Tag Archives: US
Access to mobile call detail records by law enforcement: Warrants are needed in Texas. What about the rest?
Smith v Maryland was a 1979 US case that permitted relatively easy access to phone records. Fixed phone records, because that’s all there was, back then. Mobile phone records yield a lot more information. But US law enforcement has been using the old rules to get the call records. But that may be about to [...]
Big data gets big funding
US government gets behind big data. We agree, we’re getting into big data too. Difference is that in our countries there are not that many big data streams. Big data refers to the rising flood of digital data from many sources, including the Web, biological and industrial sensors, video, e-mail and social network communications. The [...]
Forty percent of searches from mobile phones in India (v. 14 percent in US) says Google
Google sees mobiles as the future, especially in markets like India, according to Business Standard. Mobile Internet fastest growing vertical, says Google India MD. Listing a set of next big trends in the overall technology sector, Google India says mobile Internet is set to lead the way for the industry. As against 14 per cent [...]
Is there hope for government postal services?
In Sri Lanka, the window for saving the post has probably closed. According to the latest Household Survey, a Sri Lankan household spends LKR 4/month on postal services and LKR 750/month on telecom services. You cannot build a viable business on that kind of money. There will always be a need to deliver packages (until [...]
Good Google? Bad Google?
My entry to telecom policy and regulation was through the AT&T Divestiture case, where the US Department of Justice broke up the world’s largest company with my advisor, Bill Melody, as a key witness. The good guys and the bad guys were clear. While I was teaching the big Microsoft antitrust case came up and [...]
If communication is a fundamental right . . .
Here‘s how you enforce it. Developers caution that independent networks come with downsides: repressive governments could use surveillance to pinpoint and arrest activists who use the technology or simply catch them bringing hardware across the border. But others believe that the risks are outweighed by the potential impact. “We’re going to build a separate infrastructure [...]
4G rollout cited as rationale for AT&T buying T Mobile
So AT&T is claiming that it can rollout 4G networks only if it is allowed to buy T Mobile (and combine the frequencies assigned to both). So what they really want is spectrum? As smartphones and tablets proliferate, so too have apps like one by Facebook that draw in ever-rising amounts of data. Monday’s letters [...]
Crowdsourced broadband QoS, with value added
We thought up the idea of crowdsourcing broadband QoSE, but could not make it work because the AT Tester was too complicated. In the US, they came with the idea two years later but made it work. Now someone has added value to that product. Given many governments in the region (e.g., Bangladesh, India and [...]
Cell broadcasting gets a new boost, thanks to Pacific tsunami
The MIT Technology Review is taken seriously by many people, especially those who see technology as part of the policy solution mix. When it more or less endorses cell broadcasting as an effective public warning technology, citing our work to boot, we cannot but be pleased. The technology is also being tested in a very [...]
Alfred Kahn, policy intellectual who drove US deregulation, passes away
While he was teaching at Cornell, Alfred Kahn noticed that airfares were lower and frequencies better in the San Francisco-Los Angeles route than in other route pairs in the US. The difference was that SF-LA were both in California and were thus outside the authority of the federal aviation regulatory agency. When President Carter appointed [...]
Europe says no to simplistic net neutrality
There is no free lunch. Costs must be covered, preferably by those who cause them. This has been our position on the simplistic and ideological net neutrality debate. Looks like Europe thinks the same: “We have to avoid regulation which might deter investment and an efficient use of the available resources,” Ms. Kroes said during [...]
Super WiFi from white space
The US has done it. When will Asian spectrum managers start? First step is to move TV to digital. Where are the road maps? The Federal Communications Commission approved a proposal on Thursday that would open vast amounts of unused broadcast television airwaves for high-speed wireless broadband networks and other unlicensed applications. The change in [...]
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