Compared to more mainstream cellular broadband technology, WiMax provides fast downloads and is cheap to deploy. Sprint is betting on the technology, championed by Intel Corp., to give it a few years’ head start before cellular broadband catches up.

Sprint’s network carries the “Xohm” brand (pronounced “zoam”) and provides download speeds of 2 to 4 megabits per second, slightly more than twice as fast as the current cellular broadband networks of Sprint, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and AT&T Inc.

To use the network, customers need a $60 laptop card an $80, coffee-brewer-sized home modem. Sprint expects additional devices, like a USB modem and laptops with built-in WiMax modems, to become available this year.

With the home modem, Sprint will be competing not just with cellular broadband, but with fixed broadband services like DSL. It will charge $25 per month for home access.

Sprint’s launch of Xohm in Baltimore was widely expected, but it hadn’t previously revealed pricing details.

Xohm service will be activated by users online, much like people sign up for Wi-Fi access at hotels. In addition to the monthly plans, Sprint will offer a day pass for $10. No contracts are required.

The next cities to get Xohm will be Washington and Chicago, according to the Xohm Web site.

Sprint is spinning off Xohm into a joint venture with Clearwire Corp., which already has a WiMax-like network in parts of the country. That deal is expected to close before the end of the year. Google Inc., Intel and a group of cable companies are investing billions into the venture, which will carry Clearwire’s name.

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Norway is leading a European campaign that began two years ago to get Apple to make its iTunes online store compatible with rivals’ digital music players.

“We discussed this at a meeting two weeks ago, and decided that Norway will do the test case,” Consumer Ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon said by telephone. “This could have international consequences.”

The council has the power under Norwegian law to order companies to change trade practices, and can also order fines if companies fail to comply. Thon said Apple has until Nov. 3 to respond to the allegations, and that the council was likely to decide on the case sometime early next year.

Apple in Norway did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Thon began pushing Apple to change its system and rules more than two years go, saying the restrictions violate Norwegian law.

Currently, songs purchased and downloaded through iTunes are designed to work with Apple’s market-leading iPod players but not competitors’ models, including those using Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media system. Likewise, iPods generally can’t play copy-protected music sold through non-Apple stores.

“It’s a consumer’s right to transfer and play digital content bought and downloaded from the Internet to the music device he himself chooses to use. iTunes makes this impossible or at least difficult, and hence, they act in breach of Norwegian law,” said Thon.

Thon said Apple agreed at a meeting in February that they wanted to sell music without the protection known as “Digital Rights Management,” or DRM, and that they shared his goal of making systems interoperable.

But “iTunes has now had two years to meet our demands regarding interoperability. No progress has been reported by iTunes since our meeting in February,” said Thon about the decision to file a complaint. “This is a matter of great principal importance.”

Finland, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands all back the Norwegian drive.

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Freesat, which launched in May this year, offers you the chance to receive digital TV channels through a satellite dish without any subscription cost.

You simply pay an up-front fee for a set-top decoder and a satellite dish if you don’t already have one.

The service also offers several high-definition (HD) channels - something that Freeview, a competing service, doesn’t yet offer.

Emma Scott, managing director of Freesat said: “There are still a lot of people out there who think they’re already watching in HD because they have an HD-ready TV - but they aren’t.”

“We want to help everyone understand that HD-ready is not the same thing as HD now. Without an HD digital receiver connected to an HD Ready TV or an integrated TV with Freesat HD built in you can’t watch an HD TV programme,” Scott continued.

The company also announced that it would be putting out a digital television recorder (DTR) product in November, giving you the chance to record and store programmes broadcast over Freesat.

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The EU’s Telecoms commissioner, and an increasingly familiar figure, Vivian Reding believes that offering citizens broadband services is essential.

“High-speed internet is the passport to the Information Society and an essential condition for economic growth,” said Viviane Reding, EU Telecoms Commissioner in a statement announcing the review.

“This is why it is this Commission’s policy to make broadband internet for all Europeans happen by 2010.”

USO lucky

It appears that the current wording of the EU’s Universal Services Obligations (USO) are likely in its three-year review, which could force telecoms firms to roll out their coverage to outlying areas that are not currently able to get the faster internet action.

The USO currently calls for all member states to offer ‘functional internet access’ which was taken to mean a line that can support 28.8 kilobits per second.

Obviously, in the modern connected world this dial-up rate is far from ideal, and with 36% of EU households already enjoying broadband speeds the review of the USO may well be reworded to ensure that internet access does not mean narrow-band.

This could cause major problems in less developed nations – with the likes of Romania currently only offering a 40% coverage of the nation.

By Patrick Goss

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The council said only those submitting registration update forms in July and August are likely to be affected. The General Teaching Council (GTC) has informed all teachers affected.

“We have taken all possible steps to protect the integrity of the teaching register and are working to ensure that there will be no similar incident in the future,” said GTC registrar Alan Meyrick.

“Because we recognise that no encryption system can ever be entirely infallible, we have taken urgent steps to put additional security measures in place for affected records,” he added.

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The council is switching from sending discs by courier to electronic data transfer.

Separately, the Whittington Hospital NHS Trust said it has found all the missing discs, holding payroll data on 18,000 staff, that it had reported lost earlier in September.

The trust spent £25,000 on informing those affected of the loss, according to its response to a freedom-of-information request.

“Following the detailed scrutiny of the inquiry panel, we are clear the discs have now been accounted for and that there is no risk to staff,” said chief executive David Sloman. “I apologise for the worry caused to both present and ex-staff.”

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BRUSSELS, Belgium, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Broadband World
Forum 2008 — Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in
semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced that its
innovative PhyR(TM) (pronounced “Fire”) impulse noise protection technology
has gained wide support from carriers and equipment vendors as the technically
preferred re-transmission technology.  Broadcom’s PhyR technology provides
several benefits over other application layer schemes and has proven to be a
robust and cost effective solution in “real-world” deployments to enhance the
performance of IPTV networks.  Broadcom will demonstrate its PhyR technology
at this week’s Broadband World Forum in Brussels, Belgium.

Broadcom(R) PhyR is an uncomplicated, easily provisioned, firmware upgrade
to the company’s xDSL chipsets and is based on physical layer re-transmission
technology (or PMS-TC) that enables carriers and equipment providers to
dramatically improve voice, data and video services to their customers, while
delivering as much as a ten-fold improvement in noise resilience.  As a
result, service providers are able to offer higher quality, more advanced
triple-play services for ADSL2+ and VDSL2 networks that equate to better
revenue opportunities with lower support and infrastructure costs.
Additionally, IPTV systems equipped with PhyR will enable end users to enjoy
improved network performance, better service coverage, fewer errors and an
overall heightened viewing experience.  Several early trials and deployments
of PhyR technology by carriers and telecommunications providers worldwide have
already provided several million customers with a better IPTV experience, and
offered additional revenue streams and lower support costs for operators.

To further the adoption of its PhyR technology, Broadcom is leading
efforts to standardize it, which will enable operators to deploy a standards-
based tool for their entire customer base that provides superior impulse noise
protection technology and leverages all of its benefits.

Traditionally, video services provisioned over copper loops have been
susceptible to noise sources in the ambient environment that limit the
coverage area over which services can be made available, or may even reduce
video quality by inducing “macro-blocking” or corrupted images.  Quality IPTV
deployments require carriers to provide a level of impulse noise protection
and margin that dictates an achievable data rate and the loop length over
which voice, video and data, or IPTV services, will be delivered.  While
traditional approaches for increasing noise protection have an improved effect
on residual errors, they unfortunately have an adverse effect on the
serviceable reach and data rate, thereby limiting the service coverage area.

“We are very pleased PhyR’s ability to address real deployment issues with
a greatly simplified provisioning model, better reach and significant
improvement in residual BER under heavy impulsive noise conditions,” said Greg
Fischer, Vice President & General Manager of Broadcom’s Carrier Access line of
business.  “PhyR technology offers our customers greatly improved ADSL2+ and
VDSL2-based video or data services, and provides new IP services in a way that
vastly improves performance while reducing service provisioning complexities
and scalability issues.  We are pleased to receive very positive technical
feedback from carriers and system vendors worldwide and through our
standardization efforts; we hope that this technology can benefit the entire
industry.”

Broadcom’s new and previously deployed central office (CO) and customer
premises equipment (CPE) system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions are all upgradeable
to the innovative PhyR firmware.  As a result, service providers will be able
to offer IPTV and other ultra high bandwidth applications utilizing simplified
provisioning with quality levels comparable to Ethernet, while leveraging
their existing copper plant infrastructures.

About Broadcom’s Broadband Communications Group

Broadcom offers manufacturers a range of broadband communications and
consumer electronics system-on-a-chip solutions that enable voice, video, data
and multimedia services over residential wired and wireless networks.  These
highly integrated silicon solutions continue to enable the most advanced
system solutions on the market, which include digital cable, satellite and IP
set-top boxes and media servers, broadband modems and residential gateways,
high definition and digital televisions, Blu-ray Disc(R) players and recorders
and personal video recorders and media PC technology.

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Based on service provider-led use cases, Duncan Bees – Chief Technology Officer for the HGI – will present on the broadband service assurance goals, the HGI specifications designed towards achieving these, and the ultimate operator benefits for delivering true service assurance.

“Service assurance is key to the significant uptake of high-revenue and quality-demanding offerings like IPTV, and the intelligent Home Gateway is a crucial device in achieving this,” said Mr. Bees. “Only when an Intelligent Home Gateway – more than a router or an IGD (Internet Gateway Device) - is in place can service providers feel confident in the delivery of managed and un-managed services, and see significant revenue growth from the home network.

“The HGI is working towards making service assurance and service provider requirements a reality by defining solutions based on existing technologies, and providing expert input to standardization bodies based on service provider-led use cases.”

At Broadband World Forum Europe 2008, Duncan Bees will be taking part in the panel Service Assurance in the Home Network the end-to-end service view and its most critical component, on Wednesday 1st October at 9.00am, where he will outline the HGI specifications and service provider use cases on delivering on service assurance via the Home Gateway.

Corrado Rocca, Member of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Marketing Committee for the Home Gateway Initiative, and Senior Vice President for Product Marketing and Development at Pirelli Broadband Solutions, will also be presenting during the event, taking part in the panel Standardization Key to Broadband Success, on Wednesday 1st October.

The HGI was founded and launched by nine telecom operators (Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KPN, TeliaSonera, NTT, Telefonica and Telecom Italia) in 2004, and now has members from five continents, representing the entire spectrum of actors in the broadband home arena. The main tasks of the HGI are to establish home gateway-related technical and interoperability specifications and provide input to standardisation bodies.

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ChargeBox allows customers to hire a locker to charge their device. Each ChargeBox has a range of pins from the top manufacturers to ensure that as many phones and devices as possible can be charged.

Customers plug their phone or device into the appropriate pin, insert their money or pay by text to activate the charging, lock the door and take the key with them.

Customers using the service can not only be assured that their phone is safely charging but that their personal security is protected at all times as the device can not be accessed by anyone accept the key holder.

Customers of Vodafone and non-customers alike will be able to use a ChargeBox battery charging service from £1 for 30 minutes of charge. The maximum charge amount is £2 for 90 minutes.

Among the first 30 stores to receive the ChargeBox will be Vodafone London St Pancras, Vodafone at Harrods, Vodafone Birmingham Bull Ring, Vodafone Belfast Victoria Square, Vodafone Newcastle’s Douglas Way and Vodafone Bristol Broadmead from 29 September.

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After admitting to running previous trials of the technology without the knowlegde of customers, Phorm today said that new trials were about to get underway.

“Phorm, the advertising technology company, today announces that its ISP partner, BT, will tomorrow commence its trial of Phorm’s platform, branded ‘BT Webwise’,” the company said in a statement.

“BT customers are being invited to take part in the trial, which will take place over a number of weeks. Following successful completion of this trial and an appropriate period of analysis and planning, it is currently expected that Phorm’s platform will be rolled out across BT’s network,” the statement continued.

The City of London Police last week announced that it had closed an investigation into the secret trials.

Anti-Phorm campaigner Alexander Hanff was incensed and is currently polling visitors to his website to see if they would be willing to help him fund a Judicial Review of the decision to can the investigation.

However, the controversy surrounds Phorm’s use of a technology known as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) which reveals which web pages a surfer has been looking at.

Hanff claims that if Phorm is given the go-ahead, many other similar systems could be implemented and that unscrupulous individuals could use the information for criminal ends.

He told Web User in August that if Phorm is permitted to sidestep the law “we will soon be flooded with similar companies and technologies and people’s personal data will be compromised”.

Phorm has long maintained that its technology is not invasive and should help advertisers provide relevant advertising and stop surfers seeing ads for products they aren’t interested in.

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The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) will also introduce specific measures to protect children on the internet, including the removal of offensive websites such as those that promote eating disorders such as anorexia.

UKCCIS will also encourage sites that rely heavily on user-generated content to establish voluntary codes of practice to ensure that offensive material is taken down within a set timeframe.

Online bullying and violent video games are other areas UKCCIS is responsible for, following a government-commissioned report by Dr Tanya Byron.

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