An analysis of mobile internet service in Thailand: Implications for bridging digital divide

Mobile Internet is growing around the world without exception for developing countries like Thailand by passing the poor legacy wired infrastructure. This study attempts to provide guidance to a national regulatory agency (NRA) by addressing the following question: What are the key determining factors to explain the probability that individual consumer will use mobile Internet? The discrete choice model is employed to empirically examine whether the service and application attributes, socio-economic variables and service provider has systematic link with the decision of consumer. The data from a national survey in 2010 commissioned by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) of Thailand is used for the analysis. Based on the findings, fixed telephony, e-mail, age, area of living and mobile operator are recognized as the strongest determinants for mobile Internet adoption. The findings suggest that the mobile Internet becomes an alternative technology to bridge the digital divide since a group of people who have no fixed Internet connection at home they can connect the Internet via mobile Internet. As such, telecom regulator and policy makers need to consider the policies regarding to infrastructure investment frequency allocation, content and application development and competition in order to stimulate the growth of mobile Internet adoption and close the digital divide within country. --Mobile Internet,digital divide,developing country

Implications of Over-The-Top (OTT) Services on National Security

The telecom industry is an industry that has to deal with a continuous rapid changing business and technological environment, unlike other industries. Traditionally, the principal revenue streams for telecom operators have been the voice and messaging (SMS) with data coming in at a far third till recently. The internet explosion has led to the inception of diverse internet applications and services amidst which, OTT is one. The proliferation of Internet-based services and applications has given rise to data traffic increase for telecom operators. The growing impact of OTT services on telcos’ voice and messaging revenue is a widely accepted phenomenon that is making telecom operators lose revenue in a rapid manner. Other than the challenges OTT pose on telecom industries, the threat it also poses to national security as a result of its operation under net neutrality is a critical point that needs to be considered. This article highlights the wide adoption of OTT services, its’ devastating impact on telecom operators and its impact on national security. Keywords: Telecom, OTT, Net Neutrality, National Security

A New Covert Channel Over Cellular Network Voice Channel

Smartphone security has become increasingly more significant as smartphones become a more important part of many individuals\u27 daily lives. Smartphones undergo all computer security issues; however, they also introduce a new set of security issues as various capabilities are added. Smartphone security researchers pay more attention to security issues inherited from the traditional computer security field than smartphone-related security issues. The primary network that smartphones are connected to is the cellular network, but little effort has been directed at investigating the potential security issues that could threaten this network and its end users. A new possible threat that could occur in the cellular network is introduced in this paper. This research proves the ability to use the cellular network voice channel as a covert channel that can convey covert information as speech, thus breaking the network policies. The study involves designing and implementing multiple subsystems in order to prove the theory. First, a software audio modem that is able to convert digital data into audio waves and inject the audio waves to the GSM voice channel was developed. Moreover, a user-mode rootkit was implemented in order to open the voice channels by stealthily answering the incoming voice call, thus breaking the security mechanisms of the smartphone. Multiple scenarios also were tested in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed covert channel. The first scenario is a covert communication between two parties that intends to hide their communications by using a network that is unknown to the adversary and not protected by network security guards. The two parties communicate through the cellular network voice channel to send and receive text messages. The second scenario is a side channel that is able to leak data such as SMS or the contact of a hacked smartphone through the cellular network voice channel. The third scenario is a botnet system that uses the voice channel as command and control channel (C2). This study identifies a new potential smartphone covert channel, so the outcome should be setting countermeasures against this kind of breach

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

5GNOW: Challenging the LTE Design Paradigms of Orthogonality and Synchronicity

LTE and LTE-Advanced have been optimized to deliver high bandwidth pipes to wireless users. The transport mechanisms have been tailored to maximize single cell performance by enforcing strict synchronism and orthogonality within a single cell and within a single contiguous frequency band. Various emerging trends reveal major shortcomings of those design criteria: 1) The fraction of machine-type-communications (MTC) is growing fast. Transmissions of this kind are suffering from the bulky procedures necessary to ensure strict synchronism. 2) Collaborative schemes have been introduced to boost capacity and coverage (CoMP), and wireless networks are becoming more and more heterogeneous following the non-uniform distribution of users. Tremendous efforts must be spent to collect the gains and to manage such systems under the premise of strict synchronism and orthogonality. 3) The advent of the Digital Agenda and the introduction of carrier aggregation are forcing the transmission systems to deal with fragmented spectrum. 5GNOW is an European research project supported by the European Commission within FP7 ICT Call 8. It will question the design targets of LTE and LTE-Advanced having these shortcomings in mind and the obedience to strict synchronism and orthogonality will be challenged. It will develop new PHY and MAC layer concepts being better suited to meet the upcoming needs with respect to service variety and heterogeneous transmission setups. Wireless transmission networks following the outcomes of 5GNOW will be better suited to meet the manifoldness of services, device classes and transmission setups present in envisioned future scenarios like smart cities. The integration of systems relying heavily on MTC into the communication network will be eased. The per-user experience will be more uniform and satisfying. To ensure this 5GNOW will contribute to upcoming 5G standardization.Comment: Submitted to Workshop on Mobile and Wireless Communication Systems for 2020 and beyond (at IEEE VTC 2013, Spring