The Italians are among the most enthusiastic mobile users and it is estimated there will be 60 million of them by 2007. The number using internet services via the new 3G cellphones should reach 50 million by 2010, according to a European Union study. While the incumbent Telecom Italia holds the lion's share of the present market, there are other players eager to grab a share.
Marco de Benedetti, chief executive of Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM), the largest European mobile operator using a single network, says: "The web has been a key factor in the advance of mobile technology. This is especially true in a market such as Italy, where more than 35 million people have a mobile phone and only three million own a personal computer. "In the United States, the route to the internet has been through a PC, but in Italy we are confident that the majority of our users will access the same information through their cellphone." However, Mr De Benedetti points out that size isn't everything. "Economies of scale cannot be obtained simply through cross-border expansion," he says. "There are specific differences that distinguish the single European markets. If we compare the British market to the Italian one, there are factors which differentiate the two in substantial ways.
"The British market is highly subsidised, a phenomenon that is not true in regard to the Italian market. In the UK, the majority of mobile telephony consumers choose the option to underwrite a contract with their provider, whereas in Italy more than 90 per cent of our clients are pre-paid users." TIM has launched a new platform called UniTIM, which enables consumers to use their cellphone number as an e-mail address and fax number in addition to voice communication. Telecom Italia, of which TIM is a part, is the fixed-line operator.
It is also an internet service provider (ISP) and, following restructuring and the arrival of Andrea Granelli, the company has also created a venture capital and innovation division to break into new markets. Mr Granelli, who spent four years as the head of Telecom Italia's ISP, TIN.IT, is now the executive vice-president of the new division. "The telecommunications sector is changing and becoming much more data-driven," he says. "In terms of ISPs or con-tent, every country has its own specialities and elements of difference, so it is not easy to tackle the European market, at least not for the internet. With regard to mobile telecommunications, the case is quite different because the infrastructure needs are much greater, and one can develop economies of scale by applying common branding strategies."

Far less has been said about 802.11n for mobiles, even though roughly analogous trends also hold true in mobile usage. The mobile device is gradually taking on more bandwidth-intensive roles, functioning as a personal media player, mobile storage device and office organizer. The fact is, 802.11n using multiple antenna MIMO (Multiple-In, Multiple-Out) technology is too power-hungry and not a realistic design choice for use in mobile phones. This is the form of 802.11n that most people are familiar with, the one designed for desktop PCs, access points and home routers.The 802.11n "handheld" profile promises to bring the advantages of 802.11n to handheld devices while still using a single antenna, and to do so without bleeding a handset's batteries dry. The technology behind the 802.11n standard is, by now, fairly well known. It works quite differently to 802.11g found in most Wi-Fi consumer products on the market today such as laptop computers and access points. The most obvious development on the Wi-Fi standard in 802.11n is the option for MIMO technology. MIMO allows for multiple data streams to be transmitted via different antennas on the same frequency; a technique known as spatial multiplexing.802.11n actually benefits from the presence of objects and environmental interference. Slight differences in the path of each radio data stream mean that the two signals arrive at slightly different times, helping them to be distinguished and then amalgamated. Together with its more intelligent coding and wider bandwidth usage 802.11n allows for up to 600Mbps (possible with four antennas). The more common two-antenna version will manage up to 300Mbps; a significant improvement on 54Mbps possible with 802.11g. Many of the MIMO versions of 802.11n have done little more than re-use inefficient semiconductor IP designed for desktop PCs. Also, multiple transmission streams are, by their very nature, power-hungry. CSR has sought to reapply the principles of 802.11n from the ground up in order to make it more appropriate for mobile devices. So what is it that makes 802.11n for mobiles different? As mentioned, the "handheld" 802.11n profile uses a single antenna, primarily to overcome the limitations in power and space available in mobile devices. This does mean that the full capability of 802.11n MIMO is never going to be achieved in a handset.However, 802.11n handheld is still capable of much greater speeds than existing single-antenna Wi-Fi standards. 802.11n handheld does not rely on MIMO. Through better coding and intelligent use of bandwidth, the single-antenna 802.11n handheld may reach speeds of up to 150Mbps. Even when using the same bandwidth as older standards (just one 20MHz channel in the 5.4GHz range instead of its usual 40MHz), 802.11n's better 5/6 coding rates for 64-QAM mean that it can achieve rates of up to 72Mbps, still a 25 percent improvement on 802.11g.With use of the optional 802.11n features such as block acknowledgement and frame aggregation, you can improve the efficiency of the throughput of the network and achieve data throughput of up to 65Mbps—approximately 90 percent. With 802.11g for example you could only achieve up to about 50 percent.

Put down that DS and text your mates - using mobile phones and playing video games doesn't harm teens' academic performance, according to new research by Michigan State University.
A three-year study of students from 20 schools found that using mobiles had no effect on the educational results of a group of 12-year-olds.
And while the researchers found a strong relationship between video games and lower results, gaming did not appear to affect skills in mathematics and actually had a positive relationship with visual-spatial skills.
More lessons in Halo Wars, please
These skills, where children learn visually, by thinking in pictures and images, are considered important techniques for mastering science, technology, engineering and maths.
As expected, female students used mobile phones more frequently than did males, while boys played video games far more frequently than did girls.
Report author Professor Linda Jackson said it's unrealistic to think kids will stop playing video games, so game developers should focus on elements that develop visual-spatial skills and less on themes such as violence. Also, more games should be developed that appeal to girls to better develop their visual-spatial skills.
When it comes to mobile phones, Jackson saw no detrimental effects. However, further research is needed on older students who are more apt to engage in "devious behavior" such as text-messaging test answers to each other, she said.

Gaping gaps in weather and climate data across Africa may be filled by a partnership between humanitarian groups and mobile phone companies.
The project aims to deploy 5,000 automatic weather stations across the continent mounted on phone masts.
They will gather data on aspects of weather such as rainfall and wind, and send it to national weather agencies.
Former UN chief Kofi Annan says the project could help save lives of people on "the frontlines of climate change".
"The world's poorest are also the world's most vulnerable when it comes to the impact of climate change, and the least equipped to deal with its consequences," he said.
"Today you find cell phone towers in almost every part of Africa. We have never been able to establish weather monitoring on that scale, until now."