April 2011

China Mobile became the world’s first phone company to exceed 600 million subscribers as it signed up more rural customers in the first quarter. China Mobile added 16.8 million subscribers in the first quarter, an almost 3 percent increase from the 584 million customers at the end of December. With mobile devices now accounting for 75 percent of China’s 1.2 billion phone users, the Beijing-based carrier is getting most of its new additions from customers in the countryside who spend less on their monthly phone bills. As a result average revenue per user, or ARPU, for the three months ended March 31 dropped to 67 yuan ($10.3), from 76 yuan at the end of December, the company said

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski was eager to talk about spectrum issues in a question-and-answer session before the Economic Club of Washington, but evaded questions about a proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile.

Chairman Genachowski touched briefly on several other topics on the FCC’s radar, such as mobile payments. When asked whether there should be a tax on Internet purchases, he said anything that discourages investment and private investment should be looked at extremely carefully. He said the FCC did not have open proceedings on mobile payments, but said that the government must “get it right” or the United States will fall behind other countries.

If you haven't yet enabled encrypted backups for your iPhone or iPad, now's definitely the time to start. Two security researchers have discovered a simple way to map out where you've been almost anywhere in the world -- without any hacking involved.

The information comes from a location cache file found within your iPhone's backups on your Mac or PC, bringing out serious privacy concerns and opening the door for a jealous spouse, thief, or even a crafty trojan to take a detailed look at your whereabouts. And it's information that no one should have access to -- not even law enforcement, barring a court order. Researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden revealed their findings ahead of their presentation at the Where 2.0 conference taking place in San Francisco. The two discovered that the iPhone or 3G iPad -- anything with 3G data access, so no iPod touch -- are logging location data to a file called consolidated.db with latitude and longitude coordinates and a timestamp. The data collection appears to be associated with the launch of iOS 4 last June, meaning that many users (us at Ars included) have nearly a year's worth of stalking data collected. In order to drive the point home, the two developed an open source application called iPhone Tracker that lets anyone with access to your computer see where you've been.

Despite the looming regulatory threat to its future long-term evolution (LTE) network deployment, LightSquared continues to sign up wholesale customers and partners, adding Cellular South to its growing roster.

As in its deal with Open Range Communications, LightSquared’s tie-up with Cellular South will involve both a network sharing and a wholesale component. Cellular South is already building its own LTE network in its southern US CDMA footprint focused primarily in Mississippi, targeting the end of 2011 for launch. So in addition to Cellular South buying wholesale access to LightSquared’s nationwide terrestrial network and satellite coverage, LightSquared will use Cellular South’s to augment its footprint in rural areas. Cellular South has 700 MHz spectrum, which would allow it to run its mobile broadband service in the same band as Verizon Wireless, though its new partnership with LightSquared may change that. LightSquared is deploying its 40,000 base station network in the satellite L-band, meaning any roaming capable device Cellular South has will need to target those frequencies. In LightSquared’s partnership with Open Range, though, LightSquared is supplying the spectrum while Open Range builds the network. Cellular South and LightSquared weren't clear on how the partnership would work, but Cellular South may now have the option of launching LTE in two bands or just LightSquared’s spectrum solely. The latter could save it a lot of hassle in procuring devices.