Search Results for: satellite

When I upgraded to my recent smartphone hardware (a Samsung Galaxy S4 running Cyanogen Mod) I noticed that the time it takes to get a first location via GPS (first time to fix) is stunningly quick compared to my previous device. Even after not having used the GPS receiver for more than half a day, … Continue reading First Time To Fix – When GPS-only Location Is Good Enough And Protects My Privacy – Sort Of

Last year I was by chance on one of those Lufthansa planes that had Internet via satellite connectivity when flying back from the US over Europe. Despite the long round trip times, the overall experience was quite breathtaking. The only thing that can be done to reduce the long round trip delay times is not … Continue reading LTE to the Plane

My friends regularly mock me for checking network coverage for places I plan to go on vacation to and that I would feel uncomfortable the moment I ran out of coverage. But it's probably true. So you will understand my shock and disbelief that there is a UK overseas territory in the South Atlantic that … Continue reading St. Helena: No Cable, no Broadband Internet, no Wireless

Internet Access in the air is once again in the air, so to speak. A couple of months ago, Lufthansa has restarted their on board Internet access again after a pause of several years. On my way back from New York at the time of this writing, I had the fortune to be one one … Continue reading A Post From Over The Atlantic

What do you do when the mobile network is switched off by the government to prevent you from communicating and there is no chance things are going to change anytime soon? Well, if you are in Libya, if you know people who know what they are doing and if have some money to buy needed … Continue reading Network Split in Libya

One of the first train companies to introduce Internet access over Wi-Fi on board its high speed trains was Thalys, connecting Paris with Brussels, Cologne, Amsterdam and a couple of cities in between. When I first tried it back in 2009, performance was great, almost unbelievable. A year later in 2010, however, the offer was … Continue reading An Update of Thalys On-Board Wi-Fi Performance

Since the start several years ago, Nokia Maps, called Ovi Maps these days had offline navigation capabilities, i.e. maps data can be stored on the mobile so there's no data cost for navigation except for the few kilobytes of data required to get the A-GPS ephemeris almanac when the program is started to give the … Continue reading Offline Navigation Not Google’s Business Model?

After many many years of talking about higher quality speech codecs, Orange (France Telecom) is the first network operator to finally activate it in some of its 3G networks. Having activated the Adaptive Multi Rate – Wide Band (AMR-WB) codec in Moldova about a year ago it seems they are now confident enough it works … Continue reading Orange UK launches AMR-WB

What I really miss on long-haul flights is Internet connectivity. A couple of years back, Boeing and its Connexion system was a cool option if you flew Lufthansa and a few other carriers but it seems the service was not profitable and Motorola discontinued the service. Too bad, long-haul is offline again since then. But … Continue reading Internet Over The Clouds

Yes, I very much like my wireless mouse but I have just discovered the use for a cable bound mouse these days again: On an airplane! For long haul flights, if you have enough space to use a mouse it comes in very handy as wireless mice are not allowed to be used. I wonder … Continue reading The Cable Mouse Is Back