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As we near the end of 2011, The Insider should be thinking positively about the coming year, but he’s not. He appears to have spent an inordinate amount of time in 2011 investigating and reporting negative aspects of the telecommunications business that could have repercussions on future earnings and customer perception. Issues have revolved around invasion of privacy, bill shock, breaches of security, network malfunctions, technology shortcomings, management blunders and data integrity (or... -
Sony, Citi, Sega, CIA and the list grows daily. These are major operations that have had their online data compromised in the last few weeks and the world press seems to revel in reporting these lapses in security. At least it takes their attention away from 'bill shock', their other perennial favorite telco whipping horse. Although not directly involved with the latest round of breaches, the telecoms industry as a whole must be grimacing at the bad press it generates for any online services... -
First it was copper being stolen from telco ducting in the USA and Australia, now it’s wireless base stations in the UK being targeted. Reports have emerged that Vodafone UK suffered a major network outage on Monday following a break-in on Sunday night at one of its ‘technical facilities’, leaving many customers without voice, SMS and Internet services. The break-in occurred at an exchange located in Basingstoke, UK. An operator spokeswoman told Light Reading Mobile that "specialist... -
The Insider is not a great fan of over-regulation. After many years of deregulation in almost every national telecommunications market of the world it seems that governments believe we still need to be told what to do, constantly, almost like naughty school children. Regulation is one thing, but when governments step in and use CSPs as pawns in games of international oneupmanship, things may be going a little too far. I refer, of course, to the recent ‘decision’ by Sprint Nextel to block... -
Funny how some news stories are viewed differently. This week’s big IT headline was that Intel had bought McAfee for a massive $7.68 billion, but depending where you read about the story took on multiple personas. There is no doubt that the acquisition underlines Intel’s bet on “hardware-enhanced security” and demonstrates that that security is a necessary component as the tech company’s reach expands to handle billions of new Internet-ready devices, such as mobile phones and computers, TVs, cars... -
The United Arab Emirates has outlined plans to block BlackBerry email, messaging and Web browsing services, citing a potential security threat because encrypted data sent on the devices is moved abroad where it cannot be monitored for illegal activity. The decision raises questions about the further control of content deemed politically or morally objectionable by governments in the region. This argument could be supported by the fact Saudi Arabia immediately followed the UAE move. BlackBerry phones... -
I don’t intend to dwell on the story that Google ‘accidentally’ collected 600GB of data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks in 30 countries while out taking photographs for its Street View mapping service. Nor the fact that technical details revealed in a Google audit could see the company face criminal prosecution around the world for collecting private Wi-Fi data, according British privacy organization, Privacy International. But some of this story just doesn't add up and could have repercussions... -
This week I attended a conference in Singapore devoted to mobile financial services. So what you may ask? Well, when I asked some speakers if anything had changed in three years they admitted, very little. Sure, we have those amazing success stories emanating from Africa about the banking of ‘the great un-banked’ and the awesome payment transfer systems that some Asian operators have introduced but, in general, revenues from mobile financial transactions have eluded most. I’m talking here about mBanking... -
Recent news that a China Mobile executive had been tracked down and detained by the company after going missing with hundreds of millions of yuan and at Magyar Telekom in Hungary that four consulting contracts entered into in 2005 were later found to serve ‘improper objectives’ raises concerns about a little discussed topic - internal fraud. In the China Mobile case, the executive, Li Xiangdong, was based in the southwestern Sichuan province and he was the in charge of China Mobile’s centralized... -
Mondays are usually quiet news days but this week it’s definitely ‘bad news day’ with a number of stories highlighting security issues. You can never be sure that it’s because there are more security glitches happening these days or because we are being more open about them. The first was an announcement by European Commission (EC) following a phishing attack which allowed cyber criminals to steal account data, and perform a number of fraudulent transactions. Individual emails were sent to users...
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