WWW inventor favours mobiles to widen web access

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW), Thursday called for use of mobile technology to make the web available to a large number of people in countries with low levels of Internet penetration like India.

He underlined the need to teach people to build websites which work well on mobile phones and said the entrepreneurs can build an economy using this technology.

"This will also help in improving education, healthcare and economic status of people," he told reporters during the 20th International World Wide Web Conference here.

Berners-Lee, who is also the director of World Wide Web Foundation, which funds and coordinates efforts to further the potential of the web, said the foundation had also taken up some projects to teach people to build websites which work on mobile phones.

He said while India may have its share of problems, no country was perfect. He pointed out that even in the US and several so-called developed countries, there were many towns with either no Internet connection or no choice of Internet providers.

On the idea of voice-based search for people who are uneducated, he said the foundation was already working on the technology.

"Somebody has to provide a gateway running a programme which uses special web pages to do the dialogue. It is only the start to what could be an important section of web to get people who have no access to the web at the moment become part of the Internet society," he said.

Earlier, delivering the keynote address, Berners-Lee emphasised on the need to consider access to the Internet on par with any other civil right. Finland has already accepted access to the Internet as a human right.

The Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) said it was important to progress towards the idea of the Internet as a neutral media that was not controlled by large corporates or governments.

"Today, Egypt is communicating online with the people. The common man is in a position to give feedback to the government," he said, referring to the recent revolution in the north African country.

Berners-Lee said the issue of Internet governance and a mechanism to control international cyber crime was complicated.

"There is a problem of jurisdiction. There is a problem of coordination among law enforcement services across different countries. Which aspect of Internet should be governed by what sort of international organisation. Currently, there is a lot of discussion going on whether it should be done through countries or independently," he said.

Mobile number portability to start today

If you're tired of poor service from your current telecom service provider but have not switched to avoid changing your number, you don't have to worry anymore. You can now leave your old service provider for a new one and keep the old number.

Dump your phone company. Move to a better one. But keep your present number. A total of 700 million Indians use cell phones. With mobile number portability kicking in on November 25, many customers, especially pre-paid ones, might abandon ship. Firms might offer better service but won't drop prices any further.

"How far can you go? Will you give it away free? If that's the next battlefront, God help us all," said Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) Rajan Mathews.

Here's how you can shift. Send an SMS from your phone to 1900. Your present company will reply with a unique porting code. Use that code while filling out a detailed form for the company you want to shift to. Within 48 hours, that company will take over all your cell services. The fee charge may cost you about Rs 19.

Your cell number will be switched off for only one hour. All bills after that are paid to your new company. You'll be stuck with them for at least 50 days before you can shift again, so choose with care. While you can shift from a GSM service to CDMA or vice versa, you cannot shift from one state to another.

"The circles don't change. If you are in Karnataka, you are a Karnataka subscriber. If you shift from one state to another, roaming kicks in, just like it does right now," said Rajan Mathews.

However, if you stay in Haryana, you can switch companies starting on November 25. Everyone else will have to wait till early next year (2011). The industry says it can cope with the huge data transfers, without compromising national security.

"If in case, the Government wants to track or monitor someone, there will be robust methods to do that. Anyone planning to misuse the system because of MNP is going to be sorely disappointed," added Mathews.

'Fourth generation' Internet arrives in Hong Kong

The latest generation of wireless Internet that will allow people to watch a crystal clear movie or live sporting event on the street or atop a hill is being deployed throughout Hong Kong.

The Long Term Evolution (LTE) network will give super high speeds across the city and could mean the end of computers ever needing to be plugged into a wall for a connection to the net.

The so-called "fourth generation" system is being rolled out by Hong Kong mobile network operator CSL in partnership with telecoms equipment maker ZTE Corporation.

"The first launch of an LTE network any place in Asia is truly historic," Joseph O'Konek, CSL's chief executive, told AFP.

"For a lot of people, this will be their first experience of the Internet. They are at a huge advantage to previous Internet generations because they are leapfrogging all those fixed line technologies.

"It is truly going to unleash the power of human networks as this kind of system rolls out more and more across the world."

LTE enables faster data downloads and uploads on mobile devices compared with a third-generation network.

The system will give speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) and should make the high quality viewing of full length movies or realtime live sporting events possible anywhere in the city.

LTE networks are already operating in Europe, Scandinavia and North America. Japan will have an LTE system before the end of the year and huge growth in LTE connections is expected over the next five years, especially in China.

Meanwhile CSL's owner, the Australian telecoms giant Telstra, said it is looking to make acquisitions to strengthen its position in the Asia-Pacific region.

"Organic growth is always the best growth. But you do need to acquire new technology that's going to allow you to fuel the growth in the future," David Thodey, the company's CEO, told the Wall Street Journal.

"Sometimes you expand geographically... or sometimes you want to expand your market share. We will be doing all three because it's critically important for a company to keep pushing the limits as you go forward."

Swedish hotel replaces room keys with mobile phone

Visitors to a Stockholm hotel will be able to use mobile phones instead of keys to unlock the doors to their rooms.

Assa Abloy AB, the world's largest maker of door locks, has launched a pilot in which Clarion Hotel Stockholm will lend customers mobile phones with close-range radio chips, much like devices used for contact-less payments at gas stations.

Repeat visitors during a four-month trial will be able to check in through their phones before arrival and have their phones activated as "keys." They will then be able to skip the registration desk and unlock the door by holding the phone next to it.

The short-range radio technology, known as Near Field Communication, is expected to be built into smart phones in the coming years. It is also envisioned for ticketing and card payments. Assa Abloy says it wanted to test the system before expanding it to other hotels, commercial buildings and homes.

Greger Johansson, a telecommunications analyst at research firm Redeye, said NFC is a hot technology in the mobile phone market. But he said few models have incorporated it so far and it will take "several years" before it becomes widely used.

"It's not just a matter of incorporating the technology into the phones," he said. "You need someone who can read it too. There are quite a few players involved so it will take a while until it works well."

The head of Assa Abloy's mobile keys division, Daniel Berg, acknowledged that participants in the trial may find it cumbersome to have an extra mobile phone.

But once people have the technology in their own phones, he said, it will save them time at check-in and improve security because the access credentials in a lost phone can be revoked remotely.

He said the phone technology works with existing radio-enabled locks, so hotels can continue giving key cards to visitors who don't have the new technology in their phones.

Dell switching off BlackBerry, onto own smartphone

Dell Inc will shift thousands of its employees off Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry and over to Dell's smartphones, the company said on Thursday.

The money-saving switch affects the roughly 25,000 Dell employees who carry a company-issued BlackBerry. Dell employs around 100,000 people worldwide.

Dell is also launching an effort to convince its business customers to switch to the company's smartphone.

News of the company's plans was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, and confirmed by Dell spokesman David Frink.

Frink said the switch will begin soon, but said it will take some time to complete.

RIM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dell's BlackBerry users will be shifted over to use the new Dell Venue Pro, which runs on Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 software and operates on the network of T-Mobile USA, the US arm of Deutsche Telekom AG.

Dell's decision to move its employees off BlackBerry may come as little surprise, given its aspirations in the mobile device market. The company has frequently talked about using handheld devices as a gateway to sell and promote a broader suite of services.

Dell formally entered the smartphone market only late last year, and launched its first device in the US, the Aero, earlier this year. The Aero runs on Google's Android software, as does Dell's new 5-inch tablet, the Streak.

RIM has long been the dominant player in the corporate smartphone market, but has seen its market share erode as companies such as Apple make gains.

In the third quarter, RIM's global smartphone market share slipped more than 4 percentage points from a year-ago, according to industry tracker IDC