July 2013

When it comes to mobile revenue, AT&T is now bigger than Vodafone

The two titans of the U.S. continue to make big gains in the global carrier rankings.

The big multinational mobile companies like Telefónica, América Móvil, Bharti Airtel, and Orange still have far more subscribers than either, but Verizon Wireless and AT&T more than make up for it in terms of revenue. GSMA Intelligence’s new global carrier scoreboard found that AT&T has joined Verizon in the top 3 in mobile revenues, leapfrogging the biggest of the multinationals Vodafone. China Mobile is still the number one carrier in the world in both revenues and subscribers, and China’s other mobile operators continue to make big gains in both categories, according to GSMA Intelligence, the GSM Association’s research arm.

It’s official: handset “subsidies” are a bad deal

According to no less an authority than the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), so-called “subsidized handsets” don’t generally work out to be cheaper.

Two months as T-Mobile US: Where it’s been, where it’s going

Exactly two months have passed since T-Mobile and MetroPCS officially merged, becoming the new T-Mobile US. 61 days out is as good a time as any to take at what the new T-Mobile has accomplished so far. Here’s what we know CEO John Legere and company have been working on:

T-Mobile has started its migrating MetroPCS customers off of CDMA and onto its GSM networks. Last month, T-Mobile started selling three GSM smartphones to Metro customers in three cities and began inviting other customers to connect their unlocked GSM/HSPA+/LTE smartphones with Metro plans. Typically it can take years for an operator to fully merge to disparate network operations, but T-Mobile seems to moving as quickly as possible. The sooner those CDMA devices are gone, the sooner T-Mobile can shut down Metro’s networks and the sooner it can use that spectrum for LTE and HSPA+.
T-Mobile may not have announced any more LTE markets since its original seven, but we know it’s been hard at work building out new markets. TMoNews has been tallying up LTE sightings in dozens of different markets, from San Francisco to New York. T-Mobile has said it plans to accelerate its rollout, covering a population of 100 million by midyear. Well it’s exactly midyear, so expect T-Mobile to announce a lot of new official LTE markets next week.
MetroPCS may have brought in valuable new spectrum in key markets, but T-Mobile has been opportunistically poaching new airwaves wherever it can find them. Last week it announced a deal with U.S. Cellular to buy a big regional Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) license covering the Mississippi Valley. Those frequencies will add considerable heft to its mobile data networks in key cities like New Orleans, Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis and Nashville.
T-Mobile isn’t just expanding its LTE footprint; it’s also pushing LTE’s technical capabilities. GigaOM has learned that T-Mobile will be among the first operators in the world to implement 4X2 MIMO smart antenna technology, which will increase overall uplink and downlink capacity and help devices maintain better signals when at the edge of a cell. T-Mobile is also weighing its first step toward LTE-Advanced through a technique called carrier aggregation, which could double device speeds in several of its markets. We could get a preview of both these technologies next week.

NIST Proposes Cyber Protocols for Private Sector

The U.S. government has released preliminary guidelines for key industries on how to shield company systems from destructive attacks that could, for example, knock out electricity or halt transportation.

The voluntary rubric homes in on the upper echelon of firms. The rationale being that information technology managers can't bolster security without financial and leadership support from top officials, such as board directors. The plan includes an information flow chart with five "functions" -- factors that affect companies’ vulnerability levels, including the degree to which firms know, prevent, detect, respond, and recover from threats. Each function includes sub-factors such as contingency planning for the recover category. There also is space to enter relevant industry standards and other existing guidelines, which are provided in a separate document. Once a firm fills out the flowchart with applicable information, then there is another chart intended to illustrate the company's current security status. Each of the five factors is broken down by job position: senior leader, business process manager and operations manager. For the contingency planning subcategory, a senior leader at a company with low-level security might write, for instance, "I'm not sure about redundancy for my critical data," while a firm with a stronger security posture might write, "There is a clear strategic plan in place for the protection of critical data and essential services." An operations manager who works at a firm with low-level security might write, "My organization's critical data is contained in one location."

Fourth of July Rallies Protest NSA Surveillance

In marking Independence Day, protesters nationwide called for outlawing National Security Agency domestic spying. In response, NSA officials released a statement endorsing demonstrators’ constitutional right to free speech. Officials made no mention of the constitutional right to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The self-described non-partisan, non-violent "Restore the Fourth" movement was formed on Reddit in June, shortly after reports revealed NSA gathers millions of Americans' phone logs and possibly Internet communications. Organizers took to Twitter and Facebook to assemble crowds at venues in roughly 100 locations, including Washington's McPherson Square, Philadelphia's Washington Square Park and New York City's Union Square.

If PRISM Is Good Policy, Why Stop With Terrorism?

If the justification for PRISM and associated programs is predicated on their potential effectiveness, why shouldn't such logic be applied elsewhere?

Here are several other even more effective public-policy solutions that also violate the Fourth Amendment in similar ways and are just as reprehensible. Child Pornography. Speed Limits. Illegal Downloading.

[Khanna is a Yale Law Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project.]

Why the US doesn’t use cyber-weapons to attack its enemies more often

The US government doesn’t like to talk about it, but it has developed an arsenal of cyber-weapons that can be used to attack adversaries. Why doesn’t it deploy computer worms and other technologies for disrupting enemies’ networks and computer-controlled physical infrastructure more often in conflicts around the world?

Mike McConnell, vice chairman at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and former head of the National Security Agency and US director of National Intelligence, says the US has the best capabilities in the world for cyber-attacking and “can do some pretty significant damage if we choose to.” But the government hesitates because it’s wary of making itself an even bigger target for cyber-attacks against the US, according to McConnell.

Can State and Local Govs Benefit from the U.S. Commerce Department's Cybersecurity Program?

Data breaches are inevitable.

As Michigan CSO Dan Lohrmann noted earlier this year, small security breaches occur in government more often than many people are aware of -- and then there are the large, widely publicized breaches, most recently in California, the Washington State Courts and last year at the South Carolina Department of Revenue. Despite their inevitability, however, governments nationwide focus even further on cybersecurity -- and the U.S. Department of Commerce is no exception. But the difference for this federal-level agency is that it's working to assemble its own team of experts in cybersecurity, which it is has done by increasing the role-based training completion rate by threefold over the last three years.

And this federal-level training initiative will undoubtedly affect both state and local governments as well, says Rod Turk, chief information security officer and Office of Cyber Security director at the department.

Can Libraries Survive the E-Book Revolution?

Facing higher prices and limited access to e-books from the major publishers, Jamie LaRue, the man charged with running Douglas County's (CO) library system, has inspired a national movement to promote smaller, digitally based presses and self-published authors.

More than 20 years ago, when Jamie LaRue took over the library system, few people outside that patch of Rocky Mountain wilderness south of Denver knew who he was. A lot of things were different back then. Public libraries were still considered pillars of the community and the most important stop for any local resident looking for the latest from the printed word. Commercial e-books were still a fantasy in the mind of some anonymous Silicon Valley geek. The rules of the game between libraries and publishers had been established long ago: Discount prices and generous access were the norm, and there was every reason to believe that the status quo would continue, ad infinitum. But it didn’t. Instead, the e-book revolution has overturned the whole infrastructure upon which libraries depended.

Should Congress Telework?

A resolution introduced by two House lawmakers would allow members of Congress to become teleworkers.

The Members Operating to Be Innovative and Link Everyone (MOBILE) resolution (H. Res. 287), introduced last week by Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Steve Pearce (R-NM) would enable lawmakers to participate in committee hearings and vote on non-controversial suspension bills from their home districts using video-conferencing technology and a secure, remote voting system. The resolution would require that lawmakers and invited witnesses be allowed to participate in committee hearings remotely, with that participation counting toward rules on quorum. It also would require the development of a secure remote voting system that would enable lawmakers to vote on suspension bills, generally non-controversial bills that require a two-thirds majority to pass.

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