Google plans to spend more than $1 Billion on a fleet of satellites to bring internet access to unwired parts of the globe, according to the Wall Street Journal. The project will use small, high-capacity low-Earth orbit satellites that sit closer to the ground than traditional geostationary satellites, reducing lag times.

Internet services by satellite are widely available today from operators such as Astra and Eutelsat, operating in geostationary orbits at approximately 36,000 km altitude. At a rather lower level, the Iridium satellite network offers a global network from about 800km height, and is widely used for satellite phones and maritime services. Google is reported to be looking at orbits of only 160 km high, with the potential to remove any notable lag for the connection.

This project can be seen from several angles. At one level it is an altruistic effort to connect the digitally disenfranchised peoples of the globe, while other might describe it as a bid for first-mover advantage for the next wave of internet growth.

The Wifi Alliance plans to add Near Field Communication (NFC) to its Certified Protected Setup program, making connection setup as easy as tapping 2 devices together.

Such "tap-to-connect" capability will allow the connection of devices to the internet or networks by simply tapping a router. Users can set both traditional networks with an access point and Wifi Direct groups.

The first devices supporting the NFC option include the Broadcom Dual-Band 802.11ac access point, the Marvell Avastar 88W8787, the Mediatek NFConnected AP and NFConnected STA, the Qualcomm Dual-Band XSPAN 2-stream 802.11n WLAN adapter and the Nexus 10 tablet.

StarTech launches the Wireless-N Travel Router (R150WN1X1T)-- a small, portable router allowing customers to easily connect wireless-only devices to wired networks.

Ideal for customers wanting 802.11b/g/n connectivity in hotel rooms, conference centres or boardrooms, the portable router fits over iPad wall chargers and includes a pass-through USB port to charge devices while in use.

UK-based researchers at the Ultra-Parallel Visible Light Communications (UP-VLC) project announce a breakthrough in visible light communications (VLC), reaching data transfer speeds of 10Gbps with a system using tiny micro-LEDs.

The researchers hail from the universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Strathclyde, Oxford and Cambridge.

Reportedly the system transmits 3.5Gbps through each of the 3 primary colours (red, green, blue) making up white light, this increasing the amount of data the light can "carry." This makes the the basis of what the researchers call light fidelity or "li-fi," a potential low-cost alternative to radio-based wireless internet.

"If you think of a shower head separating water out into parallel streams, that's how we can make light behave," Prof Harald Haas tells the BBC.

Allowing the micro-LEDs to handle millions of light intensity changes per second is Orthogonal Frequency Divisional Multiplexing (OFDM), a dgital modulation technique making what amounts to an extremely fast on/off switch.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) and the Karlsruhe Instute of Technology (KIT) manage a world first-- wireless data transmission at 100Gbps.

The wifi tests use 237.5GHz signals over a distance of 20m in laboratory conditions. However the super-high frequencies involved demand clear line of sight between devices at all times.

“At a data rate of 100Gbps, it would be possible to transmit the contents of a Blu-ray disk or of 5 DVDs between 2 devices by radio within 2 seconds only,” researcher Prof. Ingmar Kallfass says.

IEEE creates the IEEE 802.11 High Efficiency WLAN (HEW) study group, with the aim to enhance the efficiency and performance of current WLAN deployments-- creating a new wifi standard in the process.

The study group will consider use cases including dense network environments with large numbers of access points and stations.

Expressing interest in the future HEW project are over 300 individuals from equipment and silicon vendors, service providers, carriers, systems integrators, consultant organisations Continue reading...

Amped Wireless launches the RTA15, a high power 700mW dual-band 802.11ac wifi router with HD/4K media streaming and online gaming support from multiple simultaneous users.

It carries three high-gain 5dBi antennas and 10 high-power amplifiers, the largest amount in an Amped Wireless product yet-- two 2.4GHz, four 5.0GHz and four low noise.

Other features include an "advanced" internal processor, five ethernet ports, a USB port for file sharing and Wifi Analytic Tool Apps with options for guest Continue reading...

The EU joins forces with Japanese authorities to invest €18 million in 6 separate projects researching ways to increase network efficiency-- with one project aiming to build networks reaching speeds of up to 19.7Mbps.

"Our Future Internet should know no barriers, least of all barriers created because we did not prepare for the data revolution,” EC VP Neelie Kross says.

The Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Commications (MIC) and National Institute of ICT (NCT) take part, together with the likes of Orange, Telefonica, NEC, Panasonic, NTT, KDDI, ADVA, STMicroelectronics and Intel.

According to the EC the word generates 1.7m bytes of data per minute-- and such data traffic will grow 12-fold by 2018.