All Wi-fi Feeds

Ofcom shares vision of future tech

Patrick Goss — 1210159497

Ofcom has taken a look at the future of communications, and believes RFID tags that help people with allergies, intelligent collision detection in cars and wireless health care will soon be commonplace.

Ofcom looks ahead as well as monitoring the present and its 2008 technology report - subtitled Tomorrow’s Wireless World – contains some sensible yet enticing visions of the connected UK of the future.

"Tomorrow's Wireless World scans the horizon ten to 20 years in the future to discover potentially significant advances and new, innovative technologies being developed that could improve healthcare and transport provision," reads the report.

"Ofcom's role is to ensure the most efficient use of the UK's radio frequencies - or spectrum - these services use. Spectrum is a finite resource; Ofcom's technology research helps it to better understand how this precious resource might be used in the future and allows it to plan how we manage the spectrum to meet these demands."

Healthcare First up is its view of a healthcare system that monitors vital signs and sends them via a wireless hub direct to hospitals and doctors, an automatic alert system if someone with medical problems becomes unconscious and a wireless bracelet that can give reminders of when pills should be taken.
Automotive Cars could communicate wirelessly with each other to automatically alert a vehicle of sudden braking to help avoid collisions – some could even include automatic braking systems in the future. There could also be e-Alerts that automatically call police or emergency services in the event of a crash and more intelligent congestions alerts.
Food RFID tags could identify products with nuts or other allergens, people could use a mobile phone or device to ensure that their shopping isn’t a danger to them.

Ofcom’s wireless role.

"Wireless devices are now an essential part of our everyday lives. As well as transport and healthcare, wireless communications are essential to defence, education, entertainment, culture and commerce. Wireless communications are so integral to our lives that today there are more mobile subscriptions, at 70 million, than the 60 million UK population," says Ofcom.

BT decides to go anywhere with broadband

Gareth Beavis — 1210159057

BT has announced plans to break the boundaries of its broadband package by offering the new BT Total Broadband Anywhere service, including a free BT ToGo mobile smartphone.

The new package is launched today, and allows users greater connectivity at home and when out and about. The phone automatically connects to the internet via Wi-Fi at broadband speeds and provides cheaper calls through BT Broadband Talk.

The phone switches to standard mobile networks when out of Wi-Fi range, though the package comes with a measly 10MB of data a month included, so data-heavy sites like YouTube are very much out of the question.

Smart choice

There’s a choice of two smartphones with the package – the HTC S620 or the S710. Both offer a decent package for the user, running on Windows Mobile 6, so BT is betting the business user will be willing to sync his or her home life with their work phone.

The package is built on top of BT Total Broadband, so the landline internet connection and the Home Hub come as part of the deal.

The BT Total Broadband Anywhere idea does seem to be a re-birth of the BT Fusion idea, which garnered only 45,000 customers in three years. Whether the re-launch can breathe new life into an old idea remains to be seen.

The package costs £23.99, including 50 minutes of free calls and texts each month, as well as the home broadband connection. It's a fairly good deal if you’re willing to tie everything together.

Upgraders

However, Rob Barnes, head of broadband and mobiles at moneysupermarket.com, is unsure of the new package's appeal to new customers: "The free smartphone offers great functionality, but will only be an attraction to current BT customers looking for an upgrade or that something extra.

"However when the phone is outside of [Wi-Fi coverage], the connection can become slow and costly. Heavy mobile data users will need to be wary of the download limit if they want to avoid further charges.

"Wi-Fi also raises concerns about security as 'piggy-backing' or connection sharing rises, leaving people open to attack. I'd advise people to be wary of Wi-Fi hotspots and take precautionary measures to protect themselves."

Netgear: Wireless N 'no longer a problem'

Dan Grabham — 1208535767

A senior Netgear representative has said there is “no longer a problem around interoperability” with 11n wireless networking. 802.11n may only have reached its second draft, but wireless vendors are now convinced it's time for 11n to make it onto prime time.

TechRadar recently met with Netgear's global head of product marketing, Vivek Pathela. “You have every company now feeling comfortable that multi-vendor interoperability is guaranteed," said Pathela. "Even Cisco, the big company that is conservative about business clients, they’re now saying hey, this is already the de facto [standard].”

“You have compliance, you can ensure different vendors products can interoperate with one another.”

More players involved

Pathela said that the delays caused to 802.11n were due to the larger number of players involved compared to the ratification of earlier standards such as 802.11n. “You know, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) getting the technology ratified and getting the technology as a de facto standard are like two different stages,” explained Pathela, who we last saw up on stage at CES in Las Vegas.

“We got whole new industries participating on the specification for the standard and that was the consumer electronics industry as well as the mobile phone industry. Before it was just the networking industry, people like us.”

“Nw we have so many more people that from the processing of the paperwork …is taking a whole lot longer.”

Ratification next year?

Pathela went on to discuss further iterations of the 802.11n standard and hinted that he expected ratification for 2009. “The ratified version would possibly be [draft] version 3 or maybe 4, but at this point there’s nothing in hardware that needs to change.” Pathela confirmed that any future updates to the 11n specification would be via firmware or software drivers.

When quizzed about possible interoperability issues between different 11n specifications, Pathela said that he expected a simple solution. “I suspect that draft 2.0 is always going to be enabled. These [future] changes are very minor, they really don’t have [much impact]. 11n never had to change hardware to go as far as we are now.”

Russia in proposed Wi-Fi clampdown

Tech Staff — 1208450439

In what seems like a throwback to the bad old days of a bug on every phone and a KGB officer in every cafe, a hitherto obscure Russian government agency has come out and proposed that the owners of Wi-Fi devices should be forced to register their devices with the state.

According to Russian-language news site Fontanka the rather splendidly named Rossvyazokhrankultura – or Russian Mass Media, Communications and Cultural Protection Service to give it its full title – has proposed that every potential Wi-Fi user should be made to seek permission and register their device.

In addition to filling out numerous forms and having to wait up to 10 days for a standard Wi-Fi device like a PDA, anyone wanting to set up an open wireless network or a wireless home router network could face even more stringent tests.

Security Service approval?

According to Ars Technica in certain regions, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, applicants may even have to seek special approval from the Federal Security Service before a licence is granted.

However, as bad and backward-thinking as this might all sound, it seems entirely likely that the proposals will be laughed out of the Kremlin and melt away to nothing.

For a start, not only would compulsory registration be all but impossible to enforce, there’s pretty much zero chance that the increasingly tech-savvy Russian population would stand for it. In fact, there's probably more chance of the Black Sea freezing over.

As The Other Russia points out some 40 million Russians already have regular internet access and Wi-Fi hotspots are popping up in all the major cities.

More importantly, any move towards compulsory registration would fly in the face of numerous laws passed in recent years to facilitate the legal spread of Wi-Fi technology within Russia.

Bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake?

The Other Russia goes on to interview a Russian technology expert who questions whether Rossvyazokhrankultura would actually have the necessary authority to enforce its proposals, before delivering the hammer blow by revealing that the head of the agency is, in fact, a former metallurgic engineer.

The inference being, of course, that he probably knows as much about Wi-Fi, as a Wi-Fi installation expert might reasonably be expected to know about metallurgic engineering.

Wireless broadband stretched across 30 miles

J Mark Lytle — 1206694631

If you’re feeling smug about getting your home Wi-Fi connection to stretch to the bottom of the garden, then take a look at the impressive feat managed by a bunch of Japanese geeks who’ve just broken their national Wi-Fi distance record.

Unlike other attempts to stretch wireless connections that focus on simply maintaining a link regardless of bandwidth, the team from Japan Radio Co. (JRC) was able to sustain an 8Mbps link across 47.5km of ocean.

Plain vanilla Wi-Fi

The 802.11g router JRC used received a helping hand from a pair of parabolic antennas, but the connection was otherwise a bog-standard Wi-Fi setup.

While it’s nice to have a national record in the bag, JRC says it plans to use the same procedure to bring wireless broadband to some of the remote islands in the far west of Japan.

Intel stretches rural Wi-Fi links to 100km

Don Reisinger — 1205903405

Wi-Fi is relatively easy to access in urban areas, but not nearly as ubiquitous in more rural parts of the world. Recognising the problem, Intel has announced its Rural Connectivity Program (RCP) - a new way to receive wireless signals outside of cities.

Intel's new initiative utilises a processor, software radios and an antenna to connect remote areas up to 60 miles (96km) away that otherwise would go without internet access.

According to Intel, the equipment also enables a relatively high throughput and could conceivably reach up to 6.5Mbps to facilitate video conferencing and telemedicine.

Worldwide appeal

So far, the RCP has been tested in India, Panama, Vietnam and South Africa. Intel contends its service has a worldwide appeal: "We're seeing a lot of interest in the industry," Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel claims. "Every time we talk about this, they say, 'We need this yesterday'."

To send signals over such a long distance, Intel's technology uses a directional router sitting atop a tower that communicates with a radio several kilometres away. The tower is needed because RCP requires line of sight.

The company rewrote the way in which Wi-Fi signals communicate to ensure that connections could span a greater distance. It used specific time slots to prevent them from timing out until the radios connected with each other.

Intel has said that it will continue to test its technology in a variety of locations worldwide in the following months, but did not give a specific timetable for individual area releases.

Could WiMAX interfere with satellite reception?

Audley Jarvis — 1205770996

A US-based satellite advocacy group has released a report (PDF link) claiming to show that WiMAX can affect the quality of satellite reception.

Research carried out by the Satellite Users Interference Reduction Group (SUIRG) found that 3.5GHz fixed wireless/WiMAX solutions caused “significant problems” to the reception of satellite broadcasts in the C-Band frequency for up to 20km away from the WiMAX base station.

While the report does highlight a legitimate concern, it’s important to note that a) the body behind the report is a satellite advocacy group, and b) there is no 3.5GHz WiMAX in the US. Both Sprint and Clearwire operate on a 2.5GHz licence.

Students texting it in

Patrick Goss — 1204901478

Shy students are being given the chance to send answers to questions via Bluetooth from their PDAs, as the classroom embraces the latest technologies.

The times of students hiding behind textbooks and offering silent prayers that they wouldn’t be picked to answer the question could be at an end, with Grenwich schools trialling a high tech alternative.

With PDA use being encouraged in the schools, pupils are now given short spells in lessons where they can text over the answers, rather than face potential ridicule.

Appropriate use

Secondary ICT consultant Jane Gordon explained that the technology was only used at appropriate times. It apparently will not prevent students from picking up vital social skills whilst hiding behind screens and handsets.

“What we have been trialling is the use of PDAs and Bluetooth to send messages between students and teachers,” Gordon told TechRadar.

“An example is an English teacher putting a question on the board and students Bluetoothing over the answer rather than putting their hand up and answering in front of everyone. It’s less intimidating for the more quiet students.

“Like any ICT it should only be used in an appropriate way. It might only be a 10 minute session in a lesson when we try this kind of thing.”

Mobile help

Gordon hopes that a more pro-active response to technology will stop the draconian measures that some schools have resorted to, like banning mobile phones from the premises.

“I think it’s just a matter of teaching them what’s appropriate,” she adds.

Mobile phones to hit outer space

Anna Lagerkvist — 1203524107

Soon you won’t be able to escape mobile phones even if you disappeared into space. US space agency NASA and the British National Space Centre (BNSC) are to trial a mobile phone network on the moon.

NASA has plans to build a base at the south pole of the moon after 2020. And this location could provide the same level of mobile phone coverage as here on earth.

Thanks to the joint Nasa/BNSC MoonLite mission, astronauts and robots exploring the moon's surface would then be able to keep in touch via voice calls and text messages, Silicon.com reports.

Via satellite

Voice calls and data between the moon and earth would be sent via satellites circling the moon. Initially only one or two satellites would be involved but more could be added if needed. Data speeds would be around 3kbps for downloads and up to 2kbps for uploads.

The lunar mobile phone network will be similar to the "satellite phone network of the 1980s and 1990s on earth", director of space science at the BNSC, David Parker, told Silicon.

2012 launch

The BNSC is building the satellites for the trial, due to be launched after 2012, while NASA is developing the communications module.

A similar idea is already in practice in America’s deep south. SpaceData offers a service where air balloons equipped with Wi-Fi technology are launched into the air. The balloons – housed with a mini mobile phone mast each – soar 20 miles into the air, providing Wi-Fi and telecoms services to truckers and oil companies, the Wall Street Journal reports.

SpaceData’s wireless service aims to bring wireless internet to millions of Americans living in rural areas. Each balloon and ‘mobile mast’ can give wireless coverage for thousands of square miles below. The WSJ report also suggests that Google is considering buying the firm.

Wi-Fi detecting clothes

Adam Hartley — 1203011498

Firebox.com has just started retailing what could well be the most ridiculous item it has ever had on the site (which is saying something) – a Wi-Fi Detecting T-Shirt.

“Capable of showing strengths of 802.11b or 802.11g (whatever that means), the Wi-Fi Detecting T-Shirt is destined to become an essential travelling companion for all you roving surfers. Simply check out your chest and get connected. It's just like being bionic,” boasts the blurb on Firebox.

Glowing bars on the front of the shirt dynamically change as the signal strength fluctuates. TechRadar cannot decide if this is a genuinely useful and practical idea, or the biggest fashion faux-pas since those global hypercolour shirts from the 1980s that used to change colour the more you sweated.