Broadband and web hosting provider Digiweb has won a national wireless broadband licence for UK and Northern Ireland, according to Britain's broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. via The Irish Times
Proving that telecommunications security is a two-way street, Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) said on Tuesday that it has entered an agreement with five international telecommunications carriers to build a ultra high-speed cable system worth $300 million (see DW: Google: Now it’s Transpacific Fiber).
The submarine system, named Unity, will link the United States to Japan across 10,000 km (6,200 miles).
Other carriers involved in the project include Google as well as Bharti Airtel, Globe Transit, KDDI and Pacnet. The Unity cable will run along the ocean floor, from Los Angeles to Chikura, Japan, where it will connect into other networks.
Each pair of fiber cables are capable of carrying up to 960 gigabytes per second, about the equivalent of bandwidth needed for 15 million simultaneous voice calls. The line is expected to initially increase trans-Pacific “lit” cable capacity by about 20 percent, and could potentially add up to 7.68 terabytes per second of bandwidth across the Pacific. The cable system is expected to be ready for service in the first quarter of 2010.
Other recent submarine cable systems announcements include:
Fiber-optic cable capacity across the Pacific is expected to increase 96 percent from 2007 through the end of this year, said Alan Mauldin, research director with Washington-based research firm TeleGeography.
By the end of 2007, 25 oceanic fiber contracts totaling 112,000 route-kilometers were awarded.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Mediterranean Submarine Cables Cut, Fifth Submarine Cable Damaged, Verizon’s TransPacific Express and Google: Now it’s Transpacific Fiber
I used to have this professor at Oxford, okay? Doctor Wickham, his name was and he was, like, this massive fat guy, you know? Huge, big guy. We used to call him - you know, well, I won’t tell you what we used to call him, but he taught biomolecular kinetics and cellular dynamics. And he used to sort of scare the underclassmen with this story about how the world would eventually be eviscerated by technology. You see, it was inevitable that a compound would be created which he referred to as the ‘Anti-God’. It was like an accelerated mutator or sort of, you know, like a, an unstoppable force of destructive power, that would just lay waste to everything - to buildings and parks and streets and children and ice cream parlors, you know?
– Mission Impossible III
Washington state’s house of representatives approved a bill that would make RFID “skimming” a felony and prohibit capturing data from an RFID tag in an identity card without the cardholder’s permission.
House Bill (HB) 1031—intended to limit collection of personal information from an RFID tag without the tag holder’s knowledge or consent—passed with 69 to 27 votes. The bill is now headed for the State Senate and, if approved, to the office of Governor Christine Gregoire.
This is the second round for HB 1031. An earlier version failed to pass a House vote in March 2007 (see Washington’s RFID Bill Halted). In its original form, HB 1031 was rejected because of its broad scope, says the bill’s primary sponsor, State Representative Jeff Morris (D-Mount Vernon).
Known at that time as the “Electronic Bill of Rights,” the first version did not offer exemptions for a host of users, including emergency responders, university researchers and service providers such as cable companies. The revised bill also has eliminated mention of a labeling requirement. Such a requirement was opposed by business associations and technology vendors, who argue that they already have labeling conduct codes in place through organizations such as EPCglobal.
“People have this Hollywood view of RFID as being a chip implanted in a person, like in the movie ‘Mission Impossible III,’ and that person can be tracked by a helicopter five miles away,” said Patrick Sweeney, CEO of Odin Technologies.
Washington state’s “enhanced” driver’s license will be used for crossing the Canadian border in lieu of a passport. The new driver’s license would be cheaper and more convenient than applying for a $97 passport.
It will contain a Radio Frequency Identification chip, which the guard booths will use to scan the license as a traveler or trucker pulls up to the booth. U.S. passports issued since late 2006 already contain RFID chips.
This year, at least 17 states, up from 12 states in 2005, are considering legislation that would limit RFID use, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures of Denver. Both New Hampshire and Wisconsin over the last year passed legislation limiting RFID.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Passports Go Long, RFID Shoes and Nightmare or Reality?
"The verykool product line is our line of proprietary products, focused on diversifying revenue, driving growth and gross margin expansion for the company."
InfoSonics Corporation , one of the premier providers and distributors of wireless handsets and accessories serving Latin America and the United States, today announced that its proprietary verykool i700 ... via Mobile Burn
The International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE) brings users from security, utilities, transportation, construction, education, and Public Safety together to talk radios.
It runs Feb 27-29, in Las Vegas and features training sessions, 350 exhibitors and a variety of speakers.
Mobile Radio Technology magazine, which sponsors the conference, covers the field. Their article on the current status of Nextel’s iDEN network is instructive:
Sprint looks to spend another $7 billion this year on Direct Connect services, but primarily on enabling P2T services over its CDMA EV-DO network. In 2006, Sprint announced an agreement to use Qualcomm’s QChat solution to deliver a CDMA-based P2T solution this year that will offer similar performance to — and ultimately interoperate with — its legacy iDEN-based service.Sprint already offers dual-mode devices that enable push-to-talk on iDEN and higher-speed data services on the CDMA networks, but the majority of public-safety users strictly use the iDEN network.
Meanwhile, the number of new bids in the 700 MHz auction has dropped to around 30, reports RCR News. The 34 new bids in round 108 this morning were scattered across the A, B and E Blocks.
According to RCR News, today’s new bids pushed the auction’s total provisional winning bids to $19.527 billion, far above the $10 to $15 billion forecasters expected. But activity on many of the auction’s big prizes, including the nationwide commercial-public safety D Block and the open-access C Block, appear to have ended.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Satphones: Merger Ahead?, Emergency Communications Applications, Sprint/Clearwire/Intel Venture: Coming Soon?, Weird Outlaw Radio Transmitters, NY State’s Wireless Net Broken?, 700MHz: Round One, Sprint: Push comes to Talk, Sprint’s New Phones, Broadcom Vrs Qualcomm, Qualcomm Down on 1-2 Punch, Cingular Push to Talk, Sprint Readies PTT, Broadcom Sues Qualcomm, HumaniNet: Free Emergency Communications Event, New York’s $1B Wireless Net, Oregon’s $500 Million Statewide Wireless Network, Frontline: Out of Business, Topoff 4 Begins in PortlandTopoff 4 Begins in Portland, Minneapolis Bridge Collapse & Emergency Communications, InterOp Takes a Holiday, Solar Powered WiMAX & WiFi, The OTHER Public Safety Band, Mapping Goes Live, HDTV from Aircraft, Panoramic Video, Vessel Monitoring, Border Surveillence, Gigapixel Imaging, and Border Surveillence.
That vision went on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on Sunday, as part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit. "Morph," Nokia said, "is a concept that demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform their mobile device into radically different shapes."
Transparent Electronics
Dr. Bob Iannucci, Nokia chief technology officer, said the Nokia Research Center is looking to "reinvent the form and function of mobile devices" through the use of nanotechnology and the Morph "concept phones" show some of the possibilities -- including flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces.
The partnership between Nokia and the university, announced last March, involves a research facility at the university and collaboration with several academic departments, including the Nanoscience Center and the Engineering Department. Nokia said the projected timeline for integration into handheld devices is within seven years, initially through high-end devices, and applications could include lowering the cost of manufacturing.
Chris Hazelton, an analyst with industry research firm IDC, noted that the collaboration supports a general trend toward the development of morphing or changeable phones. Morphing, he said, is the industry's growing effort to address the need "for greater capability for mobile phones, while getting around the size barrier."
Form Following Function
He noted that the morphing trend includes designs in which form literally follows function, such as the keypad in Motorola's Rokr E8, in which a 12-key alphanumeric pad for phone use can become a media playback pad with play, stop and other functions.
He...
The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Monday he is “ready, willing and able” to stop broadband providers that unreasonably interfere with subscribers’ access to Internet content.
The comment by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin came at the start of a day-long FCC hearing centering on allegations that some broadband providers have been improperly hindering access to some content. The agency is considering new rules that would force cable and telephone companies to more clearly disclose their policies.
Ed Markey is the sponsor of a new bill that would discourage, though not actually prohibit, “unreasonable discriminatory favoritism” of content traveling through their pipes.
The public hearing at Harvard Law School (real audio and event blog), featured testimony from Internet providers, policy experts and consumer groups.
“I think it’s important to understand that the commission is ready, willing and able to step in if necessary to correct any (unreasonable) practices that are ongoing today,” Martin said.
The dispute over so-called “network neutrality” pits open-Internet advocates against some service providers such as Comcast who say they need to take reasonable steps to manage traffic on their networks.
Martin acknowledged that broadband network operators have a legitimate need to manage the data flowing over their networks. But he said that “does not mean that they can arbitrarily block access to particular applications or services.”
The hearing, which included testimony from officials with Comcast and Verizon, is aimed at determining what network management techniques are reasonable.
"We saw outstanding performance with both radios running simultaneously at expected 3x3 MIMO throughput levels"
Test results by Craig Mathias of Farpoint Group verify that the HiPath Wireless Access Points recently announced by Siemens Communications, Inc. via Maktoob Business
Qwest Communications’s chief executive said on Monday that he was working for a new kind of wireless partnership with Sprint Nextel, reports Reuters.
“We need a wireless partnership that is different than the one we have today,” Chief Executive Ed Mueller told an analyst meeting.
“I think we have much to do in wireless,” he said during the call. “We need a partner for voice, but we need a partner for data and broadband data, so as we look forward, we’ll need someone to help us with both of those.”
Qwest resells Sprint’s services, but analysts say this arrangement limits Qwest’s profit margins.
Some analysts wonder if Qwest might have bigger wireless ambitions, notes C/Net. There have been some rumors floating around that the company is talking to Sprint, Clearwire, and Intel about WiMax.
“About 20 percent of Qwest’s footprint is not dense enough for DSL,” said Donna Jaegers, director of research for equity research firm Janco Partners, “so WiMax would make a lot of sense.”
Nearly 21 percent of the U.S. population, or over 60 million Americans, live in rural areas that are either un-served or under-served by broadband services, according to Computerworld (as of August 2007).
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes…
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.
– Ghost Busters
Members of the White Spaces Coalition say their wireless broadband device tested by the FCC for interference with television broadcasters did not failed, as the NAB claimed last week.
The prototype device submitted by Microsoft lost power during tests. Another white spaces device malfunctioned in tests run by the FCC last year.
Ed Thomas, a tech advisor to the White Spaces Coalition and a former chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, said that while the devices power supply failed after many hours of continuous testing, it did not interfere with television signals due to the power failure.
Thomas, during a press briefing, said the NAB was engaged in “rhetoric” designed to complicate the FCC’s device testing.”Let this be based on science, not politics,” Thomas said of the ongoing testing at the FCC. “Let the facts prevail.”
As Free Press explains, very market in the United States has empty or unused airwaves set aside for broadcast television. Many markets have so few broadcast stations that less than a quarter of the channels are used.
The White Spaces Coalition, including Microsoft, Philips, Dell and Google, is asking the FCC to allow wireless devices to operate in the so-called white spaces. The coalition wants the white spaces opened up to give consumers more wireless broadband options, which would be targeted at longer-range broadband than traditional Wi-Fi.
If the FCC approves the devices this year, commercial white spaces wireless devices could be available as soon as late 2009.
But television broadcasters have opposed the coalition, saying it’s likely that the that wireless devices will interfere with TV signals. White spaces devices are “not ready for prime time,” said Dennis Wharton (right), the NAB’s executive vice president.
The FCC’s in-house testing of four devices will continue for a couple more weeks, then the agency will conduct field tests for up to eight weeks. A second white spaces device has experienced no power failure problems, said Ed Thomas, of the White Spaces Coalition.
Related DailyWireless stories include; White Spaces Prototype: Dead Again, Sprint and T-Mobile Support “White Space” Use, White Space Gets Hot and NAB: Unlicensed Devices Threaten America
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