WCA MAY 2015

Telecom news

high-tech, while the iOS platform is favoured in the legal, finance and public sectors. According to Forbes, workers access an average of seven mobile apps per day – double the number of times a worker logs into a legacy system daily. Ø Neustar on 5 th March announced it had reached agreement with the Canadian Local Number Portability Consortium (CLNPC) on an extension of its current contract, now set to run through 2017. The Sterling, Virginia-based information and analytics firm has served as the group’s administrator for both the US and Canada for 18 years. CLNPC president Jacques Sarrazin said that, as the future administrator for the USA had not yet been conclusively determined, this short-term extension with Neustar is the prudent course. Should a transition take place, CLNPC will be in a position to evaluate the new vendor prior to any commitment by the Canadian service provider community. “For HP, the Telefónica deal is a nice win that includes a stack of infrastructure, services and software.” Editor Larry Dignan of SmartPlanet was reporting on the systems and networking integration pact with Spanish broadband and telecom provider Telefónica announced on 3 rd March by Hewlett-Packard. The win is welcome news for HP (Palo Alto, California), which had just said that its networking unit struggled in the fiscal first quarter. HP cited execution issues in China and the USA. For its part, Mr Dignan wrote, Telefónica is looking to move away from its proprietary architecture to virtualisation-powered UNICA. It will also use HP’s software-defined networking tools. Telefónica said it intends to virtualise non-critical systems, move to virtual-core networking technology, and then use virtualisation for home subscriber servers, among other applications.

Once the Telecoms Council states its position, then the Commission, Parliament, and Council must negotiate on rules that they all can endorse. “As it looks now, this will be a hard confrontation,” Ms Schaake was quoted as saying. “The goals of the Council are currently far off from the necessity to shape the economy of the future.” (“Net Neutrality Fight Looms in Europe As MEPs Prepare For a Hard Negotiation With the Council and Commission,” 3 rd March) At Mobile World Congress 2015, held 2 nd to 5 th March in Barcelona, Spain, Digital Economy and Society Commissioner Günther Oettinger raised a voice for the service providers. With a focus on 5G (the apparent European industry strategy), he called for a stance on net neutrality that takes into consideration the interests – and the investment potential – of the telecoms. “We need a balanced approach,” Mr Oettinger said. “On the one hand no blocking or throttling of online content, applications and services. At the same time guaranteeing efficient network management and leaving space for continued network and service innovation.” Ø As to predicting the likely outcome of the “hard confrontation”, Mr Scales of TelecomTV recommended “reading between the lines with a strong magnifying glass and under ideal lighting conditions.” He did hazard the guess that a ‘permissive’ version of specialised services would be negotiated into the single-market legislation. Elsewhere in telecom . . . Ø A committee of the Australian Parliament is inquiring into the question of “how to deal with the authorisation of a disclosure or use of telecommunications data for the purpose of determining the identity of a journalist’s source.” The inquiry followed on a recommendation by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security that it conduct its own review in the matter. A report is expected by 4 th June.

Ø The annual telecommunications report for 2013-14 from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, published 6 th March, shows that the prices paid by consumers for telecom services fell by 2.7 percent over the year. Crediting competition for the improvement, the independent statutory authority also said that the average real prices of landline and mobile voice calls have fallen by around 50 per cent since 1997-98. According to the ACCC, Australian broadband customers are also benefiting from larger data allowances and faster speeds. Ø The US Air Force is reviewing whether or not to open its future GPS-III satellite buys to competition, in part because of late delivery by Lockheed Martin (Bethesda, Maryland) on the first one. As reported on 6 th February by Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News , the USAF is under contract with Lockheed for eight GPS-III satellites, with options for four more. But the service says that the first of these – set to launch in January 2016 – will be 26 months late. The head of USAF space acquisitions, Major General Gen Roger Teague, told reporters that the delay influenced a decision to conduct market research to determine whether companies under consideration are capable of competing. Gen Teague said: “On programs that just aren’t executing, you just can’t continue to pour money” [into them]. Mr Capaccio wrote that the USAF plans to purchase a total of 32 GPS satellites. Ø The laptop continues to be the first choice of US workers who use mobile devices, according to various studies collated by Forbes magazine (“The State of the Mobile Enterprise,” 6 th March). Some 51 per cent of mobile workers opt for a laptop, 40 per cent for a smartphone, and 19 per cent for a tablet. Android devices were found to be popular among workers in manufacturing, transportation and

43

www.read-wca.com

Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2015