Communications

Satellite is going to have to work hard to gain any foothold in the broadband access market, according to industry experts speaking at the Mediacast 2004 show. “Currently satellite is a last resort stopgap until DSL arrives,” said Juan Aguirre, market and applications manager at satellite specialists UDcast. “The challenge is to make it viable cost-wise.” Aguirre said that, apart ...

Before they make it into PCs and aircraft and washing machines and DVD players, electronic devices are developed and tested out in controlled environments. But for some consumer electronics products, that laboratory is much bigger than the typical facility at a chip company. For example BMCO’s lab will be the entire city of Berlin when it launches its test programme ...

An array of technologies – GSM phones, Bluetooth, broadband, to name a few – have arrived over the last few years to change the day-to-day lives of billions of people. In that time the means of performing everyday tasks involved with looking after the old and sick – recording notes, taking blood pressures and temperatures, and analysing blood samples – ...

A Scottish start-up has developed a concept for a short-range optical interconnect that can be reconfigured in software to cover nine different standards. Conjunct, based in Edinburgh, calls its device the dynamic serial optical interconnect (DSOI), and is currently seeking funding to take it beyond prototyping. A demonstration device is planned for spring next year. “We’re trying to offer a ...

The Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board (OSAB) which will provide independent advice on spectrum management issues to communications regulator Ofcom has been set up. OSAB will advise Ofcom on how to secure optimal use of the radio spectrum while taking account of the different needs and interests of all users. The board will meet five to six times a year and ...

BT and Vodafone have teamed up to offer a fixed-mobile service which will allow customers to move automatically from a fixed to a mobile network connection during a call. The service, named Project Bluephone, will allow a single handset to be used for both fixed and mobile calls. A call originating on the BT fixed network will be able to ...

A telecoms standard has been proposed which is designed to increase the bandwidth of optical fibre networks and encourage the roll-out of broadband services. The ITU’s G.656 standard is intended to allow operators using coarse-wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) to deploy systems without the need to compensate for chromatic dispersion. This is a phenomenon that at low levels counteracts distortion but ...

BT has announced local loop unbundling initiatives which could see prices charged to rival companies offering broadband on BT’s network reduced by up to 70 per cent by the end of this year. The first cut will come in June with a 35 per cent reduction. “BT has always argued that a market needs to develop in which those who ...

While everyone seems to agree that standards are essential to the success of the digital home, that doesn’t always mean they are created without some pain. Once again, last week the IEEE failed to approve a standard for the physical layer of ultra wideband, a wireless technology that consumer electronics companies plan to use to connect devices in the home. ...

Picsel Technologies is seeing an expansion of its mobile phone software business following the winning of a major contract in the Far East which will result in the company increasing its Scottish workforce by over 30 per cent. The Glasgow-based developer of mobile web browsers is looking for software engineers as part of a plan to add 30 staff to ...