Total Hotspots hits Android

Total Hotspots the WiFi locating application that's been available on iPhone for a while has now been officially released for Android.

The Total Hotspots service is powered by the Rummble API and acquired by Rummble in 2009 now contains over 250,000 WiFi locations.

Total Hotspots gets the WiFi location data from multiple sources including user input, but it's all user rated, so users get a personalised rating that's relevant to them.

More information can be found on Rummble's site.

FLO TV is dead, Long Live FLO Data?

As predicted Qualcomm have killed off their FLO TV service in the US which uses Qualcomm's Media FLO technology (you could buy an adapter for Android and other devices that was a radio receiver and some decode bits that allowed you to watch Media FLO channels on your phone).

What this means for the UK is still uncertain, as Qualcomm paid a considerable fee for a national license to run their Media FLO services.

Now Qualcomm are pushing to utilise the spectrum for data offload from existing mobile networks and this may be a winning strategy, though in Europe there's already spectrum coming available in 2.6GHz (a BUG chunk) as well as the old TV channels etc.

Qualcomm invested heavily in Media FLO technology and buying spectrum, which many believed was a white elephant and has been proved to be so. There's probably going to be a fire-sale of spectrum now.

Stardoll Party

Last night (07/10/10) in the depths of central London (well Jalouse in Hanover Square), Stardoll held a party for with various bands and singers throughout the evening including Kym Mazelle, Robbie McDade and The Kixx.

A jolly good time was had by all and Mr Paul Clarke took some great photos.

Thanks to Joan Lockwood for the invite.

Samsung drops Symbian

Following on from the announcement by SonyEricsson that it would not be producing anymore handsets based on Symbian to concentrate on Android, Samsung has also announced it's dropping Symbian and will be developing new handsets based on Android and Windows Phone 7.

This must be a blow for Nokia who are still pushing Symbian and hoping that Symbian^3, now open sourced, would be a competitor to Google's Android and Apple's iOS and to some degree Microsoft's WP7 though earlier version of Windows Mobile haven't been too successful.

Nokia have a confused approach and are utilising MeeGo (their joint Linux venture with Intel combining the best features of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin) as their smartphone operating system, though Symbian^3 also offers smartphone features (though can also be cut down as a dumb OS for cheaper phones).

Though Nokia are still dominant in the phone arena, selling 1.4m phones per day, it's a costly exercise to keep development teams for MeeGo and Symbian when no-one apart from Nokia is using them and Android is becoming the default OS for smartphones (apart from Apple's iOS which they are unlikely to license to other phone vendors).

Maybe Nokia should drop MeeGo, move to Android and admit Google have won and just develop Symbian as a 'dumb' OS for the non smartphone market.

Ofcom makes a silent statement on calls

Ofcom the regulator for Communications (and other things) has published a statement on"tackling and handling silent calls".

Now companies are only allowed to make automated calls once per day, unless they are handled by real people. Ofcom has the power to fine any company that abuses this, though it can be difficult to regulate as often silent calls will not have an exposed CLI (caller line identifier) or the call may come from outside the UK.

At least they're making an effort to stop these annoying calls though.

Blackberry Tablet expected soon

RIM's Blackberry Tablet or "blackpad" is due for imminent release. Surprisingly it's based on a version of QNX operating system not the Blackberry OS (RIM purchased QNX a while ago). QNX has produced embedded POSIX operating systems such as Neutrino for a while and now it's rumoured that that in the future RIM will utilise Neutrino (or another OS from QNX) as the basis for all the Blackberry products, bye bye Blackberry OS.

RIM's Blackberry OS though optimised for their handsets, is proprietary and must take a huge amount of resource to keep going. QNX on the other hand has been making real-time embedded operating systems for many years (well before RIM came on the scene), it's been ported to many CPU architectures and 'just works'. As a POSIX OS it's also relatively easy to port from other more common operating systems such as Linux.

As long as all the Blackberry functionality is maintained (i.e. Push Email, BIS/BES support) which are really just applications, they should also work on a QNX OS. This will also allow RIM to support modern processors and rapidly deploy new smartphones as the hardware becomes available.

It might just give them the edge again and RIM can put the Blackberry back into the enterprise market while still keeping the youth market by making their phones sexy too.

It's that FOWA time of year again

Oct 6th sees the Carsonified put on the The Future of Web Apps or FOWA.

As with the FOWD it's taking place in London at The Brewery which is a great venue and if they pull off the same level of professionalism it will be a great conference. They even get the networking right with high speed wireless and wired connections (almost a LAN port to every chair and WiFi for the rest).

Jason Calacanis, Mike McDerment, Cal Henderson and Brad Neuberg are amongst the speakers with the complete line-up here.

The actual conference takes place on Oct 4th and 5th and workshops on the 6th.

There's a 15% discount for anyone using the code 15DISC at the check-out when buying tickets on-line.

Ofcom passes-on responsibility for VOD editortial

Ofcom the Super regulator that deals with regulation of broadcasters, communications, radio spectrum etc. has today passed on all complaints handling relating to editorial content on UK based Video on demand services to it's co-regulatory partner the Association for Television on Demand ATVOD.

Ofcom designated ATVOD it's co-regulation partner back in March. This has implications for anyone doing VoD type broadcasts on the Internet (though it specifically does not include crowd sourced content) and puts them in the same regulatory bracket as traditional broadcasters - in order to level the playing field.

It does mean some Internet broadcasters will have to look carefully at what they're doing (if they're based in the UK at least) to ensure they re compliant.

Ofcom changes billing rules

Ofcom are holding a consultation that closes on 18th Oct 2010 about changing the rules how Communications Providers or CPs (who earn more than £40m pa) have to have their billing systems independently checked for accuracy.

Currently CPs can use the Oftel Guidelines from 2003 or the Ofcom Guidelines from 2008, now Ofcom are mandating the Ofcom 2008 Guidelines, but with changes to the way some tolerances are measured.

Though important, it only affects the bigger CPs in the UK.

The full consultation is available here and the on-line response form is here.

Project Canvas becomes Youview

The hotly debated TV service known as Project Canvas has now come out of hiding to be called Youview TV Ltd and known as Youview.

Youview has several main partners, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, BT, TalkTalk and Arquiva with innovation partners from Cisco, Humax and Technicolor.

Youview will be available through a set-top-box which connects to your TV aerial and your broadband connection offering access to standard TV services (which can be watched as they're broadcast or after). The standard services will be free, though PayTV options will also be available giving access to movies and other premium content (like shows).

The obvious company that isn't a partner is BSkyB and they tried to kill Project Canvas off initially as a major threat to their PayTV services.

Youview has also published various technical documents which should allow anyone to develop for the platform, provide content services and even build set-top-boxes. How open they'll actually be is as yet unknown as only the original players are currently content providers.

In the US Apple TV (with it's reduced price of $99 for the box) is seen as a threat to traditional broadcasters and more so with services such as here and it's possible to respond on-line.

Ofcom reduces the permitted power for UWB

Ofcom has published a consultation on reducing the permitted power in the 4.2 to 4.8 GHz band for UWB devices. The power is being reduced from -41.3 dBm/MHz EIRP to a maximum mean EIRP density of no greater than -70 dBm/MHz (unless interference mitigation techniques are used, in which case the original power limits can be maintained).

On automotive and railway vehicles the limits are being reduced from -53.3 dBm/MHz to -70 dBm/MHz (unless interference mitigation techniques are used).

This is in-line with harmonised European spectrum regulation.

The full consultation is available here.

It's possible to respond on-line and the consultation closes on 18 October 2010.

UWB (or ultra wide band) is a system whereby signals are spread across multiple parts of the spectrum, so it appears as background noise for non-UWB devices however as a lot of spectrum is used (as in a wide band) a lot of information may be transmitted allowing multi-gigabit/s data to be sent over short-distances. UWB is suitable for in-room transmission of video signals and wire replacement systems.

Ofcom wants to increases spectrum for outside broadcast units

Ofcom is holding a consultation on whether to allow increased spectrum for satellite earth stations (or to be specific Transportable Earth Stations or TES).

The current usable band is 13.78 - 14.5 GHz known as the "Ku band" and Ofcom wants to make the 5.925 - 7.075 GHz band (known a "C band") and 27.5 - 27.8185 GHz, 28.4545 - 28.8265 GHz and 29.4625 - 30 GHz collectively known as the "Ka band" available. C band users will mainly be foreign broadcasters reporting on UK events.

The new allocation will approximately triple the available bandwidth available.

The consultation closes on 11 October 2010 and interested stakeholders can apply on-line here.

Ofcom wants to allow 3G operators to up power levels

Ofcom the super regulator is proposing to up the in-band power lever from 62dBm to 65dBm eirp per carrier in the FDD part of the 3G spectrum (and future 2 GHz MSS/CGC licenses).

Vodafone originally requested a license variance and the other 4 MNOs supported it, Ofcom then proposed to raise the level to 68dBm eirp, but there were objections, so Ofcom are now supporting the 65dBm eirp power levels.

The statement from Ofcom may be found here.

Google gets ballsey on the UK homepage

It's Sept 7th 2010 which must be special (for Google anyway) as their UK homepage now has a set of balls (or are they balloons) that swirl around as the mouse goes near them and then they settle back into the semblance of the Google logo.

Google usually modify their homepage on specific anniversaries and it could be the date Google opened their doors in Menlo Park on Sept 7th 1998, which they have celebrated previously so it would make it the 12th anniversary, but why bouncing balls which look more particle physics?

Chris Heilmann who's Yahoo's Developer Network evangelist has published the source code (reverse engineered) to how they've done it based on HTML/Javascript and CSS.

Google do publish a list of their logos but today isn't on there yet.

Ofcom proposes wireless cameras to use 2.6GHz band for the London Olympics

Ofcom the super regulator is holding a consultation on utilising the 2.6GHz band for use by wireless cameras for the 2012 London Olympics. The full consultation may be seen here.

The band (actually 2500 - 2690 MHz) which offers 190MHz of prime spectrum has been the centre of various legal disputes between Ofcom and the various mobile network operators. Originally reserved for IMT-2000 use (which is the technical name for 3G) Ofcom planned to auction the band in 2007 which would have pu the UK in the lead for putting the spectrum to good use. Unfortunately due to the legal issues the spectrum auction was delayed and the band is not expected to be avilable until 2012 at the earliest. The 190MHz of specrtrum is more than all of the current 3G operators have currently and would be useful for 3G/4G data services
or wireless broadband.

Now Ofcom are proposing to reserve the whole band for use by wireless cameras for use during the London Olympic games which take place between 27th of July and 9th of September 2012.

Ofcom also completely underestimated the bandwith requirement for new services such as 3D TV which will be made available during the Olympics and as such require extra bandwith which is outside Ofcom's original spectrum allocation plans.

Though the auction of this band is expected to generate significant revenues, as well as legal challenges there are physical constraints to a national auction including military radars which are using adjacent spectrum at 2.7GHz which are being upgraded but the program will not finish by 2012.

Ofcom have tried to be a leader in spectrum auctions, with the UK going to be the first country to auction the 2.6GHz band, it now looks like the UK will be at the tail end of European countries to auction it.

Anyone wishing to respond may do so here

It's all go for 2.6GHz spectrum auctions (next year)

At least the UK Government and Ofcom have made up their minds (and fought of legal battles) and announced that the 2.6GHz chunk of spectrum (all 190MHz of it) will be auctioned at the end of 2011.

At the same time they'll auction off the old 800MHz spectrum which comes from the digital dividend. It's all prime spectrum as it has extremely good propagation characteristics i.e. it goes through walls well.

Ofcom at the same time will allow refarming of the 900MHz and 1800MHz GSM/PCN spectrum so that it can be used for 3G (or 4G/LTE) services, which is currently not allowed under the GSM laws. The existing 3G licenses (which expire in 2021) will be made indefinite with the licensees paying a yearly fee post 2021 to Ofcom.

BT was expected to bid for the 2.6GHz spectrum when it was originally meant to become available (late 2007/2008) but now it's likely they'll just expand their WiFi and MVNO offerings as the cost of the spectrum is expected to be extremely high and they're already spending a fortune expanding their fibre roll-out to most of the UK.

It's likely the spectrum will be snapped up by the existing Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) who will use it for high speed data services using LTE, though an outsider could come in and use it to offer wireless broadband or even 3G services of their own.

There's still a decision to be made on how the 900MHz spectrum (currently owned by O2/Telefonica and Vodafone) should be re-allocated and also the 1800MHz and 2.1GHz spectrum that Orange and T-Mobile own as they're now a single entity (in regulatory terms anyway) which means they own too much spectrum for a single network as per the 3G license.

So though it's a good move by the Government there's still a few issues to iron out, including the big issue of Ofcom itself as the Government is also trying to reduce spending on the Quangos that are currently in operation, Ofcom being a major one. Though licensing spectrum could be a big earner (especially the 2.6GHz and 800MHz chunks) which could pay for Ofcom for a few years.

New 116 Numbers go live in the UK

Ofcom has announced that it is making two numbers in the 116 range live which are pan-European numbers.

116 006 which is a freephone number for victims of crime. The number will be free unless there is a pre-announcement stating that the number isn't free (which could happen from mobile networks).

116 117 is a freephone number for non-emergency medical help which is always free from any network.

More information can be found from Ofcom though this is another confusing number range where sometimes calls are free and sometimes they're not.

Don't try and recycle that stolen phone anymore!

In the UK each of the mobile operators maintain a list of stolen phones and that's shared between all the operators and is disseminated within 48 hours of the phone being reported stolen.

That has worked pretty well within the UK and has stopped a lot of stolen phones being reused and caused difficulties for a few people who've had their IMEI blocked by mistake as the only recourse is to complain to their operator as users have no direct access to the block list. However there's been a massive loophole and that's selling phones to a recycling company as they tend to sell them on to operators abroad and up until now, there's been no checks to see whether the phone is on any stolen phone list. It's believed that this has led to around 100,000 stolen phones going abroad a year.

That's now changing and Crime Prevention Minister James Brokenshire has stated "By joining forces with the police, the mobile phone industry is closing a multi-million pound loophole that has been exploited by criminals and the industry should be congratulated. Alongside the impressive work on blocking stolen phones, this code will make mobile phone theft an even less profitable crime."

The Telecommunications Fraud Forum known as TUFF has drawn up a code of practice alongside the Government and Police and TUFF will administer it. So far 20 mobile phone recyclers have joined the scheme which represent 90% of the industry and the others are expected to follow suit.

Now if anyone tries to sell a stolen phone, the phone will will not be accepted and they will be reported to the Police.

Now the Government just needs a way to somehow track gold items and regulate the on-line/postal gold services who will also buy pretty much any gold item and immediately melt it down before anyone can complain.

BT rejects GPRS for meter reading

BT has plans to build a system that will allow companies to wirelessly read meters in tune with government recommendations.

BT is teaming up with Arqiva and consultancy Detica and plans to use US-based Sensus' FlexNet long range wireless solution that operates in the 400MHz band (which has good building penetration characteristics).

Unsurprisingly the UK mobile network operators aren't too pleased as the original plans were to use GPRS connectivity which would have meant at least 26m GPRS systems installed by 2020 which would be a massive boost to one or more of the networks.

BT may not be successful and another consortium may still win the contract.