• BT seals �12.5bn deal to buy EE

    BT seals �12.5bn deal to buy EE

    BT said it would raise £1bn through a placing of new shares to fund the deal, after weeks of exclusive talks with the owners of EE, Orange and Deutsche Telekom. “This is a very exciting time and a new chapter for BT,” said Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT, and hailed the deal as a “major milestone”. Deutsche Telekom will hold 12 per cent in the new merged business and will have a seat on the board, while Orange will get a 4 per cent stake, as well as around £3.4bn in cash. Following the takeover, BT will be able to sell its fixed telephone, broadband and TV services to EE's customers and accelerate its plans to offer interconnectivity between fixed Wi-Fi and high-speed fibre networks with mobile 4G technology. "The UK's leading 4G network will now dovetail with the UK's biggest fibre…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX
  • Eurotunnel to launch 4G services

    Eurotunnel to launch 4G services

    According to officials, with the upgrade to 4G people will now be able to stream videos, listen to music and watch and share data on their mobile devices 100m under sea-level as easily as at home.   "This new service means we can offer our customers incredible connectivity and astonishing access to mobile services, bringing better information for passengers, allowing them to remain operational and make their journey a real opportunity to relax," said Michel Boudoussier, Eurotunnel's chief operating officer. The 4G boost was made possible because of the two-way collaboration between the Eurotunnel and telecommunication operators EE, O2, Vodafone and Bouygues Telecom. The launch of 4G in the Channel Tunnel was marked by a live concert broadcasted from the Shuttle travelling at almost 90mph. Around…

    IET EngX
    IET EngX
  • BT courting O2 and EE as it looks to re-enter mobile market

    BT courting O2 and EE as it looks to re-enter mobile market

    The former British telecoms monopoly is looking to return to the British consumer mobile market. Both the company and O2’s Spanish owner Telefonica have confirmed they were in talks after Spanish website El Confidencial reported that O2 could be sold in return for a 20 per cent stake in BT as part of a "strategic alliance" to strengthen the two groups. BT also said it was in talks with another British mobile operator, which two sources close to the matter identified as EE, owned by Orange and Deutsche Telekom. "We have received expressions of interest from shareholders in two UK mobile network operators, of which one is O2, about a possible transaction in which BT would acquire their UK mobile business," BT said. "All discussions are at a highly preliminary stage and there can be no certainty…

  • Intel launches gold-coated 'smart jewellery' bracelet

    Intel launches gold-coated 'smart jewellery' bracelet

    The MICA – an acronym for My Intelligent Communication Accessory – runs independently of a user’s smartphone to deliver vibration-based text message and Gmail notifications, as well as allowing them to respond with customisable ‘quick replies’. Alerts from Google Calendar and Facebook event notifications are displayed on a curved sapphire glass touchscreen display on the inside of the wrist, which is used to control the device. The ‘Time to Go’ app – powered by satnav firm TomTom and Intel – provides intelligent reminders that adjust the time needed to get to the user’s next appointment based on location. Users can also access Yelp local search to find and read reviews of restaurants, shops and other local businesses. Co-designed with fashion house Opening Ceremony, the ‘smart jewellery’ is…

  • Half the world's population connected to mobile Internet by 2020

    Half the world's population connected to mobile Internet by 2020

    It is calculated that there were 2.2 billion mobile Internet subscribers in 2013, representing approximately 30 per cent of the global population. GSMA Intelligence forecasts that an additional 1.6 billion citizens worldwide will become mobile Internet users over the next six years, bringing the total number to 3.8 billion, or around half of the world’s expected population in 2020. “Our new findings underline how mobile is now the gateway to the Internet for billions of citizens across the world and will be responsible for connecting millions of currently ‘offline’ global citizens to the Internet in the years to 2020 and beyond,” said Anne Bouverot, director general of the GSMA. “Developing innovative ways to accelerate digital inclusion in the form of affordable mobile Internet access is now…

  • 'Connected traveller' prompts airports to prioritise IT investment

    'Connected traveller' prompts airports to prioritise IT investment

    This annual survey of the world’s airports shows the focus on the ‘connected traveller’ with investments in IT infrastructure and services that give passengers more convenience, control and a connected experience. Self-service and mobile options are key areas of investment, with over 80 per cent of airports planning a project in these areas over the next three years. The total spend is estimated to reach $6.8bn. Francesco Violante, CEO of SITA, said: “This is the age of the connected traveller with nearly all passengers carrying mobiles, tablets and other devices. It is vital that airports invest in the infrastructure to support the changing expectations of these passengers. This year’s survey shows that the majority of airports globally are investing more in new technologies and mobile services…

  • Mobile operators embrace embedded SIM specification

    Mobile operators embrace embedded SIM specification

    The specification describes a non-removable SIM that is embedded in connected devices at the point of manufacture and allows remote provisioning over the network, thereby removing the need to replace SIM cards if the manufacturer or user decides to switch networks. At the Mobile 360 Series-Middle East conference in Dubai, the trade body announced that operators AT&T, Etisalat, NTT DOCOMO, Telefónica and Vodafone Group alongside manufacturers Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Morpho (Safran), Oberthur Technologies, Sierra Wireless and Telit have all launched compliant solutions. Ericsson, Jasper and Telenor Connexion have also committed to future roll-outs of the specification. “Our vision has always been to unite all stakeholders behind a single, common and global specification that will help accelerate…

  • Manufacturing slowdown 'first alarm bell' for economy

    Manufacturing slowdown 'first alarm bell' for economy

    Figures compiled by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) suggested that while the UK was still growing, expansion slowed during the period, with a poll of more than 7,000 firms showing the increase in domestic sales and orders in manufacturing dropped sharply following all-time highs in the second quarter. Growth in exports fell for both manufacturing and the dominant services sector, which represents three-quarters of UK output. BCC chief economist David Kern said: "These results point to continued UK economic growth, but the pace is easing. The signs of the slowdown are particularly noticeable in manufacturing, where all the key domestic and export balances recorded declines in Q3. "Noticeable falls in all the export balances and increased signs of slower growth require a forceful policy…

  • Update to Passpoint Wi-Fi roaming system aims for new users

    Update to Passpoint Wi-Fi roaming system aims for new users

    The Passpoint system, released by the trade association in 2012, is designed to provide a cellular-like experience to seamlessly switch between any WiFi hotspots run by a provider that the user subscribes to, or which has a roaming agreement with their mobile operator or home broadband provider, without having to re-enter authentication details each time. The system has already been deployed by providers such as Orange, SK Telecom, Boingo and Time Warner Cable, but so far this has involved pre-provisioned devices without the ability to easily register for new services. The latest update allows on the spot sign up by allowing users that don’t have an account with a hotspot provider or its roaming partners to set up an account via their device using a secure registration process rather than being…

  • Stonehenge: digital mapping reveals the true picture

    Stonehenge: digital mapping reveals the true picture

    Stonehenge: a national monument, an internationally recognised British icon. For centuries, people have wondered, theorised, intrigued and argued about who, or what, might have put an isolated collection of huge standing stones in the middle of the Wiltshire countryside somewhere between five and six thousand years ago – and for what purpose. Now, new research conducted by archaeologists and scientists from Birmingham University and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, in Vienna has revealed that Stonehenge did not sit alone within its Neolithic landscape. The research has revealed that the area around Stonehenge was heavy with additional monuments, chapels and burial chambers, which until now have remained hidden underground or inside known…

  • Apple apologises over iOS 8 glitch as it releases patch

    Apple apologises over iOS 8 glitch as it releases patch

    The issue was caused by an earlier update to its iOS 8 mobile operating system released on Wednesday and the tech giant had scrambled to fix the glitch, releasing an update late yesterday that it claimed would resolve the issue. Apple has also had to defend its iPhone 6 Plus against social media reports that its extra-large shell is vulnerable to bending, saying bending "is extremely rare" with normal use of an iPhone and that just nine customers had contacted the company to report a bent iPhone 6 Plus since they went on sale despite a record 10 million sales of the new models in the first weekend. But the firm was contrite about the iOS issue, having previously vowed to work "around the clock" to fix it, saying: "We apologise for inconveniencing the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users who were…

  • Intel buys $1.5bn stake in two Chinese mobile chipmakers

    Intel buys $1.5bn stake in two Chinese mobile chipmakers

    The US semiconductor firm has struggled to gain a foothold in the smartphone and tablet market, lagging behind industry leader and rival Qualcomm, but the deal would give it a bigger slice of the Chinese mobile chip market, where growth is still strong compared to maturing Western markets. Intel has struck the deal with Tsinghua Unigroup, a government-affiliated private equity firm that owns mobile chipmakers Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics, and the deal will also provide the two Chinese firms support from a US semiconductor giant on chip design and development. "It has become a national priority of China to grow its semiconductor industry," said Tsinghua Unigroup chairman Zhao Weiguo in a statement released by Intel today. "The strategic collaboration between Tsinghua Unigroup…

  • Samsung steals a march on Apple with launch of latest Galaxy

    Samsung steals a march on Apple with launch of latest Galaxy

    The Galaxy Alpha will go on sale at the beginning of September the Korean phone manufacturer said, as it reignites its battle at the top of the smartphone market with Apple, which is expected to release the iPhone 6 in early September, with rumours suggesting it could come in two sizes for the first time. Leaked images of the phone appeared online earlier this month, with some comments on social media suggesting it looked similar to an iPhone due to a new metal frame that is flatter. The new device will have a 4.7in screen, which is slightly smaller than the screen on the Galaxy S5, released in April. The Alpha is also more than a millimetre thinner than the S5, making it one of the slimmest devices the company has ever made. Despite the leaner design, which makes the phone 30g lighter than…

  • Poor connectivity at football matches solved

    Poor connectivity at football matches solved

    With thousands of fans crammed into a stadium local mobile network capacity is quickly exceeded during football matches leading to poor connectivity, but TribeHive has developed technology that can build a network directly between phones and use it as the basis for distributing data. The technology is being used in six new smartphone apps being introduced by clubs in the Football League, including one Barclays Premier League team QPR and five Sky Bet Championship teams – Birmingham, Bolton, Brighton and Hove, Middlesbrough and Watford – for the first two months of the 2014/2015 season. The iOS and Android apps are available for fans to download ahead of the first matches of the season and will deliver match-related content, player statistics, live results from other fixtures, travel information…

  • BlackBerry to open BBM up to Windows phones

    BlackBerry to open BBM up to Windows phones

    The Canadian firm is seeking to reinvent itself as a more software and services driven company as its smartphone market share has dwindled in recent years has been lately touting new BBM features in a bid to make it a more viable messaging tool for enterprise clients. While BBM was one of the pioneering mobile-messaging services and still has over 85 million active users, its user base has failed to keep pace with those of WhatsApp and other rivals, in part because BlackBerry had long refused to open the program to users on other platforms. Last year the company opened the service to phones powered by Google popular Android operating system and Apple's iOS platform and the rollout to the Windows phone platform means the service is now available on all major smartphone platforms. In a bid to…

  • Report calls for chief engineers for hospitals' tech

    Report calls for chief engineers for hospitals' tech

    The report’s authors argue that every trust should appoint a chief biomedical engineer to co-ordinate and plan how trusts use technology. “It’s vital that engineers are involved in the procurement, use and maintenance of biomedical equipment,” said Helen Meese, head of engineering in society at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). “In order to reap the full benefits that technology can offer, the people who design, make and maintain these pieces of equipment need to be heard.” Speaking at the report's launch, Meese referenced a recent report by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) report that claims more than 300 deaths in 2013 could be attributed to faulty equipment. Other situations have involved simple miscalibration of weighing scales, leading to the…

  • Wildlife monitoring: should UAV drones be banned?

    Wildlife monitoring: should UAV drones be banned?

    Just when you thought it was safe to stop talking about UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) as something that conservationists and authorities might one day use to stop poachers killing animals and start talking about drones as something actually being used to catch poachers, African governments have started banning them.On 3 June this year reports emerged that the South African Civil Aviation Authority had banned individuals and groups from flying drones with mounted cameras in South African airspace. The SACAA quickly denied this. They said that drones needed to meet certain requirements to fly in South African airspace, it was just that no drones currently met those requirements. The next day, the Kenyan government also banned privately owned drones with cameras. A few weeks earlier, drones…

  • Tracking wildlife: how scientists monitor endangered species

    Tracking wildlife: how scientists monitor endangered species

    Scientists track a wide variety of animals, from butterflies to great white sharks, in order to study how they use their environment, which foods are important and to gain insights into behaviour and condition of the creatures as well as to identify key breeding areas that may need protection.  Miniaturisation of electronics and improvement in battery technology is making it possible to follow even the smallest birds and insects on their migrations. Satellite technology allows us to track the position of animals anywhere on the planet, while crittercams and accelerometers give us a ringside view of their behaviour. “Is it diving, running or sleeping? We can follow animals into great wildernesses without having to be there,” says John Fryxell, an arctic ecologist at the University of Guelph…

  • Samsung headed for worst results in two years

    Samsung headed for worst results in two years

    The South Korean company said today that it saw better business conditions in the third quarter, but it faces slowing market growth, intensifying price competition at the lower end and the looming threat of Apple’s next iPhone. While smartphones drove Samsung to record profits last year the market is maturing, with research firm IDC predicting global shipments growth will slow to 19.3 per cent this year from 39.2 per cent in 2013, while average sales prices will also drop. Despite the potential damage to its margins, some analysts said Samsung may have no choice but to slash prices for mid-to-low tier devices, where growth is stronger, to go after cheaper Chinese rivals such as Huawei Technologies and Lenovo Group in an effort to defend its market share. "The earnings deliver a harsh reality…

  • First city-wide Internet of Things network announced

    First city-wide Internet of Things network announced

    The project will be based on the Weightless communications standard and will be used to demonstrate the ability of a city-wide M2M infrastructure to cope with a large number of static and mobile sensors. The technology is being supplied and managed by BT and Neul who, working with Milton Keynes Council, will install a network of Weightless base stations to provide coverage across the city for low power, connected sensors to allow innovators to use the infrastructure as a test bed for commercial applications, new products and new services. “We see this exciting project as a means of establishing an open innovation environment to support the creation of M2M and IoT applications across a whole city,” said Alan Ward, head of corporate ICT practice at BT.   “This could include anything from intelligent…

  • News analysis: Electronics drones and satcoms search for MH370

    News analysis: Electronics drones and satcoms search for MH370

    As you read this, the expected 30-day battery-life of the Malaysia Airlines MH370 black box pinger will have expired, making it more difficult to locate the device in the massive southern Indian Ocean where the Boeing 777-200 is believed to have ended. MH370 set off from Kuala Lumpur on 8 March, bound for Beijing carrying 239 people. The transponder, which provides ID and location data, stopped operating 40 minutes later, and the last voice contact was made as the plane left Malaysian airspace. The flight never reached Beijing, but what happened and why are matters that have been occupying investigators ever since. Even if the black box is found, technical information from the flight data recorder (FDR) would not provide all the answers if technical problems were not the cause. "Aviation experts…

  • Power-saving breakthrough in mobile mast design

    Power-saving breakthrough in mobile mast design

    A signal amplifier designed by engineers at the Universities of Bristol and Cardiff works at 50 per cent efficiency compared with the 30 per cent now typically achieved, and the researchers have calculated the design could save roughly half the output of a mid-size 400MW power station if rolled out to just a fifth of the country’s 50,000 phone mast base stations. Currently, a 40W transmitter in a phone mast’s base station requires just over 130W of power to amplify signals and send them wirelessly to people’s mobiles, but the new design enables the transmitter to work effectively while using just 80W of power. Dr Kevin Morris, project leader at the University of Bristol, said: “This new amplifier design represents a step change in energy efficiency that could make a really valuable contribution…

  • Radar arrays precisely monitor ice shelf deterioration

    Radar arrays precisely monitor ice shelf deterioration

    The radars have been placed on the ice shelf surrounding Pine Island by University College London (UCL) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists to record changes of the Antarctic ice in unprecedented detail. The ice shelves around Antarctica can be up to 1.2 miles thick, but preliminary trials show the new radar system can detect changes of as little as a millimetre – about the amount the Pine Island Glacier melts in just 30 minutes. “Although we’ve previously taken snapshots of the ice with radar, this is the first time year-round monitoring has been possible,” said Dr Keith Nicholls of the British Antarctic Survey. “Where changing ocean currents interact with the underside of the ice shelf, the rate of melting can change season by season, month by month, even over days or hours. The…

  • New radar technology to free-up radio spectrum

    New radar technology to free-up radio spectrum

    The government has tasked the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with investigating options that would allow it to release bandwidth in the current air traffic radar spectrum allocation – in the ‘S Band’ between 2.7 and 2.9 GHz – to help meet its aspiration to free up 500 MHz of public spectrum by 2020. In response, Cambridge technology firm Aveillant has been awarded a contract by the CAA to demonstrate the ability of its Holographic Radar technology to provide a spectrum-efficient alternative to S-band radar. At present each radar typically has its own frequency assignment, but Aveillant hopes to demonstrate a surveillance system that can enable all air traffic control radars in the UK to operate through a single frequency assignment, separate from the ‘S Band’. The firm’s radars use the L band…

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