Virtua Team Talk

It’s almost auction time again and the usual scramble for spectrum space has now started to gain momentum.

In the words of Ofcom, “The auction of 4G licences will allow smartphone and tablet computer users to stream and download at super high speeds almost anywhere in the UK.” The new ’4G’ connections work like current phone technologies, but deliver internet as fast or faster than many home wi-fi connections. What is still not clear though is when UK phone users will get access to the high-speed mobile networks that are now widespread in the USA. Based on the current proposals for the auction later this year at least 98% of the population would have access to mobile broadband.

This is likely to set the scene for an explosion in tablet and smartphone use because demand for mobile data in Western Europe is expected to go up by more than 500% over the next five years according to analysts.  Users will have to upgrade to new 4G tablets and phones in order to benefit but demand is expected to be high. In particular Apple’s upcoming ‘iPhone5’ is widely expected to have a 4G connection.

The new licences will give operators access to frequencies that are being free’d up as the UK switches off analogue TV and moves to digital. Ofcom’s proposals will be of particular benefit to people living in rural areas where there has been no commercial incentive to set up a new mobile infrastructure in the past.

Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards commented: “This is a crucial step in preparing for the most significant spectrum release in the UK for many years. The proposals published today will influence the provision of services to consumers for the next decade and beyond.”

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Some recent news released by telephony regulator, Ofcom, claims that it is pushing ahead with plans for the introduction of ‘white space’ radio technology in the UK, claiming to be the first regulator in Europe to do so. The technology – which Ofcom expects to be launched in the UK in 2013 – makes use of ‘white space’ – the unused spectrum between busy channels in the TV band, to transmit and receive wireless signals.

According to the experts so-called “White Space technology” could potentially alleviate pressures on current wireless networks and provide a much-needed boost to broadband provision in remote rural areas.

Unlike Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, which mainly operate on 2.4GHz, the lower, more powerful TV band frequencies (which are typically between 470 and 790MHz) enable signals from white space devices to travel large distances and even pass through walls.

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At Apple’s recent Worldwide Developer Conference, Steve Jobs, CEO, made the bold assertion that we are now living in a post-PC world adding “We are going to move the digital hub, the centre of  digital life, into the cloud.”

According to Apple, the iPhone and the iconic iPad are at the forefront of this new post-PC world and the statistics, which are staggering by any standards, seem to support this view. Sales of 25 million iPads in just 14 months, 15 billion songs downloaded since 2003 and 14 billion apps downloaded from a store that now runs to 425,000 apps.

And now, says Steve Jobs, this digital new world order is going to be all about freeing up all that data from the hardware where it traditionally resides and the PC where users have to go to manipulate their files.

This brave new world is all about Apple’s new cloud offering, aptly named” iCloud” which has been designed to help users leave behind the shackles of their old tethered ways. Ten years ago the PC was set to become the hub of our digital life but that model, according to Apple, has now broken down as mobile devices have become more powerful. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the world’s biggest networking opportunities for the web community took place this month in Austin Texas. Known as the “Southwest by Southwest Interactive Festival” or SXSW, it draws thousands of devotees every year which some cynics have dubbed a ‘geek paradise’.

In 2007, for example, a little known micro-blogging site called Twitter first launched here and there are plenty of people attending this year who want to emulate their success. Technology enthusiasts and a myriad of start-up companies have flocked to the event for one prime reason: to get their applications noticed and on to the mobile phones of trend-setting early adopters.

One mobile phone app called ‘Foursquare’ launched here in 2009 and picked up 5,000 users in four days. Today it is a sizeable social media player boasting some seven million users. Foursquare is a mobile application allowing users to “check-in” at different locations (from cafes to concerts to office buildings) and send that information to friends also using the app.

A spokesman from Foursqare describes the SXSW festival as “a great little laboratory for developers” adding, “The conference atmosphere has turned the event into a really good launch pad for start-ups because you have just the right amount of people that are in this early adopter community. And they’re all here not so much to go to the conference, but to go to the parties, hang out and socialise.”

And it is the ‘socialising’ element that is critical because a lot of the apps being developed are tools that allow people to go out and socialise as Facebook and Twitter can testify. So what are some of the hottest applications in town this year – and who are the people behind them?

“Scvngr” is a location-based mobile app similar to Foursquare that asks individuals checking in to a location to complete challenges created by businesses, institutions or fans of the application. When a Scvngr user checks in to a location, like a restaurant or a show the application presents a list of real-world challenges. This could be asking the individual to answer a question or riddle or to accept a dare to earn points and seek a reward. Discounts on products or free goods are then sometimes awarded to those that successfully accomplish the tasks.

Seth Priebatsch is the 22 year-old Scvngr chief executive who gave the keynote speech this year at SXSW in front of 2,500 attendees and some 3,500 others who watched from screens in 11 other rooms at the convention centre. He said that, “the reason we’re at South by Southwest, and the reason everyone else is here, is that it’s the most concentrated influx of exciting, fun, early adopter, tech people who are willing to try out anything at least once.”

Attendees at the conference believe that applications like Facebook have built a type of “social layer” around the world that works successfully. Now the prediction from SXSW is that the next 10 years will be devoted to creating a sort of “game layer” on top of the ‘Social Layer’ which could fundamentally change how people interact with their environments.

Similarly, the networking service “Hashable”, launched in October 2010, is attempting to do away with physical business cards and to work as a platform to facilitate business introductions, prompting people to leave their comfort zones and meet others. When a Hashable user meets a potential business connection, the e-mail address or Twitter username of that person is noted along with the location of the meeting, and that information is then sent to other friends and business colleagues using the application. The New York-based Hashable team are adding close to 1,000 users a day and have already signed up tens of thousands of business-minded individuals.

Another start-up “Instagram”, has developed a photo-sharing application for the iPhone which enables people to take photographs and immediately share them with friends through a Twitter-style feed. The San Francisco-based firm launched Instagram only five months ago and already claim an incredible 2.5m users.

Clearly the combination of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In etc together with emerging mobile phone apps is changing the communication landscape that we live in. Like it or loathe it the digital age is opening new modes of interactive communication and events like SXSW is the breeding ground for the new toys that are set to change our lives.

The mobile phone revolution has unquestionably turned phones into powerful mini-computers and is changing the way we deal with communication. But whatever happened to the so-called mobile music revolution? This is the notion that mobile phones would become a sort of digital juke box – the new primary way to access and pay for the world’s music? So far, it just hasn’t quite happened as the experts predicted but now the British digital music business “We7” has decided to have another go at cracking this huge and potentially lucrative market.

We7, which is backed by the musician Peter Gabriel, has realised that previous music offerings like Nokia’s ‘Comes with Music’ failed to take off for a number of reasons – mainly connectivity and cost. Listening to a streaming service over a 3G network is still very much a hit-and-miss affair. And 16-30 years olds’, who are the key market, are clearly not keen on paying for such a service.

So We7 has decided, both on the web and on mobile phones, that radio is the future – and what users are now mainly being offered is their own personalised radio station. Basically you tell it whether you prefer Van Morrison or Vampire Weekend and it will then play you a stream of songs to match your taste in music. The music is completely free but it is supported by advertising – unless you upgrade to an ad-free subscription service.

The trouble with offering this service on a mobile phone is that, even if the music is free, the user can quickly rack up a large bill for the mobile data. Aware of this problem, We7′s plan is to load up your phone with relevant music when you are on a Wi-Fi connection and then store it on your phone so that it is accessible whenever you want it.

Up until now the problem has always been how to actually earn money from such ventures but recently Advertisers are getting much more interested in music service audiences while the music labels are getting more realistic about the rates they charge for licensing. We7 are now gambling that their new offering – a radio service on the move – is the way forward.

To date both the giants of the mobile world and the big record labels have been trying to provide a mobile music service to compete with Apple’s iTunes who currently reign supreme. And so far few have come close.

Whether or not We7 are a roaring success or doomed to failure remains to be seen but one thing is clear. The way we access our favourite music on the move or tune in to our favourite radio station is now intimately bound to our obsession with instant-access mobile devices and it is changing the world we live in.

Now you must excuse me while I get my daily fix of Lady GaGa….

We are getting used to the idea of using mobile phones for almost everything these days. The device that not so long ago was just used for cordless telephone calls has now become our portable diary, alarm clock, filofax, GPS, music player and much more.

When we go shopping though, we traditionally turn to our trusty credit card or cheque book to pay for goods and services. But all that looks about to change.

‘Everything Everywhere’ (the parent company of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK) is about to roll out a new ‘mobile payments service’ in partnership with Barclaycard that is set to change the way we think about financial transactions. Some analysts believe it will be the biggest revolution in payments since credit cards were introduced over 40 years ago.  (It was reported recently that Apple were looking to compete with Paypal as a payment mechanism through iTunes accounts but this hasn’t transpired yet.)

A spokesman for the new innovation, which is due to be released by the Summer of 2011, claimed that “very soon using your mobile to buy a ticket for a show, a coffee and a sandwich or a magazine will soon be the norm.”

Not only will mobiles become payment systems but at specific retail outlets customers will be able to pay for goods and services just by waving their mobile phone against a ‘contactless reader’.

In Turkey a similar initiative is already in use that was developed for iPhone users by a company called Wireless Dynamics. To use the service iPhone users simply attach a Wireless Dynamics ‘iCart’ accessory to the iPhone handset to download an app that enables the payment system to work. Once the Visa based mobile card is activated users simply launch the app and touch their iPhone onto the point-of-sale reader without any need to enter a PIN number.

Now that a number of security based teething problems have been resolved the new ‘credit card mobile phone’ seems set to revolutionise the way we think of ‘money’. For die-hard traditionalists this might seem like a step too far but for the younger generation it is probably just another step towards the so-called ‘cashless’ generation. Whether you support the idea or not this way of doing business is likely to become the norm over the next few years as pounds and pennies disappear into antiquity. Next time someone asks if you can lend them a fiver you will simply tap your phones together, say ‘cheers’ and five pounds will seamlessly leave your account and credit theirs.

True, it will be sad to hear the death knell of jangly coins. One day we will point to coins in a museum cabinet and tell our grandchildren “We used to carry those around in our pocket once upon a time…”

Virtua, the Swindon based mobile telecoms experts, has appointed a new business development director, Kevin Tillotson as a part of their marketing and sales strategy.  Kevin has more than 20 years of experience across a variety of sectors and has helped businesses grow through his knowledge and expertise.

Kevin had worked with Virtua on a consultancy basis in the first quarter of 2010. During that period, the company achieved additional sales amounting to 20% of turnover.

On joining the company, Kevin said: “It is a pleasure to be able to lead the sales and marketing team for a company with whom I have been closely associated. My experience with the company enables me to have a clear vision of the things that we want to achieve. The company is growing fantastically and it will be my job to work with a variety of teams and clients to maintain this momentum.”

Andy Watts, chief executive of Virtua said: “Virtua prides itself in having some of the most talented and experienced people in the industry. Kevin’s appointment is another feather to our cap. Our success depends on our people, and to achieve this we always invest in the best people available, people with a passion and in-depth knowledge of the industry, the technology and the clients. Kevin has been instrumental in making some key business decisions for Virtua and we are very happy to have him on board as our full time member of staff.”

Virtua has also appointed Holly Atkins on a secondment from Morris Owen, a leading Swindon based accountancy practice. Holly will manage the company’s accounts division in the absence of accountant Joanne Carter, who is on a maternity leave.

Andy continues “We have a very strong relationship with Morris Owen. They have been a trustworthy and friendly partner and having someone from them to assist us gives us peace of mind, and the expertise necessary to continue our expansion plans. We welcome Holly and Kevin to the team and look forward to great long term relationships with them.”

Virtua UK Limited, a leading Swindon based supplier of expertise to the telecoms industry has set up a triathlon club. The club is made up of the employees of the company and is a part of wider scheme, invigorating the company‘s work culture with fun and sports.

Andy Watts said: “The tri-club has been set up in response to the fact that we now have around a dozen members of staff interested in the sport and even considering race entry.  As keen tri-athletes ourselves, the directors wanted to help develop staff members’ interest in the sport and allow them to progress beyond their own training regimes.  It is also part of our wider health and safety policy to encourage our employees to take up sports and remain healthy.”

Love for sports, in particular has been an integral part of Virtua’s growth as all three directors are keen athletes. Two of the company’s directors, Andy Watts and Brian Watt have competed in the Ironman triathlon in Switzerland, whilst Brian has also taken part in the London marathon 16 times in a row.  Brian and Rob Brown (the third director) are also currently in training for a 250 mile charity bike ride for Multiple Sclerosis Research.

To help team members train and improve the company has also established a leader board in the office for times on the local measured 10 mile time trial route.

Over the last twenty years or so we have witnessed a phenomenal move forward in processor technology as silicon chips have grown ever more powerful but also smaller in size. Now engineers have developed a computer chip made of even tinier “nanowires” whose computing functions can be changed by applying small electric currents. These “programmable logic tiles” as they are called, are being heralded as the new building blocks of a new generation of ever-smaller computers.

The work on this technology, reported this month in ‘Nature’ magazine, may well outpace the shrinking of chips made with current manufacturing techniques which currently etch chips down from chunks of larger material. The new ‘nanoprocessors’ in contrast, can be built up from minuscule parts. Apparently a group of scientists and engineers at Harvard University has spent the last few years developing these ‘nanowires’ – each made of a core of the element germanium and sheathed in a silicon shell, thousands of times thinner than a human hair.

The technology has now developed to a level at which the wires are reliable enough to enter the world of computing.  Small circuits made of nanowires have been assembled before, but the latest work is unique in terms of the complexity of the resulting circuit. Also, the tiles can be “cascaded” to yield far more complex circuits.  The prototype design is based on a mesh of five hundred nanowires within a 1mm-square area also criss-crossed with normal metal wires. Together with a hair-thin stack of semiconductor materials laid on top, this mesh acts as a collection of transistors.  When an electric current is passed through the chip the normal wires can change the “threshold voltages” of each transistor making the whole ensemble completely programmable.

The team of scientists were able to demonstrate the changeable nature of their chip by re-programming it to do a number of mathematical and logical functions. This new development in processor technology represents a quantum leap forward in the complexity and function of circuits built from the bottom-up with many people predicting that ‘nanoprocessors’ will probably underpin the integrated systems of the future.

Interestingly, for some time the scientific community believed that the manufacturing methods used in making current chips were close to reaching a final limit in size – a threshold, below which the relentless shrinking of the chips seen in recent years would no longer be possible. The new nanowires, however, can in principle be made to occupy an area just one-eighth of what many thought the limit might be. There is a downside though. At the moment the new devices operate at significantly slower speeds than current chips so are not set to suddenly replace existing technology. In other words current designs will still keep the lead in number-crunching power though nanowire chips could eventually win out in terms of size and efficiency. Also, the nanowires suffer less leakage of electrical current than current transistors, so chips should be as much as 10 times more efficient.

In summary, because of their very small size and very low power requirements, these new nanoprocessor circuits are set to become the building-blocks that can control and enable an entirely new class of much smaller, lighter-weight electronic sensors and consumer electronics.

Working in the field of Telecoms and mobile phones we are obviously interested in these types of developments as our engineers need to keep abreast of developing technologies. It seems that once again, just when we thought processors could get no smaller a new leap forward in technology has re-written the rule book once again.

When the first computers were invented in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s the question of how to electronically store information was part of the technical challenge. At the time though it is unlikely that those early pioneers could never have envisioned how important the question of data storage would become. Today though, with the unprecedented and phenomenal growth in the need to store digital data, the technical capacity to store colossal amounts of information across the world has finally been measured by scientists. The study, recently published in the journal ‘Science’, calculated the amount of data stored in the world by the end of 2007 as a staggering 295 ‘exabytes’ (i.e. the equivalent of 1.2 billion average hard drives). The researchers for the study calculated this figure by estimating the amount of data held on sixty different technologies from PC’s and DVD’s to paper adverts and books. Dr Martin Hilbert, one of the researchers from the University of Southern California put the figures in context by stating “If we were to take all that information and store it in books, we would cover the entire area of the USA or China in three layers of books.”

Computer storage has traditionally been measured in ‘kilobytes’, then ‘megabytes’, and now more frequently in ‘gigabytes’.  Beyond that we need to think in terms of ‘terabytes’, ‘petabytes’, then finally ‘exabytes’. One exabyte is therefore equivalent to one billion gigabytes. The same information, if stored digitally on CD’s, would create a stack of discs that would reach far beyond the moon.

The scientists calculated the figures by estimating the amount of data held on sixty analogue and digital technologies for the period 1986 to 2007. They took into consideration everything from computer hard drives to floppy discs as well as x-ray films and microchips on credit cards. The survey was chosen to cover the period known as the “information revolution” in which human society transitioned into a new ‘digital age’. The survey demonstrated that by the year 2000 75% of stored information was in an analogue format such as video cassettes, but by 2007, 94% of it was digital.

Dr Hilbert said, “The car changed society completely as did electricity. Every 50 years or so something grows faster than anything else, and right now it is information that is changing the way we live. Basically what you can do with information is transmit it through space, and we call that communication. You can also transmit it through time and we call that storage. Or you can transform it, manipulate it, change the meaning of it, and we call that computation.”

Other results from the global survey reveal that we broadcast around two 2000 exabytes of data (which some are now calling ‘zetabytes’) per day! (The equivalent of 175 newspapers per living person per day) During the two decades the survey covers, global computing capacity increased by 58% per year. Although these numbers may sound large, amazingly they are still dwarfed by the information processing and storage capacity of nature. “The Human DNA in one single body can still store around 300 times more information than we store in all our technological devices” said Dr Hilbert to put the power of nature into context. This study also served to show that the “digital divide” between rich and poor countries is growing. Despite the spread of computers and mobile phones, the capacity to process information is becoming more unequal. In 2002 people in the developed world could communicate eight times more information than people in the developing world. By 2007, the gap had nearly doubled. In other words people in richer countries have 15 times more information carrying capacity.  The study also pinpointed the arrival of the digital age as 2002 – the first year worldwide digital storage capacity overtook analogue capacity.

Thinking about today’s iphone4 and the power within our mobile phone those early computer valve technicians could never have dreamed of where their early pioneering steps into computers have led us. And where will we be in another 50 years time?