WCA March 2012

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2012 37
Alcatel Lucent’s
self-analysis: We have
fewer problems than
Nokia Siemens
In a New Year interview with the
French financial newspaper Les
Echos, Alcatel-Lucent’s CEO Ben
Verwaayen declared that the French
telecom would be making staffing
cuts, but not on the scale projected
for Finland’s Nokia Siemens Networks
(NSN).
As reported on 6th January by
Telecom TV, the London-based
channel dedicated to the global ICT
(information and communications
technology) sector, Mr Verwaayen
said he could make this assertion
“because we have quickly turned
towards the network technologies of
the future.”
Martyn Warwick on
recalled that NSN in November
said it needed to save at least $1.27
billion in a little over 12 months,
and that this would require cutting
a quarter of its workforce: some
17,000 people. The drastic surgery
was said to be dictated by an NSN
plan to divest itself of “noncore
assets” to concentrate solely on
wireless technologies.
“There’s no way we are cutting
our staff by 25 per cent,” said
Mr Verwaayen, in direct reference
to the Alcatel-Lucent rival. But he
acknowledged that his own company
has work to do in that line. In
November it, too, announced major
cost-cuts: a total of $890 million in
2012. But given Alca-Lu’s strength in
optical technologies, IP, and 4G – and
the success it is currently enjoying in
the US and China – CEO Verwaayen
believes that his company’s problems
pale alongside those of NSN.
The main focus this year will be to
“generate cash” and get Alcatel-
Lucent back on an even keel.
One way to do this would be to
persuade authorities in China to
allow the company to take some of
the profits from its Alcatel-Lucent
Shanghai Bell assets out of the
country. But repatriation of the cash
may present a challenge.
“It is possible,” Mr Verwaayen said.
“But it’s a long process.”
American mobile phone
users exhibit a marked
indifference to security
threats
Survey results published December
21st by the computer security
company McAfee and the National
Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA),
a US non-profit working with the
federal Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), reveal a false sense
of cybersecurity among mobile
users. Data collected and analysed
by the polling organisation Zogby
International indicate that 72 per cent
of American mobile users have never
installed on their devices applications
to protect against viruses, malware,
and data loss.
As reported in Chain Store Age, a
New York-based magazine for retail
executives, the NCSA/McAfee survey
found that 70 per cent of smartphone
owners believe their devices to be
safe enough from hacking and other
types of cybercrime. The absence
of these security measures does
not deter smartphone use. Some 44
per cent of respondents said they
use their smartphones to access the
Internet, and 75 per cent of these do
so more frequently than they did a
year earlier.
The survey found that more
applications of a different kind are
being developed and downloaded all
the time. Over the second half of last
year, apps added to smartphones
in the US were mainly games (46 per
cent), followed by social networking
sites (37 per cent).
The smartphone users were fairly
evenly divided between those who
had ever abandoned the download
of an app over security or safety
concerns (50 per cent) and those who
had not (45 per cent). Of those who
declined to proceed, most said they
were deterred by uncertainty as to
what information about themselves
was being obtained and how it would
be used (71 per cent).
A McAfee vice president, John
Thode, said: “This study highlights
the need to focus on the security of
our mobile devices and networks as
mobile technologies are adopted by
an ever-increasing percentage of the
population and becoming a central
part of our lives.”
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
✆
✆ Antitrust regulators in Europe
suspended their investigation
into Google’s acquisition of the
smartphone maker Motorola
Mobility (Libertyville, Illinois)
until the Internet search leader
provides “certain documents
that are essential” for evaluation
of the transaction. Google
(Mountain View, California) filed
in late November for European
clearance to complete the deal
with Motorola, worth $12.5 billion.
Amelia Torres, speaking for the
EC, said on 12th December, “Once
we have all the documents, we’ll
restart the clock.” If Google
prevails in its latest tussle with
European regulators, it would
obtain a portfolio of patents that
could importantly bolster its
immunity to infringement lawsuits.
But the acquisition could also
aggravate antitrust concerns over
the company’s increasing strength
in the markets for mobile search
and a gle already is
the s investigation
into whether the company has
abused its dominant position in
online search and advertising.
✆
✆ The Australian Communications
Consumer Action Network has
proposed new standards which,
when established, promise big
improvements in customer ser-
vice within the industry. In the
view of Richard Webb, writing
in the Sydney Morning Herald
(8th January), such measures
are long overdue. Mr Webb
noted that more customer com-
plaints are generated by tele-
communications than by any other
Australian industry. He cited a
report by Australia’s independent
complaints resolution service,
the Telecommunications Industry
Ombudsman, of an 18 per cent
increase in new complaints in
the year through June 2011 – for
a record number of 197,000, or
more than 500 a day. But Mr Webb
observed that even this is a poor
indicator of the extent of customer
dissatisfaction with their telecom
services. He wrote: “Research
estimates that only seven per
cent of all complaints get to the
Ombudsman, indicating the
[Australian] industry is receiving
more than two million customer
complaints every year.”