WCA March 2012

Alcatel Lucent’s self-analysis: We have fewer problems than Nokia Siemens

American mobile phone users exhibit a marked indifference to security threats Survey results published December 21 st 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 12 th 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 advertising. Google already is the subject of an EC 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 (8 th 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.”

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 6 th 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 telecomtv.com 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.”

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2012