Sprint received 500,000 subpoenas for its data from law enforcement in the last year. That doesn’t include court orders for wiretaps and location data, which Sprint didn’t track annually but which added up to 325,982 requests in the last five years. The company also says it doesn’t have the resources to track how many of those requests it responded to or rejected. The company has 221 employees dedicated to processing and responding to government requests for its data.
Verizon received 260,000 requests for its users data in 2011, including wiretaps, calling records, text message information, and location information, but doesn’t add how many were fulfilled.
AT&T received 131,400 subpoenas in criminal cases for its information in 2011, as well as 49,700 warrants or orders that it hand over data. It rejected 965 of them. The company says it employees more than 100 staffers full-time to respond to law enforcement demands.
T-Mobile told Congressman Markey it “does not disclose” the number of law enforcement requests it receives or complies with.
The number of data requests is growing quickly, reports the NY Times. The major carriers say law enforcement demands have risen 12-16% year-over-year.
>
Markey’s request for this information followed a groundbreaking report by the American Civil Liberties Union based on Freedom of Information Act requests to police departments around the country for evidence of their policies on data requests to phone carriers.
The information revealed Monday includes “tower dumps,” too, says Chris Calebrese, an attorney with the ACLU. “Just the sheer volume of orders is amazing, but a significant chunk are dumps from entire cell towers,” he says. “That means tons of people’s information is being grabbed with a single one of these orders.”
Some police departments obtain all of the cell phone numbers that used a particular cell tower. Other police want all the mobile phone numbers that called a particular cell phone. Still other agencies want everything that can be gleaned from a smartphone, including the owner’s GPS coordinates.
Pen-Link, among others, provides Law Enforcement and Intelligence agencies with software and systems for the collection, storage, and analysis of telephone communications.
The company is utilizing both its existing 800MHz frequency band (20MHz) and the 1.8GHz band (20MHz) it acquired last year. With an additional 20MHz uplink/downlink spectrum, it is now using a total of 40MHz for its LTE services.
Multi Carrier aggregation allows the use of additional frequency bands and enables mobile data traffic to be optimally distributed to each frequency band, preventing network overload. Upon detecting LTE user concentration in the 800MHz band, the system automatically moves data traffic to 1.8GHz to improve data rate.
SK Telecom had 2.4 million LTE subscribers and a total base of more than 26 million mobile subscribers as of the end of April, making SK Telecom the second largest LTE service provider in the world after Verizon Wireless. About 30 percent of South Koreans are expected to move to LTE within a few months.
SK Telecom began full-fledged commercialization on July 1, delivering twice the bandwidth as its competitors. A firmware update enables the Galaxy S3 LTE to be able to support the technology. Moreover, most of the smartphones to be released in the second half of 2012 will be built with the MC technology.
Starting with Seoul’s Gangnam area, SK Telecom plans to complete MC roll-out in Seoul and major areas in six metropolitan cities within the year-end. It will also cover massive underground spaces like Underground Shopping Mall at Gangnam Station and COEX. Then, service area will be expanded to 23 cities including the Seoul metropolitan area and other metropolitan cities.
Artist John Loerchner says the true confessions make a subway commute into more than a boring space of time between home and work. The art encourages riders to feel more engaged with their surroundings, he told CBC News.
“We kind of wanted to create a juxtaposition to that and really take the people out of that day-to-day humdrum commute and….and create something that’s emotional, something they can connect with,” Loerchner said.
Confessions Underground is a Labspace Studio project, produced by Art 4 Commuters and is being hosted by the Toronto Transit Commission. Previous Confessions Underground projects have run in Montreal, Chicago and Buffalo.
Breeze systems has video booth software available for Canon DSLRs in addition to their photo booth software. Video booth captures video clips complete with sound. It includes green screen shooting capability and optional touchscreen control including a touchscreen keyboard to allow users to enter details such as their email address.
The Nikon D3200 is a $699 24MP entry-level DSLR that can be used with an optional WU-1a Wi-Fi module ($59) which supports image upload and remote viewing/shutter release with a free app for Android phones. An iOS version of the app will follow later in the year.
With 16GB of storage it costs $199 with a contract in the United States, though its actual price ranges from $150 to $229 at various outlets; and runs $589 without a contract. A 32GB model is available for $50 more.
It features a 4.8-inch (120 mm) touchscreen,Android 4.04, Samsung’s Exynos 4 Quad SoC, containing a 1.4 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and an ARM Mali-400 MP GPU, an intelligent personal assistant (S Voice), eye-tracking, wireless charging, and expanded storage. Depending on countries, it comes with different processors and RAM, and 4G LTE support.
Apple’s next-generation iPhone will be powered by a quad-core ARM processor based on Samsung’s Exynos 4 architecture, according to a new report. The third-generation iPad used the A5X, based around Samsung’s 45-nanometer architecture, also found in the A5 CPU in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. The iPhone 4S uses an “A5″ processor, a custom dual-core processor clocked at 800 megahertz. That chip was first introduced in the iPad 2, where it ran slightly faster at 1 gigahertz.
The A5X has an updated integrated graphics processor. While the CPU remained dual core, the GPU was upgraded to quad core in order to push the 3.1 million pixels found on the tablet’s high-resolution display.
The company sent a message (above) to customer service representatives on Wednesday advising them of the change. AT&T will compile a “blocklist” of stolen devices and service will be automatically suspended “if any attempt is made to use a device that is stored in the blocklist.”
The only way to add a device to the list will be by contacting a customer service representative directly, and users with remote data wipe apps will be required to activate them before suspending their device, to “prevent access to their personal information.”
One out of three robberies nationwide have involved the theft of a cellphone, according to an F.C.C. summary of the new plan. The thefts have grown most rapidly in urban areas; cellphones are stolen in more than 40 percent of all robberies in New York City and 38 percent of robberies in the District of Columbia, according to the groups.
Amazon is developing a smartphone, reports Bloomberg. Foxconn, the Chinese mobile-phone maker, is working with Amazon on the device, said one source, who asked not to be identified.
Amazon has sold about 5.5 million tablets since the Kindle Fire made its debut during the holiday quarter, but smartphone manufacturers, led by Samsung and Apple, have shipped nearly 400 million smartphones and other mobile devices in the first quarter, according to researcher IDC. An Amazon smartphone would help sell digital books, songs and movies.
Amazon is also seeking to complement the smartphone strategy by acquiring patents that cover wireless technology and would help it defend against allegations of infringement. Seattle-based Amazon considered buying wireless patents from InterDigital before the company sold the assets to Intel for $375 million, Bloomberg reported.
Amazon also beefed up its patent prowess recently by hiring Matt Gordon, formerly senior director of acquisitions at Intellectual Ventures, formed by patent-troll Nathan Myhrvold.
AdAge reported that Amazon is also exploring the possibility of acquiring a mobile advertising network, further escalating its fight with Google and Apple.
With the original Kindle, Amazon bought wholesale service from Sprint (and later AT&T) and bundled it into the cost of the Kindle and of purchased books. But multi-media E-Pub3 publications, such as Apple’s textbooks, can require 2 GB downloads, more than 100 times that required by traditional ebooks.
If LTE costs $80/month for 5-10 GB/month, tablet-based services won’t sell.
Traditional cellular operators simply don’t offer consumers a cost/effective data package for Amazon’s expected service needs. The same could be said about Google and Apple tablets, which consume more data than cell phones and are more mobile than laptops.
By the end of 2017, it is estimated that mobile PCs will generate 8 GB per month, and a smartphone just above 1 GB, according to Ericsson. Tablets will generate 17 percent of mobile wireless data demand by 2020, according to Cisco.
Spectrum ownership is one solution. But who has spectrum to spare? Dish and Clearwire are the two obvious choices in the United States. All other cellular options are capacity constrained.
If Dish goes with T-Mobile, then Amazon could do a virtual operator deal with them. If Dish goes with AT&T, then Amazon might go with AT&T as a virtual operator. But AT&T would first have to construct a nationwide 2.1 GHz network. T-Mobile, in contrast, has a nationwide AWS system in place and operational. It might add the 40 MHz of Dish spectrum faster and more cheaply.
But devices supporting Dish’s unique 2.1 GHz frequency aren’t expected until 2014.
Clearwire has the most spectrum. They have 100 MHz available in most major cities. Their TD-LTE service, available in less than a year, will also provide device compatibility with China Mobile and Indian operators which also plan TD-LTE systems. Amazon could launch TD-LTE-based services and devices on their own leased 2.6 GHz spectrum – and provide global roaming – in less than a year.
One media-intensive E-Pub3 publication could consume an entire month’s data allotment using traditional cellular data plans. A 2 GB overage fee would be in the $20 range from most cellular operators. Netflix-like video service would be virtually unthinkable with traditional cellular operators.
Amazon needs spectrum. One could argue that Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook also need to have some kind of wholesale arrangement.
Let’s look at the players:
Apple has said it is not going to acquire spectrum.
Google has pulled out of their Clear investment – perhaps that indicates that they will partner with Dish.
A Seattle based troika with Amazon, Microsoft & Clear might have the advantage of time to market, bandwidth and management. That leaves Facebook as the odd man out. I’ll go with Dish and T-Mobile as home to the Google and Facebook phone service. Clear’s 2.6 GHz has poorer coverage but cheaper data downloads, good for Amazon and Nook. Apple will play the field.
Global internet advertising expenditures will rise about 31.5% between 2011 and 2013, according to a July 2011 forecast from Zenith Optimedia. Internet ad spending is expected to total about $72.18 billion USD this year, and reach $94.97 billion in 2013.
Advertising and app stores can subsidize wholesale spectrum purchases. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple may open the gates to cheap and ubiquitous computing.
DailyWireless Advertising now has sponsored links. You get 200K pageviews/3 months. Minimum two lines (or less) cost $99 for 3 mo or $175/6 mo. Additional lines $10/month. The best CPM in the business!
