Zealand
    
Published: 2010-02-25 05:24:00
Architect Day: Sir Norman Foster
Author: MarceloSeferin
With a vast and fair amount of awards received, Sir Norman Foster, is one of the best portfolios of architecture in the world. His works are functional, well established and with a unique beauty, taking advantage of the brilliant and detailed structures used, reach a final result perfectly balanced.
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Photos via: fosterandpartners.com.
Born on June 1st, 1935 in the town of Reddish, England. At 16 he left school and went to work at Manchester City Treasurer's Office, before joining National Service in the Royal Air Force. In 1956 he entered the Manchester University School of Architecture and City Planning, graduating in 1961.
He won the Henry Fellowship at Yale School of Architecture where he met Richard Rogers who would eventually become his business partner, and where he also got his master's degree. After that he traveled for a year around the United States before returning to the United Kingdom in 1963.
 StockleyPark Offices, Uxbridge, UK
Influences
He had always been a model student and his skills showed a remarkable flair for architecture. But he still always came under the influence of architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.
After his return from America, Norman Foster started a partnership with Richard Rogers and sisters Georgie and Wendy Cheesman, called Team 4. They quickly gained a reputation for industrial design high-tech. In 1967, he formed with Wendy the office Fosters Associates which quickly transformed into Fosters and Partners. A year later he began a long partnership with the American architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, which only ended with the death of Fuller in 1983.
 Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, UK
 Hong Kong and Shangai Bank Headquarters, Hong Kong, China
“ My mission is to create a structure that is sensitive to the culture and climate of its place..”
Works
The project that generated the first major recognition of the firm Foster and Partners was the Willis Faber and Dumas headquarters in Ipswich in 1974.
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 Willis Faber and Dumas headquarters, Ipswich, UK
Today, Foster and Partners work with collaborating engineering to integrate complex computer systems with the most basic laws of physics. This allows you to create and develop complex structures, original and challenging, clearly seen in some of his works.
Foster's career already has more than 470 awards and citations for excellence and has won over 86 national and international competitions. In 1990 he was awarded the Queen's Birthday Honors in 1997 and by that honor he became known as Lord Foster of Thames Bank.
“Control is the wrong word. The practice is very much about sharing, and, in any creative practice, some individuals, whether partners or directors, are much closer to certain projects than I could ever be.”
Stansted Airport, Stansted, United Kingdom
Sackler Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom
Riverside Apartments and Studio, London, United Kingdom
Albion Riverside, London, United Kingdom
House in Japan, Tokyo, Japan
Crescent Wing Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, United Kingdom
Cranfield University Library, Cranfield, United Kingdom
Century Tower, Tokyo, Japan
Carré d´Art, Nimes, France
Business Promotion Centre, Duisburg, Germany
Bilbao Metro, Bilbao, Spain
American Air Museum, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Faculty of Law, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Expo Station, Singapore
Essen Design Centre, Essen, Germany
Eletronic Arts European Headquarters, Chertsey, United Kingdom
Duisburg Housing, Duisburg, Germany
Deutsche Bank Place, Sydney, Australia
Clark Center, Stanford, USA
City Hall, London, United Kingdom
Swiss Re HQ, London, United Kingdom
Chek Lap Kok Airport, Hong Kong, China
Canary Wharf Undeground Station, United Kingdom
McLaren Technology Centre, Woking, United Kingdom
Addition to Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, USA
Al Faisaliah Complex, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Chesa Futura, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Centrica, Scottish Gas HQ, Edinburgh, Scotland
Capital City Academy, London, United Kingdom
Wembley Stadium, London, United Kingdom
Millennium Bridge, London, United Kingdom
Camp Nou Stadium for FC Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
California State University Channel Islands, Camarrillo, USA
Budenberg Haus, Manchester, United Kingdom
Boulogne Billancourt, Paris, France
Beijing Airport, Beijing, China
O escritório Foster + Partners está com uma extensa lista de grandes projetos em desenvolvimento, abaixo estão alguns deles.
 Riva Hotel, London, UK
 Al Raha Beach Development, Abu Dhabi
 Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center, Kazakhstan
 Spaceport America, New Mexico, USA
 National Arena Scotland, Glasgow
 Queen Alia International Airport, Jordan
About the authorMy name is Marcelo Seferin, I'm an architect from Porto Alegre, Brazil and I'm the chief architect at Seferin Arquitetura, an office that works with architecture, interior design and sustainability projects. You can check our work at http://www.seferinarquitetura.com.br and you can follow me at twiiter http://www.twitter.com/mseferin.
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Published: 2010-01-19 03:26:52
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