DBVu in line-up for Best Startup 2010

It's the time of year again when TechCrunch Europe host the Europas and DBVu have been nominated for a Best New Startup 2010 so please get voting.

It would be a great honour to get shortlisted.

Ofcom liberalises the WTA

Ofcom the super regulator will changes to the Wireless Telegraphy Act to come into force on 1st November 2010 that will allow the following to be used in a license exempt manner: -

* Railway level-crossing radars at 24 GHz.

* Fixed Wireless Services (FWS) at 59.1 to 63.9 GHz.

* 900 and 1800 MHz Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) terminals.

The changes also liberalise the technical specifications for the following: -

* Short Range Devices (SRDs) below 30 MHz when operating underwater.

* High Density Fixed Satellite Services (HDFSS).

* SRDs covered by the Commission Decision of 30 June 2010 amending Decision 2006/771/EC on harmonisation of the radio spectrum for use by short-range devices (the SRD Decision).

Though railway enthusiasts may be happy that railway crossing radars no longer need a license, the interesting ones for the general public are that FWS at 59.1 to 63.9 GHz (60GHz) are now license exempt as are 900 and 1800 MHz UMTS (i.e. 3G) terminals.

FWS at 60GHz will allow for very high-speed short range wireless links which will be suitable for in-room transmissions e.g. video links from a set-top-box to a TV mounted on a wall without using wires. Equipment is also expected for connecting USB equipment over wireless.

The 3G terminals at 900/1800 MHz opens the way for refarming the 2G networks so that they can be used for 3G services. When Ofcom sort this out, it should increase 3G coverage and make life easier for everyone.

The full statement is available from Ofcom.

Ofcom reviews Alternative Dispute Resolution Schemes

Anyone offering a communication service is obliged to register with an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Service so that if consumers are not able to resolve a dispute with their provider, they have the option to take it further through an ADR.

Currently there are two approved ADRs who are CISAS and Otelo.

Ofcom is obliged to review how the ADRs on a regular basis, so is consulting on how they doing.

The consultation is available on Ofcom's site.

Competition try to tear Canvas

Project Canvas, the joint venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, BT, TalkTalk and Arqiva which will deliver TV channels through a set top box (which is connected to an aerial for receiving DTV and the Internet for IPTV) and is now known as Youview has been given the go-ahead by Ofcom.

Actually Ofcom has decided not to accept complaints from Virgin Media, IP Vision and 11 other parties including BSkyB.

Ofcom's reasons are that the IP TV market is still fledgeling and it's too soon to see if Youview will make a difference in the market, Youview should benefit consumers and if they do harm the competition will the harm outweigh the benefit and the alleged harm may not occur depending on the technical specifications of the system.

Youview has gone through many iterations and current traditional pap-per-view systems like Virgin and Sky have the most to lose if a generic IP TV system can be brought into play that utilises people's broadband to deliver high quality IP TV services. Both BT and TalkTalk are part of the project and will be delivering fibre-to-the-street cabinet/premises (FTTC/FTTP) services which will deliver 40Mb/s - 100Mb/s to the home, which is enough for HDTV, thus negating the need for people to buy satellite TV or cable TV.

The fill press release is available from Ofcom

Ofcom consulting on advertising an "additional services license"

Anyone want a national license to use for carrying data? Well Ofcom are advertising one. It's part of the spectrum allocated to Classic FM and it's currently used by ITIS Holdings PLC to transmit traffic information for use by in-car navigation systems. The license will expire on 31st December 2011.

There are various complexities such as the license can be no longer than 6 years 1 month as it's inextricably linked to the Classic FM license for voice which will expire in Jan 2018.

Ofcom wants to hold an auction with cash bids.

More info can be found on the consultation site.

Ofcom updates Olympic Spectrum Plan

Ofcom the super regulator has updated it's plans for spectrum use for the London Olympic Games in 2012.

The main spectrum use will be for wireless cameras and due to recent negotiations with the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) arrangements have been made for access to spectrum in the range 2700-3100 MHz and 3400-3600 MHz.

Private Mobile Radio (PMR), Talkback and Telemetry spectrum will be avilable through the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Ltd (LOCOG) or the Emergency and Public Safety Services (E&PSS) network operated by Airwave Solutions Ltd with 430-478 MHz being conserved for national use (the Torch procession requires spectrum across the UK).

Wireless microphones and in-ear monitors will use UHF Bands IV and V (470-862 MHz, channels 21 to 69) which includes the 800MHz band freed up by the the digital television switchover which should have completed by then.

Satellite News Gathering will have additional spectrum made available for use by Transportable Earth Station (TES) satellite uplinks in the frequency bands 5.925-7.075 GHz (referred to as "C band") and 27.5-27.8185 GHz, 28.4545-28.8265 GHz and 29.4625-30 GHz (collectively referred to as "Ka band").

The 2.6GHz band (2500-2690 MHz) which Ofcom wanted to make available for wireless cameras etc. has still not been decided as there has been arguments against this use that the commercials may not stack up and the spectrum could be used for other services (nationally for wireless broadband etc). That's a big chunk of spectrum that 3G operators would like to get their hands on (it was originally reserved for 3G use).

The Ofcom statement.

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.