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Ofcom helps protect customers against unexpected roaming charges

Ofcom helps protect customers against unexpected roaming charges

UK service providers must notify customers when they connect to a different network

New rules from UK telecoms regulator Ofcom will protect customers when they use their mobile phone on a foreign network. In addition, customers will be alerted if they are inadvertently roaming, perhaps because they're near an international border.
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Global smartphone market is set for recovery, says new forecast

A new forecast from research specialists Canalys shows the smartphone market is set to recover next year. Worldwide shipments declined by 12% last year but that decline is expected to slow to 5% this year.
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Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

Vodafone and Three plan to merge their UK businesses

New Hutchison/Vodafone network would be biggest UK operator

Vodafone Group plc and CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings Limited have agreed to combine their UK telecommunication businesses, respectively Vodafone UK and Three UK. The merger will create a large new network operator to compete with Virgin Media O2 and EE.
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UK mobile payment service Paym to close in March 2023

UK mobile payment service Paym will close on 7th March 2023. The service, which allowed users to make and receive payments using their mobile phone numbers, was launched in 2014.
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Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Qualcomm legal action moves forward in the UK

Which? seeks payout for Samsung and Apple smartphone owners

Consumer protection organisation Which? has been given permission by the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal to represent Apple and Samsung smartphone buyers in a legal case against chip manufacturer Qualcomm.
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Opinion Articles

Ee-ee-ee, says Everything Everywhere

Mark Bridge writes:

Mobile networks have changed, haven’t they?

Once they were all about delivering service. Coverage. Quality. Price. Now it’s much more about branding.

Everything Everywhere has announced it’s to become EE, an obvious abbreviation that’s been used in mobile industry briefings pretty much since the company was created two years ago. It joins the likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hennes & Mauritz, British Home Stores, Independent Television and Marks & Spencer, although all of these took decades to transition into businesses that were just described by their initials.

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Article rating: 4.0

Last week at The Fonecast: 10th September 2012

No Amazon smartphone, no Nokia tablet

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s a smartphone autumn, as prophesied a few weeks ago by the Carphone Warehouse and many others. The frenzy of big-name announcements led by Samsung at Berlin’s IFA has given way to stand-alone media presentations from Nokia, Motorola and Amazon.

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With instant-pay apps, wallets can stay home

Ted Landphair of voanews.com writes:

A lot of people gave up carrying much cash a long time ago, since they knew ‘plastic’ - a credit or debit card, or a store or public transit ‘smart card’ - would be accepted just about everywhere.

But to hear tech companies tell it, plastic cards will be museum pieces as well before long.

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Last week at The Fonecast: 27th August 2012

4G gets a boost in the UK, Samsung gets a slap in the USA

Mark Bridge writes:

It was a week of dramatic contrasts in the mobile phone industry. We started with Everything Everywhere’s news that 4G service was coming to the UK this year – possibly with a new brand that’ll work alongside Orange and T-Mobile. Meanwhile Three UK seems to have its own plans that involve acquiring some excess 4G spectrum from Everything Everywhere. There was much muttering from Vodafone and O2, although whether this’ll manifest itself as legal action remains to be seen.

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The Hare and the Tortoise: the race for 4G/LTE in the UK

Robin Kent writes:

With this week’s announcement that Everything Everywhere has been given the green light to launch the UK’s first 4G service, competing operators such as Vodafone and O2 are getting hot under the collar. With every day that goes by, these operators lose vital competitiveness as the market creeps away them towards Orange and T-Mobile. This is a real life ‘hare and tortoise’ scenario.

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Article rating: 4.8
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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

McAfee expects mobile devices to attract most 'threat innovation' in 2014

Intel-owned online security company McAfee Labs has published its Predictions Report for 2014, using trends from 2013 to forecast the type of online threats anticipated next year.

The company says it expects the mobile platform to “draw the lion’s share of threat innovation” in 2014. Ransomware - taking control of a user’s device and asking for payment - is expected to become an increasing threat to mobile users, as are sophisticated attacks that can bypass some security measures. We’re also expected to see social platforms being used more aggressively to target personal and corporate information.

In total, McAfee Labs is expecting seven major online security trends in 2014:

1. Mobile malware will drive growth in technical innovation and the volume of attacks in the overall malware ‘market’ in 2014. In particular, we’re expected to see ransomware aimed at mobile devices, attacks targeting near-field communications (NFC) vulnerabilities and attacks that steal data from legitimate apps.

2. Virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, will inspire malicious ransomware attacks around the world as these currencies can be transferred anonymously.

3. Criminal gangs (and potentially government agencies) will deploy new ‘stealth’ attacks that are harder than ever to identify and stop. For example, ‘sandbox-aware’ attacks can avoid detection by not fully deploying unless they believe they are running on an unprotected device.

4. Social platforms and social networks will be attacked to capture passwords or other data. This information can then be used to target advertising or perpetrate virtual or real-world crimes.

5. New PC and server attacks will target vulnerabilities above and below the operating system, while mobile attacks are expected to give attackers direct access to the device and its services.

6. Security vendors will use ‘big data’ to add new threat-reputation services and analytics tools that will enable users to identify threats faster and more accurately than can be done today.

7. Cyber criminals will attack cloud-based corporate applications, which could be a particular threat to smaller businesses that lack sufficient leverage to demand adequate security measures from their service provider.

Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs, said “With target audiences so large, financing mechanisms so convenient, and cyber-talent so accessible, robust innovation in criminal technology and tactics will continue its surge forward in 2014. The activity in mobile and social is representative of an increasing ‘black hat’ focus on the fastest growing and most digitally active consumer audiences, in which personal information is almost as attractive as banking passwords. The emergence and evolution of advanced evasion techniques represents a new enterprise security battlefront, where the hacker’s deep knowledge of architectures and common security tactics enable attacks that are very hard to uncover.”

[McAfee 2014 Predictions Report (pdf)]

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