The rush is on to sue the U.S. Federal Communications Commission over its net neutrality rules, with three trade groups filing legal challenges Tuesday.The agency now faces five lawsuits related to the regulations.Mobile trade group CTIA, cable trade group the National Cable and Telecommunications Association [NCTA] and the American Cable Association, which represents small cable operators, all filed lawsuits Tuesday.The three new lawsuits all challenge the FCC’s decision to reclassify broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service, reversing a long-standing agency position that it is a lightly regulated information service. The CTIA lawsuit also focuses on the reclassification of mobile broadband.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent are in advanced merger talks, the companies confirmed Tuesday following media speculation that a deal was in the works.The talks could still fall apart, but a deal is on the table that would see Nokia acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a stock swap, the companies said.A merger would give the combined entity a broader product portfolio and greater scale, but would bring its own challenges.It makes sense for Nokia, a mobile broadband specialist, to merge with Alcatel-Lucent, which has a strong position in fixed networks, according to Mark Newman, chief research officer of Ovum’s telecoms research business.As mobile and fixed networks become increasingly integrated, not having the latter is becoming a disadvantage for Nokia, Newman said. The growing worldwide popularity of smartphones has increased the focus on mobile networks, but fixed broadband networks are still needed to deliver high-resolution video content and to provide backhaul for Wi-Fi networks in homes. The integration of Alcatel-Lucent’s fixed offering with the best parts of the two companies’ respective mobile offerings could in that regard be a boon for end-users, he said.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
A group of Republican lawmakers has introduced a bill that would invalidate the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s recently passed net neutrality rules.The legislation, introduced by Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican, is called a resolution of disapproval, a move that allows Congress to review new federal regulations from government agencies, using an expedited legislative process.The resolution is the quickest way to stop what Collins called heavy-handed regulations that will hamper broadband deployment and could increase taxes and fees, he said in a statement. “We’ll all be paying more for less,” he added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bruce Schneier
Security expert Bruce Schneier has looked at and written about difficulties the Internet of Things presents - such as the fact that the “things” are by and large insecure and enable unwanted surveillance– and concludes that it’s a problem that’s going to get worse before it gets better.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
As an increasing number of people use mobile phones to access the Internet in Africa, Zambia is playing catch-up. To spur Internet and mobile phone connectivity throughout the country, the Zambian government has announced an initiative to build telecom infrastructure.The Zambian government says it will spend $65 million to erect new telecom towers across the country to be used by the country’s three mobile operators in the Southern African country.There’s little doubt than in many African countries, people depend on mobile phones for Internet access. The Mobile Africa 2015 study conducted by survey company GeoPoll and World Wide Worx, a technology analysis organization in South Africa, reports that Internet browsing via mobile phone is on the rise in the countries studied—South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A decision by a U.S. government agency prohibiting the transmission of 3D dental records into the U.S. could open the door to further content restrictions on the Internet, digital rights groups have said.The heart of the question is whether the U.S. International Trade Commission can block digital goods, in additional to physical ones, from being imported to the U.S. The Motion Picture Association of America has watched the agency’s decision closely, with an eye on using the USITC to block websites.The USITC’s decision concerns a patent dispute between two companies that make clear dental braces, but it could have larger consequences and is the wrong way to deal with infringement complaints, the rights groups said Friday in a letter to the agency.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Thin crowds greet Apple Watch in stores in AsiaThe arrival of the Apple Watch in stores across Asia on Friday failed to draw the same crowds that greeted the launch of the iPhone 6—a sign, perhaps, that Apple fans are prepared to queue overnight to buy, but not just to try. The watch is now on show at Apple Stores across the U.S. too, but you’ll have to wait until April 24 to buy one. The company is accepting preorders online only.Reviewers like the new MacBook’s looks, but find a lot to criticizeTo 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
Cisco has invested in MobiKwik, an Indian “mobile wallet” company that offers payment for goods and services from a consumer’s desktop or mobile device. Cisco has taken an undisclosed minority stake in the company’s $30 million Series B round.The investment was led by Cisco’s India corporate development team. The lead investor was Tree Line Asia, and American Express and existing investor Sequoia Capital also helped fund the round.The funds will support user and personnel growth, expanding its merchant network, marketing and investments in data analytics. MobiKwik currently has over 15 million users and 25,000 merchants.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
LinkedIn is acquiring online learning company lynda.com for US$1.5 billion in cash and stock, the social networking site announced Thursday.Lynda.com offers professional development courses on design, creative and business topics. Some of the courses, for example, teach how to write HTML, negotiate better, or use design software like Photoshop. The site was launched by Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin in 1995 as a way to teach Web publishing and design.Integrating lynda.com with LinkedIn would allow job seekers to know what skills are required for a position they’re interested in and immediately be prompted to take a course in that subject, Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s head of content, said in a blog post. Further details on whether lynda.com would be combined with LinkedIn, or if the training site would continue to operate independently weren’t provided.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Brocade this week unveiled a campus switch and other enhancements to better support video and wireless traffic, improve management and extend software defined networking.
The new switch is the ICX 7250. It supports up to eight 10G Ethernet ports for uplinks or stacking, and can be stacked 12-high into a virtual chassis supporting 576 Gigabit Ethernet and 96 10G ports.
Brocade says this density will enable campus networks to better support bandwidth-intensive video and wireless traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
E-book subscription service Oyster has opened an online book store, a move that pits the young company against heavyweight Amazon.Oyster’s ebook store has the support of the top five publishers in the U.S. While Amazon also offers books from these publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster—it got into a nasty battle with them over pricing. Amazon wanted to offer their books at steep discounts, ignoring the publishers’ suggested prices.The fight between Amazon and Hachette was especially toxic, with Amazon preventing customers from pre-ordering upcoming books from the publisher and threatening to stop stocking its titles. The two parties resolved their dispute last November, but didn’t disclose the deal’s terms. None of the publishers immediately replied to questions regarding their negotiations and pricing arrangements with Oyster.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
By using more spectrum and developing new ways to send multiple channels of data at the same time, researchers at Bell Labs are working to increase bandwidths over fiber, copper and the air.Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs celebrated its Nobel Laureates and gave a sneak peek at some of the projects that are part of its vision for networks in 2020 at an event on Wednesday.Because most network technologies have hit or are very close to the limit of what can be transferred over one channel, increasing speeds is getting more complicated. But Bell Labs President Marcus Weldon is convinced there is still room for major improvements.Part of Bell Labs’ plan for 5G is a pint-sized base station, or small cell, that can generate its own power by using solar energy or energy harvesting. The power consumption of current equipment has to come down for this to work, according to Weldon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It knows when you are sleeping and when you are awake. It knows when you're home and when you're away. It knows how how fast you drive, how many steps you took yesterday, and how hard your heart is working right now.It's the Internet of Things (IoT), and it is terrible at keeping secrets.INSIDER: 5 ways to prepare for Internet of Things security threats
If the Web resembles the wild west when it comes to personal privacy, then the IoT is a jungle where only the fearless survive. While the privacy threats are similar, the stakes are much higher. Connected devices are collecting vast amounts of deeply personal information from our homes, our cars, and our bodies -- far more than any Web site possibly could. The kind of data that's being collected and what happens to it is governed almost entirely by privacy policies that virtually no one reads and few truly understand. Many IoT devices and apps have no privacy policy at all. And IoT security at this point in time is tissue thin, leaving your personal data at risk from external attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After facing a DDoS attack, an activist group isn’t backing down in its attempts to end China’s Internet censorship.“I think that we are more confident than we were before that our successful execution of our strategy is going to lead us to achieve our mission,” said the group via email on Tuesday.GreatFire.org suffered a distributed denial of service attack last month that threatened to cripple its activities. The anonymous group, which is based out of China, believes the country’s government was behind the attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Do you know SDN? Do you follow NFV? What about OSS? Those are yesterday's acronyms. The new buzzword is LSO, and it's going to be huge not only for carriers and other service providers, but also for enterprise customers.Lifecycle Service Orchestration is a catchphrase that embraces the range of activities performed by a telco or other communications service provider. An LSO platform would handle everything from provisioning the customer order to controlling the delivery of the service to gathering metrics and ensuring guaranteed performance levels to remediating fault to providing usage reports to offering analytics to customers.That's a lot to unpack, but the bottom line is that LSO is going to be big. According to the Service Provider Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) Overview and Market Forecast report published by the Rayno Report in March 2015, LSO will be a $2.75 billion market by 2019 and will combine technologies found today in Operation Support Systems, Software Defined Networks, and Network Functions Virtualization.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Department of Defense hasn’t followed through on its commitment to convert to IPv6, the new Internet standard designed to make room for an explosion of new connected devices.The DoD demonstrated IPv6 in 2008 but then disabled the technology because it didn’t have enough people trained to use it and was worried about potential security risks, according to a report by the Inspector General of the department. The Inspector General issued the report internally in December and on Monday released a redacted version to the public.The current Internet Protocol, IPv4, doesn’t meet battlefield needs, according to the report. Among other things, IPv6 would let troops quickly set up mobile, ad-hoc networks in the field. In addition, the slow transition to IPv6 has left the military without the expertise to identify malicious activity that uses the new protocol, the report said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here