The Wi-Fi contract for the London Underground that has been the target for a number of companies has been awarded to Virgin Media, giving them permission to install their services at 120 stations.
The Internet Service Provider (ISP) is committing to providing the Wi-Fi service to 80 of the stations as a minimum by the time July comes around for the 2012 Olympic Games. The service will be free to use for all passengers whilst on the platforms but not on carriages.

How long will the Free access last?

Despite the fact that the Wi-Fi access will be free to all customers during the period of the 2012 Olympic games the ISP have no intentions of letting that remain. Once the games have come to an end the service will only be accessible through two methods currently on the table, one of which is as you would expect if you are a Virgin Media customer you get access free of charge and the second option is a pay-as-you-go “contract”.

A spokesperson from the ISP has mention it is also looking into other options to grant access to people through renting out the equipment it is due to install to other providers.

Boris Barks:

“It’s vital that we harness the massive opportunities stemming from the digital revolution, by creating a vibrant, world class industry to attract investment and create jobs for Londoners,”

said Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

“Millions of passengers will now be able to connect to their work, friends or access the latest news and travel information whilst on the move. This is a fabulous new and free resource which will be in place from this summer when London is being showcased on a global stage and playing host to millions.”

The CEO of Virgin Media Meil Berkit said that the company’s fibre optic infrastructure will be the key component to the service.

“We’ll help people make the most of the city and will continue to evolve the service, ensuring everyone can benefit from a service London will be proud of,”

Berkett added.

There had been a lot of competition for the contract, of which claims had been made that it was dropped in 2011. Huawei was the initial front runner with an offer of £50 million to setup the Wi-Fi. It would seem though that they have been beaten by Virgin Media.

Yes RIM do indeed have a plan to take the Canadian corporation out of their current dark alleyway, with a new RIM CEO and upper management structure taking shape, and with this leaked blackberry roadmap, it is intriguing to see what they have in store over 2012.

So as you can see, RIM will be bringing out a new line of Curves and a Wi-Fi media server, as well as an upgrade across the board from BB7 to BB7.1.

In keeping with some peoples current suggested thoughts on the direction that RIM should consider, it would appear that the first smartphone to be produced on the new Blackberry 10 O/S will be codenamed “London” and could be the flagship smartphone that many have suggested could be the way forward for Research In Motion and their new O/S.

With a release date schedule of September 2012 or later, this phone could be the start of a recovery or be a tipping point when the company realise they have perhaps ditched the baby(s) with the bathwater!

The question remains what will RIM do in terms of setting their stall out as still being very much business centric or now more interested in your average consumer or will they pitch for a bit of both, one thing is for certain, they need to now keep an eye out on IBM and HTC after they make plans to release enterprise technology using the Android operating system that could well eat into both Apple and RIM Blackberry devices sales in the near future.

We look forward to seeing how RIM shape up in 2012, good luck I say.

The nine month long trial is starting this week and will run up until the summer of 2012 when the Olympics will be in town. The areas covered will be the most densely populated parts of the capital and will include: Canary Wharf, Soho, Westminster, South Bank and Kings Cross. This will take in 25 base stations and will put O2 firmly on the map as pioneers for the UK in terms of a 4G LTE network.

O2 UK chief Ronan Dunne said in a statement.

“Today’s launch of the UK’s first 4G London trial network demonstrates our commitment to delivering 4G to our customers at the earliest opportunity, the work we are doing now will lay the foundations for our commercial 4G network when it launches in the UK.”

But is this really 4G or a “just passed version”?

LTE was not considered part of the 4G criteria until December last year when the ITU said that LTE and WiMax and “other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third-generation systems now deployed”.

Basically they were saying that until 4G proper comes along you can now market this technology as 4G, even though it is more closely related to improved 3G.

LTE 4G a bit of a con?

Unlike LTE advanced which will offer around 100mbps and should be able to work “in motion” the o2 trial of LTE in London starting this week will only offer half those speeds and will still struggle “in motion”….this basically means that using the connection while walking or travelling in your car will be problematic in the main.

Those who are involved in the trail will be using mobile dongles from Samsung: model: B3730 which are supposed to support speeds up to a huge 100 Mbps. Portable hotspots and headsets will also be trialled, they will utilise the 2.6Ghz spectrum which is said to be capable of delivering speed of up to 150 Mbps.

Mobile Vidoecalls and HDTV to the masses?

With the pressure on data rates being pushed all the time, there are current limitations that occur for the average user when they are out and about. One of the main power hungry platforms is video. The move to improve the amount of data that can be transferred on a mobile connection will be welcome news to TV lovers and networks.

4 year delay caused by disagreements between networks including o2:

4G was suppose to be available in the UK in 2008, yes 4/5 years ago, and it still looks like the spectrum will not be put on the wholesale market for another year or more after these tests and other issues between mobile networks are resolved.

Who is involved in the trial?

The O2 trial will use technology from Nokia Siemens and also Cambridge Broadband Networks and NEC, with other smaller “trials” already taking place in the UK in Cornwall and Slough earlier this year it is not until the London trials really bring in some hard data that companies can finally see how the technology has worked on a mass scale in a dense urban environment where its ability to pass through buildings due to the particularly high bandwidth offered at this frequency will be of serious interest to businesses and consumers.

The trial will bring in the John Lewis department store, members of the institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and people visiting the o2 arena in London’s Docklands.

UK behind on 4G and costs business nearly £1 Billion a year

With the UK languishing behind the US, Australia and Germany with the 4g roll out, an Open Digital study has claimed that UK businesses are losing out on more than £730 million a year in productivity due to the slow introduction of 4G to the UK.

Blackberry’s message system BBM is famous for being a closed messaging service meaning that services such as the police can not easily intercept the data that is transferred between private group chats.

This has proven popular for business users who want to make sure sensitive information is kept as safe as possible in the airwaves, this has however meant that Blackberry devices have become popular with criminals and it now would appear rioters in London.

Blackberry have issued a statement on their twitter account stating:

“We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can”

Blackberry have become very popular in the UK teen market with 37 percent of UK teenagers citing the Blackberry as their smartphone of choice. This is mainly down to the free and confidential BBM message service which replaces the usual SMS text messaging service.

Blackberry’s are the smartphone of choice for “Yoof” of Britain:

Blackberry’s BBM group messaging service is perfect for covert communication, it is a totally encrypted means of sharing text like messages with people who have access to your own personal pin, this keeps communication totally closed.

Blackberry could be accused of targeting the “urban youth” element of society, their phones are a little cheaper than more sophisticated smartphones, and they have even been the recent sponsors of a ‘secret gig’ in Shoreditch Town Hall with huge names from the UK rap scene taking the stage.

Indeed Mark Duggan the young man shot dead who is now perhaps unfairly linked to the appalling riots was last known to be using a Blackberry phone texting his girlfriend that:

“The Feds are following me.”

Jonathan Akwue – one of the first people to raise the BBM connection – points out:

BBM is fast, free and private. It’s also created a ‘shadow social network‘ which is invisible to Police snooping.

Will Blackberry bow down to police and legal requests to decode BBM messages from suspect rioters?

Blackberry has a somewhat solid stance at defending its right to keep the encrypted data sent by its users to itself, I am unsure just what would be needed in order to force Blackberry to actually go against one of its selling points and allow the police access to users confidential and encrypted BBM messages.

Social networks blamed for riots:

Facebook and Twitter are being blamed for escalating the riots in London and Birmingham, this is totally pointless blame, they are merely a means of communication and people have used any form of communication at hand, riots are a part of Britain’s fabric though the recent unrest does seem to have a much more sinister undertone in the totally random nature.