NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 17 June
17-06-2009
by Emmet Cole
Broadband on the up: ComReg | Blue Ocean scoops award
ComReg's quarterly report on the telecoms sector for the first quarter of 2009 reveals that while broadband subscriptions continued to increase during the quarter, overall revenues and voice traffic declined, suggesting that the communications sector is experiencing more challenging times. Broadband subscriptions (fixed and mobile) reached 1,272,166 in the quarter -- an increase of 6 percent since the last quarter and a 28.2 percent jump on the year-ago quarter. Meanwhile, broadband per capita penetration (including mobile broadband) reached 28.8 percent. Communications Minister Eamon Ryan said the figures show that "Major progress is being made in connectivity and broadband infrastructure, and today's figures clearly reflect this." Meanwhile, the report revealed that overall market revenues continued to decline by 6.3 percent, to almost EUR1.04 billion.
Irish company Blue Ocean Wireless -- the global GSM provider for the deep sea merchant maritime sector -- and femtocell solutions provider ip.access have won a Global Telecom Business Innovation Award for the wireless network infrastructure innovation category. Their joint entry was named as a winner at the Global Telecoms Business Innovation awards ceremony in central London on Tuesday. Blue Ocean Wireless and ip.access won the award for Blue Ocean's global service, which uses ip.access' nanoGSM picocells on commercial ships to provide on-board 2G mobile phone connectivity to merchant seafarers.
Samsung Ireland has unveiled the Samsung Jet -- its latest mobile handset, which it claims, combines the advanced features of a smartphone with the easy-to-use interface of a conventional mobile phone. Samsung Jet supports smartphone features including multi-task manager and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. The mobile sports a 16M WVGA AMOLED display and an 800MHz application processor. A full Irish language menu is also included with predictive texting as Gaeilge and an English-Irish/Irish-English dictionary widget. Samsung Jet will be available from EUR139 on bill pay in Vodafone and the Carphone Warehouse stores from 1 July.
Patrick Crowley and Barry Hogan have been named as the recipients of this year's Gogarty Scholarship. Both will attend the Space Studies Program (SSP) in NASA's Ames Research Centre, Silicon Valley, California this summer. Crowley was recently awarded a gold medal in a competition run by the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineering and the Society of Light and Lighting for his presentation on photosynthesis and lighting. Hogan is working towards his PhD in UCD about the physiological effects of space flight and the challenges posed by long-term habitation in low-gravity environments. The scholarship programme is sponsored by well-known Dublin businessman and philanthropist, Martin Keane.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications Energy and Natural Resources and the Irish Cellular Industry Association (ICIA) have outlined measures being put in place by mobile operators to combat bullying via mobile phones. These include O2's free Block IT product -- which allows O2 customers to block unwanted text, picture and video messages from other mobile phone numbers -- and Three Ireland’s Kidsafe product, which enables parents to know with whom, when and how their children are using their mobile phones. From mid-July Kidsafe will be available for free nationwide on applicable handsets. The ICIA is the group that represents Irish mobile operators.
There is an "alarming" lack of security awareness among UK workers when it comes to printing documents, according to a new survey by Samsung. Just under half of all employees surveyed say they regularly see documents containing sensitive data abandoned on printers. Around 14 percent of respondents admitted seeing salary details, 22 percent had seen performance appraisals and 34 percent had seen CV information. Eight in 10 UK respondents were not aware that printers store all recent documents on an easy-to-remove hard drive, while over three-quarters did not know that a networked printer is as easily hacked as a PC.
Finally, 'computational search engine' Wolfram Alpha has launched a new version of its service optimised for use on Apple's iPhone and iPod devices. To add Wolfram Alpha to your iPhone or iPod screen, visit www.wolframalpha.com/iphone in the iPhone's browser, then touch the + icon in the browser footer bar, and select 'add to home screen' in the menu options.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 