If you live in a technophile city like Taipei, you’ll have been enjoying underground 4G for a long time now, but in London the rule is that you have to bid adieu to your mobile connectivity when diving into a tunnel. The city’s Mayor has been active in encouraging (forcing?) the major British carriers to install the necessary equipment to provide coverage on the Tube, and now we’re hearing that ambition has stretched beyond the nation’s borders as well. The Daily Telegraph reports that Vodafone, O2, Everything Everywhere, and Three from the UK along with Orange, SFR and Bouygues from France have agreed to share the cost of putting together a £20 million ($30.8m) project for making cellular coverage possible while traveling through the 31.4-mile Channel Tunnel between the two countries. The goal is to get things up and running by the Olympics in 2012, though we’ve no indication as to what speeds those wireless data transfers will reach. Still, having some bars is better than none, right?
We received an interesting email from Ripxx this morning, stating that due to an unprecedented outpouring of comments on our previous post for its sports GPS, the company’s gone and developed its very own iPhone app. That’s right, instead of planning your ski trips around a piece of dedicated hardware, you can now do it on the same device you use to read Texts From Last Night while sitting on the loo. The Ripxx iPhone Ski App, as it’s called, features trail maps from over 200 North American ski resorts, Google Maps integration, the ability to track time, speed, distance, and vertical drop for your various trips down the mountain. Whatever that means. But hey — it’s only five bucks! And it’s available now. Video after the break.
You might recall that British regulator Ofcom recently got things in order for an auction late next year of Old Blighty’s 2.6GHz spectrum for 4G use, but it turns out that spectrum’s going to make a quick pit stop before reaching its final destination. Broadcasters at the London Olympics have been given the green light to use the bandwidth — which will have already been sold by the time the games kick off in mid-2012 — for wireless cameras, with the government saying it’s fairly certain that carriers wouldn’t have had an opportunity to deploy LTE in that spectrum by then anyway. Though Ofcom’s original spectrum utilization plan from last year didn’t call for using 2.6GHz, it apparently got a wake-up call from the Vancouver games, which revealed higher demand for both wireless cameras and 3D broadcasts than the agency had anticipated — and unlike carriers, which are expected to pay billions of pounds sterling for LTE rights, Ofcom will be extending use of the bandwidth to broadcasters during the Games gratis. Awfully kind of them, isn’t it?
Nothing says, “I don’t play sports but I want you to think that I do” quite like wearing a pair of Oakley shades. And no smartphone has had a tougher time earning respect than the mini version of Nokia’s N97 debacle. To its credit, the N97 mini has become a very successful device for Nokia despite its namesake with not one, but two special edition runs already under its belt. Now we’ve got three with this limited edition model handed out to Oakley-sponsored Winter Olympians. Other than a laser-etched back, the Noakleyia mashup also comes packed with exclusive Oakley team content. Just 200 were produced so if you see it on eBay, you’d better be fast with the snipe. Gratuitous N97 mini video of Shaun White after the break because over-saturated is not in your vocabulary.
When DirectTV started teasing an iPhone app about a year ago our interests were certainly piqued — and then disappointed when it was revealed it would only allow remote scheduling. When the Android version came along we got our hopes up again for remote streaming of content, but again got them dashed again. Now Rogers is doing the disappointing, launching the charmingly titled “Remote PVR Access from your Bell Smartphone” in Canada just before the Olympics on February 12, though it’s unclear right now which smartphones will be covered. It too allows remote scheduling of content and, sadly, not remote viewing. Some day we’ll get our wish — some day.
American carriers have had Wireless Priority Service in place for several years now, giving government officials and first responders improved access to potentially overloaded networks in the event of an emergency or high-density gathering — but historically, that service has been restricted to American soil. With the Winter Olympics coming right up in Vancouver, AT&T figured it’d have quite a few G-Men strolling north of the border, so it has worked with Rogers this month to roll out priority access for devices roaming in Canada that are already authorized for the service. In a nutshell, that means VIPs strolling around the luge circuit will be able to get through (and stay through) if the crush of humanity gets too much for the poor, overworked cells to handle. And no, you can’t sign up for it, so don’t even ask.
When DirectTV started 
