Megaupload raid seen as declaration of war; Anonymous launches 'biggest attack ever', brings down RIAA, Universal Music, the US Copyright Service, the US DoJ, & the FBI websites motherjones.com
How mobile data plans should be set up zdnet.com
LTE-Advanced - Think of it as broadband for cars gigaom.com
4G femto's to ship by year's end cable360.com
Sparks start to fly in Verizon/MSO deal lightreading.com
Carl Icahn buys up some of Lightsquared's debt yahoo.com
Femto Cells becoming more important to operators tmcnet.com
EU closely monitoring SOPA totaltele.com
Megaupload preparing world-wide crack copyright criminal defense team cnet.com
Windows 8 to manage your mobile broadband use for you arstechnica.com
The unrealized potential for wireless charging for tablets zdnet.com
New Google accounts now require Gmail and Google+ Google Operating System
Facebook in talks to replace YouTube as Vebo's host cnet.com
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Friday Evening Links -
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 3:54pm MST
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Weekend Open Thread - Hello there. Have Something to Say?
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 3:54pm MST
The weekend is here, so please empty your thoughts into the comment section below. Just remember to clean up after yourselves.
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Untethered Jailbreak Arrives for iPhone 4S, iPad 2 - "Absinthe A5" Tool Arrives for Apple Owners
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 1:14pm MST
Those eager to avoid their carrier's monthly "because we can" tethering fee may be interested to know that a fully untethered jailbreak has finally been released for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. A new tool dubbed "Absinthe A5" has been released allowing iOS devices with A5 processors to be jailbroken, after which users need to visit the Greenpois0n website to complete the jailbreak. The release comes the same week as AT&T announced they'd be raising prices for wireless data (albeit with modest cap increases as well). Be wary: AT&T's been tracking heavy usage and then automatically upgrading users to their most expensive tethering tier.
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ITU Certifies New 100 Mbps Wireless Standards - LTE Advanced, WirelessMAN-Advanced (WiMax 2)
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 11:31am MST
With people already confused over what constitutes 4G wireless broadband, the International Telecommunication Union threw another wrinkle into the mix this week by approving IMT-Advanced, which some are already not-really-accurately calling "5G." According to the ITU press release, they've approved new specifications for the next generation of wireless broadband, IMT-Advanced, including LTE Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced (aka WiMax 2). The real benefit? Speeds up to 100 Mbps.
"IMT-Advanced would be like putting a fibre optic broadband connection on your mobile phone, making your phone at least 100 times faster than today s 3G smart phones," claims Fran ois Rancy, Director of ITU s Radiocommunication Bureau, who adds it's not just about speed, but efficiency.
IMT-Advanced would be like putting a fibre optic broadband connection on your mobile phone, making your phone at least 100 times faster than today s 3G smart phones."
-ITU
"IMT-Advanced will use radio-frequency spectrum much more efficiently making higher data transfers possible on lesser bandwidth, (enabling) mobile networks to face the dramatic increase in data traffic that is expected in the coming years."
The ITU's release is careful to avoid the term 4G or 5G, after the kerfuffle it caused when the organization kowtowed to the whims of U.S. wireless company marketing departments, and allowed pretty much everything but carrier pigeon to be defined as "4G". That resulted in significant consumer confusion to the point where the term was pretty much rendered utterly meaningless.
All you really need to know is that these new standards offer faster and more efficient connectivity -- particularly when the user is in motion. Both AT&T and Sprint have stated they plan to begin upgrading their networks to the standard sometime in 2013.
Surely the more efficient use of bandwidth means you'll be seeing higher usage caps, right? Probably not, since pricing is increasingly not actually tied to network and congestion realities but to investor demand for ever-escalating returns. LTE was supposed to give carriers the ability to raise caps given the added legroom (something engineers will confirm), but instead caps have gotten lower and we've moved away from unlimited data plans despite capacity improvements.
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Competitors Worry About Cozy Verizon, Cable Deal - As FCC and DOJ Begin Taking Look at Antitrust Issues
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 9:42am MST
Consumer advocates remain worried that Verizon's co-marketing partnership and spectrum deal with the cable industry contains either a documented or undocumented "gentlemen's agreement" that Verizon will limit future expansion of FiOS to prohibit more intense landline broadband competition. As we discussed, that would mean that the company's already stalled FiOS upgrades would remain that way as a courtesy, in exchange for being able to sell LTE service to millions of new cable customers.
T-Mobile, Sprint and DirecTV are also worried about the competitive impacts of the deal, and are urging the FCC to take a closer look. Verizon and Comcast have voluntarily provided some additional detail on the deals in a new FCC filing, though the majority of what was disclosed is private to the public, and there's certainly no guarantee a non-compete agreement was even put in print.
As they have in every instance where regulators have tried to actually regulate, Verizon is arguing the FCC lacks the authority to do anything about the marketing arrangements should the FCC find something they don't like in the deals:Verizon Wireless and its partners argued that commercial agreements do not need FCC approval and "have no bearing on whether the spectrum sale is in the public interest" so they do not need to be part of the FCC review...The partners also told the FCC that the spectrum license agreement and the commercial agreements "are not contingent upon each other" so either could go ahead even if the other were not approved, according to the filing.
As we've noted the Verizon cable deal is of particular concern of smaller telcos like Windstream, CenturyLink, Frontier and Fairpoint. Such companies already lack the funds to seriously upgrade their networks to compete with faster cable speeds, and now have to deal with Verizon LTE services that in some instances offer faster speeds than these telcos' landline services. There's an added layer of insult for Frontier and Fairpoint since Verizon convinced them to gobble up unwanted Verizon networks and debt -- only to now face Verizon returning to these markets to erode those customer bases.
The combined marketing muscle of Verizon and Comcast (or Time Warner Cable) would likely erode already weak competition in many of these more-rural markets. Unfortunately, regulators have shown time and time again that they're perfectly ok with uncompetitive landline markets, so it seems unlikely that Verizon and their new cable BFFs have much of anything to worry about from a regulatory angle.
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Reid Delays Vote on PIPA - SOPA/PIPA Support Becomes Liability for Democrats
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 7:10am MST
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that he will postpone a test vote scheduled for next week on PIPA, indicating another victory for this week's anti-SOPA/PIPA activists. In a statement, Reid (just as the MPAA/RIAA is doing) insists that the problems with the bills can be fixed with some additional work, even though it's certainly clear that both Hollywood-written laws have become politically toxic. Still, Reid seems to insist that a consensus can be reached within a few weeks, even if this week's events were an early death knell for the MPAA/RIAA written laws:I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet. We made good progress through the discussions we ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks."
Originally PIPA/SOPA weren't about political affiliation or partisan politics; the bills were just awful -- period. But responding to this week's blackouts, most of the politicians backing away from SOPA/PIPA were Republican, and GOP Presidential candidates last night all came out against the laws. That placed a new layer of pressure on Reid and the Democrats to stop supporting the bills, lest they want to get swept away on a wave of public disgust.
It seems likely you'll only have to suffer through a few more weeks of empty rhetoric about job creation by the MPAA/RIAA (and the politicians who love their campaign contributions). It seems clear that SOPA/PIPA will be too much of a liability during election season and are headed out to pasture, replaced by new, slightly-less-awful MPAA/RIAA written legislation at a later date -- when you're paying less attention.
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PIPA, SOPA One Step Closer to Dead - SOPA/PIPA Support Becomes Liability for Democrats
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 7:10am MST
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that he will postpone a test vote scheduled for next week on PIPA, indicating another victory for this week's anti-SOPA/PIPA activists. In a statement, Reid (just as the MPAA/RIAA is doing) insists that the problems with the bills can be fixed with some additional work, even though it's certainly clear that both Hollywood-written laws have become politically toxic. Still, Reid seems to insist that a consensus can be reached within a few weeks, even if this week's events were an early death knell for the MPAA/RIAA written laws:I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet. We made good progress through the discussions we ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks."
Originally PIPA/SOPA weren't about political affiliation or partisan politics; the bills were just awful -- period. But responding to this week's blackouts, most of the politicians backing away from SOPA/PIPA were Republican, and GOP Presidential candidates last night all came out against the laws. That placed a new layer of pressure on Reid and the Democrats to stop supporting the bills, lest they want to get swept away on a wave of public disgust.
It seems likely you'll only have to suffer through a few more weeks of empty rhetoric about job creation by the MPAA/RIAA (and the politicians who love their campaign contributions). It seems clear that SOPA/PIPA will be too much of a liability during election season and are headed out to pasture, replaced by new, slightly-less-awful MPAA/RIAA written legislation at a later date -- when you're paying less attention.
Update: Senator Patrick Leahy is mad that a bad bill written by the entertainment industry is facing opposition by constituents he was elected to represent.
Update 2: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has also announced that his planned February vote on SOPA has been shelved.
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DOJ, ICE Shut Down MegaUpload - RIAA/MPAA's Personal Police Force Works Hard For Their Money
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 6:30am MST
MegaUpload, one of the world's largest file-swapping sites (actually one of the world's largest websites, period) was shut down yesterday by the US Justice Department and ICE. According to a federal indictment, seven individuals and two companies involved in the website are have been engaging in "a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement." The result? A massive sting operation resulting in arrests and property seizures across multiple continents.
The move is a curious one given that similar cyber-locker services have been declared legal around the globe, the company had been voluntarily showing up in court to civil copyright proceedings, and claims to have been adhering to DMCA takedown requests.
According to the DOJ however, this cooperation was only skin deep, and both ICE and DOJ are appear to have e-mails showing the company was consistently aware they were making a killing off of copyrighted files -- that documented awareness resulting in them losing their protection under the DMCA.
The width and breadth of the global police action are simply massive, and are, quite justly, being painted as a massive over-reach. The full indictment goes so far as to mention Canadian bandwidth provider Cogent, whose headquarter employees were even held and questioned during the raids this week. Indeed, anybody who provided bandwidth, rack space or Internet services appears to have been held, questioned, and/or pressured in the global raids.
There's plenty of questions popping up around the raids, most notably being why exactly the government feels the need to push for SOPA/PIPA when they were able to extend their copyright assault globally so easily. The intensity of the action is also being questioned, given the United States seized a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, despite the fact the company involved had been cooperating in the courts. Despite the clear trade in copyrighted files, many of the files on MegaUpload were legitimate, and systems were in place to remove copyrighted content.
The reality is that the company was supported by many artists and had also been building a system that directly compensated artists. The crime wasn't conspiracy -- it was cutting out the RIAA/MPAA middle men. Then flaunting it.
The timing of the effort is also bizarre given the outrage surrounding SOPA/PIPA, layered on existing outrage over a lack of financial sector accountability for the U.S. economic collapse. While those crimes were ignored, this indictment is chock full of language that applies nefarious implications on routine business practices (routine money spent on advertising and other business expenses is repeatedly deemed part of the "Mega Conspiracy"), and the RIAA/MPAA-style language of the indictment certainly doesn't quell the notion that the entertainment enjoys using the full power of the United States government as their personal plaything.
With the White House's recent statement against SOPA/PIPA upsetting the MPAA and RIAA, the government apparently wanted to make it very clear that Hollywood's campaign contributions were still very much appreciated.
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Verizon Delays VoLTE Until 2013 - Initial Deployments Hurt by Incomplete LTE Upgrades
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 6:00am MST
Aside from the faster speeds offered courtesy of LTE, users should ultimately come to expect higher quality voice service over wireless networks, courtesy of VoLTE. Most analysts are still predicting that VoLTE should arrive in the second half of this year, which in telecom analyst parlance -- means 2013. During demonstrations last year Verizon stated they'd offer the technology sometime in 2012, though initially users would have to choose a 3G phone call or a 4G VoLTE call -- because the latter won't be able to hand off to the former. As this Ericsson white paper explores however, there was going to be some serious headaches caused by VoLTE implementations across only partially-built LTE networks. That appears to be part of the reason that Verizon's VoLTE launch is rumored to now be scheduled for early 2013.
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O3b Satellite Service One Year From Launch - Google-funded Effort Aimed at Connecting Have Nots
Posted: January 20th, 2012, 5:57am MST
A few years ago O3b Networks was getting plenty of press for a $750 million plan to bring broadband to many have-nots with the financial support of Google, HSBC, and Liberty Media boss John Malone. The plan was to use 16 new low-earth orbit satellites and create an entirely new satellite-based wholesale operator, with a focus on particularly unconnected areas like Africa, where bandwidth costs continue to be astronomical. Several years on and the company says they're about one year out from the launch of their satellites. Like many satellite efforts these predictions seem to slide rather easily, with the project originally slated for a late 2010 launch. The O3b website has more detail on the low-altitude technology for those interested.
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