Communications

The UK’s first WiMAX network is under construction in Kent, according to wireless network provider Telabria. The firm said its network would provide wireless broadband services to both residential and business customers in the south East. “We’re extremely excited about the network we’re building,” said Jim Baker, Telabria founder and chief executive officer. “We believe that in the UK market ...

Start-up Nanotech Semiconductor has completed its first external investment round, raising $1.2m. The fabless chip firm also has two potential customers and two new directors. The cash will go into applications engineering, sales and marketing. “Having completed our first two ICs, we really need to beef up the customer-facing side of the business,” said founder and CEO Gary Steele. The ...

Home networks will not be connected to the outside world via one central gateway or set-top box, according to Philips Semiconductors. “We believe there will be separate channels into the home. Our view is the centre for the connected home is the connected customer who will be taking information from everywhere,” said Karsten Ottenberg, senior v-p of Philips Semiconductors Consumer ...

TTP Communications is aiming to have its technology fitted in one out of every five GSM and W-CDMA handsets. The Cambridge-based company said in the last six months eight per cent of handsets were built around its architecture and if it could achieve 20 per cent this would make it number two in terms of GSM and W-CDMA handsets sold. ...

Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) networking technology has the potential to cut the cost of networking cards in a number of industrial networking applications. According to Matthew Caffrey, business development manager at DSP Design, PoE has in the last 18 months become an established technology particularly with the roll-out of IP phone in North America and it has potential to make an impact ...

Ultra wideband start-up Pulse-Link has unveiled a demonstration chip for transmitting ultra wideband communications wirelessly, over cable television networks and over electrical wiring. While widely regarded as a wireless technology, Pulse-Link offers UWB technology for transmitting both wirelessly and over wires, according to president and CEO, Bruce Watkins. The venture-funded, California-based company claims that it will have more than 200 ...

Scottish researchers have developed a way to dramatically cut the cost of active phased-array antennas, and are looking to interest car makers. “We know we can develop and manufacture a 17mm-thick antenna you could put into the roof of a car,” Matthew Boyd, chief operating officer of Fortel, told Electronics Weekly. A satellite TV system including the antenna would only ...

Speech recognition technology with a claimed accuracy rate of 95 per cent has been developed by researchers at Toshiba. The middleware, which also features a text-to-speech (TTS) engine, will be available from the third quarter of this year, with support for nine languages. The package is designed to fit in minimal memory, with the automatic speech recognition requiring 100Mips, and ...

Motorola subsidiary Freescale Semiconductor is stepping up the pressure in the battle to control ultra wideband (UWB). The company has laid out its roadmap for ultra wideband products, which includes plans to deliver three product families over the next year. Freescale made the announcement at the Wireless Connectivity World Expo in Amsterdam. The new product families include the industry’s first ...

Oki Electric is claiming a world first for high speed optical communications with its demonstration of a single channel optical device capable of transmitting and receiving data at a rate of 160Gbit/s over a distance of 640km. The company highlighted the importance of the high data rate technology for the distribution of digital cinema films in real-time. The 160Gbit/s data ...