A staggering 228 mobile phones are reported stolen every hour in the UK, according to the Home Office.  The cost of this crime is more than financial.  People keep a wide range of personal information on their phones, from photographs to text messages, and the mobile is increasingly the primary source of contact numbers for most people.  Mobile phone identity fraud rose by 74% in the first half of 2009, according to the UK fraud prevention service CIFAS.

Designing a simple and elegant way to combat this crime was the inspiration behind i-migo, a device that aims to significantly reduce the number of lost and stolen mobiles.  i-migo uses Bluetooth technology to link a mobile phone with a small device that can be worn on clothing or kept in a pocket.  Once linked to a mobile phone, i-migo will set off an audible alarm when the Bluetooth connection to the phone is lost.  Put simply, any i-migo user that is more than ten metres away from their phone will know about it instantly.

When the Bluetooth connection is broken, the phone is also locked.  This renders the device useless to the thief – it cannot be sold or used.  The phone’s rightful owner also has the reassurance that every number, photograph and text message is securely backed up to the i-migo device, meaning that they may have lost their phone, but not their important data.

i-migo has already won “Best Mobile Phone Security Solution” from the Home Office and the company attended Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February with support from UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) where it was featured on Sky News.

i-migo will be joining the consumer electronics trade delegation to China in July, again with support from UKTI.  Saban Demirbasa, the inventor of i-migo, sees real potential in the Chinese market: “China is the biggest single mobile phone market in the world, as well as the fastest growing,” he says.  “While we do not do business in China currently, the reality is that i-migo will be manufactured in China and will work with mobile phones manufactured in China.  It would be naive not to take account of a market that will have such a significant influence on my business.”

“Whether we look to partner with manufacturing companies in China, talk to companies that can help us sell i-migo to the Chinese market or discuss the potential to do business with mobile network operators in the country, the chance to meet with relevant companies and see for myself the market dynamics is too good an opportunity to miss.”

On Saturday March 20^th residents of Beijing awoke to an alien vista, a sulphurous yellow haze and a carpet of desert sand carried by winds from the Gobi. Caused in part by deforestation and the rapid expansion of urban areas in recent decades, it was a stark and visual reminder of the issues China faces over the quality of its air. Beijing residents regularly adopt face masks during their daily lives, but in this case the situation was extreme.  By the time the winds reached Hong Kong to the south, the concentration of pollutants in the air (API), including sulphur dioxide and lead, was at “record high levels” according to Hong Kong’s environmental agency.

Such occasional and dramatic API levels may well grab the headlines, but what is often not appreciated is that even much lower API levels may still pose a chronic threat to health, especially so for ‘YOPI groups’ (the Young, Old, Pregnant, and Infirm) – whose weaker cardio-respiratory systems render them more susceptible to the toxic effects of pollutants.  YOPI groups are advised to stay indoors at an API reading of more than 100; levels of 200 will have adverse effects on even the healthiest individuals. By the Monday, the API in Hong Kong was 453!

Joining the UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) trade missions to China is Zonegard, a British environmental business specialising in embedding intelligent ambient air quality monitoring functionality within popular digital devices as a way of safeguarding personal and environmental wellbeing. With an initiative that should resonate well with Chinese consumer electronics companies, government planners and the healthcare sector, Zonegard’s drive is to educate that personal wellbeing is intimately connected with the quality of the air we breathe, and that the technology with which we surround our daily lives may already hold the key to safeguarding it for us.

Zonegard, will present two product concepts during the Chinese trade mission which highlight the synergy between environmental monitoring and the latest digital ‘lifestyle’ devices to foster completely new product markets and applications.

Nominated for a Concept and Innovation Award, Zonegard’s ‘Mother and Baby Monitor’ incorporates a low level carbon monoxide sensor to protect both mother and her unborn baby from potentially harmful levels of ambient carbon monoxide which have been estimated to affect as many of 23% of homes.

Zonegard’s satellite navigation device features an embedded sensor array for ambient air quality monitoring, providing warnings to individual users, but more importantly enabling data concerning ambient air quality to be collected, networked, and merged with mapping technology to facilitate healthcare diagnostics and management, and even environmental policy formulation.

Faiz Zishaan, chief executive officer, Zonegard, explains, “The quality of the air that we breathe in our ‘personal environments’ is just as important to our own personal wellbeing as is the issue of air quality to the ‘global environment’. If we put the impact of indoor air pollution in a global context, the World Health Organisation has estimated that more than 1.6 million deaths and over 38.5 million disability-adjusted life years were attributable to indoor air pollution from solid fuels in 2000. That’s about 3% of the global burden of disease!”

www.zonegard.com

With the internet becoming an accepted part of daily life, computer crime has exploded. Much computer crime exploits flaws or “vulnerabilities” in software that allow an attacker or a virus to gain entry to a computer, access confidential information, run malicious programs or crash the system. Beyond stealing identities and defrauding individuals, cyber criminals deliberately attempt to block access to sites, holding organisations to ransom in what are known as denial of service (DoS) attacks. According to cyber security analysts Mi2g, a single global wave of denial of service attacks could cost companies $1 billion.

WiFi networks are particularly prone to malicious DoS attacks and so-called ‘man-in-the-middle’ (MITM) attacks, forcing user communications to go through the attacker. DoS attacks can easily bring down a wireless network in seconds.

Nations which have accelerated uptake of technology, such as China, have embraced wireless networks as they are quick, easy and cost effective to deploy compared to laying ‘hard’ cable links, especially when dealing with the sheer number of people online. However, the tools cyber criminals deploy are freely available from the internet, which makes network security a major concern. But this is also a business opportunity for UK security specialists such as Traffic Observation via Management (TOM), which is joining the UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) mission to China in July.

TOM is a high-tech spin-out company from the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) at Queen’s University Belfast, and Dr. Bosheng Zhou, CTO, explains how the company can make a difference in China. “Our objective is to educate organisations about how to deploy a state-of-art security solution for various wireless networks through a universal platform,” he says. “Through the support of UKTI we will be able to show the SpriteGuard-AP and SpriteGuard-Client products that can protect WiFi devices against malicious hacker attacks.”

As specialists in wireless security, WiFi intrusion detection and prevention, the UKTI trade mission provides TOM with a unique opportunity. “It is exciting to be able to engage with WiFi device manufacturers and wireless network operators in a market that is so important to the future development of our business. So we see this as a real opportunity to meet potential customers and establish new partnerships with large Chinese companies such as Huawei, China Mobile and Datang,” said Dr. Zhou. 

www.tomltd.co.uk

Charley Dai Chang, general manager, Aircom International China

The number of mobile phone subscribers in the world has now topped more than 4 billion – around two-thirds of the world’s population, making mobile the fastest growing technology ever created.

With the growth of mobile internet services, be they mobile applications or websites, users are demanding faster access to more and more complex information regardless of location. Mobile networks are having to change and adapt to meet the demands of increasing numbers of both voice and data customers.

The challenge of running an efficient mobile network, ensuring that both voice and data are delivered efficiently across multiple networks, is serious business for mobile network operators.  By far the biggest investment these companies make is in developing reliable networks.  Planning and optimising networks that deliver high levels of customer satisfaction and drive maximum return for operators is essential to generating return on the huge investment of building a network.

UK-based Aircom International has built a business helping network operators maximise the return on their mobile and IP network.  Using a combination of software tools and consultancy services, Aircom helps network operators plan, build and optimise a network to suit the changing needs and demands of users.  To date the company has worked with around half of the mobile network operators around the world.

Aircom has done business in China for almost a decade.   The company is planning to join the UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) missions to China in July.  Charley Dai Chang, general manager, Aircom International China, believes that the mission focussed on the operator community provides an opportunity for Aircom to consolidate and enhance its business in China.  “Our customers are typically mobile operators, telecommunications design institutes and network equipment vendors.  Whilst we are quite a large company, with more than 700 employees, the support that we receive from UKTI has had a meaningful impact on our business.  China is still building its third generation (3G) network and this represents a significant opportunity for Aircom.  UKTI has introduced us to Chinese mobile network operators and we have tapped into UKTI experience in the region to help develop our business.” 

www.aircominternational.com