Ofcom draws a super broadband line for BT

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

btlogoUK regulator Ofcom said that from the 1st of April, BT will have to maintain a margin between its wholesale and retail superfast broadband that’s enough to allow competition from other providers.

The regulator said that the rules will allow BT to keep its current flexibility to set its own wholesale fibre prices but it must not set those prices in a manner that will stop others from matching its prices and making a profit.

While BT is the biggest retail provider of fibre broadband services, it is forced under regulation to let other operators sell superfast broadband to ordinary people too, using a process dubbed virtual unbundled local access.

Ofcom seems happy enough that BT is, at the moment, allowing other companies to compete in the superfast market but wants to make sure that continues in the future.

What’s triggered Ofcom’s interest is that BT is a new entrant to the sports content market and gives BT Sport free to superfast broadband customers. The regulator wants to make sure that it doesn’t have an unfair advantage over the competition.

The number of people using superfast broadband in the UK is now 3.7 million, with providers offering speeds of up to 76Mbit/s. The industry eventually wants to offer speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s in the future.

Intel, Google, TAG to make smart watch

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

Swiss Watches the BrandEver eager to join the fashion bandwagon, chip giant Intel has joined up with TAG Heuer and Google to create a smart watch which they will launch before the end of the year.

TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver told a press conference at a Swiss watch trade show that the deal is a “marriage of technological innovation with watchmaking credibility”.

The watch will use the Android Wear platform and use Intel chips but it’s unclear quite how much it will cost when it’s released.

Intel suit Michael Bell, who is the general manager of Intel’s new devices group, said that making a luxury watch in collaboration with TAG Heuer and Google brings the vision of wearable technology that bit nearer.

The Google man, David Singleton, said that the Swiss watch has inspired generations of artists and engineers. And Google. He said that Google can now imagine a better, beautiful and smarter watch.

Apple releases its range of smart watches next month, and much will depend on whether that is a flop or a success. Intel has never been particularly brilliant at creating reference designs that have long battery lives and its other ventures into consumer technology have all, without exception, been damp squibs.

TAG Heuer doesn’t make cheap watches, so you probably have to have a chunk of disposable income to impress – or alternatively depress, your friends.

 

How people solve problems

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 15.24.39Scientists at Aarhus University have devised a computer game that they say has given insight into the way people solve problems.

The game – called Quantum Moves – has been played 400,000 times by regular people. It involves moving atoms around a screen and scoring points for the best moves.

And that means ordinary people are helping research into quantum physics, according to research director Jacob Sherson. He said that a human’s way of solving a problem is very different than a computer’s approach to similar problems.

The whole idea is to help build quantum computers by providing data. Sheraton said: “The players showed us that there’s an unexploited capacity for ingenuity in the human brain. We see solutions that a computer would never have allowed, and which optimise the process.”

Initial research said that females are better at solving problems than males.

“It would be very interesting to find that the feminine brain has a different – and more efficient approach than the masculine,” said Sherson.

The insights from Quantum Moves means that the university has developed another game called Quantum Minds, which the team hopes will give even better insight into the way our brains work.

And you can try it out yourself, by going to this web page.

Samsung signs up Mediatek

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

Samsung HQ Silicon Valley - MM picGiant Korean chaebol Samsung has signed a deal with Mediatek to supply application processors for smartphones, with shipments set to start in the second half of this year.

So says Digitimes Research, which said that currently there is a hole in Samsung’s lineup. Samsung currently uses Marvell and Spreadtrum to provide applictation processors.

But apparently Samsung is unhappy with its two suppliers because it’s claimed supply and support was indifferent.

Mediatek actually competes with Samsung in both the Chinese and Indian markets but it seems that because of the range of the products it supplies.

But it seems a deal has been satisfactorily struck.

It is something of a puzzle that Samsung feels it needs to turn to Mediatek because the Korean company has advanced semiconductor fabrication equipment and expertise of its own inhouse.

But Digitimes Research speculates that Samsung still needs help from outside, particularly in the wearable marketplace.On the face of it, the Mediatek partnership is intended to bolster Samsung’s low end range of phones, but it may also begin to supply its high end models too.

 

Opera buys privacy company

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

tim-cook-securityOpera Software bought a Canadian company called SurfEasy, for an undisclosed amount.

SurfEasy has a VPN (virtual private network) system aimed at securing smartphones, tablets and PCs, Opera said.

A VPN adds an extra level of net security to filter traffic between the web nd devices.

Opera said that over 90 percent of US net users are now worried about their online privacy and want to protect themselves when they’re online.

Opera, which has 350 million users worldwide said that privacy and security has always kept that as its top priority

The CEO of Opera, Lars Boilesen, said more and more people are looking for security on phones and other devices.

The said Opera will collaborate with the SurfEasy team to create joint products, using the Opera browser as the basic foundation for the collaboration.

 

Osborne backs the internet of things

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

gosborneGeorge Osborne, the UK chancellor of the exchequer, has promised to throw £40 million into research into the internet of things (IoT). He made the announcement during yesterday’s 2015 budget speech in the House of Commons.

And, in addition, Osborne said that it will spend a further £100 million in R&D on smart cities and future infrastructure in the UK.

Osborne said the UK government was still committed to improving net connections and wants to spend £600 million for better networks and ultrafast broadband across the UK.

The government is also spending money on looking at digital currency and improving wi-fi connections in public places.

Osborne said the IoT would connect everything from urban transport to medical devices to household appliances.

The £40 million will be used to create business incubators for startups that will work on the government’s smart cities initiative.

The tech industry is investing hundreds of millions in IoT applications, but so far there is a distinct lack of standardisation and there are worries about security when billions of devices are all potentially connected to each other.

Poor internet connections cost UK £11 billion

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

DaisyA survey commissioned by the Daisy Group estimates that slow net connections cost the UK a staggering £11 billion a year.

The research was carried out by One Poll on Daisy’s behalf, and surveyed 2,000 adults.

According to the report, 72 percent of the estimated 30 million workers in the UK use the net as part of their daily tasks.

Thirty nine percent of the respondents said home net connections were “much faster” than the ones used for work.

Daisy product manager Jan Wielding said too many businesses used basic ADSL connections aimed at home users. “These are the businesses that struggle to cope with the high bandwidth demands of software and apps that workers use.:

Wielenga said this was unacceptable, particularly when fibre and dedicated Ethernet are cheaper than ever and widely available.

Over 60 percent of the people surveyed said they used their smartphones for non related work activities. And when the business net goes down, nine per cent scurry to see if there are other jobs going, using their smartphones.

The survey appears to show that the average British worker loses 38 hours of productivity a year because of downtime or slow access – meaning something like £494 worth of productivity is lost a year.

Wielenga said that there is a lack of awareness in small to medium enterprises that a government sponsored Super Connected Cities scheme will subsidise the the cost of a much faster connection.

Daisy is hosting a webinar on the 26th of March, in conjunction with the CBI, to help SMEs through the maze.

OpenPOWER reveals hardware plans

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 09.25.15The OpenPOWER Foundation – a group backed by Google, IBM, Nvidia, Mellanox, Tyan and others, revealed its hardware plans to capture data centre business.

OpenPOWER has over 100 members worldwide and IBM claims, for example, that Power 8 microprocessors offer something close to 60 percent better price performance than the competition. The competition, by the way, is mainly Intel.

IBM claims the Power 8 microprocessor is the first CPU designed specifically for Big Data and analytics workloads.

OpenPOWER members showed a number of hardware elements in their plan to grab data centre business.

IBM and Wistron showed off a prototype of a high performance server using tech from Nvidia and Mellanox. IBM will deliver two systems to Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, with a throughput five to 10 times faster than existing supercomputers.

In the second quarter of this year, Tyan will release its TN71-BP012, using an OpenPOWER customer reference system and aid at large scale cloud projects.

Nviia, Tyan and Cirrascale have developed the Cirrascale RM4950, which is a GPU accelerated developer platform which will be available in volume in the second quarter of this year. That’s aimed at big data analytics and scientific computing applications.

Public wi-fi hotspots hit new high

Posted on March 19, 2015 by - News

1980-radio-shack-catalogThe number of public wi-fi hotspot deployments totalled 5.69 million and show no sign of slowing down at all.

Figures from ABI Research reveal that they will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.2 percent between this year and 2020, and by the end of that time there will be 13.3 million of them.

Liam Jye Su, a research associate at ABI, said: “Wi-fi deployments have been surprisingly robust, and more and more public locations have signed up on a free or ‘premium’ basis. This has discouraged the participation of third party operators in some locales because there is a need for the upgrade of service, coverage and legacy equipment, only beneficial for operators with significant economies of scale.”

Some mobile operators are re-considering their attitude to public hotspots because of the high cost of sales with a low return on investment on residential wi-fi. British Telecom and China Telecom, for example are entering partnerships with third parties.

Wi-fi hotspots also have the benefit for operators of offloading mobile data traffic, more especially in urban environments.

Germany bans not quite Uber alles

Posted on March 18, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-03-18 at 16.23.53A German court has ordered taxi service Uber to stop operating commercial services and threatened severe fines if the company breaches any transport laws.

A Frankfurt regional court said that if Uber broke the order, it would be fined 250,000 Euro, according to Reuters.

The Frankfurt court hasn’t stopped Uber from operating its service for taxis and limos.

Uber said it will appeal against the decision with its German general manager saying it regretted the decision the court made.

Aber will continue to offer its UberBLACK and UberTAXI services in Germany.

A company called Taxi Deutschland filed the suit against Uber because it would replace qualified taxi driers with unlicensed casual workers.

The judges appear to believe that Uber doesn’t just violate German laws, but European laws too.

 

Windows 10: Summer is a coming in

Posted on March 18, 2015 by - News

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseWe’ve already written how Microsoft is to give away Windows 10 to Chinese users but senior VP Terry Myers has revealed other elements that he hopes will give his company an edge on the operating systems front.

Speaking at a Windows technical conference in China, Myers said the firm will roll Windows 10 out this summer in 190 countries and 111 languages.

He showed off a feature called Windows Hello that supports biometric authentication rather than the usual typed in passwords. Hello will use facial recognition, iris recognition or fingerprints to unlock devices using the Intel RealSense F200 sensor.

He also said there will be a new version of Windows specifically aimed at the internet of things (IoT) market – and that version of Windows will be free and see applications in ATMs, ultrasound machines, and gateways.

Microsoft has signed deals with a number of organisations including the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Qualcomm, Intel and others.

Myerson also announced the Qualcomm DragonBoard 410C which is a Windows 10 developer board with integrated wi-fi, Bluetooth and GPS, and uses a smartphone style Snapdragon 410 chipset.

He claimed that Windows 10 is the only operating system that has a reach across such a broad family of hardware.

 

Smart city connections rise over a billion

Posted on March 18, 2015 by - News

Internet of ThingsEven though there’s little in the way of standards for the internet of things (IoT), the revolution is already here, according to research published by Gartner.

In a report released today, Gartner said that 1.1 billion connected things will be used by smart cities this year but that figure will soar to 9.7 billion by 2020.

But a significant number of connected things this year will be down to so called smart homes and smart commercial buildings – right now the share is 45 percent but the percentage will reach 81 percent by 2020.

Gartner said most of the money will be spent from the private sector. It released figures which showed that public services and in particular healthcare are lagging behind other sectors including transport and utilities.

For the home, connected devices include smart LED lighting, such as Philips Hue lights, healthcare monitoring, smart locks, and sensors that detect things as diverse as motion and carbon monoxide. The highest growth will be in smart lighting – in 2015 there will be only six million units shipped but that will grow to 570 million units by 2020.

Major applications in cities include IoT deployments for parking, traffic and traffic flow. And the UK is leading the way in the field.

Commercial IoT applications will span multiple industries and firms specialising in analytics will see a rise in revenue as big data generated by the billions of devices will represent challenges for the industry.

Freescale-NXP merger challenges the giants

Posted on March 18, 2015 by - News

renesas-chips (1)The proposed merger of Freescale and NXP will result in a semiconductor company that challenges the giants.

That’s according to chief analyst Dale Ford at IHS, who said the merged entity will be in the top 10 semiconductor companies in the world, outranking other giants such as Broadcom and ST Microelectronics.

He said the strength of uniting Freescale and NXP will be shown in automotive applications particularly.

NXP, formerly the semiconductor division of Dutch giant Philips, used to compete in the same market, said Ford.

But the new top 10 will look fundamentally different. By revenues, Intel will remain number one with 14.14 percent, followed by Samsung, Qualcomm, SK Hynix, US DRAM firm Micron, Texas Instruments and Toshiba.

The merged company will be second place in the micro controller market, and it will also have significant share in the digital signal processing (DSP) market, much used in consumer applications.

IHS noted in its report that Freescale is practically an exclusive source for power architecture processors – and although its share in this market is tiny compared to ARM and X86 semiconductors, it has big wins in the military aerospace market.

Apple buys into white box servers

Posted on March 18, 2015 by - News

novità-apple-2013Cupertino based Apple Inc has decided to ditch HP and Dell to supply its servers and instead is looking to Taiwanese firms to supply its data centre needs.

That’s according to Taiwan wire Digitimes which said some of the local white box server manufacturers have already received orders from Apple for boxes.

One of the major manufacturers of servers is Quanta, which used to specialise almost wholly in making notebooks for big vendors but has diversified its business over the last two years.

It offers servers at a price that undercuts Dell and HP and will customise the machines for customers which already include giants like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Apple said recently it will open data centres in Ireland and in Denmark and it’s also spending billions on building up data centres in the USA.

The company is also cuddling up to IBM and wants to release tablet machines that will appeal to enterprises rather than the home users it has depended on in the past.

Microsoft gives the Chinese free Windows 10

Posted on March 18, 2015 by - News

eclipse-chinaSoftware king of the world Microsoft has decided that the best way to stop the Chinese pirating its Windows 10 operating system is to give it to them.

Microsoft has decided to push into the heavily pirated Chinese consumer computing market this summer by offering free upgrades to Windows 10 to all Windows users, regardless of whether they are running genuine copies of the software.

The big idea is to get legitimate versions of VoleWare onto machines of the hundreds of millions of Windows users in China. Recent studies show that three-quarters of all PC software is not properly licensed there.

Terry Myerson, who runs Microsoft’s operating systems unit, announced the plan at the WinHEC technology conference in Shenzhen, China.

Microsoft will upgrade all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10. The plan is to “re-engage” with the hundreds of millions of users of Windows in China, he said, without elaboration.

Windows 10 would be released globally sometime “this summer”. That is the first time Microsoft has put a time frame on the release, although it has been expected in autumn.

Microsoft said in January it would offer free upgrades to Windows 10 for users of Windows 7 or later in an attempt to hold onto users and make up for lost revenue by selling services such as Office over the Internet.

Microsoft is working with Lenovo to roll out Windows 10 in China to current Windows users, Myerson said.

It also is offering Windows 10 through security company Qihoo 360 Technology and Tencent Holdings, China’s biggest social networking company, which will build a Windows 10 app that will work on smartphones and PCs for its popular QQ gaming and messaging service. QQ has more than 800 million users.

Lenovo said in a statement that it will make phones running Windows software, available through China Mobile, sometime later this year.