'Super WiFi' white space trials begin in Cambridge

A new consortium including BT, Sky and Microsoft is set to use the space between TV channel in the radio spectrum for a new trial of innovative broadband services
A new mobile broadband trial in Cambridge could create a series of localised “super WiFi” networks a consortium including BT, Microsoft, Sky and the BBC has announced.

The tests will use ‘white spaces’ in the radio spectrum. These areas that are not required for TV broadcasts, The Cambridge trial is similar to a white space trial in the remote Isle of Bute, off the west coast of Scotland, but will focus on machine to machine communication as well as rural broadband and traditional consumer applications such as mobile phones.

Beginning on Wednesday, the trial will aim to demonstrate that the new services do not interfere with TV signals and could potentially open up new channels for network providers to meet growing demands for broadband from mobile phones and tablet computers.

The market for mobile bandwidth that serves phones, laptops, tablets and other smart devices is expected to increase 92 per cent between 2011 and 2015.In a joint statement the members of the consortium said that “this trial will attempt to demonstrate that unused TV spectrum is well-placed to increase the UK’s available mobile bandwidth, which is critical to effectively responding to the exponential growth in data-intensive services, while also enabling future innovation.”

They added that “the consortium chose Cambridge for the trial because it offers an environment for testing diverse uses of the TV white spaces network. The city is distinguished by a dense mixture of buildings, including the historic stone buildings of its colleges, which offer a unique opportunity to demonstrate the penetration of TV white spaces signals when compared with other higher frequency networks such as Wi-Fi.”

Google’s Microsoft moment? American authorities begin major antitrust probe

 google is set to face extensive formal and long-running investigations into its dominant position in the online search market, reports say.

America’s Federal Trade Commission is to serve official requests to the company for information over the next few days and is likely to ask for information from companies that have dealt with the search giant later.

The civil antitrust probe is not the first that Google has faced, but it is likely to be the most extensive to date. Previous investigations have been largely limited to the company’s purchases of other businesses.

This inquiry, however, will relate to search advertising, the fundamental business that had made Google a mulit-billion pound company. At the heart of the investigation will be the allegation that Google manipulates its search results to direct disproportionate amounts of traffic to its own sites, such as YouTube. Google has always prided itself on the purity of the algorithm that powers search results. It claims that it makes manual adjustments solely to improve the service for consumers.

The case has clear echoes of antitrust probes into Microsoft in the Nineties, which saw the company pay millions of pounds in fines and prevented from apparent plans to dominate huge swathes of the IT sector. Google, however, will benefit from changed laws, and from the difficulty of proving that Google abused its powerful position, rather than simply providing a service that millions of businesses and consumers choose to use every day. The company said that users can easily switch to other services. It handles more than two-thirds of US searches online and four out of every five web searches across Europe.