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- EU urges major spectrum reform, investment
- Nanotech about to get kicked by unions
- White House phone unlocking petition gets 110,000 signatures
- Intel expands foundry operations
- LG buys WebOS
- Samsung managers arrested for suspected negligent homicide
- Qualcomm, TSMC unveil 28nm HPM chips
| EU urges major spectrum reform, investment Posted: 26 Feb 2013 03:16 AM PST EU regulator Neelie Kroes will explain the cost of dragging Europe's mobile networks from today's near collapse to sustainability. Kroes is at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today and will be outlining her cunning plan to make EU mobile networks more competitive than the US operators. At the moment the US networks are coining it in, while the EU is struggling. TechEye has been given an outline of her plan which she says will boost mobile operators' access to valuable spectrum. It will involve €50 million euros of research funding to deliver a "5G" mobile technology by 2020 and put Europe back at the heart of the mobile industry it established, she said. Kroes pointed out that it was 30 years of EU research funding that delivered GSM, and much of the 3G and 4G technology. She said that the European Commission has identified a €27 billion investment gap between what the mobile networks have and the mobile networks the EU needs. Spectrum is still a mess. The EU spectrum allocation maps look like a bowl of spaghetti, she said. Not that there is anything wrong with spaghetti, particularly real Italian EU-approved spaghetti. Kroes promises a pragmatic, not dogmatic approach to addressing these challenges. She said that the EU has always been critical for building the mobile sector, and that it will be key to the future with 5G research and harmonising spectrum policy. "What is missing now is a real telecoms single market. Mobile needs a real single market. We are going to start using our EU Treaty powers to change the situation," she said. Kroes wants 1200Mhz of spectrum for wireless broadband, and it has already allocated 1000. But most EU countries have only made 650 or less available. That is a huge waste and it it's inexcusable, she added. She was also concerned that some local and regional authorities were 100 times stricter than the EU's recommended safety standards for 4G. Kroes thinks that isn't protecting people, it's just killing the economy. Kroes believes it is unacceptable that there are more 4G subscriptions in South Korea than the entire EU and 17 EU countries still lack 4G. She said there needed to be a change of mindset, with Member States having to realise the potential benefits of thinking European when authorising spectrum 5G must be pioneered by European industry, based on European research and creating jobs in Europe – the EU will put its money where its mouth is, Kroes promised. |
| Nanotech about to get kicked by unions Posted: 26 Feb 2013 02:56 AM PST While nanotechnology is an industry buzzword, it is starting to look as if it will be opposed by the union movement. There are already signs in Oz that nanotechnology is going to be the new spinning jenny. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, union leader Paul Howes has related nanotechnology to asbestos and called for more research to ease fears the growing use of fine particles could endanger manufacturing workers. The Australian Workers' Union national secretary said he did not want to make the mistake that his predecessors made by not worrying about asbestos. Nanomaterials are used to make products such as non-scratching car wax, some types of paint, lighter sporting equipment, and self-cleaning coatings for glass and building materials. There is some research taking place to see whether some nanomaterials may harm human health and the environment after a pilot study published in Nature Nanotechnology in 2008 suggested that types of carbon nanotubes may behave like asbestos fibres and cause disease. Howes was worried nanotechnology could be used to carry carcinogenic particles and believes it needs proper regulation and more research. He fears that people are making the same mistakes that they did with asbestos which appeared in every workplace and household in Australia. Everyone thought it was a miracle fibre that could be used for anything and it was going to transform Australia. Unfortunately, it mostly killed you, he said. |
| White House phone unlocking petition gets 110,000 signatures Posted: 26 Feb 2013 02:44 AM PST A White House web petition to lift the phone unlocking ban has received more than 110,000 signatures. The threshold for "We the People" petitions is 100,000 and now the White House will have to review or at least reply to the petition, before it throws it out. The silly ban was imposed in January and under the new law anyone who dares unlock their own phone in the Land of the Fee could face up to 5 years in jail and a $500,000 fine. Forbes described the new legislation as a "clear example" of copyright law gone crazy. The underlying law is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA), but applying the law to cellphone unlocking is a stretch to say the least. Basically the ban is viewed as an example of crony capitalism, nothing new in post-Citizens United America. The ban allows companies to control how their gear is used after it's sold, which clearly violates property rights. Phone companies might try to claim that they are in fact renting their phones on two-year plans, but they're not, at least not at the moment. It is a bit like a car company telling its customers that they can't install new alloys. What's more, buying a modular assault rifle is still legal in the US, and the accessory market is booming. In most states it is possible to install everything from a bayonet to a high powered scope and high capacity magazine on virtually any rifle. It's perfectly legal, yet unlocking a phone can land someone in court, facing some serious jail time. |
| Intel expands foundry operations Posted: 26 Feb 2013 02:26 AM PST Intel is scaling up its chip foundry work for more rivals - in this case making them for Altera. Analysts see this as a significant step toward opening its prized manufacturing technology to customers on a larger scale, and Apple's name is now being whispered. The move is seen as helping the world's top chipmaker offset the growing costs of developing new technology and help keep the plants running near capacity. Intel will make Altera's programmable chips using its upcoming 14 nanometer trigate transistor technology. Sunit Rikhi, veep and general manager of Intel's custom foundry, told Mercury News that it means Intel will be a significant player in the future. Intel has announced agreements to manufacture on behalf of Achronix Semiconductor and other small chipmakers but Altera, which is one of two leading programmable chipmakers, is potentially much larger. It means that the outfit has crossed over the line from just being a questionable experiment to working for tier-1 customers. Whispers suggest that Intel may eventually agree to make Apple's processors for the iPhone and iPad, although no one is saying that at Intel or Apple. Intel has decided that real men own fabs and invested heavily in them over decades. Altera chief exec John Daane told the Mercury that Altera is the only major programmable chipmaker that will have access to Intel's plants. The company gets access like an extra division of Intel. As soon as Chipzilla makes the technology available to its various groups to do design work, it will get the same level of tech. Intel's manufacturing technology will give Altera's chips a several-year advantage against its rival Xilinx. However, Altera will continue to make other chips with TSMC, its long-time foundry partner. |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2013 02:04 AM PST The promising but under-developed WebOS looks like it is going to get a second chance at life after all after LG wrote a cheque and picked it up from the maker of expensive printer ink HP. HP grabbed the OS when it acquired Palm. Coincidently both HP and Palm believed that the mobile operating system could save their companies. HP released the Pre and the TouchPad tablet before realising that the OS required more work than it could be bothered with. LG apparently is not daft enough to think that it is a good idea to take on Android with the OS. Instead it sees it as ideal for smart televisions. With the deal, LG obtains the source code for WebOS, related documentation, engineering talent, and related WebOS websites. LG also gets HP licences for use with its WebOS products, and patents HP obtained from Palm, CNET reports. This future is better than many predicted for WebOS. HP had dumped it in the open source graveyard and had left it for dead. LG had been looking at the platform for use in its tellies for a while. A web-based operating system has a lot of good things going for it, if it is not too stressed, which it would be if it was used for mobile or tablets. LG's biggest problem is that most of HP's WebOS team have cleaned out their desks and found something more productive to do with their time. This makes the company's claim that the WebOS team will make up the "heart and soul" of the new LG Silicon Valley Lab, sound a little hollow. But maybe if they are on a mission from God they can get the band back together. |
| Samsung managers arrested for suspected negligent homicide Posted: 26 Feb 2013 01:55 AM PST Three Samsung managers have been arrested for suspected negligent homicide, following the company being embroiled in investigations after a hydrofluoric gas leak at one of its plants in Hwaseong, Korea, killed one worker and injured four more. |
| Qualcomm, TSMC unveil 28nm HPM chips Posted: 25 Feb 2013 06:06 AM PST Qualcomm and TSMC are teaming up to produce silicon on TSMC's High Performance Mobile process technology, which they boast can support 2GHz+ application processors at low power. That sort of power consumption on a chip means Qualcomm will be going for its established position in the market - smartphones and tablets. The first device made with 28 HPM will be the Snapdragon 800 with quad core Krait 400 CPUs. Qualcomm promises speeds of up to 2.3 GHz per core making the chip a formidable contender. It is the first SoC of its sort that integrates a 4G LTE Advanced modem with carrier aggregation and category 4 data speeds of up to 150 Mbps, the company says. According to the companies, this process can manage CPU speeds of between 2 and 2.3 GHz using under 750mW of power consumption per core, which is half the power of TSMC's 40LP devices. In a statement, executive veep at Qualcomm Technologies, Jim Lederer, said the chip should give the company even more of an edge in smartphones and tablets. TSMC North America president, Rick Cassidy, said it is Qualcomm's "deep familiarity with 28nm design" that helped the company "achieve breakthrough 2.3GHz performance and power characteristics" that users are after these days. |
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