Net Neutrality is a critical topic that must be considered with less passion and more pragmatism.

Most of the operators are held by private investors. They invest in network infrastructure and sell services that are supposed to give them decent ROI. I’m afraid the Net Neutrality joint to the boom in Mobile Broadband traffic will lead to the bankruptcy of the liberal telecom market model. Then we go back to the minimum servicing Post and Telegraph Telcos.

The unpredictable and surprising growth of the mobile broadband traffic has surprised most of the mobile operators. In fact, the radio technologies, even HSPA+ and LTE appeared as incapable to satisfy the new capacity requirements. Operators all over the world are seeking for smart ways to offload the broadband traffic from wireless to fixed-line through Femtocell and Wifi in order to release their networks and their pockets.
Furthermore, network suppliers are working on new architectures that will revolutionize the wireless networks by relying most of the load on wireline networks and deliver the switching and service functions on cloud computing datacenters. The goal is also to release the expenditures and propose more flexible and scalable solutions to the suffering operators.

So, calling for Net Neutrality on the Wireless field will squeeze very hard the MNO business. Imagine that the statistically planned radio networks get flooded by P2P file sharing, video and skype traffics. Under a crisis situation, operators will either continue spending more and more on capacity upgrades; which will exhaust their budgets and decrease the profitability of their business without even solving the problem. Or, they will join hands to lobby for raising prices and finding new ways to charge more, not only end users but also content houses (facebook, google, why not?). Because with Net Neutrality and without one of these two solutions, MNOs will just hit the wall.

For fixed-line the picture is not less dark. In fact, for business balance purpose, the fixed-line broadband networks have always been built considering statistical traffic planning and estimation. Yet, if Net Neutrality is imposed, P2P file sharing and video traffic will overtake huge parts of the bandwidths, compromising HTTP, SLA professional services and so on. What should the operator do is even rougher than Wireless in somehow. There will be a whole chain of land gears to upgrade or swap: from access to aggregation switches to the backbone. Even without Net Neutrality, wireline operators cannot afford the traditional flat rate price packaged Internet (type 30$/month) and they’re even lobbying to charge the content providers such as Facebook and Google (yes, lion is being grabbed by its tale for business necessity!). And the irony is that they accepted to negotiate in order to avoid future crisis.

Net Neutrality is an ethical concept that can be considered as a citizen right in some point of view. However, the telecom market has been liberalized since at least a decade allover the world; and network operators act under a license contract and serve under pragmatic business plans. Net Neutrality is a critical variable that can compromise the whole business profitability. It must be present in the license conditions and contract as a clear clause. I’m saying so while being sure that if this happens, no investor will bother to buy telecom operation license, and we will see the PTT Telco model reestablish again in many markets.

If governments insist to apply the Net Neutrality, network operators will most probably lobby together and raise the prices in an extraordinarily way, and here end user will neither enjoy neutrality nor keep the advantageous flat rate prices.

I’d like also to look at the story from another angle. As has been reported recently by the WHO, there is more and more proofs that radio waves, precisely the case of mobile handsets, cause cancer, brain problems and nervous diseases. This is still a shy news until now, but it will develop and may cause serious economic crisis later.

Joining the Net Neutrality squeeze job to the health concerns to the difficulties in keeping steady business models will threat in a very dangerous way the telecom operators and the whole telecom industry. And therefore the risk of a more serious financial crisis has to be considered.

Posted by akkeri | Report as abusive

A very good read, but it seems as usual, its the consumer who will take it in the shorts.

Here are McAfee’s five security tips:

• Be aware: It may not be out there to get you right now, but know that it exists and that a lapse of judgment could come back to haunt you.
• Research apps and publishers: McAfee says to download broadly used apps that have good user ratings and a lot of reviews. It is akin to making sure you walk home through well-lit areas.
• Use reputable app stores: You never really know what is going to sneak into a third-party app store. The Apple App Store and Android Market are sort of the app repositories of record. The App Store can be trusted to be almost 100% free of malware while the Android Market has done a better job of cleaning itself up after the DroidDream debacle earlier this year.
• Check permissions: When you download an app, it tells you exactly what it is going to do. See an app for Mark Twain quotes that requests access to your calendar, SMS messaging and contacts? Given the nature of the app, it probably shouldn’t be doing those things. If an app’s permissions seem suspicious, do not download the app until you have gone back and done your research.
• Install antivirus: This one is probably a little self-serving coming from a security company (that is owned by Intel), but it also fits in with the above tip. Mobile security apps will look at an app’s permissions and check the app to see if it is actually doing what it says it is going to do. If it is not, a warning will pop up saying that the app is suspicious. Norton from Symantec and Lookout are both good options for Android.

In addition to McAfee’s tips, here are a few of our own:

• Pay attention: Do not go downloading apps in third-party markets willy-nilly. Check the URL of the page you are downloading from and make sure that it makes a semblance of sense. Sometimes it is the little things that you would have seen if you paid attention that end up hurting the most when you do not follow up.
• Trust no one: That includes the security companies. Every half year and or so the security companies come out with new data about the big, bad world of scary malware. Why do they do this? So you will download their offerings to get rid of that malware. Take a step back and ask yourself what the problem really is and find a way to solve it using your own recognizance.
• Common Sense: What do you do when you leave the house? You lock the door. When on a bike, you make sure to have a good lock for when you need to park it. You do not run down railroad tracks that have a high frequency of trains. You do not purposefully endanger yourself in the real world, take that approach to digital.

How do you protect your smartphone or tablet? Let us know in the comments.

See Also

• Hotspot Shield Comes to iOS to Bring HTTPS to Your iPhone
• Encryption, Passcode & Physical Security Flaws Found in iOS 5
• Mobile Devices, Mobile Workers – What’s an IT Manager To Do?
• Where Does Mobile Malware Come From & How Do You Protect Yourself? [Infographic]

Posted From Tekpedia Reader

The number of public Wi-Fi hotspots is expected to increase by 350 percent in the next four years, as operators look for ways to offload traffic from their mobile networks, according to a report by market research company Informa Telecoms and Media.

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By 2015 users around the world will be able to connect to 5.8 million public hotspots, Informa wrote in the “Global developments in public Wi-Fi” report, which was commissioned by Wireless Broadband Alliance. WBA members include AT&T, Boingo, Cisco Systems, Deutsche Telekom and Google. Its goal is to make Wi-Fi services easier to use.

Mobile data growth is a key reason for the rapid build-out of Wi-Fi hotspots, according to Informa. On Monday, telecom equipment vendor Ericsson published a report which contends that mobile data traffic will grow tenfold in 2G, 3G and 4G networks between 2011 and 2016.

To handle the growth, operators will have to use a number of different technologies, including Wi-Fi, LTE (Long Term Evolution) and traffic shaping, according to Thomas Wehmeier, principal analyst at Informa.

Users don’t care about acronyms like 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi, as long as their network connection works well, according to the WBA.

However, to increase usage, hotspots also have to become easier to use. Operators and vendors are working on integrating mobile networks and Wi-Fi hotspots more closely, including using SIM cards to simplify the log-in procedure and roaming between different networks.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is next year planning to launch a certification program that will offer standardized mechanisms for discovery, authentication and provisioning. The program will be based on its Hotspot 2.0 specification, which also used by the Wireless Broadband Alliance as it trials next-generation hotspots. In June, the two organizations said they will cooperate on developing hotspots.

But the buildout of Wi-Fi hotspots isn’t just about offloading data. Telefonica is using Wi-Fi to build a location-based services and earlier this year hotspot provider The Cloud was acquired by British Sky Broadcasting Group, which is mostly known for its satellite TV services.

The report also highlights the proliferation of smartphones, which will soon overtake laptops as the most popular way to connect to hotspots. Globally, smartphones account for 36 percent of all connections, compared to 48 percent for laptops and 10 percent for tablets. However, in North America smartphones already outnumber laptop connections, according to Informa.

Informa defines public hotspots as a place that offers Internet access to all members of the public, either for a fee or for free. The report excludes 4.5 million community hotspots, where consumers today share their broadband connection with others using equipment from Fon.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

Makes a WiFi Phone a more feasible option.

Yet Another Reason to Use Boingo, Free VPN!

By David Strom / November 9, 2011 3:00 PM / 2 Comments

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As of October 2011, 850,000 U.S. veterans were unemployed. The jobless rate for post-9/11 vets hit 12.1 percent. With an estimated one million service members scheduled to leave the military between 2011 and 2016, it was high time for President Obama to find new ways to help vets find civilian jobs. In addition to launching a government resource on WhiteHouse.gov, Obama teamed up with LinkedIn and Google to offer additional resources for veterans.

LinkedIn now tags job postings that might be best for veterans, and Google offers additional tools for the building the military veteran community online.

Article Shared from www.readwriteweb.com

In December 2010, the Federal Communications Commission imposed network neutrality regulations on broadband-access providers. These providers would be forbidden to block subscribers’ use of certain types of high-volume-using devices or software, or to unreasonably discriminate by offering superior access for extra fees.

The Senate on Thursday voted down a Republican bill to block net neutrality, and President Barack Obama had pledged to veto the bill if it passed.

The FCC had decided net neutrality rules are necessary, because the Internet was supposed to bar major “gatekeepers.” This view is faulty; online networks are an evolving ecosystem relying on freedom to innovate.

Universities often bar bandwidth-gobbling services such as Skype. They limit traffic to improve overall performance. A truly open Internet allows consumers, investors and entrepreneurs to choose among many models, discovering efficiencies.

Antitrust regulators have not brought a single major case accusing a firm of anticompetitive practice. Indeed, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division recommended that the FCC not impose neutrality rules, which might reduce investment in broadband networks.

But the commission insisted rules were needed because otherwise, we would be “allowing gigantic corporations … to exercise unfettered control over Americans’ access to the Internet.”

This “unfettered control” is actually considerably fettered — by competition that delivered the open platform the commission supposedly seeks to protect. And, it was not exactly a gigantic corporation that was first to feel an FCC neutrality complaint. That honor belongs to MetroPCS, America’s fifth-largest mobile operator.

MetroPCS offers an all-you-can-eat plan for wireless talk, texting and data for just $40 a month — and it blocks video streaming. But, with a special compression format made by Google — the owner of YouTube — MetroPCS offers its customers unlimited YouTube videos. This discriminates against other video websites, the FCC ruled.

Net neutrality attacked MetroPCS, singling out its business model as suspiciously non-neutral. In forcing innovative firms to defend themselves about offers that improve consumer welfare, a clumsy government does not advance an open Internet, but harms it.

Thomas Hazlett is professor of law and economics at George Mason University. He wrote the Encounter Books Broadside “The Fallacy of Net Neutrality,” from which this article was adapted.