Broadband

July 30, 2007 Ocean City, New Jersey, is about to become one of the first American dot com-munities. As part of a $3 million plan to upgrade public services in the popular tourist destination, small wi-fi transmitters are being installed on light posts to drench the city in a wireless internet network. Access to the high speed broadband will be free for the residents and will be available to tourists for a small charge. And with a tourist base that increases the town’s population from 15,000 to 130,000 in the summer, it’s a safe bet the council will more than get their money back.  Read More

June 26, 2007 Dutch wireless technology company Option N.V. has one of the simplest internet connectivity solutions on the planet, and one which has become the focal point of a new Scandinavian campaign by Telenor Norway. Weighing just 40 grams, the GlobeSurfer ICON is a self-contained wireless access device which attaches to and draws its power from a PC USB port and provides instant internet access at 3.6 Mbps download (upgradeable to 7.2 Mbps) using HSDPA, 364 kbps upload using UMTS and in areas beyond 3G, it enables reliable 247 kbps data connections over EDGE. Drivers are auto install, there’s a built-in control applet, and one-button connect which all contribute to extraordinary user-friendliness.  Read More

June 16, 2006 A pan-European drive to use information and communication technologies to help people to overcome economic, social, educational, territorial or disability-related disadvantages was endorsed by ministers of 34 European countries in Riga (Latvia) this week. "e-Inclusion" targets include halving the gap in internet usage by groups at risk of exclusion, boosting broadband coverage in Europe to at least 90%, and making all public web sites accessible by 2010. Welcoming the ministers' undertaking, Information Society and Media Minister Viviane Reding (pictured) said: "Many Europeans still get too little benefit from information and communication technologies, and millions are at risk of being left behind. Enabling all Europeans to participate on equal terms in the information society is not only a social necessity – it is a huge economic opportunity for industry. By implementing their Riga undertakings, European countries will take a big step towards making e-inclusion a reality.”  Read More

January 19, 2006 Be Un Limited ("Be") is the UK's first ISP to employ ADSL2+ technology to maximise the potential of an existing “copper” telephone line thanks to the Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) EU directive, which allows independent operators to lease incumbent's (British Telecom in the case of the UK market) last mile access infrastructure. 'Be lite' will give the UK broadband market a significant shot in the arm by offering up to 24 meg broadband for UKP14 per month while unlimited usage costs just UKP24 a month.  Read More

January 19, 2006 Though the internet seems to have been with us for an eternity, the world’s first broadband internet service on a commercial airliner had just its third birthday this week. It was on January 15, 2003 that passengers flying aboard a Lufthansa 747-400 first sampled Boeing’s Connexion high-speed internet service. The new service enabled what we’d long dreamed of (or dreaded, depending on your point of view) – seamless, real-time communications, with the speed and quality characteristic of a modern office environment, including Internet access, audio, video, e-mail, VOIP and intranet access. Connexion ushered in the New Year by announcing new pricing and service enhancements for its real-time high-speed Internet and entertainment services to airline passengers in flight. The service enhancements include an expanded delivery of four channels of live global television to airlines that offer the Connexion by Boeing service, and implementation of Yahoo! as the exclusive search engine on the service's portal used by passengers on flights to access the Internet and email. The bargain of the new pricing is a 24-hour price of US$26.95 including connecting flights within 24 hours of sign-in.  Read More

November 16, 2005 - Samsung has demonstrated the WiBro (Wireless Broadband; Korean brand name of Mobile WiMAX) mobile phones and systems at the "2005 APEC IT Exhibition" during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Busan, South Korea. Various applications such as broadcasting, home networking, video telephony, VOD, and navigations were presented at the exhibition with Samsung's latest WiBro (Mobile WiMAX) handsets. As WiBro gets prepared to be fully implemented and utilised in the market next year, Samsung also put on display both the mobile phone-typed H1000 and the PDA-typed M8000.  Read More

July 25, 2005 ADAPTIX has been demonstrating mobile WiMAX capabilities in an automobile to clients in recent weeks, where it simultaneously receives mobile Voice over IP calls, streaming video content such as feature-length movies and the transfer of large files, at throughput of up to 2.5 Mbps while travelling at vehicular speeds through the coverage area. The technology is based on the forthcoming 802.16e wireless standard, expected to be ratified by the WiMAX Forum and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) later this year.  Read More

May 15, 2005 Delaware-based communications company Nethercomm Corporation has announced a new broadband technology promising massive bandwidth with minimal additional infrastructure investmentment required. Nethercomm’s Broadband-in-Gas (BiG) carries enormous amounts of data through existing subterranean gas pipes instead of over the air (with constraints and interference), to offer much greater bandwidth and hence access to content and services beyond that which has been available to date. BiG (note that acronym – you’ll certainly hear more of it) uses Ultra Wideband technology to wirelessly broadcast information in a way that is both safe and reliable by using the private spectrum isolated within natural gas pipelines.  Read More

May 7, 2005 The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) this week released the Internet Advertising Revenue Report including final numbers for Q3, Q4 and full-year 2004. If there was any doubt that the internet was back as a major force in the world of advertising and communications, it was dispelled by the reportThe report states that Search, Classifieds, Display and Rich Media continue to grow at a healthy rate. Overall industry revenues rose nearly 33 percent over 2003 totaling over US$9.6 billion and exceeded the previous revenue record in 2000 by nearly 20 percent. Q4 2004 revenues totaled a record US$2.69 billion, marking the highest quarter ever reported.  Read More