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14
March 2008 |
MTN Group has confirmed that the Taliban has forced cellular operators in Afghanistan to shut off their networks at night, after attacks on networks.
Earlier this week, the BBC reported that cellular operators in the war-torn country had acceded to the Taliban's demands to switch off their networks from 5pm to 7am each day. This was because the Taliban asserted that US, Nato and Afghanistan government troops were using the cellular networks to track their fighters.
According to those reports, about 10... |
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14
March 2008 |
From traffic lights to mobile phones, small computers are all around us. Enabling these ‘embedded systems’ to create wireless communications networks automatically will have profound effects in areas from emergency management to healthcare and traffic control.
Networks of mobile sensors and other small electronic devices have huge potential. Applications include emergency management, security, helping vulnerable people to live independently, traffic control, warehouse management, and environmental monito... |
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14
March 2008 |
South Africa has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to help fund a $700 million submarine cable to boost broadband capacity and ease Internet tariffs, a government official said on Friday.
"The shareholder's agreement will be signed on the April 15, 2008 with financial close the same day," Lulu Bam, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Enterprises, said in a statement.
Bam did not name the 11 companies involved.
South Africa's state-owned telecom infrastructure company, Broadband Infr... |
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14
March 2008 |
Time is running out for so-called "unlimited broadband" packages, according to analysts and internet service providers.
For some time, many ISPs have been offering users what they call unlimited broadband, although it almost always comes with some kind of "fair usage" cap on downloads. PlusNet has been one of the few providers to buck this trend — preferring instead to offer packages based on fixed download caps — and is now warning that the emergence of IP television and the BBC's iPlayer will make it i... |
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14
March 2008 |
London has shored up its status as wi-fi capital of the world with usage soaring 156 per cent and the average session time lasting 72 minutes.
But the world is in the grip of wi-fi fever, according to the latest data from iPass' 'Wi-Fi Hotspot Index' for the second half of 2007. Business use of wireless hotspots almost doubled last year but the increasing popularity of 3G as a mobile broadband technology is also fuelling the connectivity storm.
Singapore and Tokyo were the second and third wi-fi cit... |
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14
March 2008 |
Verizon has been experimenting with a new technology called P4P, which localizes P2P file transfers, as many media are reporting today. Essentially, rather than randomly pulling pieces of a file from around the world, Verizon is communicating the locations of their users, so local sources are preferred over distant ones. This reduces the number of hops from an average of 5.5 to 0.89.
Thus Verizon saves serious dough and even better users get their movies delivered an average of twice as fast, in some cas... |
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12
March 2008 |
Apple's unreleased iPhone 2.0 software has already been cracked -- before it even ships, at least that's what a renegade group of developers have claimed.
The iPhone Dev Team claim to have cracked the software, meaning yet more pressure on Apple in the cat and mouse game between software developers and the owners of a million unlocked iPhones and the company and its network partners.
The developers claim to have decrypted and jailbroken the new iPhone software, and have published a series of screensho... |
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12
March 2008 |
Although the 802.1x access protocol is a must for wireless network security, companies rarely use it and thus leave the door open for hackers, according to Robert Lamprecht, IT advisory supervisor at KPMG.
The protocol lets users on either wireless or wired local networks set up a connection and prevents others from accessing the port they are trying to use if authentication fails.
"With 802.1x, unauthorized users can't get access to your network. Without it, you are vulnerable to people who can come ... |
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12
March 2008 |
A privately-funded think tank says New Zealand is being left a long way behind other countries as it waits for Telecom to develop faster broadband services.
New Zealand Institute chief executive David Skilling says Telecom is the dominant investor subject to pressures from shareholders and others not to invest any more rapidly than it is currently committed to doing.
He said the unbundling of the local loop has not changed the telecommunications landscape.
New Zealand is still reliant on Telecom b... |
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12
March 2008 |
Skype has admitted that eBay put a cramp in its style. But it also wants you to know that those days are over.
Today at eComm2008, a Silicon Valley geek gathering dedicated to "emerging communications," one geek made the point that Skype hasn't exactly set the world on fire since it was swallowed by eBay back in the fall of 2005.
"Skype was the future, the leading edge - and then it went into eBay," said David Isenberg, a former AT&T Labs researcher semi-famous for his paper on "The Rise of the Stupid... |
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12
March 2008 |
Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says a high-speed broadband network is on track to be working by the end of the year.
Senator Conroy has appointed an expert panel to assess proposals to build the national network, which he promises will cover 98 per cent of the country at a universal price.
Senator Conroy has told Radio National the panel will recommend who should build the network.
"The bids will close in July and the recommendation from the panel to government will be in Septembe... |
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12
March 2008 |
In-flight broadband is coming soon for travelers on some American Airlines and Virgin America flights. But will the companies hit the right price point to attract customers?
Aircell, a company that sells air-to-ground telecommunications equipment to airlines, said this week that its in-flight broadband system will be used on some Virgin America and American Airlines flights originating from San Francisco and Los Angeles to New York and Miami.
American Airlines will initially enable 15 of its 767s wit... |
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11
March 2008 |
Canada's Nortel is deploying a new network technology, one which it claims will at least quadruple the current bandwidth of most telecom companies. Reuters notes that while most companies are able to handle 10Gbps on their networks -- enough for 1,000 HDTV channels -- Nortel's new optical scheme supports as much as 40Gbps, without dramatic upgrades to a network. With enough investment, Nortel suggests, companies may be able to boost throughput to 100Gbps.
Installation deals have already been signed wit... |
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11
March 2008 |
The Minneapolis Wi-Fi network will be completed by March 29, and citywide marketing of the high-speed Internet service will begin on that day, network builder US Internet of Minnetonka said Tuesday.
The Wi-Fi network had been scheduled for completion on Tuesday, but it was delayed by cold weather, said Joe Caldwell, the company's marketing vice president.
As previously reported, some dead spots in the network -- primarily from Lake of the Isles to Loring Park and Lowry Hill -- will persist until summe... |
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11
March 2008 |
Dave Tomlinson of the product team at the UK ISP Plus Net has written a long, detailed and (if you can stay with it) fascinating explanation of the real costs that ISPs in the UK face. For instance, the monthly rental payable to BT just for connecting the ISP's customers to their nearest exchange using BT's IPStream:
Based on customer numbers of around 200,000 the monthly rental after the rebate works out at approximately £1,700,000
And that's before you send any data anywhere. Tomlinson also explode... |
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