mobile

CPUC says telcos, cable companies, mobile carriers shouldn’t cut off customers during corona virus crisis

18 March 2020 by Steve Blum
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Corona virus

Edit: The title of this post originally contained a (serious) typo. It’s fixed now. I can blame jet lag but, really, sometimes my fingers don’t do what I think they’re doing. Sorry about that.

Communications companies should declare “moratoriums on disconnections” in California, according to a letter sent yesterday by the California Public Utilities Commission to executives of landline telcos, mobile carriers and cable companies. It warns telecoms companies that the “CPUC plans to take action to provide emergency customer protection measures for customers in California to prevent disconnections for unpaid bills” during the corona virus emergency.… More

Review of 2G, 3G cell phone RF study draws closer link to tumors in rats

31 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Following a review by outside experts, the National Institutes of Health has revised its conclusions about two studies of the effects of mobile phone transmissions on rats and mice. The initial versions were published in February . The changes to the findings draws a stronger link between high levels of 2G and 3G radio frequency (RF) radiation from cell phones, and cancerous tumors in male rats, and less certainty about whether there’s evidence or not of more limited tumour development in female rats and mice, and male mice.… More

Billion dollar fine, new management and “security guarantees” gains ZTE U.S. access

14 July 2018 by Steve Blum
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ZTE is back in business. The Chinese mobile phone and network equipment manufacturer paid $1.4 billion in fines and replaced its board of directors in order to make peace with the U.S. government. The federal commerce department effectively shut ZTE in May when it cut off access to U.S.-made products, including high end chips and key bits of the Android mobile operating system.

The problems began when the U.S. government accused ZTE of doing business with Iran and North Korea, in violation of U.S.… More

U.S. senators want cities to act fast on small cell permit applications

3 July 2018 by Steve Blum
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There’s bad news and maybe a little good news for cities in a draft U.S. senate bill that aims to speed up wireless broadband deployments. Senate bill 3157 was introduced last week by senators John Thune (R – South Dakota) and Brian Schatz (D – Hawaii). It’s a bipartisan and significant pairing – Thune chairs the senate’s commerce committee and Schatz is the ranking democrat on its communications subcommittee.

The bad news is that the bill would reduce the amount of time local governments have to process permit applications for wireless facilities.… More

ZTE shutdown could lead to a mobile OS startup

13 May 2018 by Steve Blum
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A major Chinese smart phone and telecoms infrastructure manufacturer was stopped cold by U.S. trade sanctions, after it 1. did business with Iran contrary to U.S. rules and 2. didn’t adequately punish the executives responsible for the violation. ZTE announced last week that “the major operating activities of the company have ceased”. It’s number two smart phone maker in China, behind Huawei, but has a low profile among U.S. consumers.

The U.S. commerce department issued an order that bans U.S.… More

Mobile phone radiation limits are safe, FDA concludes following ten year study

25 February 2018 by Steve Blum
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Mobile phones don’t significantly increase the risk of cancer, given current safety limits. That’s the federal Food and Drug Administration’s assessment of two long term studies recently completed by the National Institutes of Health.

Rats and mice were exposed to higher-than-allowed levels – up to six-times as much – of radio frequency radiation for nine hours a day for two years. According to the NIH, only one significant negative effect was observed, and only in male rats…

High exposure to radio frequency radiation (RFR) in rodents resulted in tumors in tissues surrounding nerves in the hearts of male rats, but not female rats or any mice, according to draft studies from the National Toxicology Program (NTP)…

“The levels and duration of exposure to RFR were much greater than what people experience with even the highest level of cell phone use, and exposed the rodents’ whole bodies.

… More

Video will drive the U.S. mobile market in 2018

31 December 2017 by Steve Blum
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Consumer electronics is collapsing into a two-product industry – smart phones and big screen televisions – and the balance is tipping towards phones. The end of network neutrality will accelerate the shift, as the big four U.S. mobile carriers use their control over network traffic and service pricing to sell more content and capture more viewing time.

The big beneficiary is AT&T. Its DirecTv Now over-the-top platform just passed the million subscriber mark. The Federal Communication Commission’s decision scrapping net neutrality rules allows AT&T to exempt DirecTv from data caps – zero rate it – while subjecting everything else you watch to monthly limits and hefty overage charges.… More

U.S. senate looks at stomping local wireless property rights and permits

3 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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A draft bill bouncing around the U.S senate would preempt state and local ownership of public property when wireless companies want to use it, and would put tight limits on state and local authority to issue permits for wireless facilities on private property. It’s a bipartisan effort, led by senators John Thune (R – South Dakota) and Brian Schatz (D – Hawaii), both of whom are major congressional broadband policy players.

In a lot of ways, it resembles senate bill 649, which was approved by the California legislature this year then vetoed by governor Jerry Brown, who wanted a “more balanced solution”.… More

Windows mobile suffers the Blue Screen of Death, Microsoft moves on

15 October 2017 by Steve Blum
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Microsoft is done with the mobile operating system business. The man in charge of Windows 10, Joe Belfiore, announced the end of the mobile version in a tweet. Like Bill Gates, Belfiore switched to Android.

Current Windows mobile users – both of them – will continue to get security updates and other tweaks, but development of the system has ended. The market just wasn’t there, Belfiore tweeted…

We have tried VERY HARD to incent app devs.

… More

Open access does not guarantee open broadband competition

2 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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When national governments run mobile broadband networks, they do not run them well. That’s the unsurprising conclusion of a white paper published by GSMA, the trade association for mobile network operators that rely on GSM standards to one extent or the other – in other words, pretty much all of them.

A trade association that lobbies governments to advance the interests of its members might be expected to oppose what amounts to nationalisation of mobile network infrastructure and operations.… More