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Wi-Fi wherever
CES Got a 3G USB modem? Want to share the link? Netgear today launched a wireless router designed to tie an on-the-go Wi-Fi hotspot to the internet over an HSDPA back link.…
But it's a beta
As promised, the intrepid iPhone Dev Team released its iPhone 3G unlocking utility, yellowsn0w, on the first of this year.…
Claim ley line interference
The new-age residents of Glastonbury are up in arms about the council's deployment of WiFi, claiming the wireless networks are interfering with their chakras and generally getting them down.…
FCC proposes smut for all
FCC Chair Kevin Martin has proposed dropping the content-filtering requirement attached to the AWS band, in the hope that someone will build a network if they're not required to remove all the pornography.…
After whinging from Pres, lawmakers
The US Federal Communications Commission has canceled the December meeting where it was scheduled to vote on chairman Kevin Martin's plan for free US-wide puritanical wireless broadband. But the commission says the proposal will "remain in circulation for the commissioners to vote" in the future.…
But no pictures of Blighty as yet
Google's latest version of mobile mapping software finally brings Street View to mobile phones - excepting the iPhone, which gained that capability when the iPhone 2.2 Software Update was released on November 21.…
Watching TV while the rubber economy burns?
Digital tuner chip company Microtune has launched a new chip for in-car reception of DVB-T signals, a market expected to explode during 2009, despite the obvious luxury status of in-car TV reception.…
The threat of unlicensed spectrum
FCC chairman Kevin Martin has added some kick to his plan for a free nationwide wireless network, flirting with the possibility of dropping at least a portion of the zero-cost spectrum straight into the hands of mobile developers.…
Who needs a mobile network anyway?
BT is trumpeting figures that show Wi-Fi usage has doubled since last year, with users clocking up more than a million minutes a day during September - but all is not quite what it seems.…
No-smut opt-out?
The Federal Communications Commission is set to consider chairman Kevin Martin's plan for free US-wide puritanical wireless broadband at its next meeting on December 18.…
New network approved, needs paying for
While the white space vote might have got all the attention last week - along with that other vote - the FCC also approved the creation of "New Clearwire" and it turns out that the two votes could well prove complementary.…
'Buttons are proud and vain, not plain'
Amish farmers attempts to prevent RFID tags being used in cattle have been attacked by the US Department of Agriculture on the grounds that it's not mandatory, and therefore can't be considered a breach of religious rights.…
Upload speeds to be upped to 5.7Mb/s
Faster HSDPA and HSUPA 3G speeds will be rolled out in the UK’s big cities in 2010, network operator 3 has promised.…
Max 4G on Yota debuts
HTC has taken the wraps off its rumoured "4G" phone - the world's first handset to integrate WiMax, Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity.…
CI Net deploys 5.8GHz in Newmarket
CI Net, the business ISP with a bent for wireless, is to extend its 5.8GHz wireless-broadband service into Newmarket in the new year. It will offer wireless connections, while paying the regulator only a quid per user for the licence.…
Playing nicely in the white spaces
The FCC has voted to allow unlicensed use of White Space spectrum between the TV stations. Meanwhile UK-regulator Ofcom today published a statement on cooperative common spectrum, but both proposals are based on technically unproven concepts of radio agility that hardly stack up.…
But O2 wants to make you happy
Virgin is to cut its wireless offering to a fiver a month for broadband customers who want to go wireless, but O2 reckons ten per cent of wireless broadband users feel mis-sold anyway, and reckons only they can guarantee happiness.…
Tries flat-rate temptation
TapRoot, creator of the Walking Hotspot, has given up trying to take subscriptions or do deals with network operators in favour of simply charging punters $25 for the product.…
Hopes pact will last longer than its Nokia partnership
Intel and Nokia may have drifted apart before the Finnish phone giant could create HSDPA 3G modules for Centrino laptops, but the chip giant is hoping to have better luck with its 'Moorestown' Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform.…
Batteries schmatteries
Taiwanese electronics specialist Favite has been demonstrating its latest remote control module using RFID technology to remove the need for batteries - at least for those prepared to bathe their living room in a two-watt energy field.…
Throttling on a granular scale
Partisan network enabler Camiant is to bring "real-time policy control" to a European mobile network, throttling data by application, time and location, not to mention tariff.…
Point-free tests confirm what Ofcom already knew
The FCC has completed tests confirming that deployment of its porn-and-cost-free network won't interfere with incumbent operators, as already established by Ofcom and Czech deployments.…
Volunteers asked to put anger into words
Volunteer mountain-rescue staff in Scotland are being asked to write to the UK regulator Ofcom to complain about increased spectrum prices that could drive them out of the life-saving business.…
But only in Baltimore
First Acer, now Lenovo. The ThinkPad company has rolled out a laptop with WiMax on board to cater for wireless broadband buffs in Baltimore.…
But only if you're living in Baltimore
Acer is the first company to announce a pair of WiMAX-touting notebooks so that residents of Baltimore, where Sprint has rolled out its WiMAX service, can enjoy speeds approaching 3G with 4G technology.…
You looking at my ID?
California governor Schwarzenegger has signed a law making the illegitimate reading of RFID tags illegal, but blocked a measure making the unauthorised tracking of kids equally so.…
Hardly Virgin territory
Virgin Media has added wireless broadband to its range of offerings, with a service bearing a remarkable resemblance to T-Mobile's deal, except without the Wi-Fi hotspot access thrown in.…
Like Comcast (without the lies)
Sprint has reserved the right to limit the bandwidth of P2P file sharers on its brand new broadband wireless network..…
Claims 4G is here
Sprint has officially launched its WiMAX broadband wireless network in Baltimore - the crab capital of America - marking the technology's big city debut. And the company still insists on calling it Xohm.…
Only through carriers?
Asus is to integrated HSUPA 3G as well as HSDPA into its Eee PC 901 next month, but it's not clear whether the mobile broadband technology will be available beyond the network operators, or with Linux.…
Closedzone
BT Openzone customers will next week be cut off from public Wi-Fi provided by The Cloud, and will lose coverage at thousands of hotspots as a result.…
Scoffs at PM's PC 'bribe'
London should become a "WiFi city," Mayor Boris Johnson told a local radio station Tuesday morning.…
Just follow the websigns
American researchers have developed a Bluetooth-based system which would allow blind people to hear information about their immediate surroundings in the same way that others read posters, signs or notices.…
Sadville gets RFID enabled
Students at the University of Arkansas have created a couple of full-sized hospitals inside Second Life to experiment with the use of RFID tagging in medical environments, and ride on flying cats.…
Hella lotta Gmail
Google has hooked up with Liberty Global and HSBC Principle Investments to start funding a satellite network aimed at connecting the three billion people who still can't get access to the internet, at least those living near the equator.…
Stick NFC tech into clothes, toys, children
If you're still wondering exactly what NFC technology is for, then Tikitag will sell you enough kit to try and find out for only $50 - a small investment if you can find a killer application for the technology.…
Secondhand spectrum swap
Spectrum trading - the ability for licence holders to sell on, or sub let, their frequencies - has been broadly endorsed by both the FCC and Ofcom, so now a US company has done the obvious thing and set up a market for the buying and selling of radio frequencies.…
Oblivious IEEE waves through standard for dead dream
The IEEE has formally approved 802.11r, the amendment to the Wi-Fi standard that allows devices to smoothly transition between Wi-Fi hotspots without breaking the flow of conversation.…
Get your stuff and get out before Feb
The Federal Communication Commission has voted unanimously to ban the use of low-power transmitters operating in the 700MHz band from February next year, but wireless microphone users aren't going to go down without a fight.…
Blackberry v iPhone v Windows Mobile
It used to be pretty simple. If you were a large organisation with a hard-core mobile email requirement, the only serious option from a security, robustness, manageability, usability and ease of deployment perspective was Blackberry. If you had a need to develop custom applications, then provided you were happy to construct your own middleware and management stack, then Windows Mobile was the accepted way forward.…
We don't know where you are
Mobile broadband over 3G may be able to offer speeds to compete with ADSL, but it can't offer access to the Olympics - at least not from the BBC, who are blocking mobile users from video streams of the event to comply with IOC rulings.…
Lush lawns latest victims of war on crime
The relaxed attitude to spectrum use in the USA has come under pressure as a new police radio system in Dallas is interfering with an automated sprinkler system 30 miles away, resulting in brown lawns and dead trees in Plano.…
A truly olympian task
IDF Craig Barrett banged the drum for WiMAX in the opening keynote of IDF today. But only quietly, and not for very long.…
But only for those topping 10GHz
UK regulator Ofcom has published a consultation on increasing the limits on broadcasting above 10GHz, claiming that at such high frequencies the range is so small it's not going to bother anyone anyway.…
A trace of humanity now?
Analysis The 1976 Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire which showed the a sympathetic and softer side of the vampire and which uncovered both the mind-numbing ennui of being immortal and the complete lack of a sense of belonging, and other disadvantages to being uniquely powerful and yet disliked, was the first image that struck us while listening to Qualcomm’s analyst relations conference the week before we took our summer break.…
Sprint-Clearwire tie-up 'defective'
True to form, AT&T is attempting to scuttle the Great American WiMAX Merger.…
Quick! Call a doct... oh damn.
The head of a leading US cancer research institute has sent out a warning to his staff to limit their cell phone use because of a risk of developing brain cancer.…
Rogers dodgers
Back in 2005, when he lost his three-day-old Motorola v 635, Pete Gillespie immediately phoned his cell provider, Canada's Rogers Wireless. Among other things, he urged the cellco giant to blacklist the phone's IMEI number so that miscreants couldn't reconnect his $600 purchase to the Canadian airwaves. But the company said it didn't do such things.…
Better security too?
BT has updated its hacker-vulnerable Home Hub wireless box, introducing support for 802.11n Wi-Fi and - perhaps more importantly - the WPA security technology enabled out of the box.…
But do we need another standard?
Sony intends to have 90 per cent of its products networked up by 2010, though how many of them will be using the company's proprietary TransferJet technology remains to be seen.…