September 2012

Britain’s largest mobile phone payment platform, which is being created by the three leading network operators, is set to be granted unconditional EU approval despite objections by rivals such as Google.

Vodafone, Telefónica’s O2 and Everything Everywhere – the merged UK businesses of Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom – have been preparing for the launch of a “mobile wallet” system this summer. Mobile payment systems are seen by telecoms groups as a key area for revenue growth to offset declining parts of their businesses, especially as more phones use the near field communication (NFC) technology that allows a phone to be “swiped” for payment. The latest smartphones being launched this month by Apple, Nokia and Samsung are expected to feature NFC technology.

[Commentary] I don’t always agree with the Free Press. But even when my interpretation of facts differs, I’ve usually found the information the group puts forth to be credible – that is until a recent op-ed piece titled “Taxing Broadband – An Idea Whose Time has Not Come,” that ran on the Ars Technica site.

In the piece, the Free Press research director argues that the high-cost Universal Service program, which helps cover part of the cost of delivering communications services to rural areas, is a “corporate slush fund.” To back up his position, he cites two studies that have been demonstrated to be inaccurate. He references a “2010 audit of the rural USF program [which] found that one out of every four dollars sent to participating phone companies was an ‘overpayment.’” But if you read the audit (which was actually done in 2008), you will find that if a phone company was missing any documentation for the USF monies it collected, the Government Accountability Office assumed all payments to that telco were an overpayment. I spent a considerable amount of time going through the GAO numbers when they came out – and I estimated that it was unlikely that telcos had been overpaid by more than 4% or 5%– if that.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) questioned the Federal Bureau of Investigation's data-collection practices after a hacker group claimed to release a trove of personal data stolen from an FBI computer.

Rep Markey said the incident "raises questions about why the FBI had this information in the first place." "While engaged in their efforts to protect and serve the public, law enforcement must protect their servers and computers that contain any personal data about Americans," he said. Rep Markey said more information about the reported breach is needed, but he said it would be a "mistake to allow this recent incident to pass without reexamining and recommitting ourselves to dealing with this vital personal privacy and protection issue." Rep Markey urged lawmakers to take up his Wireless Surveillance Act, which would restrict law enforcement's ability to collect data from mobile phones. The draft bill would require regular disclosures from police about the kinds of information they are collecting and would require them to get a warrant before tracking a phone's location.

The European Commission is pushing telecoms companies to share the radio frequencies they use for mobile and broadband services as space runs out for rapidly increasing Web use.

European economies must squeeze more out of the radio waves that carry mobile and Internet technologies if they are to cope with the huge growth in demand for data services on smartphones and tablet computers. More than 50 percent of all smartphone traffic is routed over Wi-Fi networks and this type of traffic is growing four to six times faster than that on mobile networks, the commission said. Companies that own parts of the radio wave spectrum after liberalization in the 1990s consider this capacity to be among their most valuable assets and many have been reluctant to share. Spectrum is a finite resource so it can carry only a certain amount of traffic. If you have licenses for adjacent blocks of spectrum, then you can carry more traffic. If your blocks are separated by a slice owned by someone else, you can't carry as much traffic.