2005/06/02

Google Code: Summer of Code

Google Code: Summer of Code

If there are any budding programmers out there, now's your chance to earn some money.

Google are making awards for students to earn some money over the summer by contributing to Open Source efforts. You can either contribute your own ideas/code or help out with ideas submitted by various open source organisations. There's still time for more organisations to get involved too.

Internet News Article | Reuters.co.uk

Internet News Article | Reuters.co.uk

Bulldog has announced speed upgrades from 4 to 8Mb/s for some of its offerings. This follows UKOnline (the consumer arm of Easynet) launching a service last November.

Bulldogs pricing starts at £15.50 per month rising to £41.50 pm including unlimted Internet and local and national (UK) calls.

Broadband is starting to reach commodity pricing, though it hasn't yet dropped as far as in France where ADSL2+ has been rolled-out allowing Internet speeds of 18Mb/s and unlimited national calls for less than 30 Euros per month.

UMA Technology : Extending Mobile Services to unlicensed Spectrum

UMA Technology : Extending Mobile Services to unlicensed Spectrum

UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) allows mobile terminals (i.e. phones) to roam on to local networks using technology like Bluetooth or WiFi. In terms of technology it extends the mobile roaming capabilies to cover the Internet.

The site has a full set of specifications available to download (in PDF), though it's not easy reading.

This is what BT are trying to do with "Bluephone", though their trials are meant tohave been too successful to date.

If the technology can be made to work then it should allow the cost of calls to reduce when on a local network, since the mobile operator no longer has to transport the call over the cellular airwaves as the call traffic will be sent over the Internet (which is someone else's infrastructure).

Calling it "UMA" is a bit misleading in the UK (and in fact most of Europe) as there is no unlicensed spectrum. Ofcom still require licenses (as per the Wireless Telegraphy Act) to use any part of the radio spectrum, just that some bands (like 2.4GHz) are license exempt. License exempt spectrum means that if you stick to the license published by Ofcom, you don't need a specific one.

2005/05/31

ADSLguide: News Archive

ADSLguide: News Archive

Although VDSL (and now VDSL2) offer substantially higher speeds than ADSL variants (including ADSL2+) it also suffers major distance limitations. VDSL is also not approved for use in the UK.

ADSL allows for distances of several miles whereas VDSL is much better suited to several hundred metres (or at least under 1Km) which gives it very limited coverage from BT local exchanges - even in urban environments.

VDSL has achieved good results for in-building use (i.e. fibre to the building, and then local VDSL connectivity to tennants) and even street cabinet DSLAMs. Unfortunately the only people with fibre to street cabinets are cable providers, which and they tend to use cable modem technology.

Unless BT decide to rewire the uK with fibre to each street cab (which is a very costly exercise), and there's a major change to existing Access Network Frequency Plans (ANFP), VDSL(2) is a white elephant in the UK.