NCC fines 3 GSM Operators

Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday slammed a total fine of N647.5 million on Airtel, Globacom and MTN Nigeria, the three major GSM service providers for failing to meet the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for quality of service in the month of January 2014.

NCC has also barred  Airtel, Globacom and MTN Nigeria from selling SIM Cards.

According to Reuben Muoka, head, Media & Public Relations (NCC), consequently, the three companies have been barred from selling SIM Cards with effect from March  1 to 31, and are also barred from running promotions in their networks until they improve on the failed KPIs for which they are sanctioned.

The details of the sanction showed that Airtel Network Ltd, and MTN Nigeria Communications Ltd, are to pay a fine of N185 Million each while Globacom Ltd is liable to the tune of N277.5 million.

In addition, each of the operators must pay the sanction amount on or before March 7, 2014, failure upon which each will be liable to pay N2,500,000 per day as long as the contravention persists.

He said that the sanctions, which were communicated to the three operators in a letter signed by Dr. Eugene Juwah, executive vice chairman of the Commission, explained that the Commission will carry out an audit of the three companies on March 1, 2014 and also on March 31st, 2014, to ensure that no sale of new SIM Cards takes place in any of the three networks within the period.

The letter made reference to an earlier directive of December 10, 2014, which warned the operators that “if the Quality of Service does not improve by 31st December, 2013, the Commission will be compelled to direct operators to, among others, suspend the activation of new SIMs and subscribers until such an operator can prove that it has met the Key Performance Indicators specified in the Regulations”.

According to Dr. Juwah, “The Commission after careful collation of statistics from the Network Operating Centres, NOC, of all major networks operators for the month of January 2014, has concluded that the service provided by some of the operators during the period fell below the Key Performance Indicators published by the Commission in the Quality of Service Regulations, as amended”.

Details of the sanction also indicated that Airtel failed on Call Setup Success Rate, CSSR, and SDCONG, while MTN failed on Call Setup Success Rate , CSSR and Drop Call Rate, DCR. On its part, Globacom failed on Call Setup Success Rate, CSSR, Drop Call Rate, DCR, and SDCONG.

The key highlights of the sanction are that the concerned operators must adhere to the following conditions:

1. Payment of the fines shall be on or before March 7, 2014.

2. Failure to settle the said amount within the stipulated period, the operators shall continue to be liable to pay the sum of N2,500,000 ( Two Million, Five Hundred Thousand Naira Only) per day for as long as the contravention persist.

3. To stop the sale of new SIM Cards throughout the month of March 2014, with effect from March 1 to 31, 2014.

4. The Service Providers shall not churn or delete inactive or ( None revenue generating SIMs) from their networks during the period of March 1 to 31, 2014.

5. The Service Providers shall not supply new SIM Cards from their warehouses or other sources to its Dealers or third parties throughout the period from March 1-31, 2014.

6. The Service Providers shall stop all promotions until the KPIs which have been identified in their respective networks are positively addressed.

The directive further warned that “any deviation or alteration of provisioning pattern ( in terms of average daily number of provisioning) in the remaining days of February 2014 compared to the regular provisioning rates by the concerned service providers shall be construed as a breach to the Direction

Google Android Security getting Smarter

Android security is always a hot-button issue. "Dangerous malware" and "new threats" make for great headlines, after all -- and companies that make money selling anti-malware software are always happy to feed fear-inducing fodder to stats-loving reporters (go figure!).

The truth, though, is that Android security is one of the most sensationalized and misunderstood subjects you'll read about in the tech media today. Plain and simple, a theoretical breach and a meaningful threat that's actually putting users at risk are two very different things.

Google's made a lot of progress in separating one from the other over the years -- and the company's about to take another step in making nearly every Android device even more secure.

Android security: The next phase

Over the next couple of weeks, Google will be rolling out a universal update that'll enable constant on-device monitoring for potentially problematic apps. It's an upgrade to the platform's Verify Apps function that first launched with Android 4.2 in 2012, as I reported exclusively at the time, and then spread to all devices with Android 2.3 and up last July.

As it stands now, Verify Apps watches your device for any new applications -- particularly those that you download and install directly ("sideload") instead of installing from the Google Play Store. Anytime a new app appears, the system instantly checks it for potentially harmful code and warns you of any dangers it discovers.

What's changing is that Verify Apps will soon continue to monitor your applications even after they're installed, thereby extending its level of protection.

"We're constantly updating what [threats] we're aware of, so being able to detect those things where we've improved our coverage is valuable," Android Lead Security Engineer Adrian Ludwig tells me.

Ludwig says the newly expanded system will also help identify issues with apps installed before Verify Apps became available -- or those installed without a person's knowledge while, say, someone else was borrowing a device.

"We want to make sure that if that were to happen, a user would be made aware of it after the fact," Ludwig explains.

Just like it does now, the updated Verify Apps system will run silently in the background; Google suspects the majority of users will never even know it's there. And if you'd rather not have the protection in place, you can always disable Verify Apps altogether in your device's system settings.

Beyond a single system

Remember, too, that Verify Apps works in conjunction with a server-side system that scans all apps uploaded to the Google Play Store. And both systems take advantage of something Google calls the Android Safety Net, which detects everything down to SMS abuse and blacklists sources that have exhibited shifty behavior in the past.

"At this point, there really is a collection of services that we're starting to think about as the Google security services for Android," Ludwig says. "We want to make sure there is no single point of failure within our platform so users can be protected."

That "no single point of failure" concept is important: With last year's "Master Key" vulnerability, for instance -- publicized, coincidentally enough, by a company that sells anti-malware software for Android -- Google implemented protection for its Play Store scanning system within a day of learning about the exploit and for its on-device Verify Apps system a few weeks later.

Even though OS-level patches didn't start hitting devices for another few months, those initial layers of protection were available to everyone almost instantly -- and according to Google's internal data, not a single real-world exploit attempt occurred before they were in place. In other words, the real-world risk related to the vulnerability was already next to none, as I pointed out at the time -- and once the Play Store and Verify Apps protection kicked in, it dropped even lower.

And there's the dull truth of this domain: When it comes to security, real-world assessments make for far less sexy headlines than sensational shouting based on theoretical threats.

The next steps

The expanded Verify Apps system will be rolling out as part of an upcoming update to Google Play Services, which means it'll automatically hit all devices with Android 2.3 or higher. That covers almost every phone and tablet out there -- nearly 99 percent of actively running products, according to Google's latest platform measurements -- and thanks to Google's ongoing deconstruction of Android, the update will happen behind-the-scenes and without the need for any manufacturer or carrier interference.

So what's the broad takeaway from this? It's the same thing I've been saying for years: Now more than ever, malware on Android is far less significant of a real-world issue than some reports would lead you to believe. In the real world, the killer viruses that are so good for headlines actually affect next to no one. And now, even if you don't exercise basic common sense -- even if you carelessly download shady-looking stuff from unofficial sources out in the wild -- your phone will automatically protect you even more than it already did.

Anti-malware software vendors will undoubtedly keep preying on ignorant reporters and consumers, but all it takes is a little bit of knowledge to keep the big bad virus monsters in perspective -- and out of your nightmares.

Facebook's WhatsApp coming with Voice Calls

(CNN) - WhatsApp, the globally popular texting app that Facebook just acquired for a whopping $19 billion, is adding phone calls to its list of services.


At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said the voice service will be free and begin rolling out to users within the next few months.

Currently, WhatsApp offers unlimited text and voice-mail messages between users. Its service is free for the first year, then costs 99 cents annually.

"We want to make sure people always have the ability to stay in touch with their friends and loved ones really affordably," Koum said in a speech at Mobile World Congress.

As reported by multiple news outlets, Koum also announced that WhatsApp now has 465 million monthly users and 330 million daily users. The latter is 15 million more than what was made public last week when Facebook announced the purchase.

Voice service will come first to Apple devices and Google's Android operating system, with Windows phones and Blackberry to follow.

The move puts WhatsApp in competition not only with other messaging apps that offer voice but chat tools such as Skype and even mobile carriers. WhatsApp's unlimited texting has already helped establish it in places where smartphones and fancy data plans are less common.

It has 40 million users in India and another 38 million in Brazil, two countries highly coveted by tech companies such as Facebook for their large populations and emerging mobile customer base. WhatsApp hasn't released figures for the United States, where it is less popular.

Last week, Facebook shocked the business world when it announced it was buying WhatsApp for up to $19 billion in cash and stock -- by far the social network's largest acquisition to date

IBM to lay off 25% Hardware Staff

IBM has confirmed that it's laying off a portion of its workforce in order to focus on new priority areas, like the cloud, analytics, and cognitive computing. This means certain divisions of the company must see cuts.

"As reported in our recent earnings briefing, IBM continues to rebalance its workforce to meet the changing requirements of its clients, and to pioneer new, high value segments of the IT industry," IBM spokesman Doug Shelton told CNET in a statement. "To that end, IBM is positioning itself to lead in areas such as cloud, analytics and cognitive computing, and investing in these priority areas."

The company wouldn't comment on the number of people being laid off or what divisions would be most affected. However, one source familiar with the plans told CNET that the layoffs entailed up to 25 percent in the Systems and Technology group -- this is the group that makes IBM servers and is often referred to as the "hardware" division.

IBM announced last month that it sold its x86 server business to Lenovo for $2.3 billion, so layoffs within the hardware division seem to make sense. With the sale, about 7,500 IBM employees were expected to be offered jobs at Lenovo. In 2005, IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo, too.

IBM currently employs more than 400,000 people worldwide and says that its total workforce has remained stable over the past three years. Additionally, the company is investing in cutting edge projects like Watson, which was first developed by IBM researchers to show what was possible in combining cognitive computing and natural language processing.

"Already this year we have committed $1 billion to our new Watson unit and $1.2 billion to expand our Cloud footprint around the world," Shelton said. "In addition, just this week IBM announced a $1 billion investment in platform-as-a-service Cloud capabilities, as well as investments in areas such as nanotechnology which will bring hundreds of new jobs to New York state."

"This also creates new job opportunities at IBM," Shelton continued. "At any given time, IBM has more than 3,000 job openings in these and other growth areas in the US."

IBM employs tens of thousands of people across the US. According to Alliance@IBM, a union seeking to represent IBM employees, workers in New York, Minnesota, and Vermont will be among those hit hard by the layoffs, along with workers in other countries.

Vermont's Burlington Free Press newspaper reports that more than 100 employees will be lad off from IBM's plant in Essex Junction, Vt. And, New York's Poughkeepsie Journal writes that IBM agreed to keep at least 3,100 high-tech workers in upstate New York through 2016 -- however, the last official head count of the state's workers was estimated around 7,000.

Mozilla Launches Firefox OS

Gadget show goes soft on hardware

Barcelona, Spain (CNN) - I came to Mobile World Congress expected to be wowed by lots of shiny new gadgets, but I'm leaving impressed by the seemingly less sexy subject of mobile operating systems. Turns out there's a lot happening here.


A lot of the buzz was focused around the Firefox OS launch on Sunday. A rival to Android, iOS and Windows Phone, it seems unlikely it will get much traction in the West. But in places where people have yet to buy a smartphone it might stand a chance -- it's intended to run on less powerful phones that are cheap to make and sell.

One of the aspects of the launch that surprised most people was the number of manufacturers and network operators backing the OS.

Tell us: What's your dream smartphone feature?

That's a sign of how fed up those parties are getting of being told what to do by Apple and Google, and how worried they are that they are being increasingly locked out of the profits of the smartphone sector. They are lashing themselves to Firefox OS in the hope that it will lead to more money for them down the line.

Also shown off for the first time was Tizen, Samsung and Intel's alternative to Android.

Due later this year, Tizen has had a long history of false starts, so we were excited to take a look at it. It essentially looks a lot like Android, but seemed pretty janky to us and a long way from being ready for release to consumers. It wasn't the best of debuts for something so important.

Read more: Will we ever have battery-free mobiles?

But for me and the rest of the CNET team, the star of the show is something very few people will have heard of.

Ubuntu Touch is an operating system for mobiles and tablets coming in October. It doesn't have the big names attached to it like Firefox OS and Tizen, but it feels a lot slicker.