Sukawaty envisages a handheld unit with support for internet telephony, known as Voiceover IP (Voip).Inmarsat, though, needs its I-4s to regain lost ground from the low-orbit satellite operators, such as GlobalStar and, at the high end, VSAT systems.”The competition in satellites today is from hand-portable voice, which we don’t have. That has put us under pressure but we hope to claw that back with Voip,” he says.”At the high end, very large users of voice and data have gone to VSAT operators. Cruise ships are a good example of a market that was lost to us eight to 10 years ago.”Sukawaty believes that new maritime and aviation products, based on the BGAN network, will help Inmarsat. They have 200 spot beams, which can be used to bring extra capacity to a particular part of the world, for example during a large sporting event or following a natural disaster. “It is a data-only service, and customers want voice and data. And large groups of our customers are not very regional, so it tended not to get bought by customers with broader coverage requirements.” Low sales volumes also deterred manufacturers from bringing out smaller terminals.The more powerful I-4 satellites have other advantages.

The City regulator interprets this by putting pressure on pension funds to put more of their money in supposedly safe long-term investments.This means the City pension funds are looking desperately for some good long-term bonds. But there’s not much that gives them the maturity structure they would like. Then, as if by magic, the Chancellor comes up with the brilliant idea of 50-year gilts, which will no doubt be snapped up like discount ice- creams on Brighton beach in August. If only I’d thought of it.Silence speaks loudestAnyone who is expecting some dramatic news from Jean-Fran?s Theodore, the boss of Euronext, when he presents his group’s results on Tuesday will be sorely disappointed.After the defenestration of Deutsche B?, Euronext is the only bidder left in the battle for the London Stock Exchange. But it has yet to name a price.And why should it? No bid can go through until the competition authorities give a green light, and that will not happen for some time yet. The speculation is that Euronext will end up paying 550p a share, versus the LSE’s Friday close of 490.5p. But Mr Theodore has done pretty well so far by saying nothing, so it’s no time for him to start shooting his mouth off.j.nisse independent.co.uk.

The fear of losing valuable data from a computer is a completely understandable one. The risk is especially high for mobile workers and laptop users: there is always a chance of either losing a machine or falling victim to a thief. But anyone hand-ling valuable data will want to look at more robust techniques.Keeping data on an external hard disk is a convenient option and a good way to boost storage on a computer, especially for laptops with relatively small internal drives. But these disks do pose a security risk, not least because they can be picked up and plugged straight into another computer.The encryp2disk from Amacom is a small, portable external hard drive that offers a solution.