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There is no doubt that 2008 was the year of the smartphone.

The last 12 months has seen the launch of iconic devices such as the iPhone 3G, Google G1, Blackberry Storm and Nokia N97.

It also saw the emergence of the electronic ecosystems needed to get the most out of such handsets.

But all is not rosy in the smartphone garden. The popularity of these devices has brought to light several problems that look set to become acute in 2009.

Customer control

“It was a goodish year,” said Andrew Bud, chairman of mobile firm Mblox and director of the Mobile Entertainment Forum.

One of the high spots, he said, was the knock-on effect the launch of innovative smartphones had on the mobile market.

Many were using them to get at popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, said Mr Bud.

“We’ve also seen the emergence of applications as a whole new content category,” he added.

Alongside the launch of the Apple and Google smartphones went shops that gave away and sold applications to run on the high-end handsets.

Apple said more than 100 million applications had been downloaded from its App Store between July and September.

For Steven Hartley, senior analyst at Ovum, the popularity of the smartphone was a signal that older technologies were coming of age.

“3G has really started to deliver on its promise,” he said. “That’s again something that has been talked about for a long time.”

The success of 3G has been attributed to the use of a technology known as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA).

Dan Warren, director of technology at the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) Association, described HSPA as: “the original 3G service on steroids”.

Mr Warren said data rates looked set to get a further boost in 2009 thanks to a follow-up technology known as HSPA+.

He said: “HSPA+ will start to become prevalent in 2009. It takes you up to 42Mbps but the maximum at the moment is 7.2Mbps in the UK.”

Switch off

But despite the good news for the mobile world 2009 is unlikely to see that success continue.

For a start, said mobile analysts CCS Insight, 2009 will see sales of handsets shrink.

“This will be the first time the market has contracted since 2001,” said an end of year report from CCS.

The firm said this slowdown could be blamed on the global economic downturn that will hit every part of the mobile industry.

The only place to buck these trends will be markets in developing nations, said the report. In particular, it said, India, sub-Saharan Africa and China still have low penetration rates by the standards of mature economies such as the UK.

But, said Mr Hartley from Ovum, more customers in some markets will be a mixed blessing.

“As more and more people get a mobile you are going down the value pyramid,” he said. “You get a lot of people but every single one is not going to be generating a lot of revenue.”

The important thing that mobile operators have to get right in 2009 is increasing the numbers of people paying for data traffic, he said.

But, added Mr Hartley, the problem with pushing people towards using more data on the move is the knock-on effect it has on the infrastructure operators need to support those customers.

The global downturn could mean operators will find it hard to raise the capital needed to cope with significant growth, he said.

For Mr Bud from Mblox the growth of mobile broadband highlights another pressing issue for operators - how they price data plans.

Research by Mblox showed a huge discrepancy between the amounts people using different operators in different countries will pay when downloading or browsing the web.

In the UK, it found, some folk will pay about 10 to download a two megabyte music track. By contrast in Germany, on some tariffs, customers will only pay 24 euros (22p) a megabyte.

The confusion that results was holding back the growth of mobile data services, said Mr Bud. Few people were willing to risk downloading as they were worried about racking up huge charges.

In some cases, he said, their fears were being justified. In the summer of 2008 one unlucky Vodafone customer returned home from a holiday in Portugal to a phone bill in excess of 31,000.

He racked up the bill by using his phone to download an episode of Prison Break and several music tracks while on holiday abroad.

“The price consumers see should be the price they pay,” said Mr Bud.

With retail, housing and even hi-tech grinding to a bit of a halt in recent months, most commentators would agree that 2009 is going to be a slow year.

But in the world of broadband things should be speeding up significantly.

Both BT and Virgin Media will kick-start their plans for next generation access in the UK in 2009.

Virgin Media will upgrade its cable network to deliver speeds of up to 50Mbps (megabits per second) during the first six months of 2009. In addition, BT will start its 1.5bn investment in fibre which will eventually see 40% of the country enjoying speeds of up to 60Mbps.

But not all commentators are convinced that the flavour of broadband on offer from BT and Virgin Media will be enough to satisfy the evolving appetites of users.

Uploading speeds

The president of the Fibre to the Home Council of Europe, Joeri Van Bogert, believes only the ultra-fast, two-way speed of fibre to the home can revolutionise the way people use broadband.

“A lot of DSL and cable modem services can be complementary to Fibre To The Home (FTTH) but they are in no way a substitute for it,” he said.

The main reason is that neither can quite compete with FTTH when it comes to speed - which starts at 100Mbps and could go up to 1000Mbps.

And uploading content - which some commentators see as the essential element of future broadband - is much slower for both cable modems and so-called Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC), which relies on copper wires for the connection between the street cabinet and the home.

“Just take something simple, like photos. Increasingly, people want to upload them to share with friends and have them stored somewhere secure,” said Mr Van Bogaert.

“FTTH is much more than a technology, it has the power to change the way we live, work and communicate,” he said.

Using Nielsen’s law - the broadband equivalent of Moore’s Law - the FTTH Council has calculated that by 2013 the average broadband speed in Europe will be 35Mbps.

This is getting dangerously close to the top speeds of current generation cable modem (50Mbps) and even BT is reluctant to promise more than 60Mbps out of FTTC.

The FTTH Council predicts that by 2012 some 15 million homes in Europe will be hooked up to its technology.

Those in Europe who have FTTH connections already use three times more broadband and in France, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, where FTTH networks are well established, there are already some innovative services up and running.

“In the Netherlands people want to have their house connected to fibre because they believe it will connect them to the future. They are already doing things such as having daily conversations with their nurse or doctor,” said Mr Bogeart.

Health and education are just two public services which can be radically improved by super-fast broadband.

Community broadband projects in the UK are being partly funded by the NHS because of the cost savings it can make by having people monitored at home.

Watching and distributing video is becoming the norm for broadband users. The BBC’s iPlayer has seen daily requests to stream or download TV and radio programmes increase from 36,000 in January 2008 to 957,000 in October of the same year.

And recent announcements that other broadcasters may be able to use the platform will see traffic increase even more.

Digital movie cameras are now delivering high-definition video and with devices such as the Flip offering instant upload facilities to users, contributing video to the net will become as popular as watching it.

TV market

But FTTH is almost prohibitively expensive. The Broadband Stakeholder Group has predicted that providing a UK-wide FTTH network in the UK would cost 15bn.

There are currently no plans for any large scale FTTH deployments in the UK and BT has said it will only use the technology on new housing estates.

So far it has installed fibre to the home to a handful of houses on the Ebbsfleet development in Kent, but admits that the credit crunch means no other potential sites have yet been earmarked.

There are two other reasons for the lack of appetite for such networks according to Ian Fogg, an analyst with research firm Forrester.

“The challenge for the UK is the type of housing it has. There is a lot of relatively spread-out suburban housing and it is typically twice the cost to deploy fibre to the home as opposed to fibre to the cabinet.”

The other is about TV.

“In the French market a lot of telcos have aggressively used TV as their business case, but the TV market is already well established in the UK with a strong free-to-air TV service and satellite offering from Sky,” he said.

But there could be rich rewards for anyone prepared to take a gamble.

“Those who hold their nerve and make investments now will do well when we come out of recession,” said Mr Fogg.

From dongles to netbooks and services to applications, the BBC News technology team talk through what they have loved in the world of technology during 2008.

JANE WAKEFIELD

Technology, for me, has to be almost invisible. And very very simple.

And that is why a stripped-bare video camera the size of a mobile phone has become my favourite piece of technology for 2008.

The Flip Mino camcorder only boasts 60 minutes of recording time, an internal memory of 2GB and a resolution of 640 by 480 but the specs are not important to me.

What I love about it is the fact that it allows for the kind of spontaneous recording that a clunky camcorder never did.

This proved very useful when I realised I had forgotten to bring my traditional camera to my son’s first ever Christmas play but did have a Flip lying in the bottom of my bag.

The Mino is very much designed for the YouTube generation, allowing clips to be instantly uploaded to the video site, and as such is part of a new tranche of devices aimed at allowing people to contribute back to the web.

It can be plugged directly into the USB port of a computer and, with all the editing software built in, makes video sharing child’s play.

And there is an awful lot of child’s play on my Mino, a document of their lives that will prove priceless in the years to come. And that for me is what good technology should be all about.

JASON PALMER

The technology that most frequently caught my attention this year is an old dog doing a new trick: mobile phone geolocation services.

The range of applications that is springing up in response to the question “Where am I?” is staggering.

The bottleneck for now is simply that only high-end handsets have GPS chipsets inside but industry insiders see that balance shifting, so that within a couple of years the majority of handsets will have GPS capability. Then it’s down to the ingenuity of programmers and content developers.

And what will that bring? The buzzword is “context”. Leave bulky city guidebooks behind and tap into an online guide such as Pocket Places that knows where you are, providing multimedia content relevant to the monument you’re standing in front of.

Task-specific websites and applications will abound; an early example is Sit or Squat - a mobile application you can use to find out the location of your nearest public toilet.

Social networks such as Brightkite will - if you wish - keep tabs on where you and your friends are and let you know when a friend happens to be nearby. Finding a recommended restaurant in an unfamiliar corner of town? Absurdly easy.

For my money, it’ll be worth it if I never again need to make that “Where are you?” phone call to a friend - services like Navmii will mean that precise map of where we both are will be near to hand.

RORY CELLAN-JONES

For me, this has been the year of the dongle. In other words, 2008 was when the mobile internet really took off - not just on phones, but on laptops with a 3G USB dongle plugged in.

The mobile networks suddenly discovered a whole new market and a way to use all that 3G capacity they had spent billions building.

They started pushing mobile broadband hard - and it showed in their data figures. One operator, Three, has seen the data throughput on its network increase fortyfold in 18 months as all of those mobile surfers started using their laptops on the move - or even at home.

Dongles are now being plugged into routers and used as an easy way for a household to share a broadband connection without using a fixed line.

Coverage can be patchy, pricing plans opaque, and speed claims questionable - but having once got 2Mbps from a moving train, I am now addicted to mobile broadband.

DARREN WATERS

For me, the last 12 months have been about services and less about hardware technology.

I did succumb to the iPhone hysteria and buy one of the 3G phones. All I’ll say is: great iPod and pocket computer, shame about the phone. The battery life is dreadful and the 3G network just isn’t fast enough or widely available enough to make true mobile comms a reality.

It’s also still a passive device. Until it launches live alerts for key services it will remain so. Of course, the introduction of such alerts are liable to drain the battery further.

But back to those services. There’s only one that I’ve used above all others: Twitter. I’ve been a user for sometime but it’s only in the last year, with the launch of web apps like Twhirl, and the mobile client Twitterific that the service has become indispensable.

It’s part communication tool, part messenger service, but for me at least, it’s mainly a tool for filtering content. I use the Twitter feeds of key services and the feeds of key thought leaders to help inform me about the wider world.

The other services I’ve been using are video on demand streaming services, mainly the iPlayer and Hulu.com.

I won’t talk too much about iPlayer - I don’t want to be accused of bias - but I will say it has been impressive to see the speed of rollout of new features, from the mobile versions to the PlayStation 3.

Hulu is similar to iPlayer. It too is a video streaming device but it incorporates videos from a number of different networks.

The quality is high - there’s even some HD content - the service is robust, the choice is wide and the implementation of advertising is done sympathetically.

Together Hulu and iPlayer represent the next shift in TV consumption, and a precursor of how the web and TV are beginning to merge at last.

MARK WARD

My epiphany about the most important technology of 2008 was prompted by one of the better science fiction novels I read this year - Halting State by Charles Stross.

Though set in a fictional future it is, like much SF, more about the problems of today than tomorrow. Net access via mobile is central to the book’s plot and that emphasis struck a chord - particularly when it is matched with some of the other things happening in the mobile world.

This year has seen the rise of the netbook - the cheap, web-connected laptop that folk can tote around and do that web stuff.

At the same time the iPhone 3G has shown now mobile web access blooms when the right interface is presented to owners.

The likely diminishing use of wi-fi and wholesale conversion by laptop owners to 3G and USB dongles feeds my hunch that the web on a mobile has caught on and is here to stay.

Problems remain, of course. The payment model for the mobile web is broken in a much more serious manner than that for fixed net access.

Operators have to repair that given their need to ensure data revenues offset all the money they will lose as the cash they make from voice and text dips. But there are deals in the wings that promise to change things for the better.

This year then we have seen the first murmurs of the movement that looks set to be the standard way we connect to anything and everything online. 2008 was the year that it became impossible to doubt that the future is already in our hands.

MAGGIE SHIELS

To my mind Apple’s App Store has been one of the big technology hits of the year. And the numbers certainly seem to bear that out with more than 300 million downloads since July.

Such staggering figures have been too hard to ignore for the competition.

Apple has made the app store into a real game changer and has broken all the rules for mobile media. Never has being on the go been such fun.

I admit a certain addiction to a couple of favourites namely Tap Tap Revenge which I have written about, and boasts over three million users. Another is my own personal radio station thanks to Pandora and some old fashioned throwbacks such as Pac-Man.

And I should mention the BBC reader to keep up to date with all the marvellous musings and writings of my colleagues around the globe.

While developers might be rushing to get their app on Apple devices, there is a growing amount of frustration with how the company evaluates applications.

It is a secretive process and no one seems to know why their app gets the green light or not. In true fashion, Apple didn’t return any calls about the app store. But some developers have warned that this lack of communication could well stifle innovation.

One might be minded to chide Apple and tell it to buck up its ideas in this department because while it is the dominant player at the moment, that surely won’t always be so.

Technology editor Darren Waters looks back at an eventful year in the world of game consoles.

At the start of 2008 there were three key questions that needed answering about the future of the games industry:

If you are reading this and pushed for time, then the short answers are Yes, No, Not quite.

Early lead

At the start of the year the Wii was way out in front in terms of an installed base with 20 million machines in homes. By comparison the Xbox 360 was in 15.5 million homes and the PS3 nine million.

Analysts Screen Digest predicts that Nintendo will more than double its installed base of the Wii by the end of this year to 42 million, amplifying its lead over Sony and Microsoft.

Piers Harding-Rolls from Screen Digest said Nintendo had enjoyed a “fantastic year”.

“The Wii has maintained its price and they gain a profit from every bit of hardware sold,” he added.

But a significant slowdown in sales in November and December in Japan points to a trickier 2009 for the company in which it may not enjoy the same blockbuster success.

The picture in 2008 was mixed for Sony and Microsoft, he said.

“The 360 and PS3 have performed fairly similarly, with just a few hundred thousand units difference over the year between them.”

Screen Digest predicts that the PS3 will have an installed base of 19 million by the end of 2008, while the 360 will have 24 million.

“When we looked at the 360 at the beginning of the year we didn’t think it was going to do as well as it has done.”

An aggressive price cut and marketing campaign across Europe has seen the 360 do well in traditional PlayStation heartlands around the continent.

By contrast, the lack of a price cut for the PS3 combined with difficult economic circumstances for many consumers has seen the console fail to ignite as some predictions foretold.

“We think there have been corporate pressures to aim towards profitability,” said Mr Harding.

“They are pretty exposed on price. Adoption has slowed and will be delayed.

He added: “We always felt that 2008 was the year that PS3 kicked off - but we think that will now be 2009.”

Playing safe

This year was always going to be one of transition and development, rather than shock and awe. With no new consoles or significant hardware launches, the focus was firmly on hardware sales and software development.

The first big industry event of the year was the publication of the Byron report. In it, Dr Tanya Byron won the praise of many developers and publishers for highlighting the positive impact of gaming on children, but sparked a row which has yet to end over how games should be classified.

Should it be the BBFC’s role as an independent classifier, or self regulation through PEGI? Dr Tanya Byron seemed to be on the fence when she suggested a dual approach.

This infuriated all sides involved in rating games and it is still not clear how games will be classified in the future.

In June, E3 returned to its spiritual home of the Los Angeles Convention Center. But the more sombre and professional approach to a trade show only succeeded in making the event seem cheap and second rate.

There were few highlights from the show. Microsoft showed off its New Xbox Experience, a new front end and UI designed to take the best bits of the existing system and replicate the success of Nintendo’s family-friendly Mii approach.

Sony’s pitch was all about emphasising the long game. “Don’t judge us now; judge us in 10 years,” was the mantra, as Jack Tretton, head of PlayStation’s US business, told the audience: “It took some time for mass market migration from PlayStation to PlayStation 2.”

At least Sony had some decent games to finally talk about, including Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet.

Nintendo’s press conference was the biggest disappointment - Wii Music garnered groans and sales on release have confirmed the limited appeal of the title, there were no updates on a new Zelda or Mario game, and the Japanese giant seemed to be resting on its laurels.

The UK games industry enjoyed mixed success in 2008.

Two of the biggest releases of the year, LittleBigPlanet and Fable II, were home-gown titles, but the financial pressures on developers were reflected in the closures of firms such as Pivotal Games, Sega’s Racing Studios and NCSoft’s European development office in Brighton.

And with the end of the year approaching it seemed that the most high profile closure would be Free Radical, the makers of Haze and TimeSplitters.

On the content side, the big winners of plaudits were Gears of War 2, Fable II, Dead Space and Fallout 3.

Games like LittleBigPlanet and Mirror’s Edge continued to prove the level of vitality and creativity that remains in the industry.

But modest sales for the latter showed that gamers’ tastes may be more narrow and limited than are suggested by opinion polls - which often decry the sequel-heavy nature of gaming.

Looking forward to 2009 I expect a few of the following questions to be answered:

It is unlikely that the global recession has completely dampened people’s enthusiasm for new gadgets this Christmas.

But for cash-strapped consumers with a shiny new mobile in their hands, there is a way of making money from their old, unwanted handsets.

According to mobile phone trade-in website FoneBank, only 20% of UK consumers are recycling their mobiles but those that do can recycle their old mobiles for cash.

A survey it conducted to find out what people did with their mobile found that 28% put them away in a drawer while 23% simply threw them away.

“It’s crazy that a lot of people out there are still just chucking their phones in the bin when they no longer have any use for them,” said Mark Harrison, director of Fonebank.

The need to recycle electronic devices such as phones, PDAs and digital music players is more than just a financial one as many contain materials that can be harmful to the environment.

The main problem lies with the batteries used to power the phones, some of which contain toxic substances such as cadmium, which can contaminate the water table.

Mobile phones now come under the WEEE directive, a piece of European legislation which aims to reduce the amount of electronic waste that ends up in landfill sites.

It requires member nations to collect and recycle the equivalent of 4kg of e-waste for every person living in the country.

Manufacturers, importers and retailers of electronic equipment are obliged to put systems in place that allow customers to recycle their obsolete devices free of charge although households are under no obligation.

Fonebank recycled around 10,000 phones in November, the majority of which are earmarked for Africa, Pakistan, India and South East Asia.

“It is a lot more difficult to buy a brand new phone in Africa and they are prohibitively expensive, so a good, second-hand phone is very attractive,” said Ollie Tagg, director of Fonebank.

Right thing

During November Fonebank sent out 200,000 worth of cheques, with an average per person of 50, although an iPhone can raise much more.

“One of the most popular ones traded in during October was Nokia’s N95 which can raise 102 for the owner,” said Mr Tagg.

“People recycling their phones make a bit of money and feel they are doing the right thing. The whole process takes three minutes online and then they just have to stick their phone in a jiffy bag,” he added.

This year Fonebank has teamed up with Oxfam to donate a minimum of 10% of the value of the phone to aid the charity’s work in the developing world.

Other charities, including Age Concern and the British Red Cross, are also offering people the chance to donate phones.

During December some six million handsets will have been exchanged.

And for those who really can’t be bothered to post off their old handset there are other ways of recycling them.

“I have spent literally hundreds over the years on toys for my kids but the thing they’ve liked the most are old mobiles, particularly ones that flip and flash,” one respondent to the FoneBank survey revealed.

More than five million people are expected to use the internet to carry on shopping on Christmas Day, the online retail group IMRG says.

IMRG estimates more than 100m will be spent online, compared with the 84m spent last year.

The shopping figure compares with the four and a half million people who attend a Christmas church service.

Many High Street stores, including John Lewis and Marks & Spencer, have already begun sales on their web-sites.

Marks & Spencer will launch its online sale on Christmas Day, offering savings of up to 50% across most of its departments.

Research by PricewaterhouseCoopers has suggested that 82% of High Street retailers offered either sales or promotions in the run up to Christmas.

But the Church of England Bishop for Urban Life and Faith, Stephen Lowe, said the increased shopping trend for Christmas Day was “terribly sad” and reflected a society that had its priorities wrong.

Meanwhile, Debenhams has announced it is cutting 70% off its prices across its stores in what it describes as its biggest-ever sale and will launch its online sales from 0700 GMT on Boxing Day.

And Tesco has also announced it is launching its largest sale, which will begin on Boxing Day.

Children wanting to track Santa Claus’s global journey on Christmas Eve have a number of options this year.

As always, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) will be keeping tabs on Santa and children can follow his progress on Google Earth.

In addition, they can send e-mails to the tracking team or even follow Santa on Twitter.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of a tradition that started by accident in Colorado, in the US.

Father Christmas’s journey will start at 1100 GMT and children worldwide can track his progress using Google Maps and Google Earth.

He will pass 24 “Santa cams” around the world, providing live video feeds of his progress, which will in turn be put onto Norad’s YouTube channel as they happen.

For even more up-to-the-minute progress reports, Santa can be followed on the Twitter microblogging service, on which he is known as @noradsanta.

And lastly, Norad volunteers can answer e-mails about Santa’s journey (the address is noradtrackssanta@gmail.com).

Newspaper misprint

Norad’s 50-year tradition of tracking Father Christmas goes back to a misprint in a Colorado newspaper advertisement in 1955.

A local child wanting to know Santa’s whereabouts dialled the phone number printed, which connected to the Continental Air Defense Command (Conad).

As more mistaken calls came in, the commander on the other end of the phone answered the queries and the tradition continued in 1958 when Conad became Norad.

The effort spread to the internet in 1998 and in 2007 Norad’s Santa tracking site saw more than 10m visitors from 212 countries.

Volunteers fielded nearly 95,000 phone calls and 140,000 e-mails.

This year when Santa takes flight from the North Pole, more than 1,000 volunteers will be on hand to help out.

From August next year, the Brazilian government will be equipping every new and imported car with an anti-theft and tracking system.

A car is stolen every 12 minutes in Rio de Janeiro and every three minutes in Sao Paulo.

Digital Planet’s reporter Helen Clegg visited Rio de Janeiro to find out how this tracking device will work in practice.

It is mainly criminals and drugs traffickers who are behind the car thefts in Rio.

They manage to steal around five cars an hour in thefts that are often accompanied by violent assault.

Pablo Schargrotsky had his car stolen from one of the supposedly safest and wealthiest areas of the city.

“It was in Leblon, a very rich place. I was working there and it wasn’t very late, seven PM,” he said.

“They put a gun in my head and they said ‘give me everything’, then they took the car away and I called the police,” he added. “They could never find the car.”

Many of the stolen cars end up in the northern part of the city, an area dominated by the slum housing and industrial estates known as favelas. According to statistics from the federal police, 80% of Rio’s stolen cars end up there.

Community support

The private team that recovers the stolen vehicles is made up of off-duty police officers, who have developed their own methods of retrieving cars from these areas as it is very unsafe for them to enter on their own.

“Nowadays [going there] is prohibited by the state government because of the conflict with criminals and exchange of gunfire that can occur there,” said Officer Carlos Silva.

“So we ask for the support of the police together with our team to carry out the recovery. We also have a contact and we can request that if the car is inside the favela they can bring it outside.

“We work a lot as a team together with the residents in the community,” he added.

“The cars will come already pre-installed with the device, you are able to block your car while it is driving and no-one steals it when it is parked,” said Francisco Maximo, who works for Car System, a company that produces anti-theft systems.

“It begins when your car gets stolen - you just let the thief take your car,” he said.

“Then you go to the next phone, you call the centre and say that your car is stolen,” he added.

Each driver will be issued with a password that they give to the police along with the details of their vehicle.

“They ask you where and they send a signal. Your car receives the signal, blocks the car and our recovery team is on the way with the police,” he said.

The car will then be located by GPS and a signal is sent directly to the vehicle, blocking its electrical system - literally stopping the car in its tracks.

Car Systems engineers busily install up to 60 systems a day. Rosemary, who declined to give her surname is one of their customers. She decided to have an anti-theft blocking system fitted after one of her friends was killed for her car.

“I lost a friend, she was leaving college and her father had given her a new car,” she said.

“She hadn’t put it in the garage, she was 25 years old, she resisted because it was a new car and she was shot in back of the neck, she died on the spot.”

Only time will tell if implementation of this new law will have a significant impact on car crime rates in Brazil.

Digital Planet is broadcast on BBC World Service on Tuesday at 1232 GMT and repeated at 1632 GMT, 2032 GMT and on Wednesday at 0032 GMT.

You can listen or download the .

On Christmas Day, most of us pick up the phone and give our friends and family a seasonal greeting.

But for people in remote locations, sending a festive message is not always an easy thing to do.

Twenty years ago, the only options were a crackly long distance call or a letter sent six weeks early.

Today, advances in technology mean that even if you are in the middle of the ocean, or half way up a glacier, there is always a way to send a message home.

So rather than making a good excuse as to why this year’s Christmas card did not arrive on time, here are some of the technological solutions on offer:

E-MAIL

For many, this is the cheapest and easiest choice. Electronic mail covers the entire spectrum, from basic text message, through to sound and movie files.

As long as you have got an internet connection and a means of getting online, then an electronic season’s greeting can be sent with just a few clicks of a button.

SMS / TEXT MESSAGE

Short Message Service’s - or SMS’s - are almost as versatile as e-mails, enabling users to send photos and short video clips, as well as traditional text messages.

The popularity of the service has skyrocketed in recent years. According to the Mobile Data Association, more than 1.4 billion texts were sent in the UK every week in 2008, which is more than the entire number of texts sent in 1999.

According to data from the Mobile Data Association, from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day last year, 6,466,506 video and picture messages were sent.

SMS is available anywhere there is a regular cellular network, although unlike e-mail, users have to pay for every message sent.

VOIP

Internet telephony aka VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol to give it its full name) is a way of transmitting voice communications over the web.

Although the first communication of someone’s voice over the internet happened in the early 1970s, it wasn’t until the late 1990s - when internet speeds rose from an average of 300 bits per second (bps) to 56 kilobits per second (kbps) - that it became a viable proposition.

Today, with a typical internet connection typically running at 3,000 kbps, you can now not only send speech over the net, you can send video too.

What’s more, you can often use your VOIP package to dial into a public switched telephone network (PSTN), meaning you can make a call anywhere there is an internet connection, with only a minimal charge made by an Internet Telephony Service Provider.

However, unlike PSTN networks, quality can often be hit and miss and due to frequent distortion and delay, using VOIP to send a fax is very difficult.

IM

Instant Messaging is a way of sending text messages (and in some cases, images) in real time across the internet.

Chat - or IMing - allows users to have a conversation between two or more people, or to send pending messages to a user, who will then get the message when they log in. Think of it as hybrid of e-mail and SMS in real time.

BLOGS & SOCIAL NETWORKS

For some, constant or regular access to the internet is impossible. One solution is either writing a blog or sending a electronic greeting through a social network site, such as MySpace or Facebook.

It does mean you can send a global message to everyone you know, although they often lack that personal touch.

SATELLITE PHONE

Similar to a mobile phone, a satellite phone - or satphone - dials in using a satellite connection, rather than a conventional mobile network.

Modern handsets are similar in size to a regular mobile phone, although units installed in ships may have a directional dish that points at the closest satellite.

The only problem is that they need a clear line of sight to the satellite, so they perform poorly inside buildings.

B-GAN

In principle, this works in the same way as a satphone.

But rather than direct voice communication, it taps into the B-Gan (Broadband Global Area Network) at 492kbps.

It is also somewhat larger - about half the size of a conventional laptop. It work on land, sea, and air; BMI is currently trialling a system that would give air passengers with a Blackberry access to the internet.

E-BLUEY

This is a free service operated by the British Forces Post Office and allows servicemen and women to receive typed letters in the field that have been written and sent over the internet.

Once the e-mail has been received, it is printed and put into a self sealing envelope and then sent out to the troops, along with the traditional mail.

On average, 100,000 e-blueys are sent each month, although this figure increases during Christmas and when roulement occurs ie when combat units go on a tour of duty.

Families of servicemen can also embed an image into the message, turning it into the eponymous picture-bluey.

VHF / SSB / HAM RADIO

If an internet connection is impossible, there are no telephone lines, and a post box is just a distant dream, then some people hook themselves up with an amateur radio.

Although operators can communicate across the globe, the range of available frequencies is limited, with the bulk of the radio frequencies occupied by military or commercial use.

At its most basic level, amateur radio operators - hams - use Morse code to communicate.

However, some sets can be used to talk to communication satellites called OSCARs (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio), as well as bouncing signals off the moon or meteor showers.

Two ships have started repairs undersea cables that were cut on 19 December, disrupting telephone and net services to Asia and the Middle East.

The cables were cut about 140km off the coast of Sicily and are thought to have been damaged by a ship.

Egypt says it has been able to restore most of its communications by re-routing services, but other parts of the Middle East remain badly affected.

The same day, a suspected earthquake damaged the main cable to Malta.

On Sunday, the French repair ship Raymond Croze started work on two of the cables (SEA-ME-WE3 and 4) with the Italian vessel Teliri arriving the next day to work on the Flag Asia-Europe cable.

They three cables were cut within 40 minutes of each other, possibly by a trawler net or ship’s anchor.

A ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) will locate the ends of the cables on the sea bed and bring them to the surface to be re-connected.

Flag Europe Asia said it expected to have the FLAG subsea cable repaired by 26 December, although that was dependent on weather and how badly damaged the cable was.

Jonathan Wright - director of wholesale products at Interoute which manages part of the optical fibre network - told the BBC that once one of the cables gets repaired, telecommunication companies will have far more options to get their services back online.

“SEA-ME-WE4 is the newest line. It has the largest capacity and so is probably the most critical line. Once that is repaired it should take some of the pressure off the one remaining cable.”

“As luck would have it, a second submarine line was being installed to Malta earlier this month and that should go on line today, which will help alleviate some of the communication problems Malta is suffering,” he added.

Experts have warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and that the knock-on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.

Lengthy process

Engineers from France Telecom Marine arrived at the site of the damage to the SEA-ME-WE4 and SEA-ME-WE3 lines onboard Raymond Croze at 1330 GMT on 21 December, spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard said.

The engineers then sent a remotely-operated submarine robot called “Hector” to the sea bed to begin the search for the two ends of each line.

It is unclear how long repairs to the two cables will take, as a ship could have dragged the cables several kilometres from their normal positions.

Once located, the cable ends will be brought to the surface by the robot and repairs will be carried out in a special facility on the ship - a process that could take days.

“We have to fix the cable fibre by fibre, and it’s a very huge cable,” Mr Aymard told the Associated Press.

France Telecom said it expected to repair SEA-ME-WE4 by 25 December and SEA-ME-WE3 by the end of the year.

In January the same line was damaged off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, severely disrupting internet and phone communications for many in the Middle East for days, although only two lines were snapped then.

A few hours before the three lines were cut, a suspected sub-sea earthquake damaged a local GO cable to Malta, severely disrupting communications to the island.

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