Mobile Subscriptions are at 100% of the World Population - 7.1 Billion

As reported by Tomi Ahonen's Almanac: Where are we in mobile stats in 2014?

The mobile subscription rate is at or very very nearly at 100%. For 7.1 Billion people alive that means 7.1 Billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide. Not everyone has a mobile account or number - babies don't have mobile phones so some of us have two or more accounts. Hong Kong is past 200% penetration rate for example. But globally yes, we are now at 100%. 7.1 Billion mobile phone accounts in use worldwide.

THE SIZE IS HUGE
So first, some context. The PC: Take every type of PC, including desktops, laptops, net-books and tablet PCs and add them together. What do we have? 1.5 Billion in use worldwide. Mobile is nearly 5 times larger. Televisions: Sure - We are now at 2 Billion TV sets in use globally. But mobile has 3.5 times users. What of 'paid' TV viewers - i.e. cable and satellite TV accounts? That's only 1 Billion. Mobile has 7 times more paying customers. Land-line phones? There are only 1.1 Billion of those left. Mobile is more than six times bigger.

Then lets talk about those numbers. 7.1 Billion mobile subscriptions doesn't mean 'unique users' and not all represent 'handsets in use'. The number of unique users is now 4.5 Billion or 63% of all humans alive are actually users of mobile phones. The remaining 2.6 Billion accounts are second or third accounts for the same user. And many of us have two phones. What is the number of phones in use? We are at 5.4 Billion mobile handsets in use around the world. So out of the unique user number (4.5 Billion) 900 million carry two phones. So 20% of us, one in five who has a mobile subscription or account, actually walks around with two phones (and at least two accounts).

MOBILE SUBSCRIBERS END OF 2013
Total active mobile subscriptions or accounts . . .  7.1 B (was 6.7 B in 2011, growth 6%)
Unique mobile users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . 4.5 B (was 4.3 B in 2011, growth 5%)
Actual mobile phones in use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 B (was 5.2 B in 2011, growth 4%)

THE MONEY IS ALSO HUGE
The industry grew 7% in total revenues last year and the global mobile industry is now worth $1.56 Trillion dollars annually. That breaks down so, that $1.15 Trillion is service revenues (our phone calls, messages, internet access, music, games, advertising, apps etc). $280 Billion is handset sales (mostly smartphones) and another $125 Billion is 'other hardware' that includes a wide range from networking equipment to accessories.

Of the service revenues those highly hyped smartphone apps are still only a tiny corner of the opportunity. The mobile operators/carriers still make the majority of the service revenues and two giants dominate that space - voice calls and messaging. Voice calls were worth $673 Billion dollars in 2013 while messaging was worth $199 Billion dollars. And no, most of that was not 'OTT services' like Whatsapp. SMS text messaging was worth $130 Billion dollars and MMS another $46 Billion dollars in 2013, for the lion's share of messaging revenue worldwide. Please note that an increasing portion of both SMS and MMS is now content (like voting for TV shows), advertising and commerce revenues (coupons etc).

HANDSETS
So lets talk phones. 5.4 Billion mobile phones in use worldwide. The industry sold 1.8 Billion new mobile phones just last year alone. And more than half of the new sales are now smartphones (990 million were in 2013). In the installed base, already 31% of all mobile phones in use are smartphones (1.7 Billion units) and this year will sell about 1.2 Billion more with roughly half going to replace older smartphones and half going to first-time smartphone owners. But before you lament those 'dumbphones' they aren't that dumb these days. 44% of all phones in use have WiFi capability. 67% can install apps via Java. Four out of five has a memory card slot. Nine out of ten phones in the world can receive MMS multimedia messages (And 100% can do SMS text messaging obviously).

The migration to smartphones continues at rapid pace. Three regions - advanced Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America have passed the mid-point so there are smartphones for more than half of the population. The Middle East is nearing the mid-point. Lagging in the migration rate come Latin America, developing parts of Asia, and Africa. Monitoring the market share wars on a quarterly basis, Android has now utterly won the smartphone platform war with over 80% of new sales. Apple's iPhone has peaked and is in gradual decline at about 15% with the remnant few percent split among Windows, Blackberry and miscellaneous others. In the installed base the past large sales of Symbian and Blackberry still place them ahead of Windows, with Windows lingering in fifth ranking among smartphone operating systems by actual devices in use. Android and iPhone obviously dominate the installed base as well.

MOBILE INTERNET
An easily-muddled statistic, the internet or 'browsing' user base and which platform they use is prone to very wild swings of legitimate reporting of the statistics. It depends on whether you count primary use or all use (many of us will access web content from several device types, our laptops, our tablets, our smartphones etc). And the reporting is often coming from systems which do not measure all use, or which miscalculate part of the use (often iOS measurements cannot differentiate between iPhones - ie smartphones vs iPads ie tablets and iPod Touch ie PDA uses). But when we allow multiple uses, and look at all 'browser' type of access to 'internet content' such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon etc - then the usage in 2013 was like this:

There are 2.9 Billion users of the internet when any device and type is allowed including accessing from internet cafe and other shared devices.

48% of the internet users will use both a PC of some kind (which includes tablets) and a mobile phone
42% will not use a PC and will only access the internet on a mobile phone (smartphone or dumbphone)
and 10% will not use a mobile phone and only access the internet on some type of PC (including tablet)

Of mobile phones used to access internet content, the numbers build like this. 1.6 Billion use a smartphone. 2.2 Billion use an HTML based mobile browser (including smartphones and dumbphones). And 2.6 Billion use any type of mobile browser including WAP and HTML (this of course therefore includes smartphones too). You can see there is a lot of chance to offer confusing and 'disagreeing' numbers just by browsing before we consider say app downloads.

MESSAGING OVER-THE-TOP (OTT) AND PEAK SMS
So the OTT content revolution has really taken off led by Whatsapp. But still the total user base is modest. OTT services across all OTT types have only 1.4 Billion users. That compares with 5.8 Billion users of SMS and 3.3 Billion users of MMS. The total traffic, user count and even revenues of SMS still grew in 2013 while OTT services grabbed the majority of total mobile messaging traffic. The heavy users who send more than 100 messages per day will shift most of that traffic rather rapidly to more cost-effective (and user-friendly) messaging platforms. But even heavy Whatsapp users will usually not abandon SMS they only greatly diminish its use. For advertisers and brands, obviously, SMS is the only way to reach every economically viable person on the planet, with MMS a near-universal second choice.

MEDIA CONTENT
The total non-voice 'data' opportunity in mobile is now nearing 500 Billion dollars in value. 40% of that is now from messaging and 60% from 'value-add data' which includes media content, apps and many other elements like the sales commission from m-commerce. 290 Billion dollars is the total value of mobile media content. The big media opportunities in mobile are social media, TV and video, gaming, search, news and virtual goods. Music has passed its peak and mobile music revenues are now in decline. Several areas of smaller size are growing fast led by m-health and m-education. Smartphone apps are only a tiny slice of this space with most income earned by apps built for gaming.

MOBILE ADVERTISING
Then we have advertising. Mobile ads keep growing at rates of nearly 100% per year and across all mobile ad income types passed 30 Billion dollars in value in 2013. This includes the often-reported banner ad revenues and the less-often included messaging revenues and the in-app advertising. 

DIGITAL DIVIDE
And finally a few words about the so-called 'Rich World' vs the 'Emerging World'. The spoils of the digital miracle are not spread evenly. But even here the 'best story' in digital for the Emerging World is of course mobile. Of the 7.1 Billion mobile subscriptions, we in the 'West' have 2.1 Billion mobile subscriptions for a 175% mobile penetration rate. The Emerging World with 5.9 Billion people have 5.0 Billion subscriptions for an 85% penetration rate. In the Industrialized World 97% of all phones in use are camera-phones vs 76% in the Emerging World. 82% of the mobile subscriptions in the Industrialized Countries have migrated to 3G while only 18% of the accounts in the Emerging World have done so. 53% of handsets in the West are smartphones while only 21% in the rest of the world are so. And did you know many actually buy used handsets? Only 3% of mobile phones in the Industrialized World are second-hand phones (these tend to be hand-me-down phones we give to our young kids). But in the Emerging World 17% of all phones in use are second-hand phones (often shipped from more affluent countries).

SO WHO ARE THE BIG DOGS
Then lets do the 'if measured only by their mobile business' chart of the biggest players. So for example Apple we remove the Macs and iPads and iPods and iTunes, only the iPhone and its app store revenues. For Samsung we remove the flat screen TVs and PCs and all sorts of consumer electronics. For Vodafone we remove the fixed land-line telecoms business etc. When we measure the largest companies on the planet by purely their mobile income we get this chart:

BIGGEST COMPANIES WHEN ONLY COUNTING THEIR MOBILE BUSINESS IN 2013
1 (3) Apple iPhone, USA, smartphones . . . .  $ 112 B
2 (4) Samsung Galaxy, S Korea, handsets . . $ 103 B
3 (1) China Mobile, China, operator . . . . . . .  $ 91 B
4 (2) Verizon Wireless, USA, operator  . . . . . $ 82 B
5 (5) AT&T Wireless, USA, operator . . . . . . . $ 65 B
6 (6) Vodafone Mobile, UK, operator . . . . . .  $ 58 B
7 (7) Telefonica Movil, Spain, operator . . . . . $ 52 B
8 (9) T-Mobile, Germany, operator . . . . . . . . . $ 50 B
9 (8) NTT DoCoMo, Japan, operator . . . . . . . $ 49 B
10 (10) Orange Mobile, France, operator . . . .$ 44 B
Note: All except China Mobile in the above chart are 'virtual companies' with different names to reflect their mobile businesses and their mobile branding.

So the two big smartphone makers Apple and Samsung have kicked the big mobile operators from the top slots. No big surprise here, as the trend was clearly forming for the past few years. Meanwhile operators struggle with flat revenues or even declining revenues as voice calls and messaging revenues are under increasing threats from OTT services like Skype and Whatsapp.

Russia Pulls GPS/Space Cooperation in Response to Ukraine Sanctions

The Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft.

As reported by Newsweek: Russia will bar the United States from using Russian-made rocket engines for military satellite launches, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday, retaliating for sanctions on high-tech equipment which Washington has imposed over the Ukraine crisis.

He also said Russia would reject a U.S. request to prolong the use of the International Space Station beyond 2020.

Russia pledged to respond in kind when the United States said last month that it would deny export licenses for any high-technology items that could aid Russian military capabilities and would revoke existing licenses.

Moscow's measures would affect MK-33 and RD-180 engines which Russia supplies to the United States, Rogozin told a news conference. "We are ready to deliver these engines but on one condition that they will not be used to launch military satellites," he said.

Washington wants to keep the International Space Station, a $100 billion orbital outpost that is a project of 15 nations and a showcase of Russian-U.S. cooperation, flying until at least 2024, four years beyond the previous target.

In spite of differences on foreign policy and security matters, Washington and Moscow have cooperated extensively on space exploration. Russian Soyuz spacecraft are the only way astronauts can get to the space station, whose crews include both Americans and Russians.

Rogozin also said Russia will suspend the operation of GPS satellite navigation system sites in Russia from June and seek talks with Washington on opening similar sites in the United States for Russia's own system, Glonass.

He threatened the permanent closure of the GPS sites in Russia if that is not agreed by September.

Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

As reported by the NY Times: Toyota said on Monday that it would allow a battery-supply deal with Tesla Motors to expire this year and would focus instead on building cars running on hydrogen fuel cells, a next-generation technology that rivals Tesla’s all-electric systems.

Toyota Motor invested $50 million in Tesla to acquire a 3 percent stake in the Silicon Valley upstart in 2010, and signed a $100 million joint-development deal in 2011 for a version of Toyota’s RAV4 crossover sport utility vehicle that carried Tesla’s electric powertrains. At the time, the two automakers suggested that the RAV4 electric vehicle could be the start of a wider collaboration.

But the electric RAV4 has sold poorly, despite low-cost lease and loan offers Toyota introduced last year to promote sales. And Toyota has increasingly signaled that it sees fuel cells as the most viable zero-emissions technology, putting it at odds with Tesla, an evangelist for electric-vehicle technology. Toyota is also the world’s biggest manufacturer of gas-electric hybrids.

Toyota said in an emailed statement that it was “re-evaluating” its RAV4 electric vehicle, and that Tesla’s supply agreement for the model would “conclude this year.” Toyota said that its contract had called for Tesla to supply 2,500 battery-electric powertrains for the RAV4.

The Japanese automaker said its focus this year would instead be on its four-door sedan powered by hydrogen fuel cells, which it plans to introduce in California next year. The automaker will also focus on developing hydrogen refueling stations to support fuel-cell technology, it said.

Tesla said Friday in a regulatory filing that it expected the supply deal to end this year. Toyota said it would keep its stake in Tesla for now.

“It’s obvious Toyota doesn’t see a market for electric vehicles,” said John O’Dell, green-car analyst at the auto-research site Edmunds.com. “They really see the future of the zero-emission vehicle as the hydrogen vehicle,” he said.

“In partnering with Tesla, there might have been a message there that Toyota was looking at the possibility” of a wider partnership with the Silicon Valley manufacturer, he said. “But they can’t even give these cars away. Why continue doing this?”

The winding down of the supply deal comes just four years after the two automakers announced their partnership to much fanfare, in May 2010, when Tesla bought an assembly plant in Fremont, Calif., that Toyota had closed.

The plant had been the site of a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota. But G.M. ceased production there during its bankruptcy and restructuring in 2009, and Toyota closed the factory a year later.

In return, Toyota agreed to buy $50 million of Tesla common stock and said the companies intended to cooperate on the development of “electric vehicles, parts and production-system and engineering support.”

That came as a surprise to analysts, as Toyota executives had long talked down the all-electric car in favor of the company’s own gas-electric hybrid technology, which cost the automaker millions of dollars to develop.

And yet as momentum built in recent years around all-electric powertrains, Toyota was increasingly criticized for lagging behind in a crucial automotive technology. In 2010, Nissan released the Leaf, which it billed as the world’s first mass-produced all-electric car. General Motors followed with its plug-in Chevrolet Volt.

Toyota, for a time, appeared to be hedging its bets. In a joint news conference with Tesla in 2010, Toyota’s chief executive, Akio Toyoda, said the market had not yet chosen the best low-emissions technology. He said the company was preparing for all options.

“When customers do give us their answer,” Mr. Toyoda said, “I want the company to be ready.”

Toyota introduced its own all-electric vehicle in 2012, a car based on its iQ ultra-mini compact that the automaker developed independently. But Toyota has limited sales of that car to fleet customers. At the same time, electric vehicles have struggled to reach the mass market, hindered by consumer concerns over their range and high cost.

Alec Gutierrez, senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, said he did not see the deal’s end as a tremendous blow to Tesla. The boutique automaker would just shift its attention to the Model X sport utility vehicle, he said, which it is set to sell next year. Still, it came as a disappointment, he said.

“There was a hope that this would have taken off and that Toyota would plan a mass-market vehicle,” he said. “But now they’re heading in two different directions.”

Nanotechnology to the Rescue: A New Fuel Cell Catalyst is a Game Changer for Hydrogen Vehicles

As reported by The Motley Fool: Fuel cell electric vehicles, or FCEVs, may have just taken a giant step closer to widespread adoption. Why? Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have jointly developed a new type of fuel cell catalyst that has more than 30 times the catalytic activity than conventional catalysts and uses 85% less platinum.
 

Nanotechnology to the rescue
One of the main barriers to widespread FCEV adoption is the high cost of fuel cell catalysts. This is because they rely on platinum. In fact, the Energy Department estimates that platinum can account for 50% of a fuel cell's cost. Luckily, the new class of catalysts being developed by Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley help solve this problem. Here's how.

Uniform polyhedron.

Fuel cell catalyst researchers conventionally use polyhedra, or small, solid nanoparticles of pure platinum. However, when scientists at the labs combined platinum and nickel nanoparticles to make an alloy -- and then exposed that solution to air for two weeks -- it reacted with oxygen and dissolved the particle's nickel interior. The result was a dodecahedron nanoframe, which is a three-dimensional, 12-sided, hollow structure a thousand times smaller in diameter than a human hair.  

Further, the Energy Department states: "The research team then took the nanoframes a few steps further -- applying heat to form a thin topmost skin of platinum atoms over the remaining nickel and encapsulating an ionic liquid in the nanoframe to allow more oxygen to access the platinum atoms during the fuel cell's electrochemical reaction." 

To put the above in layman's terms, what researchers did is create a hollow frame of the original polyhedron so, instead of a solid particle of pure platinum, what's left is just a frame with platinum-rich edges. Thus, the amount of platinum needed is greatly reduced. Moreover doing this makes the catalyst more efficient because the surface area is increased, and the catalyzed molecules can contact the structure from more directions.

Future promise
Right now, the new catalysts are still in the early stages of research, but scientists at the labs believe they hold strong promise for fuel cell vehicles. Furthermore, the nanoframes have already been lab-tested with conditions associated with vehicle use, and the result was that after 10,000 cycles, the nanoframes showed no decrease in activity -- that's pretty impressive. 

2015 Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell.

The above is especially great news for Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai because all three are betting on a hydrogen fuel cell future. Plus, they are actively pursuing ways to make their vehicles more cost-competitive and thus, widely adopted. In fact, Reuters reports that Toyota is willing to sell its FCV at a loss just to popularize the new technology. This is the same strategy Toyota used with its Prius, which Reuters states, "with other hybrids, now accounts for 14 percent of Toyota's annual sales, excluding group companies, of around 9 million vehicles." 

What to watch
Currently, there are still barriers to widespread FCEV adoption. However, these barriers are becoming smaller by the day. Furthermore, a fuel cell that uses 85% less platinum and has 30 times more catalytic activity is a great step toward furthering an FCEV future. 

NTT DOCOMO to Trial Ericsson 10Gbps 5G Mobile Broadband Technology in Japan

As reported by ISPreview: The standard for the next generation of 5G mobile communications technology is still being debated, yet that hasn't stopped telecom giant Ericsson from teaming up with Japanese mobile firm NTT DOCOMO to test its own 10Gbps+ (Gigabits per second) capable solution in Yokosuka; albeit using the 15GHz radio frequency band.

NTT DOCOMO has always been one of the first pioneers of new mobile communication technologies and thus their plan to achieve “ultra-high bit rates” of more than 10Gbps as part of a 5G trial should thus come as no surprise.

Meanwhile Ericsson claims to have developed advanced antenna technologies with wider bandwidths, higher frequencies and shorter transmission time intervals, as well as radio base stations built with base-band units and radio units developed specifically for the 5G trial.

Seizo Onoe, NTT DOCOMO’s Executive Vice President and CTO, said:
“5G studies are starting to gain real momentum as we point toward 2020. We appreciate that 5G will provide significant performance enhancements to support future new applications that will impact both users and industry. We look forward to showing the potential of 5G radio access technologies via this experimental trial.”

A quick glance at one of Ericsson’s 5G white papers suggests that their technology would be designed to operate in all sorts of different frequency bands, although it’s unclear why 15GHz has been chosen for the trial. This might be more difficult to implement in the UK / Europe where such frequencies are often already allocated to Satellite, military, point-to-point communications and maritime systems.

Ofcom’s recently published radio spectrum strategy (here) also seems to be focused on much lower frequency bands, which are generally better for coverage but not so good if you want to deliver a lot of capacity (note: high frequency but shorter range gives you the best speeds).

At any rate we've already seen various different so-called “5G” trials from companies like Samsung and Huawei, although as yet these are all just possibilities and the various political or regulator forces will still need to make the ultimate decision about which direction the future technology takes.

Clearly any solution will need to operate at both a lower frequency, to help coverage, and a higher frequency for more capacity, such as in urban areas. But at least everybody seems to agree on the 2018-2020 time frame for introduction. In the meantime, USA/UK based 4G networks are still a long way from reaching their maximum potential of 1Gbps+ via LTE Advanced technology, with only EE currently looking at the next step via summer 2014 trials of 300Mbps+ planned.

In related news the Government of South Korea has committed around £940m ($1.59 Billion) to roll-out its own 5G service, with trials due by December 2017 and a commercial deployment set for 2020. No specific technology choice is mentioned, although local Smartphone giant Samsung has been testing its own unique twist on 5G connectivity using some high frequency bands.

Previously the developed Asian countries have led the way with new mobile services but this time around the UK and Europe have also been trying to steal a march on their rivals. But sooner or later somebody is going to have to choose which standard to use and as before it looks like we might end up with different approaches for different parts of the world.

After the Loss of Flight MH370 - Airlines to be Given Access to Inmarsat Near-Real-Time Aircraft Tracking Service

As reported by the Seattle Times: Inmarsat Plc, a provider of global mobile satellite communications services, said it will offer free basic tracking services for planes flying over oceans in the hope of preventing another incident such as the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The British company said Monday that the service is being offered to all 11,000 commercial passenger aircraft already equipped with an Inmarsat satellite connection -- most of the world's long-haul commercial fleet.

"This offer responsibly, quickly and at little or no cost to the industry, addresses in part the problem brought to light by the recent tragic events around MH370," said Inmarsat CEO Rupert Pearce.

The Boeing 777 with 239 people on board was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8 when it disappeared. The plane automatically sent signals to a satellite belonging to Inmarsat after the plane's transponder and its communication systems had shut down -- but researchers were unable to find the plane before the batteries in the black box flight recorder shut down.

Malaysia's government said the plane's last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, and that the flight ended there. It has not been found.

Inmarsat, which made its offer ahead of a conference in Canada on aircraft tracking, said it anticipated the adoption of further safety measures following the loss of MH370.

The company said it would also offer both an enhanced position reporting facility and a 'black box in the cloud' service that would stream historic and real-time flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder information when a plane deviates from its course. These would not be free.

Inmarsat PLC started out in 1979 as an intergovernmental organization that helped track ships at sea, but became a private company in 1999.

Its customers now include airlines, broadcast media, oil and gas companies and aid agencies who use hand-held satellite phones, laptop size Internet devices and antennas linked to the company's 10 satellites to communicate.



Chris McLaughlin, a senior Inmarsat executive, said the uptake of the service could be almost immediate on 90 per cent of the global fleet of widebody aircraft as they have the necessary equipment already installed. He said a simple software upgrade would extend that to “virtually 100 per cent” of long-haul aircraft flying today.

The service would enable the aircraft to transmit data about its speed, height and direction over the Inmarsat network every 15 minutes.

Long-haul aircraft flying over the world’s oceans are out of radar contact for prolonged periods and normally use a combination of radio communications or transmissions via satellite to report their positions. The latter has been a voluntary premium service until now.

The offer by Inmarsat comes ahead of a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the UN agency that sets global aviation standards, in Montreal on Monday to discuss real-time tracking of aircraft in the wake of the disappearance of MH370.

An interim report into the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner, which has still not been found despite the biggest international search in history, recommended that aircraft should be tracked in real-time.

This is a repeat of the recommendation made by French air accident investigators following the crash of an Air France aircraft in the South Atlantic in 2009. It was revealed in late March that ICAO had ignored their proposal to introduce a mandatory requirement for all commercial airliners to regularly “transmit basic flight parameters” such as position, altitude, speed and heading.

“By doing this at no cost we are looking to take the immediate stress out of the system as no doubt ICAO will be discussing what to do for the rest of the year,” Mr McLaughlin said.

He added that providing the basic service for free would cost Inmarsat about $3m a year. “It is a marginal cost to us but we think it is worth it.” He said the company hoped to recoup those losses by convincing more airlines to sign up for its premium services which allow the aircraft to transmit information back to the maintenance base about the performance of its systems, such as its engines and fuel consumption.

The take-up of satellite-based communications services by airlines has been slow because of the cost. Inmarsat was originally set up by the UN’s International Maritime Organisation 34 years ago to offer tracking and communications services to the shipping industry. It was privatised in 1999 but has continued to offer a free global maritime distress service.


The search for MH370 has been scaled back in recent weeks after the authorities failed to locate any wreckage in the southern Indian Ocean off the Australian coast. Investigators have focused on this area as the only clue to the whereabouts of the aircraft came from brief “electronic handshakes” that an Inmarsat system on the Malaysian jet had made with one of the company’s satellites.


The Inmarsat system on MH370 was not active because Malaysian Airlines was one of the many airlines around the world that had not signed up for the satellite services.

FCC Chairman Will Reportedly Revise Broadband Proposal

As reported by CNET: The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has revised details of its proposed plan to rewrite Net neutrality to add assurances that Internet service providers will not be able to segregate Internet traffic into fast and slow lanes, according to the Wall Street Journal.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is expected to reveal the new proposal as early as Monday, the Journal reported. The rules revision is an apparent attempt to quell concern that broadband providers will be allowed to degrade traffic speeds to some sites while allowing other sites to strike deals that assure preferential delivery of their web content to customers.

While not a dramatic revision of Wheeler's proposal, the new draft is expected to include language that will allow the FCC to ensure that broadband providers don't degrade the traffic of nonpaying customers. The new proposal will also seek comment on whether such "paid prioritization" should be prohibited altogether.

The commission's proposed plan ignited a frenzy of criticism on the Internet last month after being spotlighted in news reports. The reports suggested that the FCC had changed its position on certain aspects of its Open Internet rules, including shifting its stance to allow Internet service providers to charge companies for a faster lane of service.

The redrafting comes just days after the world's top tech heavyweights made a plea to the FCC to lay down the law and safeguard Net neutrality, which traditionally has prohibited blocking access or discriminating against Internet traffic traveling over an ISP's connections. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, and dozens of others wrote a letter (PDF) to the FCC on Wednesday asking for a "free and open Internet" and rules that protect users and Internet companies. In all, nearly 150 Internet companies signed the letter.

Over the past few weeks, Wheeler has worked to calm critics of the proposal saying that he is all for an open Internet. A couple of weeks ago, he wrote a blog post in which he pledged to use "every available power" to prevent ISPs from degrading service for the benefit of a few.

After the letter was released, Democratic FCC Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn both issued statements questioning Wheeler's proposal. Clyburn wrote a blog post that called for a free and open Internet, as well as prohibiting pay-for-priority arrangements, and Rosenworcel issued a statement (PDF) asking the commissioners to "delay our consideration of his rules by a least a month. I believe that rushing headlong into a rulemaking next week fails to respect the public response to his proposal."

Wheeler's proposal will be voted on by the four other FCC commissioners at the agency's open meeting on Thursday.