Recently in Mobility Category

Virgin Mobile user? Own a Palm Pilot with Bluetooth? Want to access the Internet on your Palm OS device? Annoyed by this?

Don't worry. There is a way to get everything working.

Nice to see the final parts of Wales not yet wired up for broadband are finally going to get the goods, thanks to the Welsh Assembly. The end of the month also marks the big upgrade BT has planned for the country:

From 31st March, BT will upgrade over 5,300 UK exchanges to Max DSL, serving more than 99.6% of homes and businesses. Only 159 remote exchanges will remain on standard DSL.

Customers’ ability to receive up to 8Mb speeds will be dependent on line quality and distance from the exchange. Results from the BT Wholesale IPStream Max Trial indicate that the average speeds achieved are 5-6Mb. BT estimates that 78% of BT phone lines should support broadband at line rates of 4Mbit/s and above, with 6Mbit/s and above available to more than 42%. For those living or working close to their local telephone exchange, line rates of up to the maximum 8Mbit/s should be achievable.

BT anticipate that it will take several months to regrade the total existing end user customer base to DSL Max products.

I'm glad of this, especially since I've just upgraded to an ADSL2+ router - my last one was a bit flaky, only capable of ADSL and could only deal with speeds up to 4Mbps. At the moment though, despite being based in London, I can still only get 1Mbps on my line, thanks to being too far from the exchange to get even 2Mbps - let alone the 8Mbps of Max DSL or the 24Mbps of Be*.

That's with Zen, who are charging me £29.99 a month for the privilege. They're reliable and know what they're doing, but I'm not sure I can justify that any more, given the other offers available. But with so many tales of woe from broadband users around the country, dare I risk the move? Can anyone recommend a good ISP that gives a reasonable speed at a reasonable price?

Access, which bought up PalmSource, has confirmed that the future Palm OS will be Linux-based. You'll be able to run Linux apps on future Palm devices that use the OS, but you'll also be able to run current Palm apps (well, most of them).

PalmSource was already walking down the Linux path when it was acquired by Access. This was partially because of the complete failure of any device manufacturers to license Palm OS 6, the next generation version of the current Palm OS 5 that incorporated lots of lovely technology from the acquisition of Be's technology. The question is, will anyone bother with this new Palm OS either?

Sure, it's easier to find Linux developers than Palm OS developers. But the last big Linux PDA, which was produced by Sharp, is no longer available in the UK because of lack of popularity. Ultimately, what made Palm successful was the Palm interface in combination with existing software. If there are no good reasons to move to the next OS, you lose compatibility with a swathe of software and the Palm interface gets replaced with something more Linux-y, why bother migrating?

I get the suspicion that by the time the last Palm device gets made, it'll still be running Palm OS 5, not Linux.

For all the hype over VoIP and how it's going to revolutionise telecoms, actually evidence of this has been short on the ground. It's all very well saying VoIP gives you the option of a single number that gives you access to free Internet calls, no matter whether you're at your PC, by your landline or using a mobile. But unless there's a way to actually do this, it's all so much theory.

The announcement by 3 yesterday that it's going to bundle Skype with its mobile Internet service is probably the first indication that the VoIP stirrings are now something more than hype. The pricing of the service is going to be the main factor in its success. 3's network tariffs aren't exactly the cheapest and adding on additional Internet access charges is going to be a turn-off for infrequent users. But for those that intend to use Skype as their main calling system - and who intend to use it a lot – it could certainly be a big costsaver and convenience.

Much as regulation is a dirty word in most free markets, I actually welcome the news that the EU is to try to pass a law forcing mobile phone operators to drop their roaming charges to sensible levels. It really is just stupidly expensive to call from abroad using a mobile phone - far more than it could ever cost the operators. God bless the EU.

A trial of solar-powered street lights that incorporate WiFi answers at least some of my worries about The Cloud's plans for universal WiFi access that I discussed yesterday. At the very least, they're a great idea from a green point of view, since street lights require a huge amount of electricity to run.

Technorati Tags: green issues, WiFi

The Cloud is planning to roll out blanket WiFi coverage in UK cities. It's an interesting idea in the short term at least, but:

1. How is billing going to work for roaming users? Will there be a single payment point or will you have to set up new payment details for whichever ISP you happen to be connected to at that point?
2. How much will it cost? WiFi access still isn't as cheap as it could be?
3. What will happen to existing WiFi networks? Many are already causing interference with each other, so the addition of an ubiquitous network is undoubtedly going to cause problems for incumbents.
4. What will happen in the mid-term, when WiMAX comes online? Will all these nodes be converted to WiMAX or can we expect an eternal WiFi network to fill up our radio spectrum in perpetuity?
5. Are there the resources to cope with this? That's an awful lot of nodes draining an awful lot of power and using up an awful lot of bandwidth
6. How will each node get Internet access? Wireless extension, wireless mesh or some other system? Or will every node have to be connected to a phone line? And will there will be enough IPv4 addresses available to cope?

Let's hope these issues aren't ignored or skirted over, otherwise there's going to be a great deal of effort being wasted.

Updates and related entries
January 5, 2006: A trial of solar-powered street lights that incorporate WiFi answers at least some of my worries about The Cloud's plans for universal WiFi access that I discussed yesterday. At the very least, they're a great idea from a green point of view, sinc...

True, they won't be getting the full 1Gbps speeds promised for 4G, but by combining WiFi, 3G and GPRS, they will at least get the pervasive networking side of things covered.

Technorati Tags: Orange, WiFi, mobile phones