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Wire & Cable ASIA – July/August 2015
Telecomnews
available on most smartphones –
be identified and turned against
would-be attackers.
Researchers collected data from a
number of phone models and users in
real-life or simulated scenarios in both
friendly and adversarial situations.
The results, they said, show that
typical gestures like snapping
and tapping can be detected and
distinguished from one another with
high accuracy. Further distinction,
between benign and malicious
activity, then becomes possible.
“The most fundamental weakness
in mobile device security is that the
security decision process is dependent
on the user,” Nitesh Saxena, an
associate professor of computer
and information sciences at UAB,
told FierceMobileIT. “In this method,
something as simple as a human
gesture can solve a very complex
problem. It turns the phone’s weakest
security component – the user – into its
strongest defender.”
The US Federal
Communications
Commission will offer tech
and telecom companies
free access to valuable
airwaves
In a move hailed by telecommuni-
cations industry trade groups, US
regulators on 17th April decided
to open a section of government-
controlled airwaves for commercial
use by companies under pressure
to meet the growing data demands
imposed by new wireless devices.
The Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) voted unanimously
to work out a process to allow
companies access to the frequencies
in the 3.5 gigahertz band. The ability
of those airwaves to carry heavy data
across short distances makes them
attractive to wireless Internet service
and device companies, including
Verizon, Google, Qualcomm and
Ericsson.
As with Wi-Fi, the plan would allow
wireless providers and others to
use the airwaves without charge; or
– if the airwaves crowd up – to buy
licences for exclusive short-term use
in some areas.
By sharing spectrum in places where
commercial users would not interfere
with incumbent users, companies
will be able to take advantage of
frequencies now dedicated to mili-
tary radar and other government
operations.
Malathi Nayak of Reuters noted that
the plan to open up the frequencies
could help boost the capacity of
existing wireless networks, especially
in densely populated areas or indoors.
It could even help with the wireless
connection of household appliances to
facilitate the Internet of Things.
The FCC has been developing the
system, the Citizens Broadband
Radio Service, since 2012. Chairman
Tom Wheeler said in remarks in
Washington that the opening up of
3.5 GHz airwaves “is setting a new
paradigm for how spectrum sharing
should work.”
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
Ø The Paris-based financial daily
Les Échos reported on 20th April
that the French parliament had
approved an amendment to
the telecom component of an
economic reform law requiring
operators to improve mobile cover-
age throughout France.
Ø The new legislation directs that
existing gaps in 2G network
coverage in rural areas be
addressed by 2016, and that all
unserved municipalities in these
“white areas” be covered by 3G/4G
networks by 2017. The Loi Macron,
named for the French economic
minister, empowers telecom
regulator Arcep to sanction mobile
network operators for any failure of
compliance.
Ø NBN Co, the overseer of
Australia’s National Broadband
Network project, announced the
launch in May of a nationwide
“speed pilot” designed to signifi-
cantly boost the broadband
speeds available to families and
businesses in rural and regional
Australia.
Customers connecting via the
fixed-wireless element of the
NBN infrastructure reportedly
can expect wholesale downlink
speeds of between 25Mbps and
50Mbps – double the current
top wholesale offering – while
wholesale upload speeds will rise
to between 5Mbps and 20Mbps.
As reported by TeleGeography
(20th April), the speed pilot is
slated to conclude 20 business
days after the commercial launch
of the NBN product, set for
fourth-quarter 2015.
More than 600,000 premises
are earmarked for fast
broadband via the LTE (long term
evolution)-based fixed wireless
network by the end of the rollout.
Ø Also from TeleGeography (20th
April), China Mobile, the world’s
largest cellular provider by sub-
scribers, has taken erosion in
its traditional revenue streams
from the growing popularity of
smartphones and data services,
as users increasingly adopted OTT
(over-the-top) messaging appli-
cations.
For the first three months of
2015, SMS (short message
service) usage slipped from 156.1
billion to 146.2 billion and total
voice traffic from 1.083 trillion to
1.03 trillion, a fall of 4.9 per cent
quarter-on-quarter from 2014.
But the operator booked operating
revenue of $27.76 billion for first-
quarter 2015, an increase of 3.9
per cent year-on-year from 2014,
driven mainly by growth in the
number of the 4G users in its
subscriber base.
China Mobile registered 8.75
million new users in the quarter,
lifting its total user base to 815.38
million from 806.63 million at the
end of 2014.
Ø A survey by BBC World Service has
found that some 6.6 million people
– two in five adults – consume BBC
content every week in Afghanistan.
The London-based public service
broadcaster reported that an
audience of 3.2 million Afghans
watches BBC TV each week.
Radio – FM and shortwave –
remains the BBC’s principal
platform in Afghanistan, reaching
4.7 million Afghans each week
predominantly in Pashto and Dari,
and in smaller numbers in Uzbek
and English.