Posts Tagged ‘wireless’
October 20th, 2009
Well done to CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization which patented a solution commonly used in wireless networking (specifically WLAN 802.11a, 802.11g and 802.11n). This Australian Government organization has agreed with various corporate users of its technology to a $200 million payout in licensing revenue. These users include Toshiba, Netgear, Buffalo, D-Link, Belkin, SMC, Accton, 3Com, Intel, Microsoft, Asus, Fujitsu and HP. CSIRO shows that Australia has the ability to be leaders in new technologies. Here is the media release from CSIRO:
Australian inventiveness lies at the heart of how millions of people now use wireless networks to access information on a myriad of portable devices.
In homes, offices and cafés, most of the wireless devices we use every day to access the Internet and other networks rely on CSIRO’s solution to a complex radio problem.
“CSIRO’s solution to the ‘multipath problem’ and its subsequent commercialisation ranks as one of the most significant achievements in CSIRO’s 82 year history,” CSIRO chairman Dr John Stocker says.
“The technology is used in over 800 million devices right now and its use is rapidly expanding.”
Today at a ceremony in Melbourne, the scientific, commercial and legal teams responsible for the achievement will receive CSIRO’s highest honour: the Chairman’s Medal for Research Achievement.
One of the main problems the team managed to solve was ’multipathing’.
“You might imagine that the little box with the flashing lights that powers your home wireless network is simply beaming information straight to your laptop,” CSIRO’s Dr John O’Sullivan, leader of the scientific team says.
“In reality the radio waves travel in all directions, bouncing off walls, furniture and people – making it very hard to deliver a clear signal to the receiver.”
The team solved this problem by adapting ideas that had their roots in radioastronomy and the Dell search for exploding black holes.
“I was inspired to think about ways of cleaning up smeared radio signals to make searching for short pulses like those from exploding black holes easier,” Dr O’Sullivan says.
“We ended up building a ‘fast Fourier transform’ chip to do these sorts of processing tasks efficiently and fast. That proved to be the key to untangling the web of wireless signals so we could build a workable high speed wireless local area network (WLAN).”
A US patent was granted in 1996 and, in 1999, one of the first modern international standards for WLAN (IEEE 802.11a) relied on the technology covered by CSIRO’s patent for its implementation. In 2001 the first products entered the market.
“CSIRO set out to encourage the industry to take licenses for the use of its patented technology,” Mr Nigel Poole, CSIRO Executive Director, Commercial says.
“When that did not prove successful, we initiated legal proceedings which then led to proceedings being initiated against CSIRO.
“The result earlier this year was that 14 companies settled with CSIRO under confidential terms. The revenue arising from these settlements to date is approximately $A200 million.
“Soon an announcement will be made about how Australian research will benefit from this success.”
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Tags: Australia, Australian, government, IEEE, Intel, Internet, Microsoft, nbn, networking, Patents, radioastronomy, Research, wireless, WLAN | 
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May 11th, 2009
For various clients in the past I have provided business cases for technology including the assessment and procurement of competing Information Technology products. Apple products have been a part of the assessment particularly in education based organizations. The Apple products have generally competed against PC variants such as Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer and the total cost of ownership (across the product lifecycle) of Apple products has always exceeded that of the PCs. I have therefore wondered as to the attraction of Apple products to consumers! Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: apple ipod, consumer electronics, electronics, Internet, iphone, ipod, ipod touch, mobile, skype, twitter, wireless |
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April 8th, 2009
One doesn’t need to be a ‘techie’. Just plain common sense makes it so obvious that the Australian Governments Internet Broadband plan (NBN – National Broadband Network) is ill conceived and wasteful to the extreme. Sure the need for wider access to the Internet as well as high speed Internet isn’t debatable. The method of achieving speed and accessibility are the points at issue.
What is the National Broadband Network and FTTP
The proposed solution by the Rudd government is to spend $43bn (yes, 43 billion dollars!) in connecting 90% of Australian households, schools and workplaces with optical fibre / fibre optic cable (the other 10% will get wireless and satellite connectivity). This solution will provide high speed access and, at a very high cost, widespread availability and is termed FTTP (Fibre to the Premise). But is fixed cable (i.e. optical fibre) really the best option?
If you have been on a train, ferry, bus lately, or to a coffee shop, the beach, the park or mostly anywhere else lately you would have noticed a trend; people now access the Internet on mobile devices away from home and in public places. Just think of the incredible growth in data access via 3G, iPods, iPhones, small portable notebook computers etc. Is the Rudd/Australian government living in a cocoon (the answer to this rhetorical question is that Rudd and the gang ARE living in blissful ignorance)? If Australia is to spend $43bn then surely it has to be for a product that is relatively future proof. Fixed Cable isn’t future proof, in fact it is already yesterday’s technology as people forsake fixed line broadband Internet for wireless technology. (UPDATE 14 Sep. 09: The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released data showing decreases in the number of Fixed Line subscribers and increases in ‘Mobile wireless subscribers’ – yip, people want mobile internet connectivity!).
NBN Alternatives to Optical Fibre / FTTP
Here are two options (there are plenty more options out there):
- Partner with Mobile/GSM providers, both hardware (Alcatel, Ericsson, Nokia etc.) and services (e.g. Telstra, Optus, Vodafone etc.) to provide broadly available and high speed Internet access (remote areas may be services by satellite if necessary).
- Innovate. Partner with the likes of Google or Intel to advance existing wireless technologies to reach greater range and at higher speeds. Just imagine what return on investment new patents/technologies derived from this innovation could be returned to taxpayers.
$43 billion to Break Telstra’s Monopoly?
One has to ask with this whole debacle whether the government is trying to find a way of removing Telstra’s hold on Australian fixed line telephony (including Internet) or is the government really so way out of touch with reality? Spending $43bn is certainly not the way to resolve any issues with Telstra’s monopoly!
Telstra Disclaimer: Please note that at publication date of this post I am providing ITIL Process Mapping services for Telstra therefore advise that I do not represent Telstra in any information on this website. The views expressed in this post are mine only and do not necessarily reflect the views of Telstra.