WCA July 2011

Telecom news

dissatisfaction with the condition that the winner pay a 25% revenue share to the Syrian government. If the auction, which carries a minimum reserve of $122.2 million, is rescheduled, the two bidders left in the process are committed to their bids as submitted. ✆ Claiming a milestone development in fourth-generation (4G) tech- nology integration, China’s ZTE Corp has said it successfully demonstrated the coexistence on a single network of WiMAX and TD-LTE, making ZTE the first company in the telecom industry to showcase this technology. As reported by vision2mobile (21 st April), the demonstration was conducted in Beijing together with Malaysia WiMAX operator Packet One Networks (“P1”). ZTE, the developer of P1’s incumbent WiMAX network, says it has proved that its base stations support seamless upgrades from WiMAX to TD-LTE. Michael Lai, the CEO of P1, told the e-newsletter: “Our next step is to become the first company to leverage the power of WiMAX and LTE. The decision to deploy LTE will depend on . . . when operators around the world, such as China and India, begin commercial application of TD-LTE and [make available] LTE devices.” ✆ For another noteworthy demon- stration, this one in Taiwan, Chunghwa Telecom Laboratories, the research arm of Taiwanese operator Chunghwa Telecom, partnered with French equipment manufacturer Alcatel-Lucent in an LTE field trial which apparently has yielded “outstanding results.” As reported by MobileBusinessBriefing (21 st April), over a six-month period the partners conducted an “extremely comprehensive and intensive field trial in both 2.6GHz and 700MHz frequency bands,” focusing on radio network perfor- mance in terms of coverage and penetration. Alcatel-Lucent also said it had “conducted extensive interoperability testing” with device makers HTC, Quanta, BandRich, Zyxel/MitraStar and WNC/Wistron, using form factors including smart- phones, USB dongles, wireless routers and tablet PCs. The trial, enabled by Alcatel- Lucent’s end-to-end 4G LTE solution, incorporated indoor demonstrations of applications and

The European Union requires its 27 member states to store telecommuni- cations user data. But several of the nations apply the EU legislation casually – or quietly ignore it. Now, however, they can expect legal pressure for compliance. “Whilst there are no concrete examples of serious breaches of privacy, the risk of data security breaches will remain unless further safeguards are put in place,” an 18 th April statement by the European Commission (EC) read. “The Commission will therefore consider more stringent regulation of storage, access to, and use of the retained data.” The decision grew out of irregularities in implementation of an EU directive on data storage across the membership – including a few countries which do not enforce it at all. As noted by the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Austria and Sweden never passed laws to empower the measure, while Germany stopped enforcement after the country’s Constitutional Court in 2010 overturned its implementation of the EU guideline. Similar action has been taken by Czech and Romanian courts. The EC has already asked the European Court of Justice to place Sweden heavily for its noncompliance. And Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU’s commissioner for home affairs, has said that the directive must be implemented across the bloc. Ms Malmstrom, herself a Swede, told reporters in Brussels, “There can be no exception in this case. The law has to be followed.” (“EU Pressures Skittish Member Nations to Store Telecommunications Data,” 19 th April). As noted by David Levitz of Deutsche Welle, the Data Retention Directive was adopted in 2006 following the bomb attacks in Madrid and London. The anti-terrorism measure calls for the storage of certain information derived from telephone calls and e-mails, such as names and addresses of the communicating parties and dates and times of the communications. The legislation does not require that the content of phone calls or e-mails be saved. Under the subhead “Privacy über alles,” Mr Levitz wrote: “Despite threats from Brussels, debate over the directive continues in Germany, where privacy rights and fears often carry more weight than in other EU countries.” Deutsche Welle provided this background to the German position: ✆ In March 2010, Germany’s Constitutional Court overturned “legal transposition” of the directive on grounds that it violated privacy rights, though the court did not find fault with the European Commission’s guideline itself ✆ The Karlsruhe court also said that German law did not put in place enough hurdles to the state’s access to telecommunications records, and demanded that telecom companies erase the data they had already collected ✆ Germany’s parliament has yet to agree on new data storage legislation. Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who in March 2010 lodged a complaint with the Constitutional Court against the data retention laws, advocates the so-called “quick freeze” method, which would call for telecommunications data to be stored only in cases where the authorities had concrete suspicions of illegal activity “Most EU states, however, have deemed that approach an insufficient interpretation of the directive,” wrote Mr Levitz. “If Germany fails to implement the directive of its own accord, Brussels could take legal action to force Berlin to pass new legislation.” Amid privacy concerns, the European Commission moves to stiffen enforcement of a directive on telecom data retention

Elsewhere in telecom . . . ✆ With ongoing political unrest in Syria, the government of President Bashar al Assad postponed indefinitely an auction, set for 27 th April, of the country’s third GSM network operating license.

As reported by CommsUpdate, after Turkcell’s withdrawal from the field the competition for the third mobile license came down to Saudi Telecom and Qatar Telecom. Earlier, Emirates Telecommunications (Etisalat) also withdrew from contention, citing

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Wire & Cable ASIA – July/August 2011