Now more coverage!  Still unlimited talk & text for $30/month

Tag Archives for Telecommunications

Double savings if you come back to BT

Talk and surf from BT cost 19.99 pounds per month. That’s a pretty good price for unlimited anytime cheap phone calls and 10GB of internet download time. And if you need unlimited broadband as well as unlimited calling you can pay just 8 pounds more every month and have that feature as well. But to truly save on your home phone line and internet time you don’t need a special plan you just need to come back to BT before May 31st. BT is offering three months free service on home phone and broadband combined packages until that date. Most all of the phone line providers serving the United Kingdom offer special incentives but rarely has such a double bonus offer been made. Not only are you saving a lot of money by bundling these important home telecom servic
es but you will receive the first three months service for free. This equals a minimum of 60 pounds saved for better projects. If one opts for the larger Talk, Surf and Watch plan, the savings are almost 150 pounds! It would seem that BT is committed to offering their customers solid reasons to use the company for all of their home telecommunications needs.

Third-generation Technology

3G is the short form used for third-generation technology. There are few technologies in the history of mankind where there has been so much hype, followed by so much dissapointment, but it looks like the 3G providers have finally got their act together in 2008, and have started delivering the 3G mobile broadband services that we have all been waiting for.

According to wikipedia definition:

3G is the third generation of mobile phone standards and technology, superseding 2G. It is based on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) family of standards under the International Mobile Telecommunications programme, IMT-2000. 3G technologies enable network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency. Services include wide-area wireless voice telephony, video calls, and broadband wireless data, all in a mobile environment. Additional features also include HSPA data transmission capabilities able to deliver speeds up to 14.4Mbit/s on the downlink and 5.8Mbit/s on the uplink.

The first country to start 3G service on a great scale was Japan where by 2005 nearly 40% of consumers used 3G network only. With 2G technology becoming outdated in Japan,almost all the 2G networks have now been shifted to 3G networks.

3G gives the ability to transfer both voice as well as non-voice based Data at a much faster level. While marketing 3G services, video telephony is famously referred as a killer application. 3G networks have not been upgraded from 2G networks and do not function on the same frequency spectrum. For 3G services new networks need to be fitted and new frequencies are allocated to the mobile operators.

When you sign up for a mobile broadband deal, you will usually be provided with a USB ‘dongle’ and a sim card. You will need to insert the SIM card into the dongle and then, when you plug it into your laptop it should self-install. The good thing about the USB dongle solution is that you can install it in a number of machines, so you could take it with you to a meeting and then give it to your partner when they are heading out to a meeting with their own laptop. You should get your business checks ready to get this new technology in your office connection. easy payment with payday loan

Broadband Connection

What is broadband? For those who wish to upgrade their internet service provide, this salient question may be the first thing that come to our minds. But the one important question should be: What can broadband do for me that dial-up can’t?

Broadband has been taking the internet service provider wars by storm. There are tremendous benefits for broadband that individuals and business are rapidly switching to this internet pipeline. Broadband is a form of telecommunications by which a broad range of frequencies is available to wire information. The most common forms of broadband are cable and DSL. With the advent of broadband, the dial-up modem is slowly being shunted aside. Here are a few reasons why more individuals and companies are switching to broadband.

Broadband is built for speed. Because of the wide range of frequencies available, data through the internet can be multiplexed, which allows the quick transfer and delivery of information. In fact, broadband on average is around 20 times faster than dial-up. Dial-up is usually 28-56 kilobits per second (kps) and broadband is around 1500kps.

Speed is important for content delivery, particularly media. For instance, media such as videos and music demand speeds for adequate streaming. Or even popular sites such as youtube.com require a fast connection. Games, such as online role-playing games, hog connection bandwidth to adequately play online.

Broadband provides users with more than just speed. One great advantage is that it’s always on and connected. In the world of dial-up, one needs to connect through a phone line. So to connect you must dial-up, get a “handshake” and wait for the connection to be available. This process could take up to one minute, or even more, causing frustration. With broadband, there is no attempt to dial-up to the server. As long as the physical connection is maintained, the connection does not need to be dialed up. All one needs to do is have the computer connected via a LAN cable, or wireless.

This alternative service also frees up your home phone. Sometimes with dial-up, the phone line competes with the dial-up line. As such, users can only use the phone line one at a time. With broadband, access is kept separate; which means that you can still maintain a dedicated phone line. Who would want to lose important phone calls?

Can you save money with this broadband? Most will think that broadband might be a little costly; indeed, it is. However, this service does allow for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) for a cheap price. VOIP is a cost-effective way to provide IP telephony services through the delivery of voice information over the Internet. In other words, VOIP can replace your normal telephone. Some save over 50% of their phone bills with a VOIP subscription.

If you have more than one computer, you can find that it’s not easy to share a dial-up line. Usually, only one computer can use the same line. Broadband, however, allows more than one connection. In fact, there’s really no limit at all as long as bandwidth isn’t full. Dial-up may require additional lines, if there is more than one computer needing access.

Broadband provides many advantages over dial-up. Although you’ll pay a premium for its service, the benefits outweigh the costs for most people.

Mobile Internet Satellite Broadband – chapter 2

We were the first beta testers of a Mobile Command Center with full Internet Access in 1999. Our mobile command center was also the first unit with WiFi and Internet Mobile Access.

The next generation of this system of Broadband Satellites was introduced in 2004. And the next wave of technology almost exists for the 10 times that speed. Looks like Moore’s Law may just apply to Satellites, however with the former practice tries by Motorola and the incompetence with the FCC we saw previously we may find that there are significant obstacle to over come still.

The biggest gripe back then was the Iridium pricing of $134.50 per month and the ridiculous cost of $1.34 per minute. Of course GlobalStar proves that they are worse at 150 per month and 1.39 per minute and International calls at $1.79. The cool thing about Inmarsat is that it is 20 years old and still has the 9.6 kbps data speed and sometimes you can get the 64 kbps. Inmarsat A is ancient and 18,000 ships have the maritime Global distress system aboard. GMDSS. If you look at most all commercial ships you will see the antennas on top that can run fax machines, Telephones and various data interfaces. Previously they ran below deck Telex systems. This system as you would guess is purely analog which has much advantages in weather conditions at sea. Inmarsat B is a whole different story with it’s digital technology, you can definitely get 64 KBPS all day long for broadcasting audio streams, video (a little jumpy), and voice and fax transmissions.

The pricing of data transmission due to speeds can save users up to 40% simply because it takes less time per minute to down and upload data. Of course the hardware runs about $ 10K, but for what it is that is not bad considering the original costs of data transmissions. Now here is the new deal Inmarsat C, two way data communications, terminals are portable and small, brief case style. Costs for terminals are only $4K approx. and everyone in the TV business has one or more. Inmarsat also has a system for voice, which needs only a little antenna of 9.3 or more inches and comes in a small dome. These were recently featured in Popular Mechanics in Nov 01. Trac Phone antennas for boats, RVs etc are expensive at $6,500 but work well. This is also known as the SatCom system mobile. It is a briefcase laptop system and is only 5 lbs. Costs only $3,000. People call it their brief case phone. It uses a SIM card for multiple users a system if you will remember never took off in the US like the smart card phones in Europe. Remember the PCS Phones had that little slide in cards, but they were too expensive for mass production in cellular technology. Inmarsat F77 is another innovation of 2001. ISDN and mobile packet data service capabilities. Delivering Fax, phone, voice and data. 64kbs, Absolutely and without a problem. Almost trouble free, this is nearly fully operational. We are almost there. This technology takes advantage of the B-GAN services that will be provided by the Inmarsat 4 being launched in 2004.

This will be cool. US Based ComSat Mobile, a division of Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications has announced it’s cooperation with Fleet F77 in the first half of 2002. Ah ha, now we are getting somewhere ? Says the people at Stratos, who are arrogant Canadians. Why is this so cool? It means that users can send and receive data but only be charged for the data sent and received. Serf the web in broadband from anywhere or even a remote log cabin on vacation, emails and web browsing for about $89.95 per month all in real time with about 2-3 second delays for distance or in another system the one we have now it will be a half second delay with even higher speeds (I will talk further about this in a minute). Internet based systems like this means we can track every ship, truck, terrorist school bus in the country real time, just like they now track all the aircraft as we saw on TV during the 9-11 act. We watched charts of the US with every single aircraft flying.

Imagine the system capabilities for efficiency, safety, storm and weather watching, and safety of our people. I am really liking this a lot and everyone in America will be safe and the President can have his missile defense program because we will be able to track everything that moves which is not cloaked and right now that is everything that we know about. We can even track stealth bombers by frequency disruption patterns from cell phones. We win. Guess what these systems have a built in safety switch so important transmissions get there first for instance a ship in high seas in trouble, DEA transmitting while profiling a smuggler, or mayday distress calls. So if you are surfing or on line sending emails it will be delayed until the safety priorities are taken care of and at those speeds and numbers of users and the forthcoming Craig McCaw’s Law I predict to replace Moore’s Law for satellites that will not be more than a nano second by 2005. In other words you will assume a solar flare or even a thunder cloud.

Orbicomm is another data source with no voice capacity and handles two-pager and alphanumeric operations using a small network of LEO Satellites. Another web site we found of interest to you if you are using any of these technologies.