Andrew Donoghue writes "ZDNet UK is reporting that although WiMax and 3G have been battling it out as rival broadband wireless technologies, WiMax has effectively been folded into 3G's future development, after the International Telecommunication Union decided to include it in the IMT-2000 set of standards. 'An auction is to be held next year in which spectrum around the 2.6GHz band -- which is usable for both 3G and mobile WiMax -- will be sold off on a technology-neutral basis. It remains to be seen what the implications of Friday's announcement are for that auction but, as the investments already made in 3G infrastructure had been a major detrimental factor for WiMax, its inclusion in IMT-2000 has the potential to shake up the entire argument.'"

goombah99 writes "Blackfriars's communications has an interesting discourse on why the practical difference between 3G and EDGE cellphone data networks is less than it appears to be based on a naive bandwidth metric. Their argument is that the user experience of TCP/HTML is much more impacted by latency, error rates, and processor speed than by bandwidth — and Edge had the edge on all three. Additionally, EDGE may consume considerably less power."

Reader geoffrobinson notes an AP story on a new initiative by the police in Beijing to put a visible police presence on the screens of Chinese citizens. Starting Sept. 1, little animated cop figures will wander across the displays of users of a baker's dozen of Chinese Web portals. The program is set to expand by year's end to all sites "registered with Beijing servers," according to the report. The point of the anime-like figures seems to be to remind citizens that their Web usage is being monitored, not to actually implement any further monitoring themselves.