By Julia Ng, Channel NewsAsia http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/98853/1/.html Singapore is already testing the next wave in mobile phone technology. Towards the end of this year, mobile phone operators in the Republic are expected to roll out their 3G services. But the Infocomm Development Authority is already evaluating 4G network and the potential of Ultra Wide Band technology. Imagine walking through a shopping mall and having multi-media advertisements or promotions beamed directly to your mobile phone by the shops around you. This would require blue-tooth wireless technology but with data being transferred at 100 times the current rate. The IDA is already testing such Ultra Wide Band technology and it may be a reality in about two years. Dr Tan Geok Leng, Infocomm Development Authority, said: "Ultra Wide Band can be used by the consumer to download information very fast. You know nowadays you've got cameras, you've got video phones and even recently Creative launched its video player and so on. How do you get information to the video player? So imagine you have a UWB-enabled video player, and this person is walking along the MRT or whatever, he can download streams of video clips, music whatever and then on the bus he can go and listen to it in leisure. The present technology like blue-tooth and all that are too slow. So Ultra Wide Band could be used for that." - CNA |