Case Insensitive Searches

Please note that i have read Note 1025420.6 (but per application developer, we've got this code in a 10g application and it doesn't work in 11g (both instances on same server running Windows 2003 Server 32 bit))

Note that in 11g the result being picked up is NOT leading edge of string.

sqlplus user/pwd@SID                                                            
                                                                                
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production on Mon Mar 25 14:38:12 2013           
                                                                                
Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.                         
                                                                                
Connected to:                                                                   
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production          
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options   
                                                                                
SQL> desc people                                                                
 Name                                      Null?    Type                        
 ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------
                                                                                
 ID                                                  NUMBER(1)                   
 FIRSTNAME                                          NVARCHAR2(20)