The mobile network O2 has started testing a next-generation mobile data service in London.
The nine month trial will involve hundreds of consumers and businesses using a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network across parts of the city.
O2 says its LTE downloads will be many times faster than those over 3G.
The news comes a fortnight after MPs urged O2 and other operators to stop fighting over how 4G airwaves should be shared out.
The experiment is an extension of O2′s LTE trials in Slough, west of the capital, which began in 2009.
Participants will be given …

Shares in Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) have fallen by more than a fifth since it announced disappointing results on Thursday.
The company said that it had missed even its lowered expectations and reduced its profit forecasts.
RIM’s net profit was $695m (£430m) in the three months to 28 May, down from $769m in the same period last year.
It warned in April that its profits would be low because of lower shipments of its Blackberry phones.
Share fall
RIM shares closed down by 21.4% on the Nasdaq exchange in New York.
The company has …

The biggest ever test of the internet’s new address system is taking place.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Bing and Facebook are among the companies switching-on IPv6 versions of their websites for the one day trial.
The technology is gradually being introduced because the world is running out of older IPv4 addresses as more devices come online.
Companies and home users may need new networking equipment, however the transition is likely to take years.
World IPv6 day is partly a technical exercise by internet companies to see how the technology works, and partly an awareness-raising initiative.
For …

Researchers have set a new record for the rate of data transfer using a single laser: 26 terabits per second.
At those speeds, the entire Library of Congress collections could be sent down an optical fibre in 10 seconds.
The trick is to use what is known as a “fast Fourier transform” to unpick more than 300 separate colours of light in a laser beam, each encoded with its own string of information.
The technique is described in the journal Nature Photonics.
The push for higher data rates in light-based telecommunications technologies has seen …

The telecoms regulator has launched a consultation on how best to sell off the rights to the next generation of mobile wireless networks.
The auction of the fourth generation, or 4G, spectrum will be the largest ever, equivalent to three quarters of the mobile spectrum in use today.
The last time an auction was held, for 3G in 2000, it raised a record £22.5bn for the Treasury.
The auction itself is expected to start in the first quarter of 2012.
The additional spectrum to be sold off should mean faster speeds for downloading data …

Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa have stolen a march on BT and British Airways by becoming the first operators to offer up to 5Mbps broadband access in flight.
Based on Panasonic Avionics and a satellite link from the aircraft, the Flynet WiFi hotspot in the sky costs €1.70 for 10 minutes, and is available to any WiFi-enabled device for surfing the web.
The service goes live in February after trials in December last year revealed pent up demand for it. “On average, data volumes of around 2.35Gb and 250Mb were downloaded and uploaded, …

Chinese Mobile phone manufacturer Huawei is close to sealing a deal with the London Underground, which would see a mobile network installed on the Tube.
The mobile network Tube deal would mean that telecoms equipment would be provided by Huawei, whilst installation and maintenance would be done by Thales.
Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has been looking to fit the Underground with improved Wi-Fi and mobile coverage ever since London won the right to stage the 2012 Olympics, so time is of the essence.
However, these time constraints coupled with the fact that …

Robots could soon have an equivalent of the internet and Wikipedia.
European scientists have embarked on a project to let robots share and store what they discover about the world.
Called RoboEarth it will be a place that robots can upload data to when they master a task, and ask for help in carrying out new ones.
Researchers behind it hope it will allow robots to come into service more quickly, armed with a growing library of knowledge about their human masters.
Share plan
The idea behind RoboEarth is to develop methods that help robots …

Alcatel-Lucent has launched a modular scalable mobile network base station and antenna array system that fits into the palm of a hand, but provides more functionality than a standard base station, with a promise to halve the lifetime cost of ownership of mobile network assets.
Orange, Verizon and China Mobile will this year trial the system, launched in London on Monday. Two more mobile network operators are believed to be ready to sign up. Commercial roll-out of the new technology could start early next year.
The multi-frequency, multi-standard wideband active array antenna …

Google has unveiled an operating system for tablet computers aimed at ramping up the competition with Apple’s iPad.
More than 15 million iPads have been sold since Apple launched the gadget in 2010.
The latest version of Google’s Android OS is called Honeycomb and it has been specifically optimised for tablets.
The features include the ability to buy applications from a computer, buy features inside the app, video chat and improved graphics.
“This is a serious investment of years of design and engineering to really nail the experience for a larger screen,” Hugo Barra, …