Category: Network

Operators from emerging markets are boosting their mobile networks to handle growing traffic from smartphones and mobile broadband devices, but an industry observer says they should relook their current business strategies to stay relevant.

Arun Bansal, Ericsson head of Southeast Asia and Oceania, told ZDNet Asia that the region has seen an influx of smartphones and mobile data growth, driving operators expand their mobile networks in terms of coverage and capacity.

In a separate interview, David Chambers, Amdocs’ product marketing manager, concurred that the growth of mobile broadband is putting a strain on operators’ network.

However, despite the rush to boost their 3G infrastructure, Chambers said it is not technically possible for operators to build out capacity fast enough to meet forecasted demand.

He noted that these service providers are instead looking at Wi-Fi or femtocells to help offload data traffic, pointing to China Mobile’s plans to deploy 1 million WiFi hotspots as an example.

Customer experience a differentiator
According to Chambers, customer experience will play a big role in boosting an operator’s competitive edge. He explained that operators previously focused on selling the latest smartphones in the market because consumers’ selection of a mobile operator was “90 percent based on the device and 10 percent on networks”, he said.

This scenario will change, said Chambers, as users will increasingly choose their operator based on the quality of its networks. “Unless you are with the right network, [having the phone is] less useful,” he added.

He also pushed for operators to offer tiered data plans instead of unlimited data plans since they will need to ensure their networks can cater to loads that cannot be determined. Contrary to consumer belief that unlimited data plans are better, he said customers will appreciate charges that are “more directly related to what they think they should pay for” instead of paying a higher premium for unlimited data plans.

Hackers have broken into the computer systems of Lockheed Martin and other major U.S. weapons manufacturers, potentially gaining access to information about future weapons programs as well as military technology currently in use, according to a Reuters report.

In an early report, the news agency cited a defense official and “two sources familiar with the issue”. It has since said that it’s unclear what–if any–data had been stolen.

A Lockheed representative told The Wall Street Journal, which cited its own unnamed source, that the company wouldn’t comment on any specific incident but that “we have policies and procedures in place to mitigate the cyberthreats to our business, and we remain confident in the integrity of our robust, multilayered information systems security”.

The intrusion could be related to the recent breach of RSA’s popular SecurID token authentication technology, according to various news reports. SecurID is used in electronic “keys” company employees and others rely on to securely access computer networks. The Journal said remote access to some Lockheed networks was temporarily disabled and that Lockheed had sent 90,000 replacement keys to workers and asked employees to change all their company-related passwords as a safeguard.

Industry officials have said weapons contractors are unlikely to keep truly sensitive data on networks that can be accessed remotely, The New York Times reported.

Tech blogger Robert Cringely said the network disruption at Lockheed began Sunday and that the SecurID tokens were at the center of things, according to Reuters. The news agency also said that RSA-parent EMC had declined to comment on the issue, and that other defense contractors were, like Lockheed, remaining mum on the incident.

Lockheed makes a plethora of weapons and military technologies, from missiles to fighter planes to satellite-based field communications systems. RSA’s SecurID technology is also used by the Pentagon, as well as other government agencies and numerous financial institutions.

On announcing the breach of the SecurID technology, in March, RSA said, “While at this time we are confident that the information extracted does not enable a successful direct attack on any of our RSA SecurID customers, this information could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack. We are very actively communicating this situation to RSA customers and providing immediate steps for them to take to strengthen their SecurID implementations.”

The New York Times reported that military contractor Raytheon said Friday that it took “immediate companywide actions” when the RSA breach was made known and that it had, as a result, “prevented a widespread disruption of our network.” The Times also reported that General Dynamics said it hadn’t experienced any issues related to the SecurID breach but that other major military contractors, including Northrop Grumman and Boeing, had declined to comment.

The U.S. Department of Justice is examining bidders, including Apple and Google, interested in Nortel’s patent portfolio, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal that cites unnamed people familiar with the situation.

The agency is worried that the patents could be used to hamper competition in the wireless industry, according to the report.

In April, Google said it had bid US$900 million for thousands of patents that Nortel is auctioning off as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. While courts in the U.S. and Canada, where Nortel is based, approved Google’s offer, other interested buyers have until June 20 to counterbid for the more than 6,000 patents. Continue reading “DOJ examines Nortel patent sale”

According to Chinese news agency China Every day, the State Administration of Radio, Film & Tv (SARFT) has said that the new body will be in operation “by the finish of the year” & will also help drive expansion in to new business opportunities in mobile TV & online videos.

When asked why the SARFT is embarking on this project, agency official Tao Shiming said: “The cable tv network at present is managed locally, & is lacking in organization & scale.”

The editorial also noted that the one,000 radio & tv networks in China are run by different operators at varied administration levels. The absence of a unified network is delaying the country’s designs to compete with others for opportunities stemming from the convergence of technologies.

To overcome this fragmentation, there needs to be national consolidation, the document said. The completion date, however, may take up to years, said Zeng Huiming, deputy secretary-general of the cable TV committee of the China Radio & Tv Association.

The document also pointed out that the new consolidated company will have a start-up investment fund of around 80 billion yuan (US$11.8 billion) contributed by both the government & broadcast & tv companies.

However, analysts are skeptical about the consolidation designs.

China has designs to bring about one,000 of its regional radio & tv networks under the banner of a single, national cable tv network company body in order to better integrate its telecommunications, Web & broadcasting systems, said reports.

Telecom analyst Xiang Ligang, for, told China Every day that they was not definite what returns can be had from the whole exercise.

“It’s hard to earn profits if the new company offers lower prices, but simultaneously, it is also hard to win more users if it charges high fees,” they said. The local telcos–China Mobile, China Unicom & China Telecom–have invested over two trillion yuan (US$294.2 billion) on telecom networks & will still have an advantage in the market, Xiang said.

Another analyst, Adrian Tong from Hong Kong’s Media Partners Asia, told Bloomberg in a separate document that it won’t “be easy” for China to integrate all the smaller players & that the “consolidation will take years” because its industry is fragmented. This is unlike the situation in the U.S. where several bigger cable operators are dominant, they added.

China Every day also mentioned that the government last month launched a pilot project in 12 cities to check the convergence of the networks, with trials expecting to last until 2012. The project will focus on connecting the broadcasting & telecom networks, it added.

Researcher Karsten Nohl is continuing his crusade to get mobile operators to improve the security of their networks by releasing software that can turn phones into mobile data snoops of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) traffic.

Using a GPRS interceptor, someone could “read their neighbor’s Facebook updates”, he told ZDNet Asia’s sister site CNET in a brief interview last week. He planned to release the software during a presentation today at the Chaos Communication Camp 2011 in Finowfurt, Germany, near Berlin.

Karsten of Security Research Labs in Berlin and a co-researcher Luca Melette were able to intercept and decrypt data sent over mobile networks using GPRS using a cheap Motorola that they modified and some free applications, according to The New York Times. They were able to read data sent on T-Mobile, O2 Germany, Vodafone, and E-Plus in Germany because of weak encryption used, and they found that Telecom Italia’s TIM and Wind did not encrypt data at all, while Vodafone Italia used weak encryption, according to the report.

One reason operators don’t use encryption is to be able to monitor traffic, filter viruses, and detect and suppress Skype, he told the newspaper.

Nohl has been pointing out weaknesses in mobile networks for years in the hopes that operators will step up their security efforts. In August 2009, he released the encryption algorithms used by mobile operators on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks. Last year, he released software that lets people test whether their calls on mobile phones can be eavesdropped on.