Article

FCC licenses new LEO constellation from Boeing | (advanced-television.com)

FCC Authorizes Boeing V-Band LEO Broadband Constellation – Via Satellite – (satellitetoday.com)

My Comments

The Puget Sound area of Washington State in the USA now has two actors in the low-earth-orbit satellite broadband game.

This was initially Jeff Bezon’s Project Kuiper effort that is starting to pick up steam, but Boeing, associated with the likes of some well-known airliners which you most likely have flown on many times, is now getting the go-ahead to build a constellation of these satellites.

The initial FCC permit will allow Boeing to launch 147 LEO satellites which will be for civil-use cases like residential, commercial and institutional use initially within the USA then globally. The wavebands they will be licensed to work in are part of the V-band radio spectrum for both space-to-ground and inter-satellite communications. They have six years to develop the constellation and launch half of the satellites as part of the licence.

Here, it will be about Boeing joining a relatively-crowded market for LEO satellite broadband which will be a boon for use cases like real broadband in rural and remote areas; alongside broadband Internet within transport services.

But how will Boeing join this market? Could this be through offering a retail service like SpaceX’s Starlink or to offer it as a wholesale service in a similar manner to OneWeb. That is where retail ISPs could resell Boeing’s service to local customers.

There will be the issues of having a retail service licensed for operation in multiple countries especially where some countries are particular about preferring companies chartered in their jurisdiction offer telecommunications and allied services. A wholesale approach can allow a country’s own telcos and ISPs to resell satellite broadband to all user classes.

There is also the question about Boeing being tempted to vertically integrate this service with their lineup of civil aircraft. This could mean that they could get more airlines who fly the likes of the 737 or the 787 Dreamliner to offer a high-bandwidth Internet service provided by their LEO satellite constellation as a passenger amenity.

If Boeing can get these low-earth-orbit broadband satellites off the ground and yielding a viable service, this could be a viably competitive market when it comes to satellite broadband.

Articles

Where Wi-Fi HaLow fits in with other Wi-Fi technologies

This new Wi-Fi technology with a 1km range is the future of long range IoT applications | Business Insider India

‘The Wi-Fi portfolio is unmatched’: Wi-Fi Alliance on Wi-Fi Certified HaLow (rcrwireless.com)

Wi-Fi HaLow could be the next IoT enabler – TechRepublic

From the horse’s mouth

Wi-Fi Alliance

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED HaLow™ delivers long range, low power Wi-Fi® | Wi-Fi Alliance

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED HaLow (Product Page)

My Comments

A Wi-Fi network technology that is being put on the map at the moment is Wi-Fi CERTIFIED HaLow a.k.a Wi-Fi Halow.

This network technology is based on IEEE 802.11ah wireless network technology and works on the 900MHz waveband. It is about long-range operation of approximately 1 kilometre from the access point and very low power operation that allows devices to run for a year on commodity batteries like a single 3V coin-size cell or a pair of AA-size Duracells.

The power requirement may be a non-issue for devices like HVAC thermostats that are wired to the heating system they control. But they may be an issue with devices like movement sensors or smart locks that are dependent on their own battery power. As well, the low power requirements that Wi-Fi HaLow offer could be of benefit towards devices that implement energy-harvesting technology like solar power or kinetic energy.

This low-bandwidth Wi-Fi specification is intended to complement the other Wi-Fi specifications used with your home or business network. But it is focused towards the Internet of Everything especially where the devices are to be operated across a wide radius like a farm or campus.

The network topography for a Wi-Fi HaLow network segment will be very similar to the standard Wi-Fi network. That is where multiple client devices link to an access point, but there should be the ability for a mobile device to roam between access points associated with the same Wi-Fi network.

Compared to the likes of 802.15 Zigbee, Z-Wave, DECT-ULE, Bluetooth LE and similar Internet-of-Things wireless technologies, this is meant to avoid the need for special routers when there is a desire to link them to IP-based networks.

This is because this technology effectively uses the same protocol stack as our Wi-Fi networks save for the layers associated with the radio medium. It also means that the same security, connectivity and quality-of-service protocols that are part of Wi-Fi nowadays like EasyConnect and WPA3 can be implemented in Wi-Fi HaLow devices.

At the moment, you would need to use a Wi-Fi HaLow access point to get any Internet-of-Things devices on to your network and the Internet. It may be a small device that plugs in to your existing home network router or network infrastructure. But a subsequent Wi-Fi access point or router design could have built-in support for this standard thus making it more ubiquitous.

The use cases being positioned for Wi-Fi HaLow technology would encompass the smart home, the smart building and the smart city where all sorts of “Internet-of-Things” devices are acting as controllers or sensors. It is also encompassing vertical use cases like agriculture, industry and medicine where sensors come in to play here.

At the moment, this kind of connectivity will exist as an alternative to Zigbee, Z-Wave and similar technologies especially where IP-level connectivity and functionality is wanted at the device. It may not have ready appeal in use cases where a direct connection to Internet-based technology may not be required.

On the other hand, a use case could allow for a “hub and spoke” approach to the Internet of Things where a device can connect to accessory peripheral devices using Zigbee or Bluetooth but link to the home network and Internet via WI-Fi HaLow. An example of this could be a retrofit-install smart lock which supports the use of accessory input devices like keypads, NFC card/fob readers and contact sensors.

Wi-Fi HaLow could be seen as a direction towards capable low-power long-distance wireless networking for Internet of Things, especially where direct Internet / LAN network connectivity is desired out of the application.

Article

Hi-fi music streaming service Qobuz launches in Australia (themusicnetwork.com)

Qobuz hi-res audio streaming service lands in Australia and New Zealand | TechRadar

From the horse’s mouth

Qobuz

Qobuz launches high-resolution streaming and download platform in Australia, New Zealand, and Northern Europe | Press Room

Home Page

Subscription page

My Comments

Qobuz is a music service that was founded in France in 2007. This service offers sobscription-based music streaming and transactional download-to-own music purchasing but offers these services with Hi-Fi-grade sound. It had existed in Europe for a long time and since 2020, Australians and New Zealanders can use this service to stream or purchase high-quality music.

Here, the music is available using lossless streaming and file formats with CD-quality audio as a baseline and the option for master-grade audio. There is also the ability to download a PDF copy of the album’s liner notes which typically will have lyrics for an album’s songs or a biography and discography in the case of a artist-specific compilation.

The Studio Premium subscription costs AUD$24.99 per month or AUD$229.99 per year which offers up to “master-grade” streaming quality. There is also a more expensive Studio Sublime+ subscription tier costing AUD$299.99 per year which gives you a discounts for “download-to-own” music tracks that you purchase.

There are native clients for Windows, Mac OS, Android and iOS along with the ability to interact with Qobuz through the Web. The Android and iOS apps allow streaming of Qobuz audio through the Apple AirPlay or Google Cast (Chromecast) to endpoint devices compatible with these protocols. Issues that were raised include the desktop apps for Windows and Mac OS regular computers not being available through the operating systems’ native app stores. This may be of issue where the app stores are preferred by some users as a software update path.

Qobuz can work with Naim equipment

As far as other devices are concerned, there is support for Sonos speakers and some network-capable hi-fi equipment, usually some of the premium hi-fi brands like Sony, Yamaha, Linn or Naim. But none of the popular games consoles, smart speakers or smart TVs don’t support Qobuz yet in a native manner.

But the omission of synchronous lyrics or music videos on Qobuz is more about focusing this service to music listening.  This is similar to how most of us would be listening to our music whether on packaged media like vinyl or CD; or as file-based audio and we either want it in the background or to concentrate on the actual music.

There will still be calls for interlinking Qobuz, Deezer and Tidal with music-recognition services or the Shazam or Soundhound kind so people who hear songs on the radio for example can bring them up on these high-quality services. Similarly, there will be the need to make curated playlists available across multiple platforms through the use of a standard datatype and export / import abilities.

At least Qobuz is coming to the fore as a high-quality file-based audio service that offers both a subscription-based streaming approach and a transactional download-to-own approach for your music.

A strong direction for music streaming services is to offer CD-quality sound for all of their library at least

Apple, Amazon and Spotify are lining up or have lined up hi-fi-grade service tiers as part of their audio-streaming services. It is in response to Tidal and Deezer already offering this kind of sound quality for a long time along with the fear of other boutique audio-streaming services setting up shop and focusing on high-quality audio.

Now there is something interesting happening here regarding hi-fi-grade streaming. Here, Apple is having a CD-grade lossless-audio service as part of their standard premium subscription while making sure all music available to their Apple Music streaming service is CD-quality.

So how could these streaming music services compete effectively yet serve those of us who value high quality sound from those online music jukebox services that we use?

What are these hi-fi-grade digital audio services about?

This will be something that is expected of Spotify at least

The hi-fi-grade service tiers typically offer a sound quality similar to that of a standard audio CD that you are playing on your CD player, with the same digital-audio specifications i.e. 44.1 kHz sampling rate and 16-bit samples representing stereo sound. Some of these services may offer some content at 48 kHz sampling rate that was specified for the original DAT audio tapes and may be used as a workflow standard for digital radio and TV.

In the same way that a regular audio CD stores the audio content in the original uncompressed PCM form, these hi-fi-grade streaming services use a lossless data-compression form similar to the FLAC audio filetype to transmit the sound while preserving the sound quality. That is equivalent to how a ZIP “file-of-files” works in compressing and binding together data from multiple files.

CD-grade digital audio was adopted during the late 1980s as the benchmark for high-quality sound reproduction in the consumer space. As well, the DAT tapes that recorded 16-bit PCM audio at 44.1 or 48 kHz sampling rates were considered the two-channel recording standard for project studios and similar professional audio content-creation workflows. It is although MiniDisc which used a lossy audio codec caught on in the UK and Japan for personal audio applications.

Some of these services offer extras like surround-sound or object-based audio soundmixes or supply the audio at “master-grade” specifications like 96 or 192 kHz sampling rates or 24 or more bits per sample. But these are best enjoyed on equipment that would properly reproduce the sound held therein to expectations. This is while most good audio equipment engineered since the 1970s was engineered to work capably with the audio CD as its pinnacle.

The provision of these hi-fi-grade services is having appeal thanks to telcos and ISPs offering increased bandwidth and data allowances for fixed and mobile broadband Internet services. This is more so in markets where there is increased competition for the customer’s fixed or mobile Internet service dollar.

As well, there is a highly-competitive market war going on between Bose, Apple and Sony at least for high-quality active-noise-cancelling Bluetooth headsets with the possibility of other headset manufacturers joining in this market war. This is something very close to the late-1970s Receiver Wars where hi-fi companies were vying with each other for the best hi-fi stereo receivers for one’s hi-fi system and increasing value for money in that product class.

Here, a streaming music service that befits these high-quality in-ear or over-the-head headsets could show what they are capable of when it comes to sound reproduction while on the road.

Let’s not forget that Apple and others are working on power-efficient hi-fi-grade digital-analogue-converter circuitry for laptops, tablets, smartphones and other portable audio endpoint devices. Then hi-fi-grade digital-analogue-conversion circuitry that connects to USB or Apple devices is being offered by nearly every hi-fi name under the sun whether as a separate box or as part of the functionality set that a hi-fi component or stereo system would offer.

Current limitations with enjoying hi-fi-grade audio on the move

There are limitations with this kind of service offering, especially with the use of Bluetooth Classic streaming to headphones or automotive infotainment setups from mobile devices. At the moment, it is being preferred that a wired connection, whether via a traditional analogue headphone cable or via an external digital-analogue converter box, is used to run the sound to a pair of good-quality headphones while “on the road”.

Similarly, Apple’s and Google’s smartphone-automotive-integration platforms need to be able to support use of these hi-fi-grade audio services properly so you can benefit from this class of sound when you are at the wheel of your car.

What could be done?

One step that can be taken by many music-streaming services is to create a service-level distinction between CD-quality stereo lossless audio service and create a higher-grade extra-cost audio services that focus on “master-grade” or multichannel soundmixes.  Here, most of us like our music in stereo sound and see CD quality sound as the pinnacle with equipment engineered to that calibre. This is while the esoteric audiophiles would invest in equipment and services that can handle master-grade audio or multichannel soundmixes.

The music services could them move towards offering the CD-quality stereo lossless sound as the audio quality for the standard paid service subscription. That includes moving the service’s music library towards that kind of quality. The user would need to have the ability to enable and disable the CD-quality lossless stereo sound on a device-by-device basis perhaps to cater for smartphone use or limited bandwidth.

Where a music service offers transactional “download-to-own” music, the recordings could be offered at CD quality stereo as lossless files. There could be the ability to provide a complementary download of previously-purchased material as the CD-quality stereo lossless files.

At the moment, there are a number of open-frame and proprietary paths that are able to use a home network to transmit CD-quality or master-quality lossless digital audio from a computing device or streaming audio service to audio endpoint devices within the home. But there needs to be more done to support mobile and portable setups where one is likely to hear audio files while out and about.

The Bluetooth SIG could investigate how CD-quality lossless audio can be sent wirelessly between devices using the various audio profiles that they oversee. This is more so as Bluetooth is used primarily to send multimedia audio from a smartphone or tablet to speakers, headphones or home and car audio equipment. Here, it could be based on their Bluetooth LE Audio specification which is being used to revise the Bluetooth multimedia audio use case effectively.

Similarly, the use of USB-C as a “digital audio path” from a computing device to an audio-output device needs to be encouraged. This would come in to its own with connecting to audio devices or systems that have highly-strung digital-analogue conversion circuitry which can come in to its own with high-quality audio streaming services.

In the automotive context, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto which are used to provide integrated smartphone-dashboard functionality could be improved to provide lossless audio transfer between the smartphone and the car’s infotainment system. This may be valued as a differentiator that can be applied to premium car-audio setups.

Once there are a list of standard protocols adopted for streaming lossless hi-fi grade stereo sound to headsets and automotive setups and that support wired and wireless connectivity, this could make proper CD-quality stereo sound more relevant on the road.

Articles

Jerusalema – could the South African dance craze be a symbol of hope? | Latest Ghanaian Music News & New Songs – Pulse Ghana

Jerusalema: The South African Song The World Needed (insider54.com)

How South Africa’s ‘Jerusalema’ Became a World Hit Without Translation – Rolling Stone

Where to get this song online

Songwhip link – availability on streaming or download-to-own services (7”single equivalent)

Beatport (download-to-own music service pitched at DJs) – 7” single equivalent

Qobuz Store (hi-fi-grade download-to-own music service – Now in Australia and New Zealand) – 7″ single equivalent

There is an album of the same name and recorded by the same artist featuring this song as an “album-length” track. It is available as an LP record or as a CD. You can get this at Amazon or your favourite record store may have a copy of it on hand or can order it for you if you want it playing on your turntable or CD player.

Jerusalema Dance Challenge video examples

Jerusalema Challenge – Aussies in Iso (Click or tap to play on YouTube)

My Comments

Over this past year, a South-African song with Zulu lyrics ended up becoming a musical symbol of hope through this COVID season.

This song, “Jerusalema”, was recorded in 2019 by Master KG but when it appeared online in 2020 along with a set of associated dance moves, it became very popular. There were a series of dance challenges where individuals or groups of people performed the dance associated with this song and uploaded music videos of their performances.

It was all concurrent at the time when the COVID-19 coronavirus plague was an unknown quantity and governments implemented measures to limit the spread of this virus. Such measures manifested in the form of border and travel restrictions, stay-at-home orders and lockdowns; mask-wearing and social-distancing mandates; amongst other things.

At the same time, there was Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro who were treating this pandemic with contempt and creating disdain against these necessary public health restrictions and the medical-research races for treatments and vaccines. Even the act of honouring one or more of these public-health measures became politically-charged within the USA.

It was also aggravated by the death of George Floyd at the hands of American police offices which brought on the Black Lives Matter protest movement. This movement also highlighted how divisive things were within the USA when it came to civil rights and the treatment of marginalised minorities in that country and was aggravated by Donald Trump’s behaviour during the protests.

The song, its music and the associated dances conveyed a comfortable “feel-good” vibe along with a thread that unites the various communities of people whether “over-the-wire” using the Internet or face-to-face where the various restrictions allowed it. This helped with boosting public moral through this season. There was also a celebration of the survivors and of survival.

Let’s not forget the Zulu-language lyrics and the associated melody were conveying a message of escapism from the continuing barrage of bad news we were facing. This is very much like how other catchy popular music songs played by oneself during hard times can be seen as a form of escapism.

As well, “Jerusalema” has caused us to show interest in Afrobeat and placed Africa on the popular-music map. This follows on from the way African-heritage diasporas have contributed to popular music over the past century and a bit through the form of jazz, funk, soul, disco and similar musical styles along with musical techniques like rapping and breakdancing.

YouTube and similar services are replete with videos of these dance challenges done by various groups of people. There are even some European airlines who have had aircrew groups perform this dance and make a video in the name of the airline as a way of saying that we will be back in the air again. The Irish Gardai national police and the Swiss federal police each had some officer teams within their forces create similar videos as an effort to boost public morale within their nations.

There are also some videos existing on YouTube about how to perform the dance routine associated with this song. These resources can be worth referring to if you want to know how to perform the dance.

“Jerusalema” and its associated dance routine will be seen in the same light as some of those songs which had or acquired their own dance routines that market out particular years or eras. Think of songs like “YMCA” by the Village People; “Forever” by Chris Brown with its wedding-dance video; “Macarena” by Los Del Rio; or “Vogue” by Madonna.

But it will also continue to be seen as a song of hope for the COVID-19 season just like Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” became a song of hope through the 1970s or John Lennon’s “Imagine” being a song of hope through the Vietnam War era.

Update (23 June 2021) – added link to where you can purchase “Jerusalema” from Qobuz

Article

German government to subsidise satellite Internet installations for Starlink and similar setups at the consumer end

Germany to subsidise Starlink subs | (advanced-television.com)

Germany readies subsidies for satellite internet providers such as Starlink | Reuters

My Comments

The rise of low-earth-orbit satellite technology to enable decent Internet service for regional, rural and remote parts of the world has gained a bit more traction.

This time, it is the German Federal Government (Bundesregierung) with its Transport ministry who are subsidising Starlink installations across rural Germany. The US’s FCC has engaged in some form of subsidisation for Starlink but this is at a corporate level as part of their US-government-based program for enabling decent rural Internet service there.

The German approach is to provide EUR€500 towards Starlink hardware purchase for installation in Germany’s rural areas. This doesn’t just apply to Starlink but to any satellite or other radio-link-based Internet service provided on a retail level. It is intended to be consumer-focused and provider-agnostic in the same manner as what is expected for the provision of broadcasting and telecommunications in modern Germany.

It doesn’t apply to ongoing service costs that customers pay to keep the service alive. In the case of Starlink, the monthly service costs are EUR€99 / month at the time of writing.

.. to improve access to real broadband in German rural areas

The question that will come up is  whether public subsidies for satellite or other radio-based Internet service is the way to go to bring decent broadband Internet to rural areas. This is compared to current efforts by local or regional governments in cohort with local chambers of commerce to bring fibre-optic Internet to rural and regional areas.

There will also be the issue of whether to extend this kind of subsidy to people living in boats along Germany’s inland waterways. Think of retirees who have riverboats on the Rhine, Elbe or Wupper rivers or cabin cruisers on the likes of Lake Constance (Bodensee).

Personally, I would see Starlink and similar technology come in to play for sparse rural areas while fibre or similar deployments are considered for more dense settlements. The long fibre-optic trunk link between towns or to serve a remote employment / industry area should never be forgotten as a way to encourage economic growth along its path.

At least Germany is taking another approach to dealing with the rural Internet deficiency issue by subsidising the installation of Starlink and similar technology in its rural households.

Articles

High-performance laptops of the Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming laptop and its ilk will soon benefit from single-cable operation

USB-C power upgrade to 240W could banish some of your proprietary chargers – CNET

USB-C upgrade will more than double its power capacity to 240W | Engadget

Proprietary laptop cables could be a thing of the past, thanks to new USB-C spec | Windows Central

Gaming notebooks should get their own USB-C chargers soon – PC World Australia (idg.com.au)

My Comments

Since I had bought my Dell XPS 13 9300 laptop computer, I had found that the charger that Dell supplied with that laptop was able to charge my Samsung Galaxy S8 Android phone quickly. It is in addition to this charger being an external power supply for use with this laptop when it’s away from my desktop and the Dell WD19TB Thunderbolt dock used as the hub there. This is thanks to both devices implementing the USB-C connection and USB Power Delivery specification.

But if you are using a gaming laptop, you will have found that you have to use a highly-powerful power supply to charge that computer up or run it from the mains. Dell had used some sort of proprietary kludge to allow some of their high-performance business computers to work with their WD-19 series of USB-C and Thunderbolt docks.

and docks similar to this Dell WD19TB Thunderbolt 3 dock will support that class of computer in a “single-cord” manner independent of whoever manufactures the host computer product.

Now the USB Implementers Forum have revised the USB-C Cables and Connectors standard to version 2.1. This creates an “Extended Power Range” class of cables and power supplies which has been scoped in to the USB Power Delivery specification. It allows the delivery of 48 volts at 5 amps but is required to support 50 volts at 5 amps at the most.

Effectively this is to extend the power supply capability for a USB Power Delivery setup to 240 watts and will apply to all USB and Thunderbolt standards that implement the same physical and electrical connection.

What kind of benefit will this achieve? It will be about high-performance computers like gaming laptops benefiting from a “single-pipe” connection that also supplies the power these computers need. It will also open up the market for cheaper higher-powered power supplies that can serve these computers no matter the power-source kind (AC mains power, DC automotive power or battery packs). This will be facilitated more with the use of GaN power electronics in these power supplies which will allow for highly-compact designs.

Some also see the idea of the USB Extended Power Range cables being able to power computing peripherals like 4K monitors or inkjet printers. In the case of 4K monitors, it may be about reducing the number of power outlets needed to power a multi-screen computing setup where some of the screens work at that resolution.

Could this also open up an extra feature for gaming-ready 4K TVs?

But I also see the idea of home-entertainment equipment like 4K gaming-ready TVs or home-theatre receivers being equipped with USB-C sockets that support PD to the Extended Range level along with DisplayPort alt connectivity.

Here, this would come in to its own where one cable powers a gaming laptop while running video and audio from that laptop to the TV’s screen or, in the case of home-theatre equipment, a connected TV or projector. The benefit here would be a “quick-to-connect, quick-to-disconnect” setup when it comes to using that big-screen TV in the main lounge area for playing games.

At least the USB Extended Power Range addition to the USB-C Cable and Connectors specification will underscore the idea of making sure that the USB Type-C is the universal multipurpose connector for today’s tech life.

For that matter, I had bought the Dell XPS 13 9300 laptop and the WD-19TB Thunderbolt dock at a discount from Dell thanks to my reviewing of some of their computer equipment on this site.