Former mobile-biz lobbyist Wheeler to become top US frequency cop
FCC boss needs to be auctioneer and priest, too
President Obama has nominated former CTIA boss Tom Wheeler to take over the FCC, putting the man who spent 12 years lobbying on behalf of network operators in charge of their regulation.
The Wall Street Journal was first to the story, reporting that FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will act as chair while the Senate confirms the …
Audio gumble biz Jawbone gobbles bag of 500 trillion body bits
Human-watching BodyMedia snapped up for $100m
Speaker and headset biz Jawbone has spent over $100m snapping up body sensor maker BodyMedia to get into the wild world of biometrics.
Jawbone already sells the Up, a wristband which closely monitors your movements to estimate calories burnt, but its acquisition of BodyMedia gives it access to a whole load of body-monitoring kit …
Facebook Messenger tech to glue 50bn-strong Internet of Stuff
Machine blabber protocol backed by Cisco, IBM et al
A communications protocol for the Internet of Things - the posh name for a future global network of 50 billion interconnected gadgets - has been chosen by a top standards body.
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), best known for its OpenDocument format, will adopt and promote the MQTT …
Huawei boss: Next CEO won't be member of my family
Company won't go public either, Ren confirms in leaked internal email
The Chinese telecoms giant won't be listing itself on any public exchange, and the founder's kids won't be taking up the reins either - as their dad reckons they're not up to the job.
Ren Zhengfei, who founded Huawei with a fistful of cash back in 1988, is now 68 years of age. Rumours have been circulating that he'd pass control …
T-Mobile UK punters break for freedom in inflation-busting bill row
What do you mean, the small print doesn't apply?
T-Mobile UK punters reckon they can avoid the mobile network's latest price rise - after the operator swelled its prices beyond inflation.
The T-Mobile contract states that its bills may increase in step with the Retail Price Index, a government-calculated rate of inflation. When this figure reached 3.3 per cent, T-Mobile and …
Peak txt: 1.5 BEELLLION more chat app msgs sent than SMSes a day
Only spam and robots save phone texts from IM stampede
WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger and other online chat apps handled more messages than telcos handled texts, says market research biz Informa.
And by the end of 2013, the number of online messages will be double the number of SMS texts, leaving the phone network operators scrabbling for revenue.
Informa pegged 2012's global SMS …
Canadian TV station wails: NFC bonking... it's not SAFE
Credit card cloning? Sigh, we've been here before
Another North American TV network has discovered credit card numbers can be read using a phone, and whipped itself into a media frenzy due to its failure to understand how NFC works.
This time it's Canadian outfit CBC News, last time it was Memphis-based News Channel 3, but the facts remain the same: an NFC-equipped card will …
Tight White Spaces to be penetrated in Blighty this year - Ofcom
And you can get your hands on it by 2014, fingers crossed
White Space networking kit will get large-scale trials later this year, to see if multiple databases and radio protocols can be deployed without knocking TV off the air.
Ofcom hasn't decided who'll take part in the trials, or what parts of the country they'll cover, or even how long they'll last, but they will run this autumn …
T-mobile US in invisible handset handcuff contract smackdown
'No restrictions' ads caused nose growth, pant fires - AG
T-Mobile USA's no-restriction contract turns out to have restrictions, and while they might seem obvious to some the state Attorney General in Washington feels they weren't obvious enough.
The tariffs are designed to separate airtime and handset subsidy, which T-mobile described as coming without a two-year commitment. But while …
AT&T debuts 'Digital Life' robo-home and security tech
Step into Internet of Things: Give us keys to homes in 15 US cities
AT&T is pushing into home automation and security with Digital Life, a new service rolling out across 15 cities, which should carve out yet another niche for the US telecom giant.
The initial sell for Digital Life is security, but the upsell is home automation, all managed through an AT&T website and an AT&T hub connected over …
DARPA looks for a guided bullet with DEAD reckoning navigation
Not only has your name on it, but your address too
Madcap Pentagon tech shop DARPA is looking again at the Global Positioning System (GPS, which makes almost all the world's satnav systems work) in a bid to reinvent the tech which used to be cutting edge military gear but these days is tracking dogs and finding golf balls.
DARPA's director Arati Prabhakar has announced that GPS …
Verizon sniffing around Vodafone's US stake again
$100bn in used greenbacks would spark serious tax bill
Verizon is putting together a $100bn bid for Vodafone's stake in its wireless business, and is ready to take the offer public if a boardroom deal can't be agreed.
Half that hundred billion will come in Verizon shares, the rest in borrowed cash, Reuters tells us in its exclusive coverage. But however the money comes it will hit …
Mobes' pay-by-bonk just isn't cool enough, sniffs Tesco bod
The kids won't use it, let's stick to cards
Tesco reckons contact-less pay-by-wave technology in phones has had its day - and the shopping giant is moving back to relying on cash and traditional payment cards.
The stumbling shelf-stacking titan will continue to punt its customer loyalty schemes and vouchers on smartmobes - but bonking NFC-capable devices against tills to …
O2 scoffs at call-centre outsource fears, forgets to rule it out completely
Just speculation, but it might happen
Rumours that O2 UK plans to outsource all its telephone support work have been dismissed as speculation by the mobile network operator. The cynical among us will note that's not the same as completely ruling it out.
The whisperings were enough to prompt an emergency motion from the Communication Workers Union, stating that more …
Crackdown looming on premium-rate phone number internet ads
Hey, it's a way to make money off the internet!
Time may be short for companies who make a living with internet-promoted premium phone numbers, as the UK regulator of such matters opens a second consultation aimed at denying them obscurity.
Adverts will be required to state clearly that they aren't linked to the service they're promoting, and will be required to use the term …
O2 to turn your innocent nipper into Silicon Roundabout hipster
Scout Camp for the 21st Centur- Hey wait a second...
O2 will be running 28 UK events titled Think Big School, pushing 3,000 youngsters through two days of training so they can learn to write code and pitch business ideas like a skinny-tie-and-sneakers-wearing Shoreditch type.
The first Think Big School has kicked off in London, but the two-day events, which are run in conjunction …
Sprint promises to take 2G into the Internet of Things
They'll be no refarming round here
Sprint has committed to keeping its 2G network operational beyond AT&T and Verizon, hoping to sign up some machines even if fleshy humans wander away.
Announcing a deal with u-blox to provide embedded modules which are pin compatible with GSM kit already in use, Sprint promised to maintain its CDMA network for "the long term", …
Ofcom: When shall we squeeze Freeview's girth?
Luvvies and White Space tools can't even touch unloved bottom
Ofcom wants to know when Freeview broadcasts should be kicked down the dial in favour of iPad-friendly 4G signals - and, controversially, whether the BBC should be recompensed when it happens.
Ofcom mooted the idea of shuffling Freeview aside onto new frequencies back in 2011, and put it into last year's plan with a 2018 date. …
App reads The Indie's dead-tree pages - so you don't have to
Tabloid-broadsheet joins digital world circa 2003
Printed pages of lefty paper The Independent can be scanned by a phone app and decoded into links to recently updated words and pictures online.
The newspaper, operated by Russian father-and-son duo Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev, is using "augmented reality" app Blippar, which uses a phone's camera to recognise pages from the day …
Securing the Internet of Things - or how light bulbs can spy on you
Analysis Fifty billion hackable devices batten down the hatches
It's going to be a tough task securing the Internet of Things, an upcoming massive global network of web-connected fridges, freezers and pacemakers. But according to experts gathered in Cambridge last week we can't even start locking it down until we know who's going to make money from it.
The meeting was run by Cambridge …
EC sends antitrust complaint to smart chip cartel suspects
Fireside chat fails to satisfy
With settlement talks stalled, the European Commission has launched a formal investigation into whether suppliers of cryptographic chips conspired to fix prices across Europe. The commission announced today that it had sent out a warning to several smart card chip suppliers that it was investigating allegations that they had …
BadNews, fandroids: MILLIONS of Google Play downloads riddled with malware
Dodgy apps spaff premium-rate txts, lol
At least two million Google Play downloads gave Android users an unwanted freebie in the form of BadNews, a piece of malware which masqueraded as a legitimate advertising network.
The malware was integrated into 32 different apps in the Google Store, according to mobile security specialist Lookout. Those apps have been …
Amazon: We're expanding into TWO HUNDRED countries
Merrily piggybacking off Android
Amazon's Android software store will soon be available across 200 countries - many of which don't have official access to Amazon's Android hardware - as the bookstore continues its quest for world domination.
While Google limits itself to selling apps across 134 countries (and even the UN only boasts 193 members) Amazon will be …
TREELLION DOLLAR mobe bonk-bank alliance goes for barcodes
Stripey bonanza - if everyone can get into bed together
The consortium of US retailers hoping to own pay-by-bonk have signed Gemalto to process their payments, revealing that on-screen bar codes lie at the centre of the scheme.
The consortium, branded the Merchant Customer Exchange or MCX, was launched last August with the intention of hosting a standard platform for mobile-phone …
T-Mobile UK ordered into humiliating Full Monty strip
Cap mobe speeds all you like BUT DON'T TOUCH BITTORRENT
T-Mobile UK can no longer describe its "Full Monty" mobile broadband tariff as "unlimited", thanks to a ruling by the advertising watchdog.
And all because the network operator slowed down BitTorrent traffic during the day.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has decreed that "unlimited" can legitimately be applied to an …
Londoners in mass test of telly tech savvy as 4G filters mailed out
Come on granny, you must know where your booster is?
Some 28,000 London suburbanites will have 40 days to fit their free 4G filters, before Freeview television frequencies are swamped with faked 4G networking signals in a mass test of the British public's ability to plug stuff in.
The filters come from at800, the orgainisation tasked with spending £180m of telco cash to mitigate …
US Justice Department pushes for fairer spectrum auctions
Giants shouldn't be allowed to hoard spectrum to lock out rivals
The US Department of Justice has written to the FCC warning against indiscriminate use of spectrum auctions, arguing that the mantra of "the highest bidder will make the greatest use" is increasingly outdated.
The warning comes in the form of an open letter (PDF, long-winded), just as the FCC is deciding how best to dispose of …
Inside Secure snatches BBC iPlayer downloads from Adobe
Doctor Who on your Android slablet to follow?
The BBC's mobile iPlayer client, which allows iOS users to download the national broadcaster's programmes for connectionless viewing, is now using digital rights management from embedded solutions player Inside Secure, which should herald the long-promised Android support.
iPhone users have been able to download shows since …
Angry Birds fire back: Vulture cousins menace UK city's mobiles
Brits must suffer until mast eggs hatch
Vodafone engineers dispatched to fix a Southampton mobile mast found a nesting Peregrine falcon - a protected species which must be left alone until its eggs hatch - leaving local residents with limited mobile coverage.
The BBC tells us the eggs can be expected to hatch in June, but until then the nest and the attending pair of …
Hands up who wants 3D finger-controlled fridges? That's the spirit
Analysis You thought 'slide to unlock' was bad? Gestures are the next patent battle
Finger gestures in three dimensions are the next big thing in controlling computers, or so we're sadly told.
The companies betting that we'll want to manipulate everything electronic around us with a wave of a hand are already laying claim to various types of body movement.
The technology to detect gestures is included in …
O2 tries something completely new: Honesty
Monthly bill to be torn from real cost of 'free' phone
O2 UK hired circus performers at a PR event this week to launch its new Refresh tariff, which it was forced to confirm ahead of schedule thanks to a media leak.
But despite its use of a cut-price Derren Brown, the payment plan really does represent something completely new: honesty. As in, one can see exactly how much of the …
Smart metering will disrupt weather forecasts, warns Met Office
You'll get a Sky box in charge of your house anyway
The Met Office has warned that Ofcom's planned deregulation of radio spectrum for Home Area Networking kit risks disrupting radar-based weather forecasts.
The airwave regulator's recent public consultation into opening up new spectrum garnered overwhelming industry support for releasing the proposed bandwidths into the public …
Ofcom: Parents, here's how to keep grubby tots from buying Smurfberries
Shame it didn't notice the PREMIUM RATE click-to-call ads
Ofcom has posted video guides to turning off in-app purchasing on all the popular mobile platforms, but ads serving premium-rate numbers continue to proliferate uncontrolled.
Users, and regulators - the OFT today launched a probe into whether kids were being pressured into buying in-game goodies - are getting wise to in-app …
The Man Who Fell to Earth: Plane plummet plod probe phone
SIM chip IDs stowaway who completely went to pieces
The man who spread himself across a street in Mortlake, London, after falling from an aircraft undercarriage has been identified. Police finally managed to crack open the SIM in his pocket and study it to discover who he was.
Jose Matada was the chap's name and he was 30 years old, the BBC tells us. He landed on Portman Avenue …
Geolocation tech to save 60 Londoners from being run over next year
Look out there's an accident hotspot just ther - Aarghh
The Metropolitan Police will be using software from Croydon-based GGP Systems to analyse road traffic accidents in the capital, continuing a 30-year-old process to minimise road deaths.
The plan is to reduce the number people being killed and seriously injured on London's roads by 40 per cent by 2020. That's Mayor Boris Johnson' …
GSMA: $11bn for 'universal service' UNSPENT, nations' poor still not connected
Operators ask governments to probe stockpiled universal access levies
Mobile operator mouthpiece GSMA is asking countries to re-examine their universal service funding, pointing out that India alone has stockpiled $4.1bn in unspent cash while the poor remain disconnected.
Universal Service Funds are financed with a levy on network operators, both fixed and mobile, and are intended to cover the …
Aruba battles BlackBerry to protect biz from staffers' nasty iPhone apps
This time with network support too
Aruba Networks has joined the mobile container fray with WorkSpace, providing enterprises with a secure BYOD platform which can be distributed to untrusted devices - and taking on BlackBerry and Samsung in the process.
Aruba's container integrates with its existing authentication system, ClearPass, and can make use of the …
Another 170,000 Freeview homes to be freed from reality TV - possibly
4G broadband in telly bout dann sarf
170,000 London homes will get letters in the next day or two, telling them they're in the next phase of 4G testing and offering telephone support for anyone who sees Freeview disappear on Monday.
The testing follows a 22,000-home trial in the Midlands, which went remarkably well, if you're a network operator worried about taking …
Stop with that LTE-B nonsense... it's NOT a thing - mobe standards guardian
4G, dude... as if it weren't confusing enough
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), global custodian of mobile telephony standards up to and including LTE Advanced, has issued a statement insisting that "Advanced" is as, er, advanced as the naming system will go.
LTE is the preferred 4G technology, and is currently being deployed around the world. Standards evolve …
Who wants a smart meter to track'n'tax your car? Hello, Israel
Avoid the rush hour, avoid higher rates. Oh and something about privacy
Israel is drafting a tender for smart meters to be mandated in every vehicle in the country, tracking drivers to allow for differential taxation, but only once the privacy issues have been resolved.
The plan is to vary vehicle tax based on usage, so drivers who don't drive during peak times, or stay out of city centres, get …
Microsoft's telly-over-the-net tech gobbled by Ericsson for mobes
Just as everyone gets used to watching TV via the Wii
Sweden's telecoms giant Ericsson has bought Mediaroom, the Microsoft-built technology that pipes TV over the internet.
It gives the world's largest maker of mobile network gear the keys to a quarter of the world's video over IP (IPTV) market - and 400 staff to improve the delivery of telly to pockets, palms and living rooms. …
EE extends network: Soon, 1 million users will pay us for 4G
No really... We've doubled the speed and everything
A million mobile subscribers will be paying the 4G premium on EE's network by year's end, according to the operator. EE is doubling its network's speed in 10 UK cities so it can keep boasting about being the UK's fastest provider.
The million subscribers will be eight per cent of EE's customer base, which it reckons is a decent …
Operators look on in horror as Facebook takes mobe users Home
We don't care that you've been buying them drinks all night ... bitch
Facebook Home reskins a phone much the same way that operators have been trying - and repeatedly failing - to do for more than a decade. But can Zuckerberg really lock the the mobile customer down into its UI and achieve the operators' nirvana of customer ownership?
Facebook Home, announced last week, takes a vanilla phone and …
Android FOUND ON TABLETS inscribed with WORD OF GOD
O come all ye fondlers, joyful and triumphant
A church has handed out tablets instead of hymn books - but not stone ones etched with the 10 commandments: these are Android fondleslabs whose pinch-to-zoom feature is a godsend for elderly parishioners, we're told.
The first tab-equipped Church of England congregation at St John's Church in Mickleover, near Derby, clutched …
Nokia Life touches down in Kenya, jingles pocketful of Microsoft money
But only rich westerners, and Nokia, get stuff for free
Nokia Life, the life services mobile app suite for the developing world, is launching the 18-pence-a-year service in Kenya, while Nokia throws another $250m into "the mobile ecosystem" elsewhere.
The money goes to Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia's investment arm which has already made money out of Morpho, Inside Secure, Swype and …
Canadian gov: Have half a million BlackBerrys now, pay later!
We're NOT desperate, we've been doing this since 2006
Telefonica will be spending another €200m with BlackBerry, borrowed from Export Development Canada (EDC) as part of its ongoing deal with the company and its supporting country.
It's far from the first time Telefonica has taken advantage of low-interest loans from the government-backed agency. EDC has been lending to Telefonica …
Wanna put your toaster and fridge online? Over to you, Ofcom
New wireless spec for 'Internet of Things' awaits rubber stamp
A blueprint for connecting up toasters, kettles and toys, and popping them onto the internet, has landed on the desk of the UK watchdog Ofcom.
Version 1 of Weightless SIG's specification describes how devices can comfortably communicate over White Space - a collection of unused gaps in the radio spectrum. Gadgets can access an …
Freeview telly test suggests 4G interference may not be a big deal
Do you know where your booster is? Or if you have one?
A trial 4G network, covering 22,000 homes just left of Birmingham, only interfered with TV reception in 15 of them - paving the way for an interference-free rollout over the summer, we're told.
The trial was conducted by at800, the organisation charged with spending £180m of cell network operator money to solve the problem. …
Mars to go offline for a month as vast nuclear furnace gets in the way
Ha ha, chuckle Martians, time to play!
Spacecraft exploring and orbiting Mars will be left alone for the next month as the red planet slips behind our nearest star for a bit of a spring break.
The Sun will block radio signals for a month or so, something familiar to old hands such as Mars Express, which has been happily orbiting Mars for almost a decade. It is, …
Cisco gobbles UK mobe mast maker - you know where this is going
Tiny cells in your Wi-Fi router - checkmate, Huawei
Swindon-based Ubiquisys will soon be part of Cisco in a $310m (£205m) buyout. The networking colossus has, in effect, snapped up more than 50 customers wanting small cellular base stations and the technology they want.
Cisco will hand over cash and "retention-based incentives" to persuade key staff at the Brit biz to stay on. …
