It has been a day without broadband…. think of it as forced downtime not only on my computers, routers and my brain. A little nip-and-tuck in the building where I reside put my cable connection on the blink. Actually, it turned out to be not such a bad idea, for I did manage to accomplish a lot of things that normally would have gone unattended.

Most importantly, I ended up doing the unthinkable – getting a local 415 phone number, which is perhaps the first sign of cutting the cord with New York. It was inevitable, because last week, I finally shipped most of my personal stuff from NY to SF. Looks like I am here to stay – for a while. Or as a friend of mine says, this is the longest (three year long) move to the Bay area.

Nevertheless, while I was away, I missed some stories that I wanted to write about.

• Vyatta, an open source router maker, finally released their hardware. I had written about them back in the day, for the blog and for Business 2.0.
• T-Mobile in UK has lifted all restrictions on its 3G plans and will allow people to use VoIP apps over the network. Yup, anything to get the damn customers signing up for 3G. Don’t worry, the panic will strike here in the US as well. T-Mobile is planning to announce UMTS network. How about good coverage in San Francisco first? Anyway we reported about UMTS way back when.
• Okay it might not be soon enough for Vonage, despite when Jeffrey Citron says. Vonage is in denial about cable competition; just like eBay which is also in denial about its executive exodus. Greg Issacs, one of Business 2.0’s 50 who matter has left the building. At this rate, those jokes about eBay being GE of Silicon Valley would stop being jokes.