Japanese consumer electronic components manufacturer Mitsumi Electric has developed a wireless microSD card, the online technology news portal Tech-On! reported last Thursday.

A wireless card can be used in a camera to transmit photos over the air to a PC. So far, cards such as the Eye-Fi and FluCard are available in only the standard SD card size, which is twice the size of a microSD card.

The cards can be used in devices without wireless connectivity.

Production of the DWM-W061 card with a price of ¥8,000 (S$136) is expected to start in June next year.

United States consumers clamouring for more video and e-mail while they are on the go might see a whole new breed of faster wireless devices in a couple of years if regulators move as expected later this month to start opening up empty airwaves for mobile broadband.

Tech companies are lobbying to use the airwaves to build a new, super Wi-Fi to serve not only users of mobile devices like Apple iPads and other tablets but also homes, schools, hospitals, businesses and municipalities.

Content providers such as Google would benefit from the increased speeds to their sites, while device makers such as Dell, Nokia and Motorola could profit by building new products to tap into the airwaves.

Microsoft and its competitors are prepared to develop software for a super Wi-Fi.

Broadcasters, however, have complained there could be interference with channels currently in use.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to adopt a proposal at a meeting on Sept 23 to make the unused airwaves freely available to the entire public.

Considered prime real estate, these empty airwaves, called ‘white spaces’, allow signals to travel faster, penetrate walls more easily and cover larger geographical areas than current spectrum used for Wi-Fi.

They come from spaces between existing broadcast channels that were freed up during the digital transition completed in 2009 in America.

The airwaves are ideal for some rural communities where it would be costly to install miles of wires and cables underground or atop telephone poles.

‘There is every reason to believe that this release of unlicensed spectrum can generate new multibillion-dollar industries in the United States,’ FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

In 2008, the FCC took the first step of approving the use of white spaces for wireless broadband.

It is not yet known how the FCC’s final rule will address broadcasters’ concerns or how the industry’s standard-setting body should proceed with technical details.

The National Association of Broadcasters said it is working with the FCC to adopt a final rule that would prevent interference.

Freeing up some spectrum would be a small victory for Mr Genachowski, who has been criticised by some for not acting more decisively on major issues such as how to regulate high-speed Internet traffic.

Freeing up airwaves for wireless broadband is also a major goal of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, which is aimed at making affordable broadband available to all Americans.

Spectrum, a limited and highly coveted resource, is at the centre of a push by wireless companies seeking to meet a huge demand in handheld devices over the next decade.

‘This will help address that demand,’ Mr Genachowski said.

Consumers may have to wait at a year and a half to two years to start seeing the benefits as network operators, chip vendors and device manufacturers all work together to create industry standards similar to the ones used for current Wi-Fi.

‘The white spaces have the potential to spark the next generation of wireless communications,’ said Google telecom and media counsel Rick Whitt.

Google is among a group of tech companies touting the benefits of the empty channels, telling regulators in a July letter that new products will lead to new investment and create jobs – music to the ears of any regulator and politician.

The industry group, which also includes Hewlett-Packard, Skype, Atheros Communications and Broadcom, says homes, campuses, municipalities and energy grids will benefit from white spaces.

The benefits could vary from city to city. Top markets such as New York and Los Angeles may have fewer vacant channels than smaller metropolitan areas but officials expect five to 10 channels to be vacant in most US cities.

Companies are working on how to outfit devices with technology to determine which unused channels are available and address broadcasters’ concerns about potential interference.

Towns and cities in Virginia, North Carolina and California have been testing sites and are using white space broadband to connect schools, provide public hot spots, test water quality and monitor electricity consumption.

‘Transmissions using white spaces frequencies can attain a greater range for the same power – or the same range with lower power consumption – than existing higher frequency unlicensed bands,’ the industry group wrote.

Reuters

The networking giant’s new UK supremo, Phil Smith, talks to Dave Bailey about the impact collaborative tools and rich media content are having on the internet, and explains how new networking innovations are helping to combat climate change

Networking giant Cisco posted a set of first-quarter financial results last week showing an eight per cent increase in sales, but with profit down 0.2 per cent year on year. The firm recently announced Phil Smith as its new UK and Ireland vice president and chief executive. He has been with Cisco since its birth in 1984 when it employed 12 people ­ a figure that has since grown to more than 65,000 worldwide. Computing talked exclusively to Smith to discuss the challenges faced by the supplier.

How do you see the current financial turbulence affecting Cisco?

Phil Smith: Our game plan for the downturn will be centered on the increasing role we think intelligent networks will play in all forms of communication and IT, with the top objectives for Cisco being: next-generation company and next-generation customer relationships; collaboration technologies/Web 2.0; datacentre and virtualization; video; and globalization.

Given your focus on collaboration technologies, what is your view of how firms should deal with systems such as Facebook?

Phil Smith: The new generation of collaboration technologies has posed a big management issue, rather than a technology one. Systems such as these need to be deployed and built around this generation of workers ­ if you ban Facebook, you’re cutting off a whole community at the knees.

Next-generation collaboration technologies use a significant amount of internet bandwidth ­ do you think the web could become overloaded?

Phil Smith: The debate about whether the internet will become overloaded has been ongoing for years now. The statistics speak for themselves ­ the footprint of the average internet user is now one terabyte. This is a huge amount of data and when you add in factors such as increasing amounts of video streaming, the vast uploads of user-generated content, software-as-a-service and the number of devices offering access to the web, this figure will continue to expand. In reality the solution will come from a variety of areas both structurally and technologically, and either way it will require a sustained collaboration between governments, the providers of technology and the ISPs.

What is the current state of Cisco’s telepresence offering?

Phil Smith: It’s kind of what we’d always assumed videoconferencing would be like ­ high image quality, near zero latency and no really painful setup requirements. It is all scheduled via Outlook, and firing up the system involves pressing a touchscreen. Indian chain Taj Hotels has telepresence rooms and it charges about £250 per hour. We have about 270 rooms deployed in-house, and we’re getting 40-50 per cent utilisation, where traditionally we would be looking at low single figures. We have logged the number of meetings in these rooms at 144,000, which we estimate has saved us between $230m (£146m) and $240m. Energy costs are always going to be high, and more firms are setting environmental targets, although I am not sure that this actually changes their behaviour in all cases.

Cisco has invested in environmental initiatives, one of them being the Connected Urban Development (CUD) programme ­ could you explain what this is?

Phil Smith: CUD is focused on what we can do with current digital capabilities to improve the way that cities actually operate, given their massive greenhouse gas footprint globally. Can we be smarter with technology and use IT as a separate utility? We kicked off with three pilot cities ­ San Francisco, Seoul and Amsterdam. The aim was to build something with these cities using technology to make them more environmentally friendly and then use this as best practice. Since then we’ve added four more cities ­ including Birmingham.

CUD looks at fundamentally changing the way that cities deliver services to residents. By looking at how traffic flow is managed, for example, CUD uses IT to improve efficiency, and in turn, help cities reduce carbon emissions. Think about public transport ­ it’s not just about getting it all to run on biofuel. It’s about making it a better and more efficient way to travel so that more people want to use it instead of cars. Buses with wireless internet access or specialist information to tell waiting passengers of their whereabouts are examples of how this works.

Source: Computing. London

Mobile devices using a new radio band for free wireless service would not cause significant interference with cell phones employing a nearby band, the Federal Communications Commission has concluded from its tests.

The band was once used for microwave links between carrier facilities; but in 2006, citing the lack of any FCC plan at the time for assigning the spectrum, M2Z Networks proposed using it for a combination of free and paid wireless services that would reach 95 percent of U.S. residents. The startup proposed paying the government 5 percent of its revenue rather than going through a traditional license auction.

Last year, the government rejected M2Z’s plan, but FCC chairman Kevin Martin is now circulating a proposal that would set rules for an auction of the spectrum.

T-Mobile took issue with the FCC report, saying the agency based its conclusions on assumptions not used when the tests took place. M2Z, not surprisingly, praised the report.

“There is no longer any need for American consumers, the public interest, and the FCCs regulatory process to be held hostage” by carriers, M2Z said in a statement.

via PC World Dec 2008

Passengers flying on V Australia’s new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft might soon be able to use GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) mobile phones and data-capable PDAs during flights the same way they use them on the ground during trans-Pacific flights. The only obstacle in the way at present is approval by Australian and U.S. government and regulatory agencies. Panasonic Avionics is providing the technology behind this AeroMobile service, which will let passengers send email, SMS, and other data communications.

Clearwire and Sprint have apparently reconsidered their decision to abandon a joint WiMax venture. Last fall the two companies ceased work on a network build-out that would have brought wireless connectivity to even remote parts of the country. Now, with a recent infusion of cash reported at $2 billion from Intel, a major WiMax supporter, the partnership between the two service providers is back on.

Beginning this spring, more than 7,000 Starbucks across the U.S. will offer AT&T Wi-Fi service. For existing AT&T broadband and U-verse customers, this means free Wi-Fi when visiting a Starbucks store.

Starbucks cardholders will be eligible for two hours of free Wi-Fi per day at participating stores, and all other Starbucks customers will be able to purchase two-hour installments of Wi-Fi time for $3.99 or monthly access for $19.99.

Intel unveiled a new-look Wifi-enabled Classmate PC at IDF. It is designed to provide schools with a low-cost educational platform.

The company was accused last year of undermining the One Laptop Per Child project to produce $100 laptops for schools in poor countries by offering first-generation Classmate at below-cost price to gain market share. It later joined the project.

Elonex is selling an educational mobile in the UK for just £99.

Wimax mobile Freedom4, the company formerly known as Pipex Wireless, has applied to Ofcom for the right to offer mobile Wimax services. In a joint venture with Intel, the company has already begun a rollout of fixed Wimax services.

News via PCW

More companies are begin bidding on a section of the 700MHz spectrum that had previously been used by analog TV. This auction, however, has engendered much more media interest than past FCC auctions, in part because of the spectrum’s features but also because of the companies participating in the sale.

The section of the 700MHz spectrum the FCC is auctioning off is composed of five different blocks. Of these, the A, B, and E blocks are further divided into smaller regional areas. These sections of the spectrum are of most interest to regional carriers hoping to fill out their networks. Unlike the other blocks, the D block is being sold as a single, nationwide license, however, there is one caveat: The spectrum must be given up to public safety officials in times of emergency. Allen Nogee, a principal analyst at In-Stat, explains that this makes the license most attractive to a big operator that can use other spectrum if the D block has to be given up.

The most attention, though, has been paid to the C block, which is divided into 12 regions. The C block is valuable because it has much stronger penetration than traditional cell signals and because of the FCC’s acceptance of open access rules that Google fought for, assuring that the spectrum will be open to essentially any type of device from any manufacturer.

Nogee believes only a handful of the 100-plus bidders are serious competitors for the C block. Of them, Verizon, Google, and AT&T are at the top of the heap, with Verizon having the best chance of winning. The company new policy of glasnost, after a long period of Soviet-style suppression of its network, going so far as to strip features from handheld devices, suggests a serious change in its business model.

Verizon appears to be moving toward building market share by opening its network to an array of devices. While Google will take part in the auction, it may have already gotten exactly what it wants. The company generates revenue primarily through advertising, and whether it wants to spend the money to build up a wireless network is unclear. Nogee thinks Google would be hard-pressed to create a national voice or data network and believes the company is not particularly interested in being in the service business. Instead, it would be happy to get as many devices as possible on the spectrum to drive adoption of the company’s search engine and online apps.

AT&T recently purchased spectrum in the 700MHz band from Aloha partners for $2.5 billion, so instead of competing for the C block, the wireless giant may fill out its network by purchasing smaller, regional licenses. Nogee also thinks AT&T might be interested in the D block; since the company already owns some of the 700MHz spectrum, it can give up the D block in times of emergency and continue to operate.

Regardless of who wins the C block auction, it will be some time before consumers benefit from any change. Building the necessary infrastructure will take several years, and hardware manufacturers will have to design devices that can operate on the network. The winning bidder, however, must provide coverage to at least 40 percent of the population within four years, and at least 75 percent of the population within 10 years.

The biggest benefit will be the potential for nationwide wireless broadband, giving customers an option other than DSL or cable. Also, since the spectrum will be opening up internationally over time, there is the possibility the C block could provide worldwide coverage.

Revised 700Mhz band plan for commercial services

Via: MAXIMUM PC, March 2008