“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle,” - Steve Jobs
18th October 2019 / Issue #340
giffgaff Happenings
by bluemoonbaz
Community stats update
The members wanted to know how the community was faring since the massive recent changes, so Roxy has some great stats for us, check it out here.
Choose your payback
You can now choose how you will receive your Payback that you earn in the current Payback period, between June 2019 and November 2019. You can change your mind as much as you like between now and the cut off date in early December, and we will use your most recent choice.
If you don't make a choice, your Payback will roll over to the next period. Rollover only happens once for each set of Payback, so if you rolled over your Payback last period, make sure you make a selection or it will be lost. Head over here to choose your payback.
[Competition] Help write our clock change text
Do you fancy writing a text message that could be seen by thousands of people? Your entry needs to be in by 23:59 on Tuesday 22nd. Head over here if you're interested.
End of Year Charity Nominations taken up to 23:59 on October 20th, 2019
Time's ticking away to make your choices, do it now and don't miss the opportunity to make a difference. The top five will go to a final vote across all the giffgaffers who have earned Payback. The top two will receive the funds from all our members who give their Payback to charity, which will be matched by giffgaff. You can find all the information about this fantastic gesture over here.
Changes to numbers starting 070 on 1 October 2019
In case you missed it, there are going to be some (good) changes to the pricing for calls to numbers starting 070. They will now be charged the same as they would when calling any mobile number. Check out the contribute thread here.
The Voice is on its way baaaaack...
Rayella has some exciting news to share with you. The Voice is on its way back with giffgaff as its sponsor! So we are currently working away on the creative approach for 2020, which we'd love to get you in on. Like the sound of this? Then head over here.
Our Members' Discussions
Here are a few of our fellow members' recent discussion threads, head over and give your views:
Say Hello!
by kathleen414
Our new member changed providers to come over to us, so please give @fable_wynd a big giffgaff welcome. You can find our new friend here.
Please say hello to a recent new member @yebazman who is brought to us by @bluemoonbaz. Nice one Baz, and welcome to our newcomer to giffgaff and the fab community we have. Say hello here.
Welcome to our new member @r29ssy who is just waiting for their number to port over. Give our newcomer a big giffgaff welcome here.
Welcome our new member engagement executive at giffgaff HQ! Please say hello to @kateegreen, a new addition to the team at giffgaff HQ. She is really looking forward to getting to know us all and what makes the community tick. Say hello over here.
Lab Highlights
by as7861 and ijustcantdoit
- Its you not me has been suggested by @garyjscott03 and has now been marked as implemented.
- Where is my idea? Are there any updates? Well, you can check over here. If you click into one of your ideas, you will see the recent comments and if you filter down to the staff comments you should see any feedback.
- Do you know the labs team has got under 20 ideas to review? This means that the backlog is now being cleared more often. So feel free to look at the new ideas.
Transferred means Transferred by @barba50882
Our member's idea states: When giffgaff sends a greeting mail saying your old number has been transferred, it should have been fully transferred not it is in the process of being transferred. It would be helpful if it said when it will be fully transferred. Seems a sensible idea?
giffgaff music by @jamie4789
Here's an interesting idea: what about a free music app for giffgaff members where we can listen to current music and stuff and it could even be included as part of the top up schemes I.e £10 top up gets you music for 30 days free, £20 top up gets you music for 30 days with free premium etc. Would you like this?
Sell LG phones by @traelkom
Please sell them, they are very good and popular phones. A nice simple idea, why not?
Photo Of The Week
by brulaw
This week's featured photo is Loch Lomond by @goofygirl. Some of the comments on the photo included:
- "Excellent lovely place and nice and peaceful too." (mrbond007)
- "Yo! That looks nice I went there in 1991 or 2 I forgot which year and it was nice bar the blummin flies." (jimvee288)
- "What a lovely picture of Loch Lomond which is well worth a visit and is such a beautiful place." (the_bookie)
- "You walked ALL the way around it? That is some trek." (cawallbank)
- "Take me 4 days to walk around that, never knew it was like that? BEAUTIFUL." (dartgirl)
As always, a great selection of brilliant photos to choose from, and as always it was difficult to select just one. They all go towards making the photography section worth visiting, thank you all for snapping and sharing, please keep the photos coming.
On This Day In History
by jammydodge
1871 Charles Babbage, ‘father of the computer’ died. He was an English mathematician, mechanical engineer and inventor who conceptualised the first programmable computer. He went on to invent the first mechanical computer.
1922 The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was officially created. It was to be managed by John Reith and to operate out of Marconi House. Their first task was setting up a national network of radio transmitters to provide this national radio service.
2007 Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan after 8 years of self-imposed exile. On her return that night she was nearly killed as suicide attackers blew themselves up near her convoy killing 100 including 20 police officers. Bhutto escapes uninjured but was assassinated that December.
Tech Developments
by revilo10
5G - The story so far
It’s finally here, but not as we know it. Earlier this year I talked about 5G, which is the next generation of mobile network technology which promises to speed up our internet access and improve voice/SMS services. However, progress has been a bit slower than expected, some industry insiders expected 5G to be up and running fully on all the major networks by the end of this year, and at this point, it’s looking unlikely. But why is that?
Well, I don’t think any of us can deny it’s been one hell of a year for the technology industry, and writers worldwide agree that the developments made this year, especially in the mobile sector. Of course, I’m referring to events surrounding Huawei, China, the U.S and vital network infrastructure which is key to the 5G upgrades. The UK has been on the sidelines of a war of words and actions from the U.S Government & other key players there, to China and a whole host of companies based there. Specifically, the aforementioned Huawei. Whose name has been at the centre of many news stories this year, and they have definitely hit the headlines this year because of the U.S’ blocking of their technology.
This affects the UK’s ecosystem because a lot of our national network infrastructure, which is the technology which all of our mobile devices connect to in order to receive calls/SMS and connect to the internet, are made by Huawei. Why? They’re both cheap and reliable, which is something that governments and companies will always look for, and for many years Huawei have provided a reliable service. Only this year, when the U.S blacklisted Huawei among other companies, have security concerns cropped up. This has hindered the progress that we have been able to make, however, it seems we are slowly but surely getting there.
A lot of major mobile providers have now announced and are slowly rolling out their 5G programmes, with just yesterday, giffgaff’s parent company and network provider O2 having announced the first stage of their 5G rollout - the business phase. This is the phase in which they give their business customers access to better speeds and information surrounding how the 5G technology will change the way they work. So by the looks of things, predictions say most network operators will be all systems go on 5G by the end of 2020 - this is, of course, dependant on if we face any delays or problems like we have done this year. All we can do is wait and see what happens in the technology landscape over the next few months.
Thanks for reading!
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