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!