Nokia And Apple Settle Long Running Dispute
After a long running dispute Nokia and Apple have agreed a technology licensing agreement.
Utility Exchange reported last year that Apple and Nokia were in dispute over several different patent infringements including infringements with the Apple iPad 3G and the iPhone. Nokia initially sued Apple in 2009 and extended the action in December 2010 with Apple suing Nokia in return.
Nokia said “The agreement will result in settlement of all patent litigation between the companies”.
According to Nokia, Apple will pay the company a one off payment. However, the amount to be paid has not been revealed. Apple will also pay Nokia ongoing royalties to use its technology. Apple added that the agreement covered patents belonging to both companies.
The chief executive of Nokia, Stephen Elop, said “We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees”.
He added “This settlement demonstrates Nokia’s industry-leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market”.
The two companies have agreed to drop all current lawsuits and according to Apple will “enter into a licence covering some of each other’s patents, but not the majority of the innovations that make the iPhone unique”.
Nokia has had a few knock backs recently so this news is positive for the telecoms company. The company has been struggling to compete in the smartphone market which is dominated by Apple and the Google Android operating system.
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Talk Talk Makes Home Safe With Broadband Blocking Service
Talk Talk is set to allow customers to choose whether or not they want to filter malicious or offensive content from their broadband service via a centralised blocking service called Home Safe.
Talk Talk will become the first large ISP to offer this centralised blocking service to its customers – allowing them to block malicious or offensive material at server level.
The blocking service will also enable parents to stop their children accessing adult content on their computers.
At the moment users have to rely on security software which is installed on a PC in order to protect themselves from infection. The new service has been questioned by experts who wonder if the service will be able to react quickly enough to new threats.
The new Talk Talk service, Home Safe, will run on the central computer system positioned between the web and the individual user’s home connection. It will scan sites users want to use to check whether there are any malicious programs connected to the site. It will also block single alerts on pages which it finds to have malware.
Talk Talk said it doesn’t retain details such as a user’s IP address so it’s not possible to identify individual customers.
It means parents who are concerned that their children are able to access adult material will be able to log on to a web page and set their own content filters enabling some sites to be blocked completely.
Not only will the new Talk Talk service block adult content and filter malicious malware but parents will be able to put a time lock on services such as Facebook, to prevent them being accessed by children when they are supposed to be doing other things such as their homework.
Security experts however have questioned the usefulness of the service. Some question whether the system can protect against malware. E.g. The senior security researcher at Trend Micro, Rik Ferguson, said the “white list” may not work for services such as Facebook. He said “The frequency with which we see rogue apps popping up on Facebook is much greater than one every 24 hours”.
He suggested it would be more useful to scan outbound internet traffic to analyse whether infected PC’s are sending spam or involved in large scale web attacks.
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BT Improves Copper Network To Give Internet Speeds Of Up To 20mbps
BT has said it is planning to enhance the copper broadband network in the UK so that 80% of the country can access internet speeds of up to 20mbps from the current 8mbps, which is good news for both domestic and business broadband users.
BT says its plan to improve copper broadband networks in the UK is an extension of its ADSL2+ copper broadband service – Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC). At the moment this is available from over 1,000 exchanges providing improved broadband for over 15.5 million domestic and business premises.
As part of its work, the telecom company is improving over 30,000 lines a week. It means more customers will benefit from this much improved copper service which is being used by over 2 million consumers at the moment.
The upgrades will be offered by BT Wholesale to other internet providers such as Talk Talk and BT Retail so that they can offer it to their own customers.
BT has said that it will spend around £2.5 billion investing in fibre broadband so that around 66% of the UK has access to superfast broadband by 2015. This will provide speeds of “up to 40mbps” – something which is accessible to over 4 million homes and businesses at the moment.
Meanwhile, network operators including Talk Talk and Virgin Media have sent a letter to Ed Vaizey, the minister responsible for Broadband Delivery UK, which suggests the Government’s plan to invest £830 million in improving rural broadband may not be viable and the subsidy scheme could be dominated by BT.
Last year Ofcom ordered BT to give other internet service providers access to its infrastructure of ducts and poles to enable them to reduce the cost of rolling out fibre optic cable in rural towns and villages. However, network operators complain that BT’s pricing is too high.
The leaked letter to Ed Vaizey said, “We are unanimous in the belief that the BDUK competitive procurement process will lack a credible alternative to BT, should BT fail to make substantial revisions to…pricing”.
The letter suggested Ofcom should intervene as soon as possible to “require BT to quickly revise the pricing”.
BT published a draft pricing policy in January but internet providers including Talk Talk, Fujitsu, Virgin Media and Geo say these figures produced by BT are as much as 4 or 5 times its costs and consequently it would be cheaper to build their own ducts and poles.
BT will make a final offer in the summer and is currently being discussed by an industry forum. If after BT has announced its final pricing, other providers are still not happy it could be that Ofcom could regulate pricing.
BT answered the points in the letter by saying “The fact is our proposed prices for duct access compare very well with European averages whilst our plans for pole access have been held up due to others delaying our trials”.
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Ofcom Changes Could Mean Cheaper Telephone And Broadband Bills
Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, is attempting to cut the cost of wholesale prices which could result in cheaper telephone and broadband services.
Ofcom has proposed amendments to the list of prices that Openreach can charge other telecom providers for using its facilities. Openreach manages BT’s network and Ofcom wants to reduce the wholesale cost of telecoms and broadband. It’s thought that some wholesale charges could be cut by as much as 10% each year.
The main beneficiaries of the move will be telecom suppliers such as Talk Talk and Sky. Virgin Media won’t benefit because it has its own cable network.
BT competitors access the BT network in two ways. The first is via Local Loop Unbundling and the second is Wholesale Line Rental.
Local Loop Unbundling enables telecoms companies to put their equipment in BT exchanges and actually take over customer lines. With the new Ofcom changes it’s hoped the amount charged by Openreach will drop by between 1.2 and 4.2% each year. Ofcom wants shared lines to fall in price by between 11.6 and 14.6% each year. This could benefit around 7.5 million unbundled lines.
Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) is where a telecom provider rents lines from Openreach rather than taking over the line completely. Ofcom wants to reduce these prices by between 3.1 and 6.1% each year which should benefit around 6.14 million WLR lines in the UK.
In a statement Ofcom said “Ofcom expects its proposed prices to lead to real term price reductions for consumers, as communications providers pass on their savings to their landline and broadband customers”.
BT’s response to Ofcom’s announcement was that they were encouraged by Ofcom’s acknowledgment of the fact that BT invests heavily in communications infrastructure but said it “would question some of the underlying assumptions being used”.
In a statement BT said “BT invests more than any other company in the UK’s communications infrastructure, so it is critical that it is able to achieve a fair rate of return in order to continue its investment in copper and fibre-based services”.
Ofcom’s proposals are part of a consultation process which will end on the 9 June and conclusions will be published in the autumn.
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Concerns As Chinese Telecoms Company Develops BT’s Superfast Broadband Technology
There are concerns that a Chinese telecoms company with links to the Chinese Red Army is developing technology which will provide superfast broadband to British homes and businesses.
BT is in the process of rolling out superfast broadband across the country but the equipment is being tested in labs in China which has raised fears over security. The telecoms company involved, Huawei, is closely linked to the military in China. As a result security experts have warned that Britain could be open to cyber attacks.
The former chairman of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, Dr Kim Howells, said the collaboration and shared technology between BT and Huawei was “very worrying”. He added “I would urge caution here because I know the intelligence agencies are very wary about sharing technology with the Chinese”.
He continued “The truth is that no matter how a Chinese company presents itself it is never really separate from the state or free from Chinese government diktats. It gives the Chinese a key component at the heart of British communications”.
Huawei began selling software to telecommunications companies in Britain in 2000 and recently the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has supported the company’s proposal to build a mobile phone network on the London Underground ready for the 2012 Olympics.
A cyber expert with KCS, one of Britain’s biggest intelligence and security companies, Massimo Cotrozzi, told The Sunday Mail that because Huawei was so closely involved in BT systems it raised the possibility of re-routing sensitive communications.
Mr Cotrozzi said “I feel that the biggest concern here should not be the security of Huawei’s infrastructure, but rather the opportunity to have a foreign country’s provider strongly linked to the Chinese army”.
Huawei has set up a lab in Shenzhen with exact copies of the computers and telecom systems used by BT. A BT spokesman said “The lab in Shenzhen is simply used for testing purposes and mirrors the environment that BT will use the equipment in the UK”. He added “The lab is managed strictly to adhere to security rules. It is not connected to any live UK network and so any such allegation is wrong”.
Meanwhile a spokesman for the Chinese telecom company, Huawei said “Huawei has a proven track record of providing secure products and solutions to 45 of the top 50 telecommunications operators globally, and there has been no breach of security using Huawei’s equipment”.
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Consumers Hit By Rising Energy And Fuel Bills Now Face BT Price Increase
As consumers face rising energy and fuel bills the cost of making a call with BT is set to increase for the third time in a year meaning many customers will be paying an extra £100 when they receive their telecom bill.
BT has increased the cost of making calls with charge increases coming into effect at the end of next month.
It comes at a bad time because not only are consumers now faced with rising fuel, energy and food costs but they are now set to be hit by above inflation rises to the cost of making a call.
BT has not just increased the cost of making daytime calls but has also increased connection charges and the call minder answer phone service and line rental. While only those on the basic package will be affected by most of these increases, all BT customers will be hit by the rise in line rental. Just a year ago BT line rental was £12.79 a month while the next price rise will take it to £13.90 a month.
Only a year ago daytime calls were at 5.4p a minute but this has increased to 7.6p a minute while the connection charge has gone up from 9.3p a year ago to 12.5p once the new charges come into effect.
BT is trying to persuade more people to join its premium call package where most calls are free but BT is guaranteed to take £4.70 a month on top of line rental charges.
A spokesman for BT said “The changes mean we can invest in even better value plans, including those with calls to mobiles”.
He added “We are happy to discuss with customers the savings they could make with Line Rental Saver and an inclusive calling plan”. He continued “millions of people have signed up to our Unlimited Anytime Plan in the last year and 75% of UK landline calls on our network are now free”.
BT will inform customers of the new price rises by letter.
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New BT Openreach Boss Says Superfast Broadband Target Can Be Met
BT Openreach’s new chief executive, Olivia Garfield, says that the target of ensuring 90% of the UK population has access to superfast broadband can be achieved.
The main job of the new BT Openreach CEO will be to ensure that superfast broadband is rolled out across the country, covering as much of the U.K as possible.
Openreach was founded in 2005 and has been run by Steve Robertson until Ms Garfield took over from him.
She said that BT Openreach would be able to introduce superfast broadband to the majority of the UK by working closely with the Government. She said BT Openreach would be able to achieve the Government’s target of “the best broadband network in Europe by 2015”. However, even if BT achieves this target it may be that the aim of having the best broadband in Europe is still not met.
Ms Garfield added “We’ve rolled out a fibre network at twice the pace of anywhere else in the world”, adding “Everything we do is at scale”.
She said that if BT matched the funding provided by the Government then they would be able to reach 90% of the country by 2015. However, she said that it was not commercially viable for BT to install superfast broadband to more than two-thirds of the country.
However, one of the Government’s top priorities is to bring superfast broadband to millions of rural homes and businesses in rural Britain. The Government is providing £830 million for broadband – a figure which BT is matching – but there are concerns that BT is not in a position to achieve its targets.
Aides to the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, said she is keen for more to be done to get superfast broadband into rural areas saying “The existing BT infrastructure can be better utilised for rural broadband growth”.
The MP for Penrith and The Border, one of the country’s most rural constituencies, hopes that Ms Garfield will bring a fresh attitude to BT. Rory Stewart said “I hope that she’ll help the company to become more flexible in the way that it works with the kinds of projects we’re pioneering in Cumbria like self-build and community owned networks”.
If no case for rural broadband can be made then communities will have to persuade the Government that state help is needed especially if it’s clear that the private sector will not provide the services needed.
It’s not just local people who are desperate for rural broadband but there are thousands of businesses, both large and small, based in rural communities which are becoming increasingly reliant on the internet for their business.
Ms Garfield suggests that broadband will be eventually seen as a human right as healthcare and even education services increasingly make use of the internet to provide services. If that is the case then rural communities will increasingly turn to the Government to provide these services which the private sector says are too costly to provide.
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Ofcom Tells Mobile Operators To Cut Termination Charges
Ofcom has told mobile phone operators that they must reduce the termination charges for calling mobile phones from other networks and landlines.
Over the next four years Ofcom has said that termination charges will fall 80%. A termination charge is the amount mobile phone companies bill other companies for handling calls from their network.
At the moment O2, Vodafone and Everything Everywhere (Orange & T-Mobile) charge 4.18p a minute to connect calls from other phone companies. But after Ofcom’s announcement this will drop to 2.66p from the beginning of April and by 2014 it will be 0.69p.
As a result, if operators act as Ofcom wants them to, landline customers will benefit from savings and it will also mean that mobile operators will be able to provide more choice. The hope is that small mobile phone operators will benefit and will be more able to offer more competitive prices – and therefore customers will benefit too with cheap mobile calls.
Ofcom said mobile operators are making money from data services so the reduction in income from termination charges should be outweighed by this new and growing form of income. More and more people, especially business mobile customers, use their phones to access the internet and for text messaging rather than using mobile phones for telephone calls. Ofcom said that last year data traffic increased by over 50% and that it now makes up the majority of traffic over mobile networks.
The managing director consumer for BT retail, John Petter said “Ofcom has made some worthwhile reductions in mobile termination rates, which will benefit customers in the near future”.
However, the European Commission had wanted these reductions to be in place by 2012 rather than 2014 so this directive from Ofcom is a compromise. Mobile operators have ignored the advice from the European Commission and customers will have to wait until 2014 to fully benefit from a reduction in termination rates.
But there are concerns that mobile phone operators will simply put up charges elsewhere rather than pass the savings on to customers. It could be that operators introduce charges for paper billing as a way of making up for lost income.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Everything Everywhere which has 28 million customers, said they were “disappointed” with this decision from Ofcom and would consider an appeal.
He added “Our concerns focus on the impact of the decision to our vulnerable pay-as-you-go customers. Ofcom has suggested we recover a larger share of our costs from retail charges. This may force us to change the pay-as-you-go model as we know it as a large number of these customers will now become uneconomical – making the way our consumers currently buy, use and enjoy their mobiles radically different”.
Despite termination charges not falling to 0.69p until 2014, consumer groups are claiming victory after their campaign for cheaper mobile phone calls. The question now is whether these savings will actually be passed on to the customer or whether mobile phone companies will make the lost revenue up elsewhere.
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Ofcom Calls For Ban On Advertising Unrealistic Broadband Speeds
Ofcom wants to stop internet service providers (ISPs) from advertising unrealistic broadband speeds when most customers only get a fraction of the advertised speed.
We are all aware that the speed most broadband providers advertise is not what we can actually expect. Most ISPs advertise a speed of “up to” a certain amount but recent Ofcom research has found that few consumers ever receive these advertised speeds.
The Ofcom chief executive told BBC News that “there is a substantial gap between advertised speeds and the actual speeds people get in their homes”. Ofcom said very few people get the advertised speeds.
Ed Richards added “The chances of someone receiving the advertised headline speed are fairly remote”. He said that Ofcom would like consumers to have access to “clearer information” which “more accurately reflects the likely speeds they will actually receive”.
Advertised speeds can be important for businesses when they are looking at installing business broadband. They may end up with very slow broadband when in fact they were expecting much higher speeds and for many internet based businesses this could prove vital.
Research into broadband speeds by Ofcom found that only 14% of customers on “up to” speeds of 20Mbps actually get speeds of over 12Mbps. However, anyone on cable or fibre were more likely to receive speeds closer to those advertised. Around 92% of Virgin Media customers with an “up to” speed of 50Mbps are receiving on average 45.6Mbps. Meanwhile BT’s Fibre-to-the-Cabinet broadband offers speeds of up to 40Mbps to 15% of homes in the UK and people actually receive an average of 31.8Mbps.
Consumer groups have been calling for action to be taken on advertised broadband speeds for years because they simply add to customer confusion when they are trying to decide which is the best broadband for them. Now the Advertising Standards Authority could also get involved.
Meanwhile Ofcom wants ISPs to use Typical Speed Rates (TSR) to ensure customers are not confused e.g. they suggest broadband speeds of up to 20Mbps should be changed to a TSR of between 3 and 9 Mbps.
BT is not happy with this suggestion though, with the managing director of BT Retail, John Petter, saying “Broadband speeds vary from line to line and so it is meaningless to use one speed for advertising. That is why we use the term “up to””.
Meanwhile PlusNet said it offered a “personalised speed range” for customers. The chief executive of PlusNet, Jamie Ford, said “We are completely honest with customers about the speeds they will receive”.
However, Virgin Media was happy with Ofcom’s suggestion and Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media said “Ofcom’s latest report is yet another damning indictment that consumers continue to be treated like mugs and misled by ISPs that simply cannot deliver on their advertised speed claims”.
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Talk Talk And Tiscali Forced To Pay Customers £2.5m By Ofcom
Talk Talk and Tiscali telecoms companies have refunded customers around £2.5 million after they were charged for cancelled services.
Ofcom received a huge number of complaints from people saying they had been billed for services that had been cancelled. Consequently Talk Talk and Tiscali have been forced to refund customers £2.5 million.
Ofcom said that over 62,000 customers may have been affected. Customers complained they received aggressive requests to pay outstanding bills even though they did not owe anything.
Utility Exchange reported recently that Talk Talk lost 25,000 customers in the third quarter of last year as a result of this problem. The telecom company blamed this billing error on a new billing system which it brought in after buying Tiscali in 2009.
A spokeswoman for Talk Talk said “We are pleased that Ofcom has recognised the significant steps we have taken to fix the billing issues”.
On average the two telecoms companies have paid out on average £40 to affected customers either as a refund or as compensation.
Ofcom admitted that the two companies had moved to fix the problems but said that if anyone has paid a bill since 1 Jan 2010 which they should not have received, they should be refunded.
However, a problem which arises from this billing error is the fact that unpaid bills can lead to credit problems and credit rating agencies have been told they must sort out and repair credit histories damaged by this incident.
Ofcom says it won’t fine either of the companies at the moment but will continue to monitor the situation.