London, England — GSMA Latin America have announced the commitment of the main mobile network operators (MNOs) in Latin America to collaborate with the regional governments in initiatives designed to reduce mobile phone theft and related crime. This voluntary initiative of GSM MNOs will allow the sharing of stolen mobile device information in order to block stolen devices and make their trafficking and reuse across the region more difficult.

At a meeting of the Chief Regulatory Officers Group for Latin America (CROG Latin America), public affairs representatives of the regional MNOs agreed on the steps to start exchanging stolen handset information via the GSMA’s IMEI Database. The agreement implies the information shared between MNOs be used to identify devices reported as stolen from users to ensure they are recognised and eventually blocked subject to local regulations.

Javier Delgado, Chair of the CROG Latin America, highlighted that: “This joint effort by all regional operators to be part of this initiative will help regulators in our countries to face and address this scourge.”

This coordinated action by mobile operators is already showing results in Central America, where industry and telecommunications regulators in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama are aligning their efforts to facilitate the identification and blocking of stolen devices. “The idea is to build upon the experience of collaboration between telecom operators and governments carried out in Central America and expand it country-by-country throughout the region over the next six months,” said Delgado.

The creation by the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL) of the Regional Front to Fight against the Theft of Mobile Terminal Devices was a key element of the resolution approved in 2011 by CITEL during the meeting of the Advisory Committee (CCPI).  Among the proposals of this resolution, it recommended: ‘Regulating at the regional level the exchange of black-listing databases and blocking their unique identification codes (IMEI) to prevent the activation and use of cell phones stolen in other markets and helping to control illegal trafficking of devices among the region’s countries’.

“Sharing of information via the global IMEI Database is an important collaborative step that our member MNOs are willing to take and is also proof of how public and private sectors can work together to address specific issues of concern to society and governments,” emphasised Sebastian Cabello, GSMA Latin America Director. “While information sharing can help to reduce crime, it is essential to explore and adopt other measures to ensure appropriate detection, prosecution and punishment of such crimes.”

GSMA member operators that are committed to connect to the stolen handset database and to implement measures to block stolen terminals in all countries where they operate in Latin America are:America Movil, Antel, Cable & Wireless Panama, Corporacion Digitel, Entel Bolivia, Entel Chile,  ICE, Tigo Colombia, Nextel/NII Holdings, Nuevatel PCS Bolivia, Orange Dominican Republic, Telecom Italia and Telefonica.

The agreement, full implementation of which is expected to conclude in March 2013, covers more than 500 million mobile connections throughout the region. The GSMA will continue working to promote the adoption of these guidelines to all GSMA member companies in Latin America through the signing of memorandum of understandings among operators on a country-by-country basis.

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After 15 years of neglect, federal regulators are finally planning to tell phone companies selling services to schools and libraries how to comply with a rule requiring them to charge bargain prices.

Last week ProPublica revealed that the Federal Communications Commission had failed to provide guidance for the low pricing rule case since the 1997 launch of the school program, called E-Rate. Lawsuits and other legal actions in four states turned up evidence that AT&T and Verizon charged local school districts much higher rates than it gave to similar customers or more than what the program allowed.

The preferential pricing rule, called lowest corresponding price, was designed to give schools a leg up in the complicated world of voice and data pricing, and to make sure school children had access to the Internet. But despite evidence of inflated pricing, the FCC never brought an enforcement case against a service provider for violating the rule.

While the main victims of this failure are the nation’s schoolchildren who receive suboptimal broadband access, there’s another set of victims: the vast majority of people with a cellular or landline phone contract. That’s because the program provides a subsidy to schools to help them pay for the telecom services. Telephone consumers pay for this subsidy, usually through a “Universal Service Fund” charge on individual phone bills. The subsidy fund is capped at about $2.25 billion a year.

Schools and libraries draw on this fund to help pay for the services provided by the telecom companies — virtually all schools are eligible, but the poorer the school, the more it can draw. Here’s the rub: Requests for help almost always exceed the available funding. So when phone companies charge inflated rates to schools and government regulators turn a blind eye, this fund is depleted faster; fewer schools and libraries benefit; and money taken from millions of telephone customers goes to boost corporate profits instead of to help as many schoolchildren as possible.

Now, the FCC will finally teach phone companies about the preferential pricing rule. Over the next week companies that participate in the program will be attending annual training sessions in Atlanta and Los Angeles that are designed to explain the program’s rules. This year’s training sessions — unlike those in past years — will include lengthy discussions of the bargain pricing rule, according to a power point presentation posted on the website of the private company that administers the E-Rate program for the FCC, the Universal Service Administration Co.

The presentation tells companies that schools are “not obligated to ask” for the lowest corresponding price, “but must receive it!”

Asked to explain why the upcoming training sessions for providers were going to discuss the pricing rule for the first time, a spokesman for the FCC released a statement saying the new guidance was “prompted by an internal discussion last August of issues raised in the whistle-blower case.”

That case was brought in 2008 by Todd Heath, who audited school telecom bills in Wisconsin. He alleged in federal court that Wisconsin Bell, a unit of AT&T, was charging several schools far more than others for essentially the same services, thus violating the pricing rule. The company says it follows the E-Rate rules and is contesting Heath’s allegations in court. One of their defenses is the FCC’s lack of guidance about the pricing rule.

ProPublica interviewed several FCC officials responsible for E-Rate last December, in a discussion mostly about the lowest corresponding price rule. None of them mentioned the prospect of new training about the rule, even after it was pointed out that the FCC had provided phone companies virtually no guidance on the price rule for the previous decade.

by Jeff Gerth, ProPublica, May 8, 2012, 11:33 a.m.

The article At Last! After 15 Years, Govt Tells Phone Companies to Follow Low-Price Rule for Schools appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The Federal Communications Commission announced Friday it is slapping a fine on Google for deliberately impeding an investigation of the collection of sensitive wireless network data as part of the search giant’s Street View mapping project. The amount of the fine: $25,000.

That figure is, of course, barely a rounding error for the company. Google made $2.89 billion last quarter, or $25,000 in profits every 68 seconds.

Nevertheless, the FCC Enforcement Bureau report announcing the fine says the $25,000 level is intended “to deter future misconduct in view of Google’s ability to pay.”

The FCC found that Google Street View cars, which were taking pictures for Google Maps, also collected passwords, email and medical records, among other data, from residents’ WiFi networks. Google has apologized for collecting the data but maintains it was legal.

The report states that the FCC actually ramped up the fine. The base fine for the violations was $12,000.

The report also notes that the commission has elected to increase fines “[t]o ensure that a proposed forfeiture is not treated as simply a cost of doing business.”

In the section discussing the size of the fine, a footnote points to Google’s vast revenue.

The FCC could have levied a larger fine, but it still wouldn’t have amounted to much for Google. As the report says, the maximum allowed by law for stonewalling the FCC’s investigation as Google did is $112,500 per violation.

The report counts three violations by Google: “failures to identify employees, produce e-mails, and provide compliant declarations.” So, the total fine could have been $337,500, or about 15 minutes of profits.

The report says the FCC decided on $25,000 based on “the totality of the circumstances of this case” and “our precedent in other failure to respond cases.”

An FCC spokeswoman declined to comment on how the fine was calculated or how it would serve as a deterrent.

The company, for its part, disputed the FCC’s findings in a statement: “We disagree with the FCC’s characterization of our cooperation in their investigation and will be filing a response.”

Google will have recouped the fine in less than the time it took you to read this.

by Justin Elliott ProPublica, April 16, 2012, 3:38 p.m.

Image Courtesy of   Federal Communications Commission

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