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http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/27/technology/cispa-cybersecurity/index.htm

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The House of Representatives, as expected, approved a controversial cybersecurity bill late Thursday, staring down a veto threat. But the fight to protect the United States from a cataclysmic cyber attack is far from over.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which has been revised several times over the past week, allows the government and private companies to share information with one another with the aim of warding off cyber threats.

Companies would be incentivized to voluntarily share information with the government, and the United States could share crucial attack information with companies. Much of that kind of information sharing had previously been banned under existing privacy laws.

The bill passed with bi-partisan support, with 42 Democrats joining 206 Republicans to pass CISPA 248-168. That came in spite of the White House’s threat to veto the bill, citing concerns that the bill’s language doesn’t go far enough to protect citizens’ privacy.

What happens next isn’t exactly clear — except for the fact that no action will likely happen anytime soon. That’s a concern to security advocates and intelligence officials, who stress that the nation remains too vulnerable to cyber threats.

The government’s top cybersecurity advisors widely agree that cyber criminals or terrorists have the capability to take down the country’s critical financial, energy or communications infrastructure.
The Cybercrime Economy

Such a cyber attack was already launched against Iran in the Stuxnet incident, which significantly delayed Iran’s nuclear program. The worm ordered the centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear facility to spin out of control, ultimately destroying it.

It’s an example of how cyberwarfare is leveling the playing field. A cyber attack would be less difficult to pull off than a 9/11-like attack, considering it could be launched from another country and the attacker could remain anonymous. Yet it could have the same devastating impact if attackers used cyberspace to take over our infrastructure, turn off our electricity, release toxins, or shut down our financial system.

Venezuela, for instance, would never try to attack the United States militarily, but Venezuelan diplomat Livia Antonieta Acosta Noguera launched cyber attacks here in January in an alleged Venezuelan plot to disable American nuclear power plants.

“Not only did Venezuela carry it out, they thought they could get away with it,” said Roger Cressey, senior vice president at security consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton, at a Bloomberg cybersecurity conference held last week. “That says a lot.”
Related story: How top U.S. government officials got hacked

If the threat is evident, the path forward is anything but. Getting CISPA or any comprehensive cybersecurity law passed soon faces many obstacles.

The Obama administration prefers the Senate’s version of the bill, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), which takes a regulatory approach. The Senate bill mandates minimum cybersecurity performance standards for private companies that control the nation’s critical infrastructure.

CISPA, or one of several other cybersecurity bills passed in the House this week, would likely to be reconciled with the Senate bill. Yet that bill isn’t expected to even pass the Senate, let alone the House, due to the anti-regulatory mood currently sweeping through Congress.

Some believe that politics will ultimately stall a bill until after the November presidential election.

But other cybersecurity experts closely watching the legislative process expect lawmakers to ultimately come together in the next few months. They believe politicians can rally behind the core elements of the bills, including increased information sharing, enhancing law enforcement’s authority and reform of the existing Federal Information Security Management Act.

“The bill that will eventually reach the president’s desk is not the one that [was passed by] the House,” said Larry Clinton, CEO of the Internet Security Alliance. “That’s understood and expected. But the core issues have broad support, and if a bill addresses all those issues, the president would sign it.”

By David Goldman

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http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/30/technology/small-cells/index.htm

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The cell phone capacity problem is getting bigger by the day, but one potential solution has wireless carriers thinking smaller — way smaller.

As smartphone and tablet usage soars, the giant cell towers that mobile devices communicate with are getting overloaded. As a result, cell phone companies have begun to get behind the idea of “small cells”: tiny antennas that you can hold in your hand.

Small cells make much more efficient use than traditional towers of carriers’ increasingly precious wireless spectrum. The low-powered devices can cut back on interference, improve cell reception indoors and become Wi-Fi hotspots to offload traffic from cramped cellular networks.

Such spectrum-maximizing tricks are becoming increasingly important as mobile traffic booms. By 2016, more than half of the Internet’s traffic will come from mobile devices, and 71% of that will be big video files, according to Cisco’s (CSCO, Fortune 500) latest Mobile Visual Networking Index, the industry’s most comprehensive annual study.

Carriers would typically handle that growth by adding new cell towers or more radios to existing towers. But that’s an expensive process, and many metropolitan areas are now so packed with towers that new ones would be riddled with interference concerns.

“That has major implications for how you build out mobile infrastructure,” said Murali Nemani, head of service provider marketing for Cisco. “The rationale behind small cells has a lot to do with this perfect storm that is brewing.”

Echoing Apple’s proclamation of a “post-PC” world, Cisco CEO John Chambers said last month that we are entering a “post-macrocell era.”

Telecom analysts agree. Small cells will make up 90% of total cell tower deployments by 2015, Nomura analyst Stuart Jeffrey predicts.

One of the main selling points is their low cost. The revenue generated by small cell infrastructure sales will make up just 5% of the total revenue from base station sales, Jeffrey estimates, even as small cells grow to dominate the market.

They also offer greater flexibility. Wi-Fi is a potent tool for fighting the spectrum crunch — carriers can use it to offload traffic from their cell networks — but today’s networks can be painfully tricky to use. Customers have to seek out a network, remember their credentials, and manually sign in.

Cisco’s small cells use a new “passpoint” standard, certified by the industry-governing Wi-Fi Alliance, that allows carriers to automatically sign their customers in to hotspots. The technology is expected to be released this summer. One day soon, you could walk into a mall with your iPhone and be switched to your carrier’s Wi-Fi network without even knowing it.

The carriers aren’t touting the technology just yet — Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500), Sprint (S, Fortune 500) and AT&T (T, Fortune 500) all declined to comment for this article about their small-cell investments — but they’re all in various stages of deploying it.

AT&T recently won approval from Palo Alto, Calif., city officials for a significant test project throughout the city. Verizon’s top network planning executive said at a conference last year that the carrier will use small cells to help manage its network capacity, while Sprint recently partnered with small cell hardware maker AirWalk Communications.

Cisco is just one of many mobile infrastructure providers hoping to get on the bandwagon. Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), Powerwave (PWAV) and others are promoting their own small cells, each with a different feature set.

Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio, introduced last year, is a cube that fits in the palm of your hand and can be fastened to the top of lamp posts or placed on the sides of buildings. The company is developing several new devices, based on lightRadio, that will bring coverage indoors and be capable of sending both 3G and 4G signal simultaneously.

Powerwave’s small cells are able to plug into an ethernet connection and broadcast a carrier’s signal. They are also designed to blend in to their surroundings so they don’t become an eyesore in places like office buildings or stadiums.

“There is a huge opportunity coming,” said Juan Santiago, head of Powerwave’s product management. “No one wants a giant cell tower in their backyard.”

By David Goldman

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http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/30/tech/mobile/wireless-data-alerts-gahran/index.html

(CNN) — If you like streaming lots of audio or video to your cell phone and you don’t have an unlimited data plan, you might end up with a bad case of “bill shock” when your wireless carrier hits you with overage charges.

In October, under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, U.S. carriers agreed to start alerting customers by text message when they’re getting close to hitting their plan caps on data, phone minutes and text messages. This would allow users to either curb their use for the rest of the month or switch to a higher (and pricier) tier before they incur overage charges.

The carriers also agreed to fully implement these alerts within a year.

So, it’s been six months. How are they doing?

Last week, the FCC started publishing updates on carriers’ progress toward implementing these alerts.

Among the four major carriers, T-Mobile has gotten the most done: It’s set up overage alerts for voice, data and international roaming plans. Verizon has implemented them only for data and international roaming. AT&T has alerts only for data plan overages and Sprint only for international roaming.

None of the minor U.S. wireless carriers has implemented any alerts, according to the FCC.

The FCC has promised to provide updates on the status of these efforts monthly.

An FCC survey conducted last year found that one in six mobile phone customers has experienced some degree of bill shock — and nearly half of those had been surprised by bills that hit them with overage charges of $50 or more.

By Amy Gahran, Special to CNN

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57425542-94/fcc-extends-review-process-for-verizon-cable-deal/

Federal regulators said today they needed more time to review Verizon’s deal to acquire spectrum from the cable providers and cross-sell cable and wireless services.

The Federal Communications Commission extended the typical 180-day review period by 21 days to give it sufficient time to examine the reams of documents that were submitted late by Verizon and the cable companies. Opponents have lauded the FCC’s move, claiming the agency has “stopped the clock” on the deal, signalling deeper concerns about the transaction. But the move only marks an extension, and not an actual pause, in the process.

“Assuming the adequacy of the current productions in response to the requests, we do not anticipate further extension of the 180-day period on account of the matters discussed above,” said Rick Kaplan, head of the wireless telecommunications bureau for the FCC, in a letter.

Verizon has entered into a deal to acquire spectrum from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, and Cox Communications. In addition, the companies have agreed to sell each others’ services, with both parties offering a bundle of wireless, pay-TV, and Internet services.

Critics have attacked the deal for multiple reasons. Rival wireless carriers fear Verizon will hoard the spectrum and expressed concern that too much power already rests in the hands of Verizon and AT&T. Consumer groups have attacked the cross-selling portion as anti-competitive and warned of potential price hikes down the line.

“Today’s FCC decision simply shows that as federal regulators look more closely at this proposal, the more they are seeing the potential problems,” said Debbie Goldman, representative for the Communications Workers of America, the union that represents Verizon employees. The CWA had previously sent a letter to the FCC, alongside rival carriers, seeking a halt to the review process.

Verizon, for its part, is unfazed by the delay.

“Verizon Wireless strongly believes it has made the case that putting unused spectrum to use to meet consumer needs is in the public interest,” said a company representative. “This brief extension keeps the review process moving and on track, while providing additional time for parties to review the submitted documents.”

Verizon is trying to avoid the fate of the AT&T-T-Mobile deal, which was met with insurmountable hurdles as regulators threatened to quash the megamerger. Verizon has argued that because it doesn’t compete against the cable providers on wireless service, it shouldn’t face the same level of scrutiny.

by Roger Cheng

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