The moves by wireless network operators to reduce the cost of voice calls when roaming in Europe are welcome, even if we can still hear echoes of the unpleasant squeals as their arms were twisted hard by the Eurocrats in Brussels. Some operators, such as T Mobile, have even managed to simplify the previously complicated roaming costs to four simple charges. The finance department high priests of profit who originally devised the roaming costs must feel that, just like Dr Prunesquallor in Mervin Peake's Gormanghast, 'their arcane world is in flames'.

But this is a mobile data column, so what about the handy idea of transmission of those simple binary ones and noughts from foreign climes instead of all that voice stuff? Well, sadly this use of the GPRS and 3G channels has not (yet) seen the same fiscal spring clean. Overcharge by obscurity still reigns supreme in mobile data, but the writing is on the wall.

This brings me nicely to our current MCUG project with utility users creating their own WiFi hotspots and then using clever software to switch the data from GPRS over to WiFi when in range without asking users all those annoying log in questions. The 20 September meeting saw MCUG water industry members reviewing a bench mark WiFi project in Sussex, and debating the notion that resilience, improved data rates, and lower costs may actually be simultaneous wins when it rolls out. If you want to know more about this initiative then please contact the MCUG.

Over the past two months we have trumpeted the return of the Mobile Advisory Clinic at Service Management Europe 2007 at the NEC in Birmingham in October.

The best way to approach such a large and comprehensive event is to visit the show website (www.servicemanagement.co.uk) a day or two before, jot down your key requirements and plan your campaign before you reach the door.

If, when the doors of the NEC swing open, it ends up as being not that simple, a short reality check at the Mobile Advisory Clinic might help restore some magnetism to your project compass. The clinic is informal, free, and run on a walk-in basis. It's near the middle of the show floor, so just turn up and sit down, always assuming we haven't a queue of Northern Rock proportions. But then, we only share valuable advice, and have no powers to return your life savings, so perhaps a scramble is unlikely.

MCUG is running a series of seminars as well as the clinic, each seminar covering items in depth that have been covered in this column recently. Check out the whole seminar programme on the website.

I've just spent a couple of days in Paris where MCUG and a European research project called ORFEUS have been running a joint user workshop. The event focused on using radar to look under the ground, and find voids, sewers, pipes, and under street services. In addition to the radar antenna system, the actual signal processing and display all took place on those toughbook computers very familiar to most of us in the service community.

Two other things emerged from the workshop that may be of interest. First, that the sharing of underground map data is a problem, and, second, that the use of XML schemas can, and has, simplified data interchange by defining open rules. It remains the case that much system integration is best done by agreeing common data definitions, rather than by re-engineering data systems themselves.

Ageing assets
In service, and in asset inspection, clarity of data structures and formats may be your best defence against the restrictions and lock in of software systems, and vendors. Getting a grip of your data is a huge enabler for co-working and data sharing - after all, data will be around long after the systems you have today have been retired.

Finally, a sobering thought from the workshop on assets and asset life from a survey of pipes in the City of London that had been carried out using these radar systems. Several main streets had so many cables and pipes laid that, on a downwards view, there was absolutely no solid soil between the tarmac and Mother Earth below. In other words, people are driving on an asphalt covered mat of wires and plumbing.

For those who like to write assets off their books over a few years, the age of things was remarkable. Of the pipes revealed by the radar systems survey, it was reckoned that 30% were more than 150 years old, and 50% more than 100 years.

Managing and servicing such venerable assets surely requires a very different business model to the other end of managed services - fixing white goods with a life of five years at best? SM