It was a week for rules and regulations, as the EC updated telecoms regulations and mulled copyright law reforms, and the TM Forum launched a new automated benchmark scheme.
Neelie Kroes, the EC’s digital agenda commissioner, pledged tough action on member states and regulators that fail to introduce new European telecoms rules unveiled on Tuesday.
The updated regulations allow consumers to switch operator in a day, demand operators give more information on the services available, and beef up the security of personal information stored online.
Separately, the EC revealed it is working up an overhaul of copyright laws designed to make them fit for purpose in the digital era. Topics covered by the proposal include the transfer of music and video orphan works and the creation of digital libraries.
The TM Forum used its flagship Management World Congress to unveil new automated benchmarking tools that enable service providers to automatically upload and compare their performance against a set of industry standard metrics. The Forum also took the wraps off an update to its Frameworx standards suite at the event.
Ireland’s communications minister used the event to call on operators to establish a trial network for its Exemplar next generation fiber network, as the scheme moves into its second phase. Pat Rabbitte said the network is essential to Ireland’s financial recovery, and will establish it as a global technology leader.
Progress in deploying New Zealand’s UFB fiber network is a little more advanced than Ireland. This week the government awarded the bulk of its rollout contracts to incumbent Telecom NZ, which plans to split its Chorus network arm into a separate company to help fulfill the contract.
Across the water, it was wireless broadband that stole the headlines, as Australian carrier Telstra switched on its first LTE base stations in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane.
Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent were the beneficiaries in a string of managed services contracts awarded by China Unicom. Huawei picked up a deal to manage half of Shanghai Unicom’s network, while Alca-Lu won control of Fujian Unicom’s operations in south east China.
The Chinese vendor also outlined plans to grow its presence in the enterprise market. Marketing president David He told Telecom Asia.net the firm plans to double sales in the sector to $4 billion (€2.8 billion) in 2011, and derive $15 billion by 2015.
Rival ZTE was also setting targets, outlining plans to generate revenues of $2 billion from Cloud computing in 2011 during its annual analyst day.
China took the unfortunate accolade of country with the most sickly Android smartphones with domestic SaaS provider NetQin Mobile revealing 64% of 2.53 million malware-infected Android devices resided there in 1Q11.
The revelation came at a good time for Microsoft, which this week revealed the version of Windows Phone 7 that will feature in Nokia’s smartphones. Codenamed Mango, the operating system sports 500 new features and is designed to integrate applications into handset’s core functions.
And IBM said a supercomputer first used on a US quiz show could transform the call center industry by ironing out subtle nuances in language to improve customer interaction. Paul Bloom, CTO of telecoms research, said the computer – named Watson – can also provide answers to staff faster than current manual processes.