The measures will reduce consumer charges and simplify red tape for mobile companies.
As part of a raft of measures to reform the telecoms market, the European Commission is proposing to scrap mobile phone roaming charges across Europe. The Commission described the reforms as “the most ambitious plan in 26 years of telecoms market reform”.
Continue reading… “European Union plans to end mobile phone roaming charges”
National Security Agency headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.
New York Times: The revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.”
Continue reading… “NSA surveillance is criminal”
Recently, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance compiled this map of all the communities in the country that control their own access to the Internet. There are about 340 of them with publicly owned fiber-optic or cable networks, serving either all or parts of town. Those residents and businesses in the places served don’t have to spar with telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast. They get their Internet instead – like many communities do their electric utility – straight from the city.
Continue reading… “Why there are no big cities that have municipal broadband networks”
Number of mobile broandband subrscriptions to surpass 1 billion in 2011.
Mobile broadband subscriptions are on track to surpass 1 billion in 2011 only months after reaching half a billion, Ericsson said on Tuesday, highlighting a key growth driver for the telecom sector.
Continue reading… “Mobile Broadband Users Will Surpass 1 Billion by the End of 2011”
The UAE said it would suspend BlackBerry Messenger, email and web browser services from October 11.
The United Arab Emirates is to block sending emails, accessing the internet, and delivering instant messages to other Blackberry handsets.
The allegations against German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom just keep on coming. German news service, Spiegel, has information that Telekom tracked journalists’ movements using mobile phone data. And the company may have hired ex-Stasi spies to help.
Continue reading… “Spy Scandal – Telekom Accused of Tracking Journalists’ Mobile Phone Signals”