Communications

Headlines in wireless are dominated by standards. GSM, DECT, Bluetooth, 802.11, ZigBee, and WiMAX have evolved – or are still evolving – through meetings and international committees, as companies and engineers try to influence the final form of the technology. Invariably, it seems, these standards take a long time to finalise, and, once the committee process has run its course, ...

Firms are racing to gain a share of a European market for high resolution camera phones predicted for next year. The market for image sensors in particular has become a target for firms looking to take advantage of this growth. Cypress Semiconductor last week spent $100m acquiring 46-person Belgian imaging sensor firm FillFactory. It is a first time entry for ...

The telecoms industry is now moving from proprietary systems to a modular building block approach. This is according to Intel and Motorola, which both made announcements about AdvancedTCA (telecom computing architecture) last week. “Communications is a vast industry, based largely on proprietary systems,” said Richard Lissenden, marketing manager EMEA at Intel. “But all large unregulated, unrestricted, industries modulise over time. ...

Bookham Technology is to become a US firm as part of a plan to “strategically position” itself in the North American market. The Oxfordshire-based supplier of optical components will become Bookham Inc as soon as September this year with its shares listed on the NASDAQ stock market. “The Board believes the move will improve its strategic positioning by placing it ...

The Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) and University College London (UCL) have launched an initiative with the aim of promoting the level of innovation in the communications industry. The Communications Innovation Institute (CII) will look at tackling some of the major obstacles blocking innovation in communications technology and draw up roadmaps for the future. “Our hope is to solve some of the co-ordination ...

BT’s plan to switch the majority of its customers to an Internet protocol (IP) network by 2008 has created a multi-billion pound bonanza for telecoms hardware and software suppliers. The replacement of the existing public switched telephone network (PSTN) will mean investment of £2bn a year for an unspecified number of years from 2004 onwards. Dubbed the 21st century network ...

Bluetooth is being touted for a wider range of applications as its data rate is tripled to 3Mbit/s. The upgrade, announced at WiCon World in Amsterdam, is called Bluetooth EDR – enhanced data rate. “Portable music is the hottest [Bluetooth] application right now,” said Glen Collinson, co-founder of Bluetooth chip firm CSR. “EDR is needed for streaming to multiple users ...

Texas Instruments (TI) is talking to telecommunications equipment manufacturers and network operators about adopting a unified DSL standard called Uni-DSL (UDSL) which incorporates all the DSL types – ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+, VDSL, VDSL2 and UHDSL (ultra high-speed DSL). “We’re in discussions with worldwide operators on the concept and we’re in strategic discussions with key customers,” said Michael Seidl, TI’s European ...

Russia is expected to start awarding 3G mobile phone licences next year and the 3G/UMTS system used elsewhere in Europe looks like the front-runner for adoption. Russia is already a big user of GSM mobile systems and the UMTS Forum has convinced Russia’s own 3G special interest group to support the use of 3G/UMTS mobile systems in the region. The ...

The E112 legislation setting out European requirements for locating a mobile phone in an emergency is liable to be tightened up soon, according to US location specialist TruePosition. “The legislation in place is passive legislation, meaning it’s a best effort approach or, ‘do what you can and we’ll revisit this’,” said Jason Angelides, director of global services at TruePosition. “I ...