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Verizon Wireless' open network earns praise	28 November 2007
Verizon Wireless' decision to open its network to outside mobile devices and applications has won praise from several groups, including past critics.Verizon Wireless officials announced Tuesday they would open up their network to any devices and software customers want to use by the second half of 2008. Any device that passes a minimal connectivity test will be allowed on the Verizon Wireless network, officials said.That announcement drew applause from a wide variety of groups. Public Knowledge, a consumer rights group that has pushed for open network regulations from the U.S. Congress or the Federal Communications Commission, said it was "cautiously optimistic" about Verizon's decision.Verizon's decision could lead to "a more open network in the wireless industry at large," said Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge's president. Wireless carriers have fought an FCC decision to require open access on a portion of spectrum in the 700MHz band to be auctioned starting in January, she noted."The Verizon announcement, however, is very limited," Sohn added. "If other carriers don't follow the same model, then consumers will still find their phones tied to a specific technology or wireless company. In order for an open network to become a reality, all carriers will have to participate."Verizon will still decide what phones can operate on its network, she said. Public Knowledge would prefer to have a third party decide what phones can operate on the Verizon network, she said.She also has continuing questions about prices. If Verizon continues to offer its preferred mobile phones at a discount, "then the adoption of the open model will be minimal, absent a rapid decline in cell phone prices," Sohn said. "We need to know whether the rates for Verizon service plans will vary for those with subsidized phones and for those customers with a phone bought elsewhere."Others were less guarded with their praise.Verizon's announcement, combined with the Google-led Open Handset Alliance, is a "significant" step toward the goal of more open wireless networks, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, said in a statement."As I noted when we adopted open network rules for our upcoming spectrum auction, wireless customers should be able to use the wireless device of their choice and download whatever software they want onto it," Martin added. "I continue to believe that more openness -- at the network, device, and application level -- helps foster innovation and enhances consumers' freedom and choice in purchasing wireless service. I am optimistic that Verizon Wireless's commitment along with the upcoming spectrum auction will ensure an exciting new era in wireless technology for the benefit of all consumers."Solveig Singleton, an adjunct senior fellow with Maryland think tank the Free State Foundation, said Verizon's voluntary decision makes more sense than open network regulations, such as net-neutrality rules pushed by Public Knowledge and other groups."Requiring openness or neutrality beyond the basics now supported by demand would needlessly make development far more costly and slow," she said. "A company that wants to invent a new type of phone with cutting-edge features already has a good bit to think about without having to worry about new phones and networks being simultaneously built by everyone else."Many proposed net-neutrality rules would require wireless and broadband providers to treat all network traffic equally, she said."Mandate 'open' and 'neutral' everywhere all the time for everything, and innovation will slow to a snail's pace and network traffic will jam," she added. "Competition between operators to offer innovative combinations of services at special prices would become almost impossible. In this fast-changing context, a regulatory command to treat all traffic all the same is just a bad idea."Also praising Verizon's decision were Funambol, a developer of open-source calendar and messaging tools for mobile phones, and the New America Foundation, a think tank that has pushed for open access rules on the 700MHz spectrumThe FCC and Google deserve credit for pushing the issue forward, said Michael Calabrese, director of New America's Wireless Future Program."This appears to be a move to head off market entry and new wireless competition from Google and other Internet companies that would result if the incumbent carriers were unwilling to meet minimal FCC consumer choice requirements," he said in an e-mail.
2nd/3rd Line Support Consultant	28 November 2007
My client in the Internet/ISP sector is looking to recruit a [2nd/3rd Line Support Consultant for their site located north of Manchester. You will be working in a new division providing dedicated support to Business Customers of the company, of the managed hardware [inc. high end business grade routers & firewalls]. The role will also expand into other hardware categories inc. VoIP PBX & managed switches. You will also be required to: Process the queue of managed support tasks. Diagnose circuit/hardware faults. Assist with the diagnosis of circuit faults and technical consultancy regarding changes to existing products. You will also be responsible for assisting customers to accurately complete configuration forms, build & test new managed hardware devices & assist with installation of hardware devices. It is ideal that you have a high level qualification in Computing [NVQ Level 4 or higher] or that you are degree educated in an IT related subject. You will be willing to achieve CCNA within the 1st 6 months & it is necessary that you have good experience within a technical role as well as excellent customer service skills. You will need to be able to produce work to high standards and be able to work to tight deadlines. My clients offers an excellent basic salary along with a fantastic benefits package including 6 monthly salary reviews, free home broadband and discounted products/services, annual bonus [dependant on personal/company performance], pension & paid holidays.
EU approves SAP, Vodafone acquisitions	27 November 2007
The European Commission has signed off on two big technology mergers, approving SAP's acquisition of Business Objects and Vodafone's purchase of the Spanish and Italian subsidiaries of the Swedish telecom group Tele2.The Commission said it approved SAP's takeover of the BI software vendor Business Objects after concluding that the combined entity would not unfairly dominate the market."The combined SAP/Business Object entity would continue to face several strong competitors, and customers would find sufficient alternative suppliers of such software products," the Commission said.SAP sells primarily middleware and ERP applications and has just started getting into the BI market, while Business Objects is known for its business analytics software.The Commission said its investigation found no significant risk that the merged entity would be able to close off competitors from the market because SAP's middleware product, Netweaver, is an "open" platform that can work with BI products from multiple vendors.The Commission also gave the green light to Vodafone's expansion plans for the Spanish and Italian broadband Internet access markets, by approving its planned €775 million ($1.1 billion) acquisition of the Spanish and Italian subsidiaries of Tele2."The combined entity's share would be below 10 percent in those markets, and the incremental increase in the share of Vodafone would be small," the Commission said.In Italy and Spain, Vodafone is mainly active as a provider of mobile communications services and is the second largest mobile operator in both countries. Tele2 Italy and Tele2 Spain offer fixed-line telephony services and Internet access, including broadband."The parties' activities only overlap in the retail market for fixed broadband internet access and in the retail market for telephony services at a fixed location, both in Italy and in Spain," the Commission concluded.
AT&T to hike prices on dial-up	26 November 2007
AT&T will jack up its rates for dial-up Internet access by as much as 60 percent on Dec. 1, going well above the price of faster DSL in many cases.Customers who are now charged $9.99 per month will start paying $15.95, and the $15.95 customers will see their bills go up to $22.95, said company representative Dan Callahan; $22.95 is the flat rate for all new customers, up from $21.95. AT&T made the change to be competitive with other dial-up providers, Callahan said. The lower rates are left over from previous carriers that have been absorbed into AT&T, namely BellSouth, he said.AT&T offers basic DSL for as little as $10 per month for new customers, with some conditions. But the dial-up price hike is bad news for some AT&T customers in areas where DSL isn't available. One user complained about it on the forum BroadbandReports, saying he would have already signed up for DSL if he could have. "For a buck less, I could have service that is 15 times faster," wrote the customer, who used the screen name "GorbGuy."Traditional carriers and other service providers have been backing away from their dial-up offerings as more Internet users adopt broadband. With the market penetration of DSL and cable Internet service in the United States at 50 to 60 percent, nearing the percentage of people who have PCs, dial-up is becoming a niche market, said Ovum analyst Mark Seery. Carriers don't like serving that market because, like any large corporation, they're interested in doing one thing, he said."Any time something becomes not the biggest part of what you're doing, it becomes potentially subscale and inefficient," Seery said.In addition, they can't upsell customers to additional services such as video on demand until they're on broadband, he said. And their dial-up customers aren't a captive audience, because there are many competitive providers of the service, due to technical and legal factors, he added.DSL providers have already tried low introductory prices on DSL, such as AT&T's $10 offer, to entice their dial-up customers to switch."I think they think the people who remain on dial-up are not looking to move to broadband," Seery said. "Perhaps the only way to get them to move to broadband is to raise the prices."Competition is the good news for those who want to remain on dial-up. Juno, for example, offers a service for $9.95 per month for the first 12 months and $14.95 per month thereafter. Most dial-up providers include a variety of e-mail, storage, and security features. But even the major competitive ISPs are steering customers toward broadband. EarthLink, for example, offers dial-up at a $9.95 introductory rate and then $21.95 per month. Its broadband plans start as low as $12.95 per month.
Study: Internet could run out of capacity in two years	19 November 2007
Consumer and corporate use of the Internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, according to a study released Monday.A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Internet by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to $137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study , by Nemertes Research Group, an independent analysis firm. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said.The study is the first to "apply Moore's Law (or something very like it) to the pace of application innovation on the 'Net," the study says. "Our findings indicate that although core fiber and switching/routing resources will scale nicely to support virtually any conceivable user demand, Internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will likely cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years."The study confirms long-time concerns of the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA), an advocacy group focused on upgrading U.S. broadband networks, said Bruce Mehlman, co-chairman of the group. The group, with members including AT&T, Level 3 Communications, Corning, Americans for Tax Reform, and the American Council of the Blind, has been warning people of the coming "exaflood" of video and other Web content that could clog its pipes.The study gives "good, hard, unique data" on the IIA concerns about network capacity, Mehlman said. The Nemertes study suggests demand for Web applications like streaming and interactive video, peer-to-peer file transfers, and music downloads will accelerate, creating a demand for more capacity. Close to three quarters of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of video in May and viewed more than 8.3 billion video streams, according to research from comScore, an analysis group.Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year, and this exaflood is a positive development for Internet users and businesses, IIA says. An exabyte is 1 quintillion bytes or about 1.1 billion gigabytes. One exabyte is the equivalent of about 50,000 years of DVD-quality video.Carriers and policy makers need to be aware of this demand, Mehlman added."Video has unleased an explosion of Internet content," Mehlman said. "We think the exaflood is generally not well understood and its investment implications not well defined."The responsibility for keeping up with this growing demand lies with backbone providers and national policy makers, added Mehlman, also executive director of the Technology CEO Council, a trade group, and a former assistant secretary of technology policy in the U.S. Department of Commerce."It takes a digital village," he said. "Certainly, infrastructure providers have plenty to do. You've seen billions in investment, and you're seeing ongoing billions more."U.S. lawmakers can also help in several ways, he said. For example, the U.S. Congress could require that home contractors who receive government assistance for building affordable housing include broadband connections in their houses, he said. Congress could also provide tax credits to help broadband providers add more capacity, he said.Consumers also pay high taxes for telecommunication services, averaging about 13 percent on some telecom services, similar to the tax rate on tobacco and alcohol, Mehlman said. One tax on telecom service has remained in place since the 1898 Spanish-American War, when few U.S. residents had telephones, he noted."We think it's a mistake to treat telecom like a luxury and tax it like a sin," he said.
Video distributor to FCC: Stop ISP traffic 'throttling'	15 November 2007
A distributor of online video content has filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, asking the agency to stop broadband providers from blocking or slowing p-to-p (peer-to-peer) traffic.The petition filed by Vuze, which uses the BitTorrent p-to-p protocol to distribute Web content, asks the FCC to set rules for network management by ISPs. Vuze's filing late Wednesday follows reports last month that cable broadband provider Comcast slows some p-to-p traffic, including BitTorrent.Broadband providers often promote their services as being necessary for watching video online, but then they slow access to a service such as Vuze's, said John Fernandes, Vuze's vice president of marketing. "They say that they're engaging in reasonable network management, but what they're doing is slowing down some traffic," he said.Vuze, which has partnerships with several movie studios, television networks, and PC game makers, wants to start a dialog with ISPs about what kind of network management is allowed, added Gilles BianRosa, the company's CEO. But the FCC needs to prohibit large-scale content blocking, what he called traffic "throttling," he said."The ISPs cannot decide unilaterally what to do with third-party Internet services such as us," BianRosa said. "We need to work with them to design a solution that works and is fair."By blocking or slowing video and other Web content, ISPs are fighting against customer demand for more multimedia services, BianRosa added. "We think that ISPs are spitting into the wind with that kind of approach," he said. "This kind of blocking has to stop."Representatives of two large broadband providers, Comcast and Verizon, didn't immediately respond to a request for comments on Vuze's FCC filing. Comcast has denied blocking Web content, but some broadband providers have opposed other attempts to create rules against blocking some types of traffic, saying they need to be able to ensure quality of service by managing their networks.The FCC has all the authority it needs to "address claims of unreasonable conduct," an AT&T spokesman said. "Broadband providers must have the ability to manage traffic to provide all consumers with high-quality service," he added. "Additional rules or legislation are totally unnecessary."Vuze's FCC petition is similar in some ways to calls by consumer groups and Internet-based firms for the FCC or the U.S. Congress to pass network neutrality rules, which would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors. The FCC has had an open inquiry into net neutrality rules since April, and a push to pass rules in Congress has stalled.But the Vuze proposal is more focused than net neutrality, BianRosa said. Net neutrality often includes other issues in addition to content blocking, including requirements for broadband and wireless providers to allow all legal devices to connect to their networks. Vuze is asking the FCC to "dig deeper" than the net neutrality debate, he said.Public Knowledge, a group promoting consumer rights on the Internet, praised the Vuze filing. Vuze is a good example of the harm caused by content blocking, said Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge's president."Comcast's actions frustrate Vuze's business and force the company to devote resources to play a 'cat and mouse' game with Comcast in order to maintain superior service for its customers," Sohn said in an e-mail. "We hope the FCC acts promptly before even more harm is done to more consumers and to more companies."Earlier this week, a Comcast customer in California filed a lawsuit against the company, saying the provider has caused several Web-based programs to suffer performance problems. In late October, Public Knowledge and other members of the Open Internet Coalition filed a complaint about the alleged Comcast blocking with the FCC.Vuze, based in Palo Alto, Calif., distributes video in partnership with movie studios and television networks including the BBC, Showtime, and PBS. It also distributes PC games, music videos, and audio files. Company officials say the Vuze client has been installed by customers more than 12 million times since the company, formerly called Azureus, rebranded itself in January.
GSM group backs LTE for mobile broadband	15 November 2007
The board of the GSM Association voted to back LTE (Long-Term Evolution) as the mobile broadband standard to succeed HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access), the CEO of the group said Tuesday.The vote is an indication that GSM operators are unified in their support for LTE, and gives them a united front as LTE competes with Qualcomm's UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband) and with WiMax, backed by the computer industry, to become the next mobile broadband technology.LTE is several times faster than HSPA and could help spur demand for more downloading over cellular networks. Japan's NTT DoCoMo may become the first operator to widely deploy the new technology, which is expected to be ready by the end of this decade.LTE is now part of the GSMA push to promote the use of mobile broadband on cellular networks.Rob Conway, CEO of GSMA, announced the association's backing of LTE during a speech at the GSM Association's Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, China, and called on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the leading United Nations agency for communication technologies, to ensure the industry wins the spectrum needed to offer mobile broadband.GSMA said it will work with other companies and organizations developing LTE technology, and start working with the NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) initiative.NTT DoCoMo is pushing aggressively ahead with plans to speed up its mobile broadband services in Japan, and is looking to LTE to take care of the job. The company counts over half of Japan's mobile subscribers as its customers and has already started running tests on LTE technology to become its "Super 3G" offering. One advantage to LTE is that it can be used on existing 3G networks.Download speeds on Super 3G could reach up to 300Mbps (megabits per second), Masao Nakamura, the CEO of NTT DoCoMo, said in a speech, a huge improvement over HSDPA. A 500-page magazine, for example, takes 3 minutes to download on HSDPA. On Super 3G it takes only three seconds, he said.That means people will be able to download larger file sizes, including videos, music, and more over their mobile phones.A problem for NTT could ultimately be government allocation of the radio spectrum that operators need to deliver wireless broadband. There may not be enough bandwidth available on some of the spectrum the Japanese government is considering for mobile network operators, said K. Jay Miyahara, corporate chief engineer of the mobile network operations unit at NEC."What technology [DoCoMo] ultimately uses depends on the spectrum they get," he said. Certain technologies, including HSPA and LTE, can be used only in certain spectrum. The 800MHz spectrum would be ideal, but most Japanese companies expect to be allocated 700MHz, Miyahara said.DoCoMo hopes to attract users by allowing them to pay a flat rate for speedy downloads. "We want people to use their mobile phone for everything, but we think that if they worry too much about their bill then they won't use this download feature," Miyahara said. "So the answer is to offer a flat rate service, and then people won't worry about their phone bill."NTT DoCoMo is Japan's largest mobile phone service provider, with 53.7 percent of the nation's 99 million mobile users subscribing to the company. Nearly 80 percent of DoCoMo subscribers have already switched to 3G (third generation mobile telecommunications) service from 2G, Nakamura said. The nation is considered a world leader in 3G and mobile phone services.DoCoMo is also researching 4G (fourth generation) mobile technology. When it's commercialized, 4G will promise 1Gbps download speeds, said Nakamura, but in testing DoCoMo has achieved speeds as high as 5Gbps.Testing on LTE is expected to be finished by 2009, said Matthias Reis, head of the LTE business program at Nokia Siemens Networks. Operators are currently using HSPA, and starting to roll out HSPA+ and IHSPA (Internet-HSPA). By 2009, testing will be done and operators will be able to start rolling out the technology, he said.Meanwhile the GSMA continues to back current generation wireless technologies. Separately Tuesday, in partnership with Microsoft, it announced a contest to design laptop PCs with HSPA-enabled chipsets to make it easier for the average user to access the Internet via a mobile network. The hope is that users will begin to use mobile phone networks to download information to more devices other than just handsets, such as laptops, digital cameras, digital music players, and more.
E.U. releases telecom review, proposes spectrum shakeup	13 November 2007
The European Commission unveiled its long-awaited review of the legal landscape for the telecom industry Tuesday, proposing a shakeup in the inefficient way radio spectrum is used in the 27 European Union countries, a new telecom authority for the whole E.U., and greater powers to punish former monopolies that don't compete fairly.The latest proposed changes come after a decade during which Europe's telecom markets have switched from being dominated by national monopolies to becoming more competitive. This process of liberalization that began in 1998 aimed to forge one giant market from all the national markets in the E.U.However, the former monopolies still exert too much control, especially in vital market sectors, such as access to broadband Internet services, said telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding at a news conference in Strasbourg Tuesday."Dominant telecoms operators, often still protected by government authorities, remain in control of critical market segments, especially of the broadband market," Reding said. She wants to grant the 27 national regulators the right to order incumbent operators to separate services operations from running of their infrastructures -- so-called functional separation.Separating the two is seen as a way to ensure rivals fair access to infrastructure, but in response to disapproval of this proposed legal tool from the incumbents, Reding stressed that the aim isn't to break up the companies."It's not the same thing as ownership unbundling," she said. Functional separation could only be used by the national regulators with the approval of the newly created European Telecom Market Authority (ETMA) she is planning to set up. "It's not a panacea, but a flexible measure that has worked in the U.K. and is already being considered in Sweden and Italy," she said.She plans a "New Deal" for radio spectrum to spur investment into new infrastructures and to ensure broadband access for everyone, she said.In rural areas of the E.U., 72 percent of the population on average have broadband access. The Commission wants to overcome this "digital divide" by better managing radio spectrum and by making spectrum available for wireless broadband services in regions where building a new fiber infrastructure is too costly.Existing rules for spectrum allocation date back to the 1950s and have to be changed, she said. "Too many countries are sitting on unused radio spectrum," she said, adding that the switch from analog to digital TV will free up a lot more spectrum.Broadcasters fear that all the available spectrum will be devoted to broadband Internet access, leaving too little for HDTV.However, Reding said it will be for national regulators to decide who gets the free spectrum. "Radio waves are the property of the member states; this won't change," she said. Some spectrum will need to be reserved specifically for cross-border services within the E.U., but for the most part, it will be up to national regulators to distribute spectrum.The ETMA will play an important role in making sure the new rules take effect across the E.U., Reding said. The idea of a supra-national authority modeled on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has been attacked by some national regulators as well as by some officials in the European Commission for adding another layer of bureaucracy. But Reding insisted it is vital if the E.U. is ever to get a single, Union-wide telecom market."I'm not looking to create a one-size-fits-all answer; however, there are similar problems in the different countries and they should be dealt with in similar ways," she said.The ETMA will combine the responsibilities of the European Regulators Group (ERG) -- a body comprising the heads of all 27 national regulators -- with the role of ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency. "Unlike the ERG, this new group will be able to take decisions itself and act independently of national governments," she said.While obstacles to an efficient single market for telecom require further regulatory measures, many markets that have been under the spotlight during the past decade are now functioning properly and no longer need such close regulatory scrutiny, the Commission said.Monitoring of 10 sectors out of 17 initially under observation can now be stopped. The 10 are: National/local residential landline telephone services, international residential landline services, national/local business landline services, international business services from a landline, the minimum set of leased lines, transit services in the fixed telephone network, wholesale trunk segments of leased lines, access and call origination on mobile networks, international roaming on mobile networks, and broadcasting transmission.The Commission and national regulators will refocus efforts on the remaining markets where competition is not yet effective and where consumer benefits are still largely lacking. These sectors are access to the fixed telephone network, call origination on the fixed telephone network, call termination on individual fixed telephone networks, wholesale access to the local loop, wholesale broadband access, wholesale terminating segments of leased lines, and voice call termination on individual mobile networks.The Commission proposal will now be debated in the European Parliament and among the telecoms ministers of the 27 national governments. Reding said she is confident her reforms will be supported by the two lawmaking institutions and will become law in 2009.
NI rape victims 'are losing out'	28 November 2007
There are no funded specialised support services for rape victims anywhere in NI, an Amnesty report says.
Many money websites are 'unclear'	28 November 2007
A quarter of promotional websites for financial services firms are not fair or clear enough, the FSA says.