Operators hit back at EU data-roaming threat
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GSM Association says data-roaming price cuts are already falling and that Commission regulation would stifle innovation.
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Passengers could soon be using their mobile phones on planes flying through European airspace.
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Business & money: World's largest mobile operator finds conditions 'very difficult' in Europe but looks to growth in emerging markets like India.
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'Basic rights need to be guaranteed' in the third pillar The EU's data protection watchdog has warned that European officials are in danger of eroding basic data protection principles and has called on them to reconsider their actions.â¦
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Dear Sir, you personal data has been made public... The European Commission has published proposals for a law change that would force telecoms firms to notify regulators and customers of all breaches of their data security.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - With the support of German lawmakers, incumbent telecommunications operator Deutsche TelekomÂ is racing into a head-on clash with the European Commission over a decision to keep rival operators off its new high-speed broadband network. The upper house of the German parliament approved a revised telecommunications law on Friday. The law will allow partially state-owned Deutsche Telekom to ban competitors from using its VDSL (Very high bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line) network to sell services. The decision flies in the face of Commission legislation that mandates member states to force telecommunications companies with dominant positions -- in most cases former state-owned monopolies -- into opening their network infrastructure to rival operators on favorable terms. While Deutsche Telekom eventually opened its local-loop infrastructure under pressure from Brussels, the operator has fought attempts to allow competition on its new network. It argues that the VDSL network represents a new market for combined triple-play telephony, high-speed Internet and TV services, and new markets are protected under European Union law; in addition, it needs to protect its â¬3 billion ($3.9 billion) investment in the super high-speed network. German lawmakers have become slightly sympathetic to Deutsche Telekom, which has been bleeding fixed-line customers by the millions and consequentlyÂ forced to lower operating costs, largely through job cuts. Since its privatization, the operator has reduced its workforce from more than 250,000 at the peak to around 180,000 today. Over the years, Deutsche Telekom and the German government have clashed with Brussels on issues including the divestment of the operator's cable TV network and local-loop unbundling. In repeated warnings over the past several months, the Commission has said it will take whatever action is necessary to make Germany observe E.U. law. The issue could land in the European Court of Justice, which is responsible for handling E.U. treaty infringements. Court decisions can take years, however. Rival fixed-line operators, including ArcorÂ & Co., which is owned by the Vodafone Group, have made it clear they don't want the former monopoly telephone operator to be given any advantages to dominate another market as it has with the market for telephone service.
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European legislators hope that aÂ compromise agreementÂ to cap mobile phone roaming charges will become law before Europeans take their summer holidays. But a network operators' group warned to expect delays because even if the law takes effect as planned July 1, network operators won't have to offer the new tariffs until September.
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The European Union set mobile phone companies a July deadline on Monday to cut their roaming charges for text messages and Internet use or face regulation.
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VENICE - One of Europe's biggest fixed-network operators is following the lead of its wireless counterparts in demanding a greater say in the design and service features of cordless phones and other wireless devices used in the home.
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Accused of 'twisting the truth' Mobile operators have been accused of "twisting the truth" by a major European consumer lobby group investigating roaming charges.â¦
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Just buy a license, and do what you will The EU has released a policy document calling for frequencies to be allocated with no restriction put on what they can be used for.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Uncertainty about how to secure mobile phones in the face of increasing threats is slowing enterprise adoption of mobile applications, experts exhibiting at theÂ 3GSM World CongressÂ in Barcelona this week said. Over two-thirds of mobile operators in Europe that took part in a survey said that they detected more than 100 incidents involvingÂ mobile virusesÂ orÂ mobile spywareÂ in 2006, according to a study by conducted by Informa for security software developer McAfee. The number of European operators reporting more than 1,000 such incidents more than doubled in 2006 compared to the previous year, the report said. IT administrators, uncertain how to protect their users from such attacks, are unwilling to enable mobile access to applications for workers. "Enterprise security professionals haven't really worked this out yet," said Lorcan Burke, CEO of AdaptiveMobile. Companies such as banks, with strict security requirements, simply block access to any service, including Internet access, that could open doors to security issues, he said. At the recent RSA Conference in San Francisco, some of the most crowded events were those tackling mobile security issues, said Simeon Coney, vice president of marketing for AdaptiveMobile. That was an indication that IT administrators are trying to find out how serious mobile security problems are and how to address them, he said. Mobile services can be secured in the application, the network or in hardware or software on the device. Among operators responding to the McAfee study, most found that virus protection was most important at application and device levels, although more of them had deployed network-level security systems than the other options. Over 200 respondents from the operator community took part in the study. AdaptiveMobile makes network-level security products for operators, including a system for filtering viruses in e-mail, SMS (Short Message Service), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) traffic. Beyond viruses, AdaptiveMobile can also control content, so it can stop phishing and other fraudulent attacks, or limit the types of content end users can access. If an operator has deployed AdaptiveMobile's platform, an IT administrator in a company can set and manage such controls down to the level of individual users. For the mass market, AdaptiveMobile's product allows operators to notify a user by text message if their phone becomes infected with a virus and offer a download, either for free or for a fee, to disinfect the device. Without such software, operators will replace a user's device or ask them to send it off for disinfection, both costly propositions. A network-based security mechanism offers some advantages over anti-virus software that sits on the handset, Burke said. Handset software doesn't prevent phishing and other nonviral scams. In addition, anti-virus software isn't compatible with all phones, making it logistically difficult for the software developers to tweak their products for each version of every phone and make sure to sell the proper software to end users. He calls anti-virus software on the handset "the minimum acceptable response. It's a tick in the box to make people feel comfortable." Some developers also sell security mechanisms that sit in the phone's hardware. Such solutions are ideal for organizations with very strict security requirements, such as government users, Burke said. One downside to the hardware-based solutions is that they take about two years to make it into a handset, he noted.
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(InfoWorld) - While mobile operators claim to be cutting the cost of roaming, their efforts are just a smoke screen and have no appreciable effect on charges overall, a European consumer rights group has said. The lower tariffs are typically available for a limited duration, sometimes requiring payment of an additional subscription fee, and may only be cheaper for long calls made using certain networks, BEUC, the European Consumers' Organisation, said on Tuesday. The fees should be capped at â¬0.33 ($0.43) per minute for customers roaming outside their home country, consumer groups said . Their demand is considerably lower than the cap of â¬0.49 per minuteÂ proposed by the European CommissionÂ in draft legislation that could be voted by June. Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media,Â announced plans last FebruaryÂ to crack down on mobile phone roaming charges, which she said were unreasonably high. On July 12, the Commission proposed cutting by 70 percent the cost of making and receiving calls while travelling in another European Union member state, saving European consumers â¬5 billion a year, according to the Commission's figures. Under the Commission's proposal, operators will be allowed to charge no more than â¬0.16 per minute for calls received while travelling abroad, â¬0.33 per minute for calls made within the country being visited, or â¬0.49 per minute for calls made back home or to a third country while abroad. However, that's still too much for the consumer groups, which called for charges of â¬0.16, â¬0.25 and 0.33 per minute, respectively. The French Consumers' Union (UFC - Que Choisir) called for national telecommunications regulators to collect more information about the volume of incoming, outgoing and local roaming calls, and the wholesale prices charged by operators for each type of call. Without such statistics, it's difficult to measure the effects of tariffs and policies, the group said. Regulators and consumers are dependent on figures provided by the GSM Association, which represents 700 mobile phone operators, the French group said. Those figures showed that the cost of making roaming calls in Europe fell by 25 percent in 2006, from â¬0.83 per minute to â¬0.62, the GSM Association said on Feb. 8. The price decline shows that regulation, especially of the retail market, is unnecessary, the Association said. In the absence of independent measurements of the market, BEUC and UFC - Que Choisir commissioned their own economic analysis in order to determine what they consider fair price caps. Limiting charges to â¬0.33 per minute will stimulate demand, and so have no adverse effect on operators' revenue or profit, they said. Based on mobile phone bills supplied by Members of the European Parliament, they calculated that lower charges could save MEPs an average over â¬1,000 each per year. European telecommunications ministers are expected to discuss the Commission's proposed regulations at informal meetings alongside the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, next month, while the European Parliament will vote on the proposals in April. Germany, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, has announced its intention to push the legislation on roaming prices through by the end of June, when its term of office ends. Â
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Britain lobbied against European Union plans to impose price caps on mobile phone roaming rates which were put into place earlier this year, The Times reported on Thursday.
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Shhh, don't tell the terrorists Vodafone is telling customers that VoIP services are insecure - even as Sky News is reporting that VoIP calls threaten our war on terror because such calls can't be intercepted.â¦
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Apple&#39;s iPhone will operate in Europe on slower, 2.5 generation mobile networks, and will not use the 3G infrastructure of such companies as Vodafone, according to people close to the situation
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3, KPN and Play cut wholesale data rates Five operators across Europe have banded together and agreed to cut wholesale data rates to â¬.25 per megabyte. The agreement should reduce customer prices over the next 12 months, though whether that will be enough to fend off the formidable Ms Reding remains to be seen.â¦