Ofcom names 4G auction bidders

The bidders are Everything Everywhere, BT, Vodafone, O2 and Three, as well as Hong Kong conglomerate PCCW and UK network supplier MLL Telecom.

full text is here.

BYTE Guide To In-Flight Wi-Fi

Interesting.
Would you use Wi-Fi on a plane? Or is nice having somewhere still where you can go without Internet access?

#wcit on Twitter

The hashtag #wcit has been adopted for the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications on Twitter. Even if you are not normally a Twitter user, there is a steady stream of thoughts and opinions on the topics being discussed — some more interesting and sane than others — and it can be quite good fun seeing what is being discussed in near real time.

"Kenya’s mobile telephones: Vital for the poor"

There's an interesting piece on The Economist about mobile phones in Kenya, and the priority placed on having a phone — credit may score more highly than a meal in some cases.

This made me think of a posting on Slashdot a couple of months ago about the culture of "missed calls" in India; apparently it's customary not to answer a call from your driver / delivery person, since it costs them, but instead to receive the missed call and ring them back.

European Commission makes additional radio spectrum available for 4G services

The Commission said that 120MHz of frequency band that has been traditionally used for the delivery of 3G services should be utilised for the delivery of 4G services.

full text here.

Man files FCC complaint over AT&T FaceTime blocking

With the wireless Broadband access more services can be provided with good quality of service... and more and more, the operators are becoming as transport networks and probably not making enough revenue from the services they provide.

Claims are filed with FCC against AT&T for charging for Apple's FaceTime video conferencing on its 3G and 4G networks, and AT&T seems not to have a competing service to offer here!

See text here.

Reprogrammable SIMs

Ofcom has published a report on the imminent move from traditional form factor SIMs to reprogrammable SIMs — eUICC modules.

As we see an expansion of devices using the cellular network to include smart meters, cars, potentially medical devices and other products, the need for an ultra small form factor, non-removeable SIM is increasing, and eUICC is one of the proposed mechanisms for achieving this.

From an operator point of view, this is potentially quite scary — whole countries of smart meters could be switched from one provider to another in a matter of seconds, or even jumping between multiple providers per day, leveraging the best pricing deals. Conversely, there needs to be a secure, trusted mechanism for enabling over the air updating.

Plenty of nice juicy legal issues here!

Four of UK’s largest mobile operators enter joint venture to bring about 4G

From IT Pro Portal:

Four of the UK’s largest mobile service providers have come together in a bid to speed up the rollout of 4G in the UK.

EE, O2, Three and Vodafone have formed a new company in conjunction with the UK government and communications regulator Ofcom. The company’s primary mandate is to ensure that consumers continue to receive Freeview TV signals unimpeded by LTE networks.

What do you think of this approach? Is collaboration a good idea, to help get 4G in the hands of users faster, or would you have concerns about competition implications — or is there sufficient consumer benefit here?

Regulators demand patent licence clarification

With the "Patent war" among, mainly, smartphone vendors brought the US and European regulators to call for patent rules to be "improved" following complaints about the way some smartphone makers had sought to defend their rights.

In my view some or most of these patents "in the patent war" are not considered within FRAND as they are not seen “essential patents” .... so to solve this issue new guidelines are required to handle the "non-essential patents" competing in the same market place.

The BBC article is here.

"Measuring the Information Society 2012"

The ITU has published a report "Measuring the Information Society 2012" — you can download an executive summary (still 36 pages) here. The report contains some perhaps quite startling conclusions:

• Around 6 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions by the end of 2011
• Almost twice as many mobile-broadband as fixed-broadband subscriptions
• Mobile-broadband penetration is expected to continue growing at double-digit rates over the next few years, reflecting the spread of mobile Internet services
• By end 2011, 2.3 billion people (i.e. one in three) were using the Internet

The six billion cellular subscription figure is really rather impressive, as it's pretty close to the estimated world population of just over seven billion. That's only going to grow, with India increasing numbers of users, and also as we move from the nascency of machine to machine communications (M2M) into real rollout — as SIMs find their way into cars, fridges, display boards, gas/electricity/parking meters and so on, the number of connections is going to increase rapidly. (From a regulatory point of view, M2M will bring its own challenges, of course, particularly in terms of ensuring that the networks can support the increased data throughput, but, in some ways, are likely to be easier to handle that traditional person-to-person services — how many machines need to be able to call emergency services, for example, or are require protection against unwanted marketing messages?)

The report is well worth perusing, if only to get a better ideal of the scale and scope of communications technology. One area which seems a reasonable omission is any mention of numbers of people using over the top communications services — Skype, Viber, Facebook chat and the like. Whilst the use of traditional services will increase, I'd see the rate of growth of over the top services being even greater, and it's something which both network operators and existing service providers need to consider very carefully if they wish to continue to operate lucratively, and which regulators and policy makers need to bear in mind also.

New Internet Domain Names

A topic which probably straddles a few modules - and I'll try to cross post.

You have probably seen reports of the ICANN initiative to allow (for a very significant price) organisations to bid for their own top level domain name. The link below

http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en

should take you to the current state of affairs. What do you think? My own feeling is that many of the names applied for will never be commercially successful. In itself perhaps not new with ICANN. There have been a number of top level domain names - such as .biz - which have been established and failed miserably in the market place.

Telefónica UK and Vodafone UK to strengthen their network collaboration

Vodafone UK and Telefonica (O2) have announced plans, which are subject to regulatory approval, to strengthen their current collaboration, by pooling basic parts of their network infrastructure to create one national grid running each operator's independent spectrum.

The main points of the deal are:

• Companies to pool basic network infrastructure to create one national grid of 18,500 sites
• Both companies will be running independent spectrum and competing services
• Both companies pledge to close the digital divide between rural and urban areas targeting 98% indoor population coverage across 2G and 3G by 2015
• Agreement will lay the foundations for two competing 4G networks to deliver the capability for a nationwide 4G service faster than could be achieved independently

More details available here.

(Disclaimer — I was responsible for the privacy and law enforcement assistance parts of this deal, for Vodafone.)

Talk Talk demand regulatory action on BTs new fibre network

"The regulatory framework today is a little too skewed to driving investment and not enough to driving competition," said Harding. "In 10 years' time when the majority of consumers should have moved on to a superfast product the idea that I will be buying my largest product from my largest competitor is not a credible place to be." BT countered that at current prices, it will take 12 to 14 years for the company to recoup its £2.5bn investment in fibre. More : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/08/bt-superfast-broadband It's quite interesting to see that there is currently no regulation on the fibre network. BT are pushing forward - understandably so - though are having to compete with Virgin media who currently have the largest and largest growing fibre customer base in the UK. Talk Talk I guess are in a position to be complaining considering the complete lack of regulation in this area and with technology advancing so rapidly it could be fair to assume there will not be an 'end' to the investment so ensuring strong competition is vital throughout. Nonetheless, considering the current climate I'd doubt that Ofcom would decide on anything too far and beyond what prices BT are currently proposing. Or do you guys think otherwise? Harding makes comments later in the article about universal access taking precedence over speed of services. Technically, I guess this shouldn't have to be an either or. Do you think the regulation imposed regarding universal access, particularly 'last mile' access, on the next generation of internet infrastructure has been too limited? From the top of my head I think more needed to be done to make use of mobile internet infrastructure and align this with the landline fibre markets...I'd be curious to hear your views!

Vodafone's Recommended Offer for Cable & Wireless Worldwide

Some of you may have already seen the news that Vodafone is proposing to buy Cable & Wireless Worldwide — for those that have not, and might be interested, you can access the official media release here.

Spectrum management for Olympics

Ofcom has published its final statement on how it plans to manage spectrum during the Olympics — it looks like a real challenge!

Connectedness, and the art of distraction

There’s an interesting piece of the New York Times website about the apparent drop in support for reading on tablet devices, in favour of traditional books and dedicated eReaders — the argument is that, with their connectivity options, and ability to run other apps, when one attempts to read on a tablet, it is too easy to be distracted.

I can relate to this very much — when I started using the iPad as an eReader, I often found myself distracted. It’s just too easy to switch to checking my email or browsing the web. The solution for me is to keep Wi-Fi switched off on my iPad unless I need it on; generally, this is just for synchronising reading material or marked up documents to or from the device, and then it gets switched off again.

With Wi-Fi off, I can read in peace, and gradually rebuild the concentration which I used to have, but which seems to have been obliterated by over-connectedness. Whereas a year and a half ago, when I started using the iPad, I was struggling to read for more than 10 minutes or so without being distracted, now I regularly read for an hour or so — and, sad to say, perhaps, it feels good!

I spend far more time working with Wi-Fi off and applications running in full screen mode on my Mac, as it reduces the likelihood of me being distracted. I never thought “connectedness” would be a bad thing, but I’m really starting to think that we’re going the wrong way overall — that we should be promoting “connected when you want it” over “always connected,” and helping rediscover the time for distraction-less reading and thinking.

Perhaps not telecoms policy in the traditional sense, but certainly something which has been taking up my research time for some months now — whether the current approach to communications needs to be re-adjusted, to ensure that we are a connectable society, rather than a merely connected one.

An interesting book

I just received this book, and I highly recommend it.
It's called "Competition and Chaos: U.S. Telecommunications Since the 1996 Act", it was published in 2005 so it's not really new but it analyzes the policy makers role (and mistakes) since 1996 and the subsequent events including the burst of the .net bubble.

The book can be obtained from amazon through the following link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Competition-Chaos-Telecommunications-Since-Telecom/dp/0815716176/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1330962723&sr=8-5

Authorization of Telecommunications Services

I came across the document "Authorization of Telecommunications Services" as I was looking for reading on the second theme, and thought it might be of wider use. It's available here.

The concept of a "licence"

Listening to David's podcast on the concept of a licence, described, with reference to the OED, as a government-granted permission to do something which would otherwise be illegal, and the particular emphasis on the government-centric nature of licence, made me think.

What struck me is that, under English law at least, a licence is a very simple notion, far simpler than the definition proposed here — a licence is simply a permission granted by someone who has a power to restrict others from performing the act in question. When I permit someone to perform an act restricted by copyright in respect of a copyright work of which I am the owner, I am granting a licence; likewise, when I permit someone to walk over my land, I grant them a licence. In each case, I have the right to exclude — central to the notion of ownership of property — but I choose to permit.

Although a subject of some considerable debate, a licence, to my mind, is fundamentally different from a contract, since it requires no meeting of the minds — it is devoid of any of the formality required for a contract, such as offer, acceptance, consideration, or an intent to create legal relations. Instead, as a bare permission, I am entitled to do something which I would otherwise not be entitled to do — this need not be something which would otherwise be illegal, though, but merely something which would trigger some form of liability; indeed, to my mind, a licence is generally granted to permit something which would otherwise be a tort (such as trespass, or copyright infringement) rather than a crime.

When we consider licensing in the telecoms context, as opposed to either a statutory or state monopoly, or an authorisation, I would see a licence as being closer to a negotiated agreement than a bare licence in that, in return for a payment (consideration) and the agreement to abide by certain terms, one party secures the right from another to provide a telecommunications service — the fundamental parts of a contract would seem to be made out. Indeed, since a licence is generally revokable at will, absent the equitable protection of estoppel, I would perhaps ask if it is not the contractual nature of what is termed a licence in this context which gives rise to the certainty, which is the stimulus for the investment. Conversely, an authorisation is closer to a bare licence, to my mind, whereby someone who satisfies certain requirements is permitted to do something which would otherwise be restricted (such as providing a communications service). One of the main benefits of an authorisation-based scheme is that there is no need to enter into negotiations for a "licence" — as long as one complies with the then-current requirements, one is permitted to operate.

What are your views on this? Do the terms really seem to be the wrong way round, or am I missing something more fundamental?

Weekend review

I would be interested to know how you are getting on with the issue of Regulators and Commissioners and which you find most appropriate in your jurisdiction. Any questions please don't hesitate to contact me at d.mellor@soton.ac.uk Have a good weekend and look forward to receiving your theme reports on Monday week.

Telecom Regulations in a turbulent time: the situation in Egypt

This post is based on an email discussion I had with Prof David Mellor, as the discussion seemed to be productive, Dr Mellor suggested that we share it on the blog and open the discussion with more participants.

As an introduction, for those unfamiliar with the current political conditions in Egypt, the country has been facing major transformations since the Arab spring and the overthrow of the ruling regime in January / February 2011.
During those 12 months, Egypt had 3 different Prime Ministers and 3 different ICT ministers; which certainly had an unlikely impact on the telecom regulations.

It also deems necessary to share some information about the telecommunications environment and market, please refer to the footnote* for a brief introduction.

Due to the political instabilities, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and tourism revenues are declining, creating economic pressures, resulting in a growing trend in protecting the existing government sources of income, including Telecom Egypt dividends (approx. Net Profit of GBP 300 in 2011).

There is also an on-going general mood of favouring public over private investments, and perceiving privatisation as driven by corruption.

All those factors are resulting in the following symptoms:

1) Difficulty in balancing between long- and short-term objectives
Although this is one of the major challenges facing most regulators, during turbulent times, the magnitude of the challenge is multiplied.
As an example, market reforms through additional liberalisation, as a long-term objective has a negative effect on the incumbent’s short-term financial results.

2) Delay in licensing new services / promoting existing services
Licensing new services specially requiring large investments cannot be offered during uncertainties. As a result, LTE plans will not be realized in the near future, same applies to an ambitious broadband initiative, aiming at tripling the fixed broadband penetration in 3 years.

3) Slow decision-making
Fearing allegation of corruption, decision-making process in the government is escalated to higher than usual levels. Operational decisions are often escalated to board of directors, and in some cases to the general assembly.

As a remedy for this situation, there are certain steps that have to be taken. Some of the possible solutions may be:

1. Detach the NTRA from the ICT ministry
   
2. Issue MVNO licenses, and allow the incumbent an MVNO license opportunity
   
3. In return, introduce competition in the services where Telecom Egypt enjoys a monopoly (or duopoly) status, for example Infrastructure and International voice gateways.

I hope you find this post useful, your comments are highly appreciated

*Footnote
The regulatory body is the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), which reports to the ICT ministry, and the minister himself is the NTRA (honorary) chairman.

The incumbent (Telecom Egypt) is primarily government owned (80% of the shares) and it enjoys monopoly position in:
• Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS)
• Transmission Network Infrastructure
And a semi-monopoly in the International voice gateway (Etisalat Misr, the 3rd mobile operator is licensed to operate an international voice gateway, limited to its own traffic)
It also fully owns the market leader Internet Services Provider (approx. 60% market share)

Telecom Egypt does not own a mobile license (MVNO is not yet introduced in the market); it owns however a stake of 45% in Vodafone Egypt

The mobile market is highly competitive, 3 MNO licenses were issued

As for the data market, there is a high number of ISP’s which are continuously being consolidated, mainly under mobile operators.

The NTRA recently issued 2 infrastructure licenses, with the scope limited to the residential closed compounds.

For a complete list of the licensed telecom services, you may refer to:
http://www.ntra.gov.eg/presentations/LicensedTelecomTree16012012_En.pdf

US regulator blocks rollout of LightSquared Network

After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and shilly-shallying the US national comms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has ruled that the ambitious nationwide LTE/satellite network planned by LightSquared will not be allowed because it would cause "serious interference" with GPS signals, services and devices.
What makes the decision all the more galling for LightSquared is the fact that the FCC had earlier given conditional approval for network deployment and the company was working, and spending money, to do just that... ful text.

Weekend Review

Neil,Shahir Sitiveni and Chantel are currently following this blog to my knowledge and Ian tells me that six others have expressed an interest si I hope you all join and allow me to share over forty years of experience gained working in the Telecomms Industry. Since I have visited over 120 Countries I no doubt have been active in the Region where you reside and have probably had the experience to meet your colleagues. I look forward to receiving more emails as you reflect over the weekend which modules you are going to follow. In the meantime ask yourselves does the Regulator/Commission improve ICT Provision in your Country? Share with others your experiences.have a good weekend. David

Success

Dear Students If you can read this it is my first blog and merely a test. Please send me an email to d.mellor@soton.ac.uk if you manage to read the text. Best regards David Mellor

"Cisco to challenge Microsoft Skype deal at EU court"

The BBC, and a number of other sources, is reporting that Cisco is to challenge Microsoft's takeover over Skype. (Story here.)

Cisco has written that its appeal:

is about one thing only: securing standards-based interoperability in the video calling space. Our goal is to make video calling as easy and seamless as email is today. Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialing a phone number. Today, however, you can’t make seamless video calls from one platform to another, much to the frustration of consumers and business users alike.

Cisco believes that the right approach for the industry is to rally around open standards. We believe standards-based interoperability will accelerate innovation, create economic value, and increase choice for users of video communications, entertainment, and services.

This is of particular interest to me, as, currently, it does not seem clear that telecoms regulation in the EU relates to over the top services.

The definition of "electronic communications services" in directive 2002/21/EC is a service "which consists wholly or mainly in the conveyance of signals on electronic communications networks," and "electronic communications networks" is defined as "transmission systems and, where applicable, switching or routing
equipment and other resources which permit the conveyance of signals." Whilst the definition goes on to talk about circuit- and packet-switched networks, it seems to be that this relates more to GPRS/UMTS than to services which are carried over the top of such networks, such as Skype traffic. (c.f. s3.19 of Ofcom's statement on the regulation of VOIP services and access to emergency services, although even this may be encompassing more than the wording of the directive permits, in my opinion.)

It is likely that my first theme report is going to focus on the extent to which regulatory principles should apply to over the top services, but, irrespective of telecommunications law, it seems that Cisco has a reasonable complaint here, based on competition law. However, it would be highly desirable for interconnection obligations and the like to apply to over the top services, irrespective of PSTN breakout, from a consumer point of view. It is likely, however, to be far less attractive to providers of such services, where access to the service is a "stickiness" factor for the product — the ability to use FaceTime, for example, is dependent (currently) on the purchase of Apple hardware.

What do you think? Is Cisco right to make this challenge? Should regulatory principles apply to over the top services?

Welcome

This is the blog site for the Southampton University LLM module in Telecoms Policy and Regulation.

Enjoy

Ian