Posts Tagged “gsm”
Demonstrated and documentedA researcher at the DefCon hackers’ meet has demonstrated kit for spoofing GSM base stations, allowing even those on a limited budget to intercept phone calls and text messages.…
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Get your GSM snooping tools hereBlack Hat Independent researchers have made good on a promise to release a comprehensive set of tools needed to eavesdrop on cell phone calls that use the world’s most widely deployed mobile technology.… Read Full Story…
Broadcast TV could be shown using the existing 3G mobile phone spectrum – without clogging up networks O2, Orange, and Vodafone have teamed up to test a TV broadcast service which would allow British mobile phone users the chance to watch TV channels on their handsets. The three companies, who control the bulk of the UK mobile phone market, are testing technology which would enable them to provide broadcast TV over their existing 3G mobile phone spectrum, without clogging up their networks, which are being used by smartphone users to access the web and send emails. They are working with Ericsson, IPWireless, and Streamezzo on a three-month trial of integrated mobile broadcast (IMB) technology in west London and Slough. All the UK mobile phone companies offer mobile TV services on their 3G networks but they suffer from congestion if more than a handful of customers use the service in the same place. IMB technology, however, uses part of the airwaves they picked up during the sale of 3G spectrum in the dying days of the dotcom boom which has lain dormant ever since. This spectrum is perfect for broadcast services as it is “unpaired” – it cannot be used to send and receive signals so it is not used for mobile phone calls. But because it is part of the existing spectrum it works with the phone companies’ systems, making it easy to bill customers. This spectrum is available to more than 150 operators across 60 countries covering more than half a billion subscribers. The trial, which starts in October, comes after T-Mobile and Orange tested similar technology back in 2008. “With the strong growth of data traffic on our 3G networks and the mobile industry’s recent support of this high performance broadcast technology, the time is right to move forward with an IMB initiative,” said Luke Ibbetson, head of technology research and development at Vodafone Group. “By joining our peers in this UK pilot, we expect to be able to explore the potential of delivering broadcast services across available 3G spectrum.” “Already a leading provider of mobile TV in Europe, our experience shows consumers will take advantage of linear broadcast services if the network experience is consistently good,” said Thierry Bonhomme, head of networks, carriers and research and development at Orange. “Network capability is key for mobile TV roll-out and IMB will enable more operators to maximize the benefits they get from 3G investments with high quality TV service deployments on an efficient, pragmatic and scalable solution that works from country to country.” “We believe the road is clear for IMB now that it has been endorsed by the GSMA and supported by the wider mobile ecosystem,” said Gavin Franks, head of new business development at O2. “Based on the results of the pilot, we anticipate being able to offer our consumers through our networks a range of innovative new broadcast services such as mobile TV and intelligent broadcasting that will lead to an enhanced user experience.” IPWireless and Ericsson, two of the pioneers behind the development of IMB technology within 3GPP, have partnered to deliver the end-to-end technology solution for the UK pilot. IPWireless will supply the core 3GPP broadcast technology that will explore the performance of the TDD spectrum for mobile broadcast services. Ericsson, as the prime integrator, will provide integration services and a media platform. Streamezzo, recently acquired by Amdocs, is a leading software publisher of open mobile development platforms and will provide the rich media user interface for the pilot. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. • If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.
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Network files appeal to Competition Appeals Tribunal to have Ofcom amend licence in line with EU GSM Directive Read Full Story…
Although Nokia can trace its lineage back much further than Yahoo, both companies rose to prominence in the 1990s, only to fall from grace in the noughties. The Finnish mobile phone company started life in the late 19th century as a paper, rubber and cables conglomerate (rubber boots being one of its best-known product lines). It started making mobile phones in the 1980s but it was the switch to the digital GSM standard across Europe in the early 1990s that provided the spur to growth. Presented with such a mammoth market, Nokia saw sales explode. Innovative products such as the Nokia 101, the first so-called “candy bar” phone, and the Nokia 8110i (which featured in the film The Matrix) helped it blast past America’s Motorola and its Swedish rival Ericsson to become the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer in 1998. While Nokia was changing mobile phones into fashion items, two students at Stanford University – David Filo and Jerry Yang – were playing around with the internet. They started keeping a list of their favourite links and other people who also wanted to be able to get around the web were increasingly using the pair’s links. In mid-1994 Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web became Yahoo! – a name coined by Swift in Gulliver’s Travels for an imaginary race of rude, brutish creatures. When Yahoo floated in 1996 it had fewer than 50 employees and was quickly becoming one of the web’s hottest destinations. But as the web increased in size in the late 1990s, directories such as Yahoo, which used human editors instead of automation to rank web pages, were creaking under the strain. Then in 2000 Google started selling adverts alongside its search results. While Yahoo was fast cornering the online display advertising market, Google sparked a boom in search advertising. Google has since pushed Yahoo into a series of restructurings and then finally in 2008 an acrimonious bid battle with Microsoft ended in a search and advertising tie-up. Nokia rode the mobile phone wave in the early part of this century but alienated the mobile networks. When newer manufacturers such as Samsung started producing fashionable phones, the operators grabbed the chance to dump the Finnish firm. But it was the arrival of the iPhone, launched by Apple in June 2008, that really showed how far Nokia had slipped. It quickly became a must-have gadget for the mobile phone operators in a way that a Nokia device had never managed. Rivals rushed to produce touchscreen phones but Nokia has yet to produce a real “iPhone killer”.
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Brad Pitt geo tracking made easyResearchers have demonstrated structural cracks in GSM mobile networks that make it easy to find the number of most US-based cellphone users and to track virtually any GSM-enabled handset across the globe.…
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Nortel Networks Corporation has announced that it has completed the sale of its GSM/GSM-R business to Ericsson and Kapsch. Read Full Story…
Sling yer SMS hookThe GSMA is piloting a scheme allowing GSM users to report SMS spam to a standard short code, in the hope of stopping the trickle before it becomes a flood.…
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Telecoms equipment company Alcatel-Lucent has won a contract from Hungarian mobile operator and Telenor company Pannon GSM Távközlési Zrt (Pannon) to unify its mobile core network and its existing IP/MPLS-based mobile backhaul infrastructure. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read Full Story…
Two dozen of the world’s largest mobile-phone companies, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile and Vodafone, are teaming up to create an “open international applications platform,” which is obviously in direct response to Apple’s success with its own iPhone App Store. Release. The announcement was made this morning at Mobile World Congress. In addition to the 24 carriers, the GSMA and three device manufacturers – LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson – are also supporting the initiative. All combined, the group reaches 3 billion subscribers worldwide, making it easily the largest app-store initiative. However, the task will also be exceedingly complicated because of the massive scope and technological barriers in uniting so many disparate platforms and operators. Called the the “Wholesale Applications Community,” it aims to create a wholesale platform for mobile apps that provides a single point-of-entry for developers. In other words, it wants to solve the massive fragmentation problem. The group intends on using common open standards that will allow developers to create apps across multiple platforms. Those standards include JIL, which Verizon, Vodafone and China Mobile have been working on, and OMTP BONDI. Those two standards are expected to evolve into a common standard within the next year. Ultimately, they pledge to work with the W3C standards bodies to create one solution for developers to create apps and port them across mobile device platforms and operators. The full list of operators are: America Movil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, mobilkom Austria, MTN Group, NTT Docomo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, VimpelCom and WIND. The four operators in the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) mobile apps initiative – Vodafone, China Mobile, SoftBank and Verizon Wireless – are also included.
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The GSMA combines with 24 network operators and opens Mobile World Congress 2010 with a drive to establish a common standard for handset platforms, and to simplify a fragmented software market for developers Read Full Story…
O2 and Orange are to join more than a dozen mobile groups in a project to pool resources and create ‘app’-style services across their range of handsets More than a dozen of the world’s biggest mobile phone companies, including O2 and Orange, are hoping to strike back against the success of Apple in persuading people to download and use mobile applications – or “apps” – by building their own competing open platform which can be used by developers of games and other services. The mobile networks hope that by pooling their resources, creating technology that would allow services to be developed that will work across a huge range of handsets, they can claw back some of the ground they have lost to companies such as Apple and Google and generate additional revenues from third-party developers. The mobile phone networks fear that at the moment they are in danger of becoming little more than “dumb pipes in the air”, with all the revenues created by applications going to software developers and the companies that operate the stores that supply them. Apple has already seen over 3bn apps downloaded from its App Store by users of the iPhone and iPod touch. Google, meanwhile, has an application marketplace as part of its Android mobile phone platform, and several devices sporting the software will be unveiled at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the industry’s biggest trade show, which starts today. But it is not just Google and Apple that are profiting from the “apps explosion”. Steve Ballmer will this afternoon use the Mobile World Congress to unveil Microsoft’s latest attempt to break into the mobile phone industry. Windows Mobile 7 – or Windows Phone, as Microsoft has dubbed it – includes an application store that allows users of Microsoft devices to download a host of games and other applications. Even phone manufacturers such as Samsung and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, are getting in on the app act, while Nokia already has its Ovi store open for business. Several of the world’s biggest operators are part of the Open API initiative, which allows application developers access to some of the core information contained within their networks, such as location and billing. Essentially an API (application programming interface) allows a developer to integrate its application with another piece of software. The Open API plan, for instance, allows software developers to create programmes that can be paid for by consumers on their mobile phone bills. But the new consortium, which will be announced by industry trade body the GSM Association at the Mobile World Congress today, is designed to go even further. The recent explosion in mobile phone software – from Apple’s iPhone to Nokia’s Symbian platform, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone – means the “apps” market is becoming increasingly fragmented. Also, consumers who switch from one device to another will soon find themselves having to download – and pay again – for all the applications they had on their old phone just because their new phone uses different software. The operators fear that they will be at the receiving end of the subsequent consumer backlash. Orange, Telefonica – which owns O2 in the UK – T-Mobile and several other operators are already signed up to the GSMA plan. Vodafone, however, is ambivalent as it is engaged in an open platform alliance called the Joint Innovation Lab with China Mobile, Japan’s Softbank and Verizon Wireless of the US. In fact, applications are likely to be a highlight of this year’s Mobile World Congress, with developer workshops taking place throughout the show, helping programmers create for Android, BlackBerry and Vodafone’s recently announced Vodafone 360 platform. Several companies will also announce their own app developments. Today, for instance, British digital music group Omnifone will announce that it has created a version of its mobile music service that runs on Android phones. Omnifone, which has access to a catalogue of more than 6.5m tracks, is looking for network or handset partners who want to launch an unlimited download or streaming music service on Android devices using its platform. It already, for instance, powers Vodafone’s unlimited music service in the UK and recently clinched a deal to have its MusicStation service pre-installed on Hewlett-Packard laptops and computers. Omnifone is currently developing apps for both the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices. Skype, meanwhile, will today announce that it has created a version of its popular free internet telephony service for Nokia’s Symbian operating system, which is already used by more than 200m mobile phones worldwide. Skype is now available as a free iPhone app, which has been downloaded more than 12m times since its launch in April last year. The Symbian version will initially be available as a download from the Skype website but will appear on Nokia’s Ovi store in the next few weeks. The company, which was sold by owner eBay last year, is planning an Android version for later in the year. Skype, which allows people to call other Skype users anywhere in the world for free, is also expected to announce a partnership with Verizon Wireless, which is likely to raise some eyebrows as in the past the American network’s joint owner, Vodafone, has blocked internet telephony services from its own networks.
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A new set of audited figures for mobile internet use, the GSMA Mobile Media Metrics, reveal a landscape with one very tall peak More than 25% of UK’s population – some 16 million people – accessed the Internet from mobile phones in December. And what were they looking for? The GSMA Mobile Media Metrics, published for the first time on Friday, provide an insight: on the mobile internet, people want to know what their friends are up to – and perhaps do a bit of flirting. Facebook has a clearly lead in GSMA’s top 10 UK mobile internet sites, with 5 million unique users against 4.5 million for all of Google’s sites. (Mobile internet users want answers, too.) And the domination is much greater in terms of times spend online and page views. Facebook had 2.6bn page impressions – nearly three times as many as Google, and more than a third of the 6.7bn total. Nearly half the total minutes online in December were spent at Facebook Mobile – 2.2bn minutes out of 4.8bn, with Google on 400m in a very distant second place. One fifth of UK mobile subscribers now tote smartphones, which is driving a rise in mobile interent use. In December, already 25% of UK’s population or 16 million people accessed the internet from their mobile phones and viewed a total of 6.7bn pages. Besides Facebook and Google, the sites of the mobile phone operators scored well, with spots three to five going to Telefonica Mobile Networks (owners of O2, with all those iPhone users), Orange Sites and Vodafone Group. Finally, the BBC site on the seventh spot indicates that people are reading the news on the go. Breaking news is also available on the mobile networks’ sites, and those of Microsoft and Yahoo at spots six and eight. Regarding unique users, Apple’s and Nokia’s site come in last in the top 10 UK mobile internet sites in December. Once you look at page views and time spent online, Flirtomatic – which is integrated into most mobile operator portals – also comes into the picture.
The GSMA Mobile Media Metrics report was commissioned by GSMA and comScore in partnership with five UK mobile operators: O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and 3UK. It is being audited by ABCe. Richard Foan, managing director of ABCe, who also chairs the web media standards committee JICWEBS, called the new metrics “a great step forward for mobile media”. The figures are based on irreversibly anonymised mobile Internet usage data from all five UK mobile operators, collected with consent from a representative sample of mobile users. In addition, Wi-Fi traffic, not seen in the mobile network traffic, is captured in the server-side logs of media owners and ad networks.
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Telecoms equipment company Alcatel-Lucent has won a 22m euros ($31m) contract from mobile operator Togo Cellulaire to extend its network capacity in GSM and build the first 3G wireless broadband network in the West African country. The company said the new network will be deployed by the end of 2010. Read Full Story…
The telecommunications firm, which has cited a decline in GSM equipment sales, is to cut 500 jobs on top of those it announced last year
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Opera Software’s mobile web browser has been shortlisted in two categories at the GSMA Global Mobile Awards Read Full Story…
Digs knife a little deeper into WiMAXThe GSMA argues that the majority of the 2.6GHz band should be LTE-friendly, conceding that WiMAX needs some space to play in the interest of neutrality.…
What is your recession sales strategy? Read Full Story…
Jan
04
2010
 
ADC Divests GSM Base Station and Switching Product Portfolio to AltobridgePosted by in Mobile News
Telecoms equipment vendor ADC has sold its GSM base station and switching product portfolio to Ireland-based mobile network operator Altobridge. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read Full Story…
Karsten Nohl says he has decoded the GSM algorithm used to keep private more than 80% of the world’s mobile conversations A German computer scientist has cracked the codes used to encrypt calls made from more than 80% of the world’s mobile phones. Karsten Nohl and his team of 24 hackers began working on the security algorithm for GSM (Global System for Mobiles) in August. Developed in 1988, the system prevents the interception of calls by forcing phones and base stations to change frequencies constantly. Most of the UK’s mobile phones use the GSM system and the breach represents a potential threat to the security of mobile phone communication. Nohl claims that armed with the code, which has been published online, and a laptop with two network cards, an eavesdropper could be recording phone calls within 15 minutes. “This shows that existing GSM security is inadequate,” Nohl told the Chaos Communication Congress, an international annual meeting of hackers taking place in Berlin this week. Nohl insisted that he had deciphered the code to force the global telecommunications industry to upgrade its security. Nohl told the Guardian that important negotiations involving politicians or business leaders could easily be intercepted and they should invest in further encryption software to protect their privacy. “If there is anything secret going on using GSM, this should be of concern.” The GSM Association, which represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry, played down the security threat and said Nohl’s activity was “highly illegal”. “We consider this research, which appears to be motivated in part by commercial considerations, to be a long way from being a practical attack on GSM,” said Claire Cranton, a spokeswoman. “To do this while supposedly being concerned about privacy is beyond me.” Nohl, who has a doctorate in computer engineering from the University of Virginia, insisted his work was purely academic. “We have written advice from our lawyers stating that our research is within the legal realm,” he said. “Obviously the data we produce could of course be used for illegitimate purposes.” Simon Bransfield-Garth, the chief executive of London-based encryption software firm Cellcrypt, said: “The code that has been cracked is for the 21-year-old 64-bit A5/1 GSM algorithm. In 2007 the GSM Association developed a 128-bit version, A5/3. However, most network operators have not invested to make the required upgrade. “We said in August when this project began that the code would be broken within nine to 12 months. This is a very significant step.”
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