Category: Wireless

Wireless connections

Ofcom Release Ultra Wideband (UWB) Document

Ofcom released a consultation document today on ultra wideband (UWB) in the UK.

Given Ofcom’s statutory duties under the Communications Act 2003 to ensure the optimal use of the radio spectrum under its management, they should be keen on UWB.

The strength of UWB also causes its problems. By simultaneously transmitting over a wide range of frequencies (around 3.1 – 10.6GHz, if you’re interested), UWB is able to achieve higher data transfer rate than other wireless technologies.

By spreading over these frequencies it has the possibility of interfering with services that currently operate in or around these services, such as 3G, broadband fixed wireless access and radio astronomy.

Back in May 2004, Ofcom commissioned Mason Communications and DotEcon to produce an independent report in to UWB. Delivered in December 2004 (Read the final report, all 218 pages of PDF fun), it looked at the advantages to the UK economy of allowing UWB applications and the disadvantages of increased interference to existing radio spectrum users.

The report focuses on the use of UWB to create a Personal Area Network (PAN) with examples of usage being; providing wireless connections between DVD players, displays and speakers; and using them for high speed wireless links between digital cameras and computers.

While acknowledging interference is likely, it’s clear that Ofcom feels this should be weighed carefully against UWB’s potential benefits. To check this interference, the suggestion is to use a technical ‘mask’, controlling the amount of power that could be used at different frequencies, in an attempt to reduce the impact of interference.

The US regulator has already authorised UWB on a licence-exempt basis, but Ofcom consider the US specification to be inappropriate for the UK. Their proposal is that if UWB is allowed, it should be on a licence-exempt basis, but be limited to the same in-band power levels as permitted in the US, but have tighter out-of-band limits.

Ofcom point out that there is a need to come to a decision soon, fearing US-built UWB devices could be imported in to the UK.

All of these add up to a big pressure on the frequency users that would be affected. It will be interesting to see what their reaction will be during the consultation period which closes 24 March 2005.

Ofcom Ultra Wideband consultation document
Mason Communications and DotEcon final report

The Sun launch Page 3 Soft Porn to Mobile Phones

Sun MobileNews International, the publisher of well known UK tabloid ‘newspaper’, The Sun, has opened the doors on its own mobile content service that it calls Sun Mobile.

It will feature ringtones, java games and … you guessed it … Page 3 wallpapers and screen savers. For our non-UK readers, Page 3 of the Sun is dominated by a photo of a topless (at least) woman.

The service won’t be short of promotion. The Sun website, Sun Online, has around 3m users, with half of its traffic coming from the US and Canada. The printed paper has a circulation of 9 million.

Despite The Sun having a presence on the Vodafone live! and Orange World portals, News International (NI) has set up their own mobile site, developed by Blue Start Mobile. It will be accessible in over 130 countries around the world, thanks to NI’s deal with Bango.

Many mobile content providers are discontented with what they see as unbalanced, operator-biased revenue splits that the mobile phone company are currently offering in the UK. It sounds to us like NI has recognised this, as Simon Ashley the commercial manager dealing with the launch points out, “Sun Mobile gives us direct, interactive relationship with our customers on mobile.”

Sun Mobile (contains nudity)

Children’s Cellular phone withdrawn following UK health report

Professor Sir William Stewart, chairman of the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), today published a report of the emissions of mobile phones. He said he believed that mobiles may pose a health risk, although this was not yet proven. He said “If there are risks – and we think there may be risks – then the people who are going to be most affected are children, and the younger the child, the greater the danger.”

Following this, Communic8 the company who sells MyMo, a mobile phone specifically for use of children between 4 and 8, announced that they were to stop selling it immediately.

We spoke to Adam Stephenson of MyMo and he said “After listening to the the tone and content of Sir William Stewart on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, we have decided to stop selling MyMo.” He went on explain that they had read between the lines to see a considerable risk. “The idea behind MyMo was to protect children. We have no intention of exposing children to any danger.” While pointing out that no one in his company were medical experts, he went on to say “We feel it would be foolish to challenge their findings.”

The MyMo offered a simple ‘cut down’ mobile phone with three buttons on it that enable pre-set phone number to be called easily. It was licensed from a company in Germany and is still for sale in Italy and in the Netherlands, through KPN.

This is the second piece of research within a month, flagging the possible dangers of mobile phone emissions. The last study, majority-funded by the European Union, has found in December that in laboratory conditions, radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA.

MyMo
Sir William Stewart on BBC Radio 4 (Real player req.)
Health warning on children with mobile phones – The Scotsman
Cellular Phone Emissions Damage DNA, Study Finds – Digital-Lifestyles.info

Philips WACS700 Wireless Music Center – Interesting

Philips WACS700 Wireless Music CenterPhilips used to strike us as a funny old company. They’ve been tremendously innovative. They had, after all, been a key players in the creation of many pieces of consumer technology; compact cassette; CD; DVD, but their products often looked like a dog’s breakfast.

About 18 months ago we noticed a change, as their design started becoming more “with it” (as I believe they used to call it in the ’60’s).

At CES last week they showed their Wireless Music Centre, WACS700 to the crowds. It doesn’t look too shabby, reminiscent of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may sound confusing that a film released in 1968, set in 2001 should look modern in 2005, but the films styling is near-timeless).

Equipped with a 40GB hard drive and its own 802.11g (54 Mbps) networking, it’s able to wirelessly stream music around your house to up to five satellite units. 750 CDs of music can be loaded on to it using the built in CD player or via the Ethernet port, which is also used to pull down information on the ripped CDs from the Gracenote CDDB database.

There are a couple of features that make it of particular interest.

It comes complete with a two-way remote control, which cunningly displays the currently playing track, as well as allowing the navigation your music.

The master unit has slim, built-in speakers using Philips Super Sound Panel Speaker technology, a nifty space saving trick to uniting tweeter and woofer into a single unit.

Satellite units can be configured for playback in a number of ways. Separate music can be played on each on; the same music on each (this is harder than it sounds due to fractional speed difference in wireless packet delivery) or a follow me feature that lets you take your music from one room to the next as you walk between rooms.

Available in the US from April 2005, the WACS700 will have a suggested retail price of US$999 including one satellite unit. Additional satellites will cost between US$200 and US$250. We’re waiting on Philips to find out European availability and pricing.

Philips

Gizmondo beef up with Disney and Sega

Since we first brought news of the Gizmondo gaming console to you in June 2004 it has been coming on leaps and bounds.

Not only is the Gizmondo a handheld games platform, but it’s also able to play music and video; has GPRS, Bluetooth and GPS built-in to it; works as a wireless email and SMS client; and has a digital camera built in. All for an expected $399 in the US or £229 in the UK.

While this is all very lovely, it’s common knowledge that what keeps a gaming machine alive beyond the spec sheet is the games it runs. Tiger Telematics, who have developed and sell the Gizmondo, are developing their own original software, having bought two software developers Indie Studios and latterly Warthog Games in October 2004, but they are also wisely doing deals with other companies.

The fruit of these now-combined studios, renamed Gizmondo Studios, will be nine titles; City; Colors; Johnny Whatever; Sticky Balls; Fallen Kingdoms; Momma, can I mow the lawn?; Milo and the Rainbow Nasties; Furious Phil; and Future Tactics.

A three year deal with Disney should bring their games to the Gizmondo platform. The initial fruits of the deal will be Tron 2.0. Developed in-house by Gizmondo, the contract also “envisions for four additional titles to be determined by mutual agreement”. The agreement has the Gizmondo paying a minimum guarantee totalling $100,000 for the Tron 2.0 property over three years. Four other titles could also be developed under the deal.

Tiger Telematics have also signed a letter of intent with Taiwan-base Digital Media Cartridge Ltd, hoping to bring many of the classic Sega video games to the platform. Currently this deal looks a little less certain that the Disney deal, but the games being discussed include Sonic the Hedgehog, Outrun, Golden Axe, Altered Beast and Shinobi.

As an icing on the cake, our friends at CNET declared the Gizmondo a finalist in the Next Big Thing awards.

The Gizmondo soft launched by taking pre-orders in the UK in October 2004, and should be in UK shops in February 2005 priced at £229. The online capabilities will be provided using a Gizmondo-branded Pay As You Go (PAYG) service.

Gizmondo

6 PSP Games Due from EA

SIRIUS SportsterToday Electronic Arts (EA) used CES to announce its line-up for the US launch of Sony’s handheld entertainment system, the PSP due in March.

The six games are FIFA Football and MVP Baseball, (only available in the US and not in the UK) along with four previously announced franchise greats; Need for Speed Underground Rivals, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR, NBA STREET: Showdown (working title) and NFL STREET 2: Unleashed.

EA say each game has been specifically designed for the PSP, as they found that trying to port the games didn’t work visually and they wanted the handheld titles to take advantage of the unique PSP functions such as WiFi head-to-head game play. To create the games, EA created the very dramatic sounding Team Fusion.

More details of the games are on their dedicated PSP site. It has some screen shots of the games which looks most impressive.

EA’s dedicated PSP site

SIRIUS to Satellite Children’s TV to Cars

SIRIUS SportsterSIRIUS Satellite Radio announced today that it will be providing 2-3 channels of premium video content, designed primarily for children, in the second half of 2006, to be beamed into moving vehicles. They will be working with Microsoft to develop the service.

Although initially pitched as a TV-on-the-move service, they clearly have ambitions beyond this, as hinted at by Amir Majidimehr, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft “We will further work together to enable consumers to experience SIRIUS video whether on the go, or at home — from the initial mobile service in vehicles to the PC and home entertainment devices.”

While it’s possible that content could be streamed down live to the cars, it may be more likely that content will be trickled down to hard disk devices in the car for on-demand playback. This would avoid cries of “Oh Dad” from the back of the car as TV pictures freeze due to drop out problems when driving through areas of low reception, like tunnels. More importantly for a satellite company, bandwidth requirements would be reduced from a full broadcast stream.

This is further backed up by careful reading of Chief Executive Officer, Mel Karmazin’s statement “We will take the DVD experience to the next level, offering the best content easily available to families and consumers.”

If they do go for live TV delivery the video channels will take significantly more bandwidth than their current audio offering. Whether SIRIUS will be closing some of their current radio stations or adding more satellite capacity is unclear.

If the content offering from SIRIUS is just on-demand, they could face some serious competition from in-car media centres that wirelessly “recharge” their content while parked in their garage overnight.

Reuters are reporting that they were originally told of the TV channels by the ex-CEO of Sirius, Joseph Clayton, as far back as February 2004.

Today’s news follows an announcement on Tuesday that Ford have committed to offering Sirius radio as a factory-installed option in up to 1 million vehicles over two years beginning this summer. XM, who also offer a US wide satellite radio service, currently have 3.1m users’ verses the 1.1m SIRIUS currently has.

SIRIUS Satellite Radio

iBod from PlayBoy = iPorn

PlayBoy iBodIt’s not that we’re surprised by this news, but it did send a ripple of laughter around the Digital Lifestyles offices today.

In this world of new words being made up on what feels like an hourly basis, PlayBoy brings us iBod.

Not surprisingly, their newly launched service entails delivering photos of scantily clad women to Apple’s Photo iPod. It’s nothing more than that really.

For years, many have been enthusing about the huge revenues that will come from delivering p0rn to portable devices, based on the one-to-one relationship that people have with them. A few years back, when 3G operators the world over worried about how to make up the huge fees they had paid for the licences, some joked that 3G stood for Girls, Goals and Games.

Playboy already sells to major wireless markets such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil. They recently announced that they will now offer the same in the US.

The fantastically-named Randy Nicolau, president of distribution for the Playboy Entertainment Group said “Given the extraordinary success we’ve had with our wireless offerings around the world, we felt the time was right to expand our wireless content to the millions of U.S. subscribers.”

To the best of our knowledge the Photo iPod isn’t waterproof, but the Click Wheel is well known for its single hand operation.

PlayBoy iBod

Cellular Phone Emissions Damage DNA, Study Finds

A new study, majority-funded by the European Union, has found that in laboratory conditions, radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA, reports Reuters.

When tested in a laboratory, the cells showed a significant increase in single and double-strand DNA breaks after being exposed to electromagnetic fields that mobile phones emit. Some of the damage couldn’t be repaired and “there was remaining damage for future generation of cells,” said project leader Franz Adlkofer.

Despite what appears to us as being quite worrying information, the researchers said the study did not prove any health risks and suggested it “require further studies.” He recommended using a landline if available and an earpiece if using a mobile.

The cellular phone companies have always asserted that there is “no conclusive evidence of harmful effects as a result of electromagnetic radiation.”

Perhaps there’s nothing to worry about. The stock market certainly doesn’t appear to be concerned by the news, if Nokia’s stock is anything to go by.

I wonder if the mobile phone companies have taken out insurance in the case that mobile phones are proven harmful to human health? If so, wouldn’t it be interesting to find out what the value of coverage was? [email protected]
Mobile Phone Radiation Harms DNA, New Study Finds – Reuters

BlackBerry Patent Case Swings Away from RIM to NTP

There will be furrowed brows over at Research in Motion Ltd (RIM), the Canadian company behind the ever-popular wireless email device, BlackBerry.

The US Court of Appeals has just ruled against them in a case brought by intellectual property holding company NTP Inc, that alleged RIM have violated patents owned by NTP that cover the transmission of email over a radio network.

The only slight cause for relief for RIM will come from the court ruling that they will be able to continue selling their products until final judgement is reached.

The history of the case goes back to 2000 when NTP first notified RIM of the alleged infringement. In a series of cases since then, the case has been batted between the two of them and over the period, the courts have ordered RIM to pay over $70m to NTP.

Back in November 2002, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ordered re-examinations of all NTP patents litigated in this matter.

Although this ruling only has jurisdiction in the USA, it is unclear if there will be any impact on RIM’s deals with non-US mobile operators. RIM has done deals with a number of operators around the world, the product of which have now made it to market. One example, being two months ago Vodafone UK launched the 7100v that has BlackBerry functionality built into a more compressed form.

Research In Motion