Everything Everywhere plans to roll-out 4G mobile internet for Orange and T-Mobile customers by the end of the year, providing it gets the green light from Ofcom.

The company has announced that a new 4G test on the 1800Mhz spectrum will commence in Bristol this April as part of its hopes to launch before the year is out.

In order to create the 4G network, it would be necessary for Ofcom to allow EE to convert some of its existing 1800Mhz spectrum license from 3G to 4G use. The regulator says it is considering the offer.

Everything Everywhere is also extending its 800Mhz spectrum 4G trials in Cornwall until the summer as it seeks to built the UK’s best 4G infrastructure.

This announcement comes as a major boost for UK smartphone owners as it was thought we wouldn’t see 4G speeds until 2013 at the very earliest.

3.5G speeds also on the up

Everything Everywhere also announced that it will complete the roll-out of HSPA+21 (otherwise known as 3.5G) by Q2, bringing download speeds of up to 21Mbps for some users.

The company is also planning to furnish its 3G customers with even faster HSPA+42 download speeds by the end of the year, making it by far the fastest 3G network in the UK.

CEO Olaf Swantee said: “Everything Everywhere’s vision is to launch 4G for Britain as soon as possible, and the roll out of 3.5G HSPA+ and our 4G trials across Britain are major steps towards delivering on that promise.

“The integration of the Orange and T-Mobile networks has already given our customers the widest 3G coverage in the UK – and I am pleased to say that with our advanced HSPA+ roll out they will also benefit from the fastest.

“I am also very proud to announce that, subject to regulatory approval by the spring, Everything Everywhere will be in a position to begin the roll out of 4G before the end of the year.

“There is a great opportunity for the UK to have the 21st Century network that it so deserves, putting the nation on a level playing field with other parts of Europe, the USA and Asia.”

Sort it out, Ofcom

A spokesperson for Ofcom said: “Ofcom has received an application from EE to vary its licence for 4G use. Ofcom is considering that application and once it arrives at a view it will consult with stakeholders.”

If Everything Everywhere can get approval from Ofcom, which has been frustrating everyone by dragging its feet on this matter, then Orange and T-Mobile users will get a huge head start on O2 in this area.

A planned auction for 4G mobile spectrum has been pushed back until the end of the year, much to the chagrin of networks keen to get the infrastructure up and running.

OnLive has added a subscription tier to its OnLive Deskop application for the Apple iPad, which now adds Internet Explorer 9 and access to the company’s super-fast cloud internet service.

The OnLive Desktop app first launched in January offering remote access to a full version of Windows 7 (including the in-demand Microsoft Office) through the company’s servers.

The new $5-a-month OnLive Desktop Plus service now brings Internet Explorer 9 functionality, which allows users to access the flash videos and websites that will not play on Apple’s Safari browser.

However, there’s more to this than just another Flash-enabled web browser.

Gigabit internet on your iPad

A subscription will give users priority access to OnLive’s cloud-enhanced web speeds of up to a gigabit. Early tests have revealed download speeds of 650Mbps and upload speeds of 200Mbps.

It works by channeling your connection through OnLive’s mightily impressive servers based in the cloud.

That means, regardless of how fast or slow, your home Wi-Fi connection is, OnLive Desktop Plus’ cloud-accelerated connection will dramatically enhance page-loading and streaming speeds.

It’ll also offer lightning-fast download speeds when opening webmail attachments from Gmail and Yahoo Mail, and transferring files from Dropbox.

Nothing short of breathtaking

“Experiencing a full Flash-enabled Web experience at gigabit speeds on iPad is nothing short of breathtaking, and OnLive Desktop Plus is your ticket to ride,” said Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder and CEO.

“Combine that with OnLive Desktop’s full-featured Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader PC applications and not only do you have the world’s fastest mobile browser, but the world’s most powerful productivity tools literally at your fingertips.”

The company says a launch for UK users is coming soon, as well as versions for Windows, Mac and Android in the not-too-distant future.

Wi-Fi Direct: everything you need to know

The world is falling out of love with cables, but the Wi-Fi we know and love isn’t always the best way to connect devices.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could effortlessly connect Wi-Fi devices without messing around with access points and lengthy passphrases? That’s what Wi-Fi Direct promises.

Wi-Fi Direct is a proper standard

It comes via the Wi-Fi Alliance, the global industry association in charge of certifying Wi-Fi kit.

Wi-Fi Direct is Wi-Fi without the internet bit

The idea behind Wi-Fi direct is that simple tasks need simple connections. For example, you might want to print from your laptop or smartphone to a wireless printer, or to share images with someone else in the same room, or to transmit video from your phone to your TV. None of these things requires an internet connection, but they do need to connect – to the printer, or to the other person’s hardware, or to the TV. With Wi-Fi Direct, that bit’s easy.

Wi-Fi Direct can have the internet bit too

If you have a Wi-Fi router connected to the internet, you can connect to that too.

Wi-Fi Direct doesn’t need a wireless access point

Wi-Fi Direct devices can connect to each other without having to go through an access point: they can establish ad-hoc networks as and when required, letting you see which devices are available and choose which one you want to connect to. If that sounds very like Bluetooth, that’s because it is.

Wi-Fi Direct uses Wi-Fi Protected Setup

You don’t want any Tom, Dick or Harriet to be able to connect to your stuff – for example, you might not want to see what the neighbours are beaming to their TV on your TV – so Wi-Fi Direct uses Wi-Fi Protected Setup [PDF] and WPA2 to prevent unauthorised connections and keep your communications private. There are two ways to establish a connection: with physical buttons – “press the button on gadget X and then the same one on gadget Y”, or with PIN codes.

Wi-Fi Direct knows what’s nearby

Wi-Fi Direct includes two potentially useful things: Wi-Fi Direct Device Discovery and Service Discovery. Your device doesn’t just know there are devices available; if developers have enabled it, your device will know what kind of devices are nearby and what’s on offer – so for example if you’re trying to display an image, you’ll only see devices that you can beam images to; if you want to print, you’ll only see devices that are or that are connected to printers. Crucially this can happen before you connect, so you don’t waste any time trying to connect so something that doesn’t do what you want it to do.

Wi-Fi Direct uses the same silicon

Manufacturers don’t need to add extra radios to their kit: the idea is to have Wi-Fi Direct as part of the standard Wi-Fi radio. It’s backwards compatible too, so you don’t need to throw out your old Wi-Fi-enabled kit.

Wi-Fi Direct is part of DLNA, and Android too

In November, the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) announced that it was including Wi-Fi Direct in its interoperability guidelines, and Google has added Wi-Fi Direct support to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (for example it’s in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus‘s networking options). DLNA says it “expects DLNA Certified and Wi-Fi Certified Wi-Fi Direct smartphones to grow strongly through 2016.” That could be an awful lot of smartphones.

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je2lWjfpywQ

The imminent BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 adds the missing messaging apps to RIM’s tablet, but it also marks a big shift in how BlackBerry devices handle email.

RIM is moving on from the proprietary email system that’s been the foundation of its success in business and is joining Google and Apple in adopting a mobile email protocol from Microsoft. But that doesn’t mean BlackBerry is abandoning its trademark security or long battery life.

With the PlayBook 2.0 – and future BlackBerry 10 handsets – you won’t have to run a wizard on the device and connect to the BlackBerry service to set up your email any more.

Instead, you just fill in the email address and password for your email account, like any other device. If it’s a common email service – or any server you’ve used with a BlackBerry device before – that’s all you need to do.

If you’re connecting to a work email account, you can click Advanced and fill in the details of the server, but it’s still far simpler.

EAS support

But the PlayBook doesn’t connect directly to the mail service. BlackBerry software head Vivek Bhardwaj told TechRadar that PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 still take advantage of the BlackBerry infrastructure and servers but things are a lot easier.

“I can put in my Gmail account and what we do in the background is take the username and read the domain [from the email address] and we do all the heavy lifting to get the settings and do all the configuration and send that back down to the device.”

The PlayBook works with standard mail protocols such as IMAP and POP3, but it also supports the popular EAS protocol.

This was developed by Microsoft (originally for Exchange; it stands for Exchange Active Services) but it’s been widely licensed, and is used by Gmail and Yahoo as well as Hotmail. It’s already supported by the majority of smartphones – Android, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile, Nokia, Palm and even iPhones.

In fact, RIM has been the only holdout, and currently you have to install third-party email tools such as AstraSync to use EAS on a BlackBerry handset or tablet.

Switching to EAS instead of RIM’s proprietary push email transport is a major change, and it’s something of a coup for Microsoft, especially when Bhardwaj praises it as an open standard.

“This is a shift in architecture, based on what we want to deliver as a company. The BlackBerry Internet Service and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server have served us well for the last decade.

“Over time, more consumers have latched on to smartphones, and enough of the industry is at that tipping point so we do need to be about standards. It’s about open standards and an open ecosystem.”

Get email faster

EAS has some major advantages. It’s a proper push protocol that copes with multiple email folders. Mail will arrive on a device using EAS when it arrives on the server. That’s a big improvement over the 15 minutes you wait to check for new emails you get with BIS today (the way any BlackBerry that’s not managed by a business gets email).

Emails you read and delete on your phone will be marked as read or deleted if you look at your mail on the web. This happens with BlackBerry devices today, if you have it set up correctly.

But messages you read in webmail or with another client will be marked as read on your BlackBerry as well, which doesn’t always happen using the current system.

And while there will probably be a setting to choose whether to download the whole of really long messages, you won’t only get the first 2K of each message. That should mean no more scrolling down to the More prompt and waiting for the rest of the message to arrive.

You’ll finally also get your contacts and calendar details synced from your email or calendar service directly to the PlayBook or BlackBerry 10 smartphone, even if you’re not connected to an enterprise BlackBerry system.

Secure and energy efficient

But what about the real advantages of BIS and BES: the security and power efficiency?

Mail will be just as secure, promises Bhardwaj. “The device talks EAS but we wrap security around it. The messages go through a secure tunnel that’s created by BIS or BES, but the transport inside it is EAS.”

Businesses still get to manage BlackBerry devices and control settings on them as well.

And it’s the connection between the server and the phone that keeps power use low (and compresses the data sent back and forth), which still uses the BlackBerry system. If battery life changes for BlackBerry 10, we wouldn’t point the finger at the mail connection.

Loosening the connection between BlackBerry devices and the BlackBerry servers might have other advantages too. It’s no longer one person, one BlackBerry, talking only to a BlackBerry server. PlayBook is going to get BBM (just not in this update).

Could this open up the possibility of BBM coming to other devices that aren’t BlackBerry? We don’t know, but it’s a tempting idea.

What is a PC? Sounds like a simple question. And it used to have a simple answer. It’s a computer with an x86-compatible processor and a copy of Microsoft Windows.

The only exceptions involved dubious standards of personal hygiene or a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. In either scenario, allowances for running Linux were made.

Today, things aren’t so clear. Portable computers of all kinds are increasingly powered by ARM chips. In fact, some of the big research houses that crunch the data and work out the trends have been bundling tablets in with conventional laptop and desktop computers under the all-encompassing ‘personal computer’ label for a while.

More recently, Microsoft revealed that its upcoming ARM-compatible operating system, which appears to be more or less a port of Windows 8, will deliver the full Windows desktop even if there will be limitations regards the apps you can run.

Not that I necessarily think that Windows for ARM will be a terribly big deal. But it does feed into the broader picture where internet access and computing in general is becoming ever more mobile and ever less tethered to x86processors.

Already, more people around the world access the internet from a mobile device rather than conventional computers.

Cisco even reckons there will be many more mobile internet devices than people by 2016. And they’ll very probably all be ARM powered.

At the same time, while Intel and AMD attempt to squeeze x86 chips into ever smaller form factors, ARM chips are heading in the other direction and becoming ever more sophisticated powerful. Nvidia, for instance, says it plans to offer multi-core ARM processors suitable for heavy duty server computers, probably in 2014.

As it happens, it increasingly looks like AMD might give in to the ARM architecture and use it for its own chips.

Whether that actually happens or not, ARM architectures are certainly due to take on capabilities previously reserved for high performance systems, such as 64-bit instruction sets and out-of-order execution.

It won’t be long before a high end smartphone has all the computing power most consumers really need. And that raises the possibility of using a single device both on the move and docked on the desktop. Meanwhile, cloud and browser-based apps and services are increasingly making the argument you need that x86 ecosystem and broad compatibility seem pretty redundant.

Now, I don’t want to get carried away. There’s plenty to shake out and I for one think ye olde mouse and keyboard interface has plenty of legs left when it comes to getting stuff done. So, I’m not saying tablets are about to take over or anything along those lines.

But I can also feel the winds of change. Thus, my plan is to get hold of one of the latest transformable Android tablets and see if it can truly replace my precious laptop PC.

I’ll still have my desktop and my smartphone, of course. So in terms of overall device count, nothing will have changed. But I reckon it will still provide an intriguing insight into what being a PC is all about.