NYC

Good news for anyone feeling left behind by the broadband revolution just because of their post code:Fujitsu has just announced a joint venture to deliver fiber optic connectivity to neglected rural homes in the UK. Built on hardware provided by Cisco and supported by Virgin Media and TalkTalk, this network will focus on channeling fiber directly to the home, which is said to provide symmetrical 1Gbps bandwidth with up to 10Gbps speeds considered possible down the line. Best news of all, perhaps, is that the cabling will be available on a wholesale basis to all ISPs, not just the ones involved in the project, so the UK may finally get a decent taste of what competition in the internet service space feels like. Alas, there's a key line in the press release that notes the new venture is dependent on BT providing "access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms," which it apparently isn't doing at the moment. Ah well, ...

Well, this might be a good reason for The Powers That Be to know your exact whereabouts. According to a team of MIT researchers, speeding up data rates on mobile devices could be as easy as tapping the various motion sensors found in run-of-the-mill smartphones. The scientists believe our wireless infrastructure is at the root of bottlenecks, with a handful of weak transmitters clumsily "handing off" data to one another as you move out of range. The solution: use GPS radios, accelerometers, and even gyroscopes to infer where you're headed, and then choose an access point near where you're likely to end up. The difference, they report, is dramatic: a 50 percent boost in throughput, along with improved success in choosing the best bit rate. To boot, if a base station is armed with location-based info, it can better predict when the devices connected to it are on the verge of losing contact. That's all good news, but sadly we doubt any amount of promising science is...