English Premier League

The Premier League (officially known as the Barclays Premier League for sponsorship reasons,colloquially known as The Premiership), is an English professional league for football clubs. At the top of the English football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. The Premier League is currently contested by 20 clubs, operating a system of promotion and relegation with The Football League, English football's governing body. Seasons run from August to May, with teams playing 38 games each.

The competition formed as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 and the first games were played on 15 August that year, following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from The Football League to take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal; The Football League had served as England and Wales' primary football competition since 1888. Since then, the Premier League has become the world's most watched sporting league and the most lucrative football league, with cumulative club revenues of around £1.4 billion. The league is
a corporation with the 20 clubs acting as shareholders.

A total of 40 clubs have competed in the Premier League, but only four have won the title:Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Arsenal, and Chelsea. The current Premier League champions are Manchester United, who won their ninth title in the 2006–07 season, the most of any Premier League team.


History:

The 1980s had marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were crumbling, supporters endured poor facilities, hooliganism was rife, and English clubs were banned from European competition following the events at Heysel in 1985. The Football League First Division, which had been the top level of English football since 1888, was well behind leagues such as Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga in attendances and revenues, and several top English players had moved abroad. However, by the turn of the 1990s the downward trend was starting to reverse; England had been successful in the 1990 FIFA World Cup, reaching the semi-finals. UEFA, European football's governing body, lifted the five-year ban on English clubs playing in European competitions in 1990 and the Taylor Report on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to create all-seater stadiums, was published in January of that year.

Television money had also become much more important; the Football League received
£6.3million for a two-year agreement in 1986, but when that deal was renewed in 1988, the price rose to £44m over four years. The 1988 negotiations were the first signs of a breakaway league; ten clubs threatened to leave and form a "super league", but were eventually persuaded to stay. As stadiums improved and match attendance and revenues rose, the country's top teams again considered leaving the Football League in order to capitalise on the growing influx of money being pumped into the sport.

Formula One

    Formula One, abbreviated to F1, is the highest class of auto racing defined by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), motor sport's world governing body. The "formula" in the name is a set of rules which all participants and cars must meet. The F1 world championship season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix, held usually on purpose-built circuits, and in a few cases on closed city streets. The results of each race are combined to determine two annual World Championships, one for drivers and one for constructors.

It is a massive television event, with millions of people watching each race in two hundred countries. The cars race at high speeds, often greater than 320 km/h (200 mph) and are capable of pulling up to 4 g in some corners. The performance of the cars is highly dependent on electronics, aerodynamics, suspension and tyres. The formula has seen many evolutions and changes through the history of the sport.

Europe is Formula One's traditional centre and remains its leading market. However, Grands Prix are held all over the world and, with new races in Bahrain, China, Malaysia, Turkey and the United States since 1999, its scope continues to expand with Singapore scheduled to hold the first night race in 2008 and India being added to the schedule starting in 2010. Of the seventeen races in 2007, nine are outside Europe. As the world's most expensive sport, its economic effect is significant, and its financial and political battles are widely observed. Its high profile and popularity makes it an obvious merchandising environment, which leads to very high investments from sponsors, translating into extremely high budgets for the constructor teams. In recent years several teams have gone bankrupt or been bought out by other companies. The current F1 champion was Kimi Raikkonen of Finnland who had drive the car of Ferrari.

The sport is regulated by the FIA. Formula One's commercial rights are vested in the Formula One Group.


History:

    The Formula One series has its roots in the European Grand Prix Motor Racing (q.v. for pre-1947 history) of the 1920s and 1930s. The "formula" is a set of rules which all participants and cars must meet. Formula One was a new formula agreed after World War II in 1946, with the first non-championship races being held that year. A number of Grand Prix racing organisations had laid out rules for a World Championship before the war, but due to the suspension of racing during the conflict, the World Drivers' Championship was not formalised until 1947. The first world championship race was held at Silverstone, United Kingdom in 1950. A championship for constructors followed in 1958. National championships existed in South Africa and the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. Non-championship Formula One races were held for many years but due to the rising cost of competition, the last of these occurred in 1983.

The sport's title, Formula One, indicates that it is intended to be the most advanced and most competitive of the many racing formulae.

Mobile Phone

    The mobile phone, cellular phone, or simply cell phone is a long-range, portable electronic device used for mobile communication that uses a network of specialized base stations known as cell sites. In addition to the standard voice function of a telephone, current mobile phones can support many additional services such as SMS for text messaging, email, packet switching for access to the Internet, and MMS for sending and receiving photos and video. Most current mobile phones connect to a cellular network of base stations (cell sites), which is in turn interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) (the exception is satellite phones).


History:

    There is one U.S. patent, Patent Number 887357 for a wireless telephone, issued 1908 to Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky. He applied this to "cave radio" telephones and not directly to cellular telephony as we know it today. However, the introduction of cells for mobile phone base stations, invented in 1947 by Bell Labs engineers at AT&T, was further developed by Bell Labs during the 1960s. Radiophones have a long and varied history going back to Reginald Fessenden's invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio telephony links and civil services in the 1950s, while hand-held cellular radio devices have been available since 1973. Due to their low establishment costs and rapid deployment, mobile phone networks have since spread rapidly throughout the world, outstripping the growth of fixed telephony.[citation needed]

In 1945, the zero generation (0G) of mobile telephones was introduced. 0G mobile telephones, such as Mobile Telephone Service, were not officially categorized as mobile phones, since they did not support the automatic change of channel frequency during calls, which allows the user to move from one cell (the base station coverage area) to another cell, a feature called "handover".[citation needed]

In 1984, Bell Labs invented such a "call handoff" feature, which allowed mobile-phone users to travel through several cells during the same conversation. Motorola is widely considered to be the inventor of the first practical mobile phone for handheld use in a non-vehicle setting. Using a modern, if somewhat heavy portable handset, Motorola manager Martin Cooper made the first call on a handheld mobile phone on April 3, 1973.

The first commercial cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979. Fully automatic cellular networks were first introduced in the early to mid 1980s (the 1G generation) with the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in 1981. This was followed by a boom in mobile telephone usage, particularly in Northern Europe.[citation needed]

The first "modern" network technology on digital 2G (second generation) cellular technology was launched by Radiolinja (now part of Elisa Group) in 1991 in Finland on the GSM standard which also marked the introduction of competition in mobile telecoms when Radiolinja challenged incumbent Telecom Finland (now part of TeliaSonera) who ran a 1G NMT network. A decade later, the first commercial launch of 3G (Third Generation) was again in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on the WCDMA standard. Until the early 1990s, most mobile phones were too large to be carried in a jacket pocket, so they were typically installed in vehicles as car phones. With the miniaturization of digital components, mobile phones have become increasingly handy over the years.

Today, video and TV services are driving forward third generation (3G) deployment. And in the future, low cost, high speed data will driveforward the fourth generation (4G) as short-range communication emerges.Service and application ubiquity, with a high degree of personalization and synchronization between various user appliances,will be another driver. At the same time, it is probable that the radio access network will evolve from a centralized architecture to a distributed one.

SIM

    A Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) is part of a removable smart card ICC (Integrated Circuit Card), also known as SIM Cards, for mobile cellular telephony devices such as mobile computers and mobile phones. SIM cards securely store the service-subscriber key (IMSI) used to identify a subscriber. The SIM card allows users to change phones by simply removing the SIM card from one mobile phone and inserting it into another mobile phone or broadband telephony device.

SIM cards are available in two standard sizes. The first is the size of a credit card (85.60 mm × 53.98 mm x 0.76 mm). The newer, more popular miniature-version has a width of 25 mm, a height of 15 mm, and a thickness of 0.76 mm. However most SIM cards are supplied as a full-sized card with the smaller card held in place by a few plastic links and can be easily broken off to be used in a phone that uses the smaller SIM.

The first SIM Card was made in 1991, with Munich smart card maker Giesecke & Devrient selling the first 300 SIM cards to Finnish wireless network operator Elisa Oyj (formerly Radiolinja). W-SIM is a SIM card which also integrates core cellular technology into the card itself.


Uses:

    The use of SIM cards is mandatory in GSM devices. The equivalent of a SIM in UMTS is called the Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM), whereas the Removable User Identity Module (RUIM) is more popular in CDMA-based devices. Many CDMA-based standards do not include any such card, and the service is bound to a unique identifier contained in the handset itself.

The Satellite phone networks Iridium (satellite), Thuraya and Inmarsat's BGAN also use SIM cards. Sometimes these SIM cards work in regular GSM phones and also allows GSM customers to roam in satellite networks by using their own SIM card in a satellite phone.

EDGE Technology

    Enhanced Data rates for GSM Environment (EDGE) or Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), is a digital mobile phone technology that allows increased data transmission rates and improved data transmission reliability. Although technically a 3G network technology, it is generally classified as the unofficial standard 2.75G, due to its slower network speed. EDGE has been introduced into GSM networks around the world since 2003, initially in North America.

EDGE can be used for any packet switched application, such as an Internet connection. High-speed data applications such as video services and other multimedia benefit from EGPRS' increased data capacity. EDGE Circuit Switched is a possible future development.

EDGE Evolution continues in Release 7 of the 3GPP standard providing doubled performance e.g. to complement High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA).


Technology:

    EDGE/EGPRS is implemented as a bolt-on enhancement 2G and 2.5G GSM and GPRS networks, making it easier for existing GSM carriers to upgrade to it. EDGE/EGPRS is a superset to GPRS and can function on any network with GPRS deployed on it, provided the carrier implements the necessary upgrade.

Although EDGE requires no hardware or software changes to be made in GSM core networks, base stations must be modified. EDGE compatible transceiver units must be installed and the base station subsystem (BSS) needs to be upgraded to support EDGE. New mobile terminal hardware and software is also required to decode/encode the new modulation and coding schemes and carry the higher user data rates to implement new services.

In addition to Gaussian minimum-shift keying (GMSK), EDGE uses higher-order PSK/8 phase shift keying (8PSK) for the upper five of its nine modulation and coding schemes. EDGE produces a 3-bit word for every change in carrier phase. This effectively triples the gross data rate offered by GSM. EDGE, like GPRS, uses a rate adaptation algorithm that adapts the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) according to the quality of the radio channel, and thus the bit rate and robustness of data transmission. It introduces a new technology not found in GPRS, Incremental Redundancy, which, instead of retransmitting disturbed packets, sends more redundancy information to be combined in the receiver. This increases the probability of correct decoding.

EDGE can carry data speeds up to 236.8 kbit/s for 4 timeslots (theoretical maximum is 473.6 kbit/s for 8 timeslots) in packet mode and will therefore meet the International Telecommunications Union's requirement for a 3G network, and has been accepted by the ITU as part of the IMT-2000 family of 3G standards. It also enhances the circuit data mode called HSCSD, increasing the data rate of this service.

GSM Technology

    Global System for Mobile communications (GSM: originally from Groupe Spécial Mobile) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. Its promoter, the GSM Association, estimates that 82% of the global mobile market uses the standard . GSM is used by over 2 billion people across more than 212 countries and territories. Its ubiquity makes international roaming very common between mobile phone operators, enabling subscribers to use their phones in many parts of the world. GSM differs from its predecessors in that both signaling and speech channels are digital call quality, and so is considered a second generation (2G) mobile phone system. This has also meant that data communication were built into the system using the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

The key advantage of GSM systems to consumers has been better voice quality and low-cost alternatives to making calls, such as the Short message service (SMS, also called "text messaging"). The advantage for network operators has been the ease of deploying equipment from any vendors that implement the standard. Like other cellular standards, GSM allows network operators to offer roaming services so that subscribers can use their phones on GSM networks all over the world.

Newer versions of the standard were backward-compatible with the original GSM phones. For example, Release '97 of the standard added packet data capabilities, by means of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). Release '99 introduced higher speed data transmission using Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE).


History:

    In 1982, the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) created the Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM) to develop a standard for a mobile telephone system that could be used across Europe. In 1987, a memorandum of understanding was signed by 13 countries to develop a common cellular telephone system across Europe.

In 1989, GSM responsibility was transferred to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and phase I of the GSM specifications were published in 1990. The first GSM network was launched in 1991 by Radiolinja in Finland with joint technical infrastructure maintenance from Ericsson. By the end of 1993, over a million subscribers were using GSM phone networks being operated by 70 carriers across 48 countries.

GPRS Technology

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a Mobile Data Service available to users of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and IS-136 mobile phones. GPRS data transfer is typically charged per kilobyte of transferred data, while data communication via traditional circuit switching is billed per minute of connection time, independent of whether the user has actually transferred data or has been in an idle state. GPRS can be used for services such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) access, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and for Internet communication services such as email and World Wide Web access.

2G cellular systems combined with GPRS is often described as "2.5G", that is, a technology between the second (2G) and third (3G) generations of mobile telephony. It provides moderate speed data transfer, by using unused Time division multiple access (TDMA) channels in, for example, the GSM system. Originally there was some thought to extend GPRS to cover other standards, but instead those networks are being converted to use the GSM standard, so that GSM is the only kind of network where GPRS is in use. GPRS is integrated into GSM Release 97 and newer releases. It was originally standardized by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), but now by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).


Basics:

WAP is just a gateway which is used to access Internet via mobilephone and vice-versa. Usually, GPRS data are billed per kilobyte of information transceived, while circuit-switched data connections are billed per second. The latter is inefficient because even when no data are being transferred, the bandwidth is unavailable to other potential users.

The multiple access methods used in GSM with GPRS are based on frequency division duplex (FDD) and FDMA. During a session, a user is assigned to one pair of up-link and down-link frequency channels. This is combined with time domain statistical multiplexing, i.e. packet mode communication, which makes it possible for several users to share the same frequency channel. The packets have constant length, corresponding to a GSM time slot. The down-link uses first-come first-served packet scheduling, while the up-link uses a scheme very similar to reservation ALOHA. This means that slotted Aloha (S-ALOHA) is used for reservation inquiries during a contention phase, and then the actual data is transferred using dynamic TDMA with first-come first-served scheduling.

GPRS originally supported (in theory) Internet Protocol (IP), Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) and X.25 connections. The last has been typically used for applications like wireless payment terminals, although it has been removed from the standard. X.25 can still be supported over PPP, or even over IP, but doing this requires either a router to perform encapsulation or intelligence built in to the end-device/terminal e.g. UE(User Equipment). In practice, when the mobile built-in browser is used, IPv4 is being utilized. In this mode PPP is often not supported by the mobile phone operator, while IPv6 is not yet popular. But if the mobile is used as a modem to the connected computer, PPP is used to tunnel IP to the phone. This allows DHCP to assign an IP Address and then the use of IPv4 since IP addresses used by mobile equipment tend to be dynamic.