Communications

Digital video recorders (DVRs) are transforming advertising in the US as the technology begins to take off in the home. Independent consultant Paul Bristow said the technology has had an unexpected benefit as it has made advertisers nervous about the commercial breaks being skipped over too easily. “Since DVR was introduced in the US there’s been an incredible improvement in ...

The next big challenge to the major telecommunications operators could be from a wave of entrepreneurial firms deploying fibre-to-the-home (FTTH). The price of the technology has now come down to a level which makes it economic for domestic users, according to the US DSL specialist firm Centillium Communications, which is about to launch a range of FTTH products. “Two years ...

Voice, data and video are the goal of every satellite TV, telecoms, cable and and mobile operator, and the key is doing it all over the Internet, according to Zarlink Semiconductor. The three applications are known as triple-play in the industry. “They all want to play in the triple-play and they all want to take the others out of the ...

Cambridge-based Bluetooth firm CSR has revealed a chip for the 3Mbit/s Bluetooth v1.2 EDR (enhanced data rate) standard. Called BlueCore4, it is the fourth generation of CSR’s Bluetooth chip. “We think it is the first in the world to sample,” said CSR co-founder Glenn Collinson. The EDR Bluetooth standard was only officially launched today by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group ...

Amino Technologies has named an offer price of 120p for its impending flotation on the AIM stock market. At that share price, the Cambridge-based Internet technology company will have a market capitalisation of  £61.2m when it floats next Wednesday. It hopes to raise £7m of new money through the placing. The seven year-old company develops software and hardware products, the ...

With total handset shipments totaling less than 60,000 in 2003, the voice-over-wireless LAN (VoWLAN) market is still in its infancy. However, according to In-Stat/MDR, despite the relatively high cost of handsets and the lack of standardised QoS and fast roaming, this technology is already reaching a surprising amount of business users, and a significant number have it on their radar ...

Satellite is going to have to work hard to gain any foothold in the broadband access market, according to industry experts speaking at the Mediacast 2004 show. “Currently satellite is a last resort stopgap until DSL arrives,” said Juan Aguirre, market and applications manager at satellite specialists UDcast. “The challenge is to make it viable cost-wise.” Aguirre said that, apart ...

Before they make it into PCs and aircraft and washing machines and DVD players, electronic devices are developed and tested out in controlled environments. But for some consumer electronics products, that laboratory is much bigger than the typical facility at a chip company. For example BMCO’s lab will be the entire city of Berlin when it launches its test programme ...

An array of technologies – GSM phones, Bluetooth, broadband, to name a few – have arrived over the last few years to change the day-to-day lives of billions of people. In that time the means of performing everyday tasks involved with looking after the old and sick – recording notes, taking blood pressures and temperatures, and analysing blood samples – ...

A Scottish start-up has developed a concept for a short-range optical interconnect that can be reconfigured in software to cover nine different standards. Conjunct, based in Edinburgh, calls its device the dynamic serial optical interconnect (DSOI), and is currently seeking funding to take it beyond prototyping. A demonstration device is planned for spring next year. “We’re trying to offer a ...