April 7th, 2008 by
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless
Not even a week after hearing that Air France was forging ahead with an in-flight calling trial, the European Commission has now voiced its approval of using mobiles on planes in European airspace. After six months of deliberating, the decision was finally made to give airlines the choice of offering up services in order for guests to dial loved ones at 3,000-meters or more. The EU telecoms commissioner, Viviane Reding, went on to warn operators to “keep the cost of calls made on planes at a reasonable level,” and of course, not all is clear just yet. For starters, the European Aviation Safety Agency still needs to green-light the whole ordeal by approving any hardware that would be used, and we won’t be seeing any 3G action up high just yet. Still, at least one less hurdle stands in the way of you phoning home from over Europe (and simultaneously making enemies out of all your neighbors trying to get a few decent minutes of shuteye).
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Posted in europe, eu, European Commission, EuropeanCommission, airplane, flight, plane, france, in-flight, in-flight calling, In-flightCalling, trial, OnAir, ofcom, pico cell, pico cells, PicoCell, PicoCells | No Comments »
February 1st, 2008 by
Filed under: Wireless
UK regulator Ofcom has already given some indication that it intended to follow the FCC and sell off some public radio spectrum of its own, and it now looks like its really about to get the ball rolling, with it giving the official go-ahead for some key spectrum to be sold off through a “market mechanism.” As The Independent reports, that spectrum could wind up netting as much as £20 billion (or just under $40 billion) when all is said and done, with the Ministry of Defence (which holds about 75% of it) likely to be the biggest beneficiary. It’ll likely still be a while before all those pounds start changing hands, however, with Ofcom still undecided about new regulations for the spectrum and the exact mechanism for selling off the spectrum not yet in place.
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Posted in uk, radio spectrum, RadioSpectrum, ofcom, public radio spectrum, PublicRadioSpectrum | No Comments »
February 1st, 2008 by
Filed under: Wireless
UK regulator Ofcom has already given some indication that it intended to follow the FCC and sell off some public radio spectrum of its own, and it now looks like its really about to get the ball rolling, with it giving the official go-ahead for some key spectrum to be sold off through a “market mechanism.” As The Independent reports, that spectrum could wind up netting as much as £20 billion (or just under $40 billion) when all is said and done, with the Ministry of Defence (which holds about 75% of it) likely to be the biggest beneficiary. It’ll likely still be a while before all those pounds start changing hands, however, with Ofcom still undecided about new regulations for the spectrum and the exact mechanism for selling off the spectrum not yet in place.
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Posted in uk, radio spectrum, RadioSpectrum, ofcom, public radio spectrum, PublicRadioSpectrum | No Comments »
