Google could take the wraps off of its wireless service as soon as Wednesday, sparking new competition by charging customers only for the amount of data they use.The service will be offered in the U.S. through a partnership with Sprint and T-Mobile, who have agreed to carry traffic, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the plans. It will be available initially only to users of Google’s latest Nexus 6 phones, the report said.Currently, most mobile operators charge users for a fixed amount of data that lapses if they don’t use it up each month, so the Google service could put pressure on that type of plan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Sony has announced its new flagship smartphone, the Xperia Z4, that will ship in summer in the Japanese market.The device is clearly meant for global markets as well, since it supports a number of languages besides Japanese, including English, Chinese and some European languages.The move by Sony comes amid reports that the company was planning to scale down or even pull out of its smartphone business.The phone, which is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, has a display of 5.2 inches at 1920 X 1080 pixel resolution like its predecessor, the Xperia Z3, and will run Android 5.0 operating system. The Snapdragon 810 processor features 64-bit computing on eight CPU cores.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
India’s outsourcing industry needs to hire and retain staff in big numbers to keep business humming, so for the 10th anniversary of its initial public offering, Tata Consultancy Services announced a one-time “special reward” for its employees.As a result, Tata took a dip in profits in the first quarter to give out a large bonus.TCS said all its employees worldwide, who have completed at least one year of service, would be eligible for the special bonus, with each employee paid one week’s salary for every year of service in the company.At the end of the quarter TCS had 319,656 employees. The bonus will cost the company about US$423 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nokia has said it has entered into a memorandum of understanding to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a deal that would value the French telecommunications equipment maker at €15.6 billion (US$16.5 billion).The Finnish company is also considering a possible divestment from its Here mapping and navigation business.On Tuesday, Nokia said it was in talks for a merger with Alcatel-Lucent. Under the all-share deal announced Wednesday, Nokia will make an offer for all of the equity securities issued by Alcatel-Lucent, through a public exchange offer in France and the U.S., on the basis of 0.55 of a new Nokia share for every Alcatel-Lucent share.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nokia has said it has entered into a memorandum of understanding to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a deal that would value the French telecommunications equipment maker at $16.5 billion.The Finnish company is also considering a possible divestment from its Here mapping and navigation business.On Tuesday, Nokia said it was in talks for a merger with Alcatel-Lucent. Under the all-share deal announced Wednesday, Nokia will make an offer for all of the equity securities issued by Alcatel-Lucent, through a public exchange offer in France and the U.S., on the basis of 0.55 of a new Nokia share for every Alcatel-Lucent share.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nokia has said it has entered into a memorandum of understanding to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a deal that would value the French telecommunications equipment maker at $16.5 billion.The Finnish company is also considering a possible divestment from its Here mapping and navigation business.On Tuesday, Nokia said it was in talks for a merger with Alcatel-Lucent. Under the all-share deal announced Wednesday, Nokia will make an offer for all of the equity securities issued by Alcatel-Lucent, through a public exchange offer in France and the U.S., on the basis of 0.55 of a new Nokia share for every Alcatel-Lucent share.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Indian online retailer Flipkart has abandoned a plan to give customers of mobile operator Bharti Airtel free access to its mobile app after criticism that the move posed a threat to net neutrality.Earlier this month, Airtel launched a marketing platform, Airtel Zero, that allows app developers to pay for their customers to access their services without data charges. The move was, however, criticized by activists as a threat to net neutrality in the country, putting Internet startups and smaller players that can’t afford the fees at a disadvantage.Flipkart’s CEO Sachin Bansal said on Twitter recently that the so-called zero-rating deals reduced data costs for users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
RadioShack will press on with its plan to sell its customer data, despite opposition from a number of U.S. states.The company has asked a bankruptcy court for approval for a second auction of its assets, which includes the consumer data.The state of Texas, which is leading the action by the states, has opposed the sale of personally identifiable information (PII), citing the online and in-store privacy policies of the bankrupt consumer electronics retailer.The state claimed that it found from a RadioShack deposition that PII of 117 million customers could be involved. But it learned later from testimony in court that the number of customer files offered for sale might be reduced to around 67 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
RadioShack will press on with its plan to sell its customer data, despite opposition from a number of U.S. states.The company has asked a bankruptcy court for approval for a second auction of its assets, which includes the consumer data.The state of Texas, which is leading the action by the states, has opposed the sale of personally identifiable information (PII), citing the online and in-store privacy policies of the bankrupt consumer electronics retailer.The state claimed that it found from a RadioShack deposition that PII of 117 million customers could be involved. But it learned later from testimony in court that the number of customer files offered for sale might be reduced to around 67 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Faced with a highly competitive market, U.S. wireless operator Sprint is now offering to deliver and set up phones, tablets and other connected devices for free at homes, offices and other locations chosen by the customer.The offer is currently limited to eligible upgrade customers, but starting September, new customers in selected markets will be able to choose the new Direct 2 You option, when buying online or through call centers.Launching in Kansas City metropolitan area on Monday, the program will be expanded across the country using about 5,000 branded cars and employing 5,000 staff by year end. A rollout in Miami and Chicago is scheduled for April 20.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The new net neutrality rule of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission was published over the weekend to the Federal Register, the daily journal of U.S. government actions, raising the possibility of a spate of lawsuits from broadband companies that oppose the rule.The FCC decided in a 3-2 vote in February to reclassify broadband as a regulated public utility, by invoking Title II of the Communications Act, thus prohibiting providers from selectively blocking or throttling or offering paid prioritization of Internet traffic.The new rules apply to both fixed and mobile broadband Internet access services. They aim to regulate both services on the lines of traditional telephone companies, which are required to deliver service at “just and reasonable” rates and interconnect with each other.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The body that manages the Internet domain name system has asked regulators in the U.S. and Canada to comment on the legality of the high prices and procedures used by Vox Populi Registry for registrations of ‘.sucks’ domain names by trademark owners.The move Thursday by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) follows a recent letter from its Intellectual Property Constituency, which asked that the rollout of the new .sucks gTLD (generic top-level domain) should be halted.The IPC, which represents the holders of trademarks and related intellectual property, described the registration scheme for the domain as predatory and designed to exploit trademark owners. It said Vox Populi had announced it would charge trademark owners US$2,499 and above to register domain names during the early ‘sunrise’ period.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. started keeping from 1992 records of international phone calls made by Americans, under a joint program of the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to a newspaper report.The secret program, which aimed to counter drug trafficking, collected logs of ”virtually all telephone calls” from the U.S. to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, according to USA Today, which quoted current and former officials associated with the operation. But the content of the calls was not recorded as part of the collection.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The operator of a revenge porn website has been sentenced to 18 years in prison, in what is being described as the first criminal prosecution in the U.S. of the operator of a website of this type.Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 27, of San Diego, was found guilty in February this year on six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft, California’s Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said in a statement. He was arrested in December 2013.U.S. regulators have started clamping down on revenge porn, which generally consists of the posting of nude photos and other explicit content of users without their permission, and then blackmailing them for payment to take it down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The operator of a revenge porn website has been sentenced to 18 years in prison, in what is being described as the first criminal prosecution in the U.S. of the operator of a website of this type.Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 27, of San Diego, was found guilty in February this year on six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft, California’s Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said in a statement. He was arrested in December 2013.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Meet the White House's new open-source happy IT Director +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Although it started off as a smartphone app to connect passengers with drivers, Uber Technologies is encountering the same real-world security issues as the taxi industry, includng the need for driver background checks and local regulatory compliance.On top of this there are the risks involved in handling masses of customer and driver data, which became evident earlier this year when the company admitted driver data had been compromised.On Thursday, Uber moved a step forward in its bid to fend off criticism of its security practices by appointing as its first chief security officer Joe Sullivan, a former U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor and, more recently, Facebook’s security chief.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Although it started off as a smartphone app to connect passengers with drivers, Uber Technologies is encountering the same real-world security issues as the taxi industry, includng the need for driver background checks and local regulatory compliance.On top of this there are the risks involved in handling masses of customer and driver data, which became evident earlier this year when the company admitted driver data had been compromised.On Thursday, Uber moved a step forward in its bid to fend off criticism of its security practices by appointing as its first chief security officer Joe Sullivan, a former U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor and, more recently, Facebook’s security chief.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The dispute between U.S. states and RadioShack over the sale of customer information continues, with the state of Texas requesting a bankruptcy court to ask RadioShack to specify in any motion for sale what information would be included and the number of people likely to be affected.Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is concerned that although the personally identifiable information (PII) was not sold in a recently concluded auction, in argument and testimony during the sale hearing, RadioShack “has indicated that PII remains available for sale and will likely be sold in the future, attendant to the sale of trademarks and/or intellectual property,” according to a filing Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The dispute between U.S. states and RadioShack over the sale of customer information continues, with the state of Texas requesting a bankruptcy court to ask RadioShack to specify in any motion for sale what information would be included and the number of people likely to be affected.Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is concerned that although the personally identifiable information (PII) was not sold in a recently concluded auction, in argument and testimony during the sale hearing, RadioShack “has indicated that PII remains available for sale and will likely be sold in the future, attendant to the sale of trademarks and/or intellectual property,” according to a filing Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Salesforce.com has acquired Toopher, the developer of a mobile two-factor authentication app that uses location-awareness.Toopher in Austin, Texas, said on its website that it will no longer sell its current products, but is “thrilled to join Salesforce, where we’ll work on delivering the Toopher vision on a much larger scale as part of the world’s #1 Cloud Platform.”It did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.Salesforce spokeswoman Karly Bolton confirmed the purchase but did not provide further details. Toopher’s website is now inaccessible, except for the notice announcing the acquisition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
John Ribeiro