Some of the very best ideas in telecom go nowhere because it's so hard to get funding. A world-renowned researcher struggled recently although his ideas were endorsed by some of the best in the business. (I think that's solved.) The U.S. is paying a very heavy price for letting Bell Labs go and not requiring the remaining companies to invest in research. 

Fortunately, many of the top Professors have found corporate funding for their research. Gerhard Fettweis is Vodafone Professor at the University of Dresden. NYU Wireless, probably the world's leading 5G center, has 16 funders in the picture at left. Nokia sponsors their Brooklyn 5G conference, the best of the year.

Some China fearing Congressmen want to knock Huawei off that list because they are Chinese. Huawei now spends more on R & D then the next three telecom suppliers combined. They are the world leaders in several areas of telecom technology, so they bring expertise as well as technology. Huawei provides support to almost every major academic research center. I visited many, and the Huawei support has made a difference.

Apple sales in India are down 30% this year. ET has a good write-up. India now has the second largest smartphone market in the world. They don't want all the profits and jobs going to Chinese and Koreans. India is using 20% tariffs to encourage, "Make in India." The first factories are mostly simple assembly, but India has a plan to rapidly increase local content as well. Samsung has just opened a $107M plant.

The emerging Indian phone market was devastated the last few years by lower-priced Chinese companies. Three of the top five mobile brands in 2015, but aggressive Chinese competitors and a quick shift to 4G  knocked them out of the running.  Apple has been demanding huge giveaways from the Indian government before starting manufacturing. "We're Apple. India needs us." India refused, and Xiaomi & Vivo have been grabbing the market. Apple probably still makes the best phones in the world, but half a dozen others are so close the functional differences are trivial.

Bitcoin's unreal hype has obscured that it is mostly used to facilitate drug deals, ransomware, tax evasion, and even the occasional murder for hire. After the 60% price drop, demand for bitcoin mining gear has fallen so much TSMC has to lower sales estimates for 2018. (That's good news for telecom. Qualcomm and probably others are close to going into production on 5G chips at TSMC. But Apple has bought up so much of TSMC's 7 nm capacity that chip quantities could be severely limited until well into 2019 unless TSMC demand drops.)

Now, Austrian Ambassador in Tehran Stefan Scholz has suggested it could be a powerful boost to the European intent to bypass the U.S. economic blockade. That could provide demand for $billions of bitcoins.

Financial Express quotes Scholz, "One of the ways for safeguarding European interests in Iran is to tap the digital payment methods and cryptocurrency channels." He added, "unorthodox and innovative measures" were being considered to allow banking transactions to continue. We are all in this together, since the EU is facing a net loss of 10 billion euros ($11.7 billion) in lost trade with Iran next year."

Blockchain is potentially good stuff, routing around institutions in a sometimes useful way.

For Google, Facebook, & phone companies, the regulator offers a clear statement: "Each user owns his/ her personal information/ data collected by/ stored with the entities in the digital ecosystem. The entities, controlling and processing such data, are mere custodians and do not have primary rights over this data." This applies to "all entities in the digital ecosystem, which control or process their personal data."

Potentially important, "The Right to Choice, Notice, Consent, Data Portability, and Right to be forgotten should be conferred upon the telecommunication consumers." Data Portability is crucial to any large-scale challenge to Facebook's near monopoly, althought that remains a difficult task.

TRAI  other sensible suggestions include:

"It should have provisions for revoking the consent, at a later date, by users."

"Multilingual, easy to understand, unbiased, short templates of agreements/ terms and conditions be made mandatory."

Steve has earned respect for OFCOM's technology ability. He's leaving after 18 years, some of which he spent as acting CEO. Previously, he had been a world-class Astronomer and part of the boom time startup scene. He may be heading for business; his Linkedin now says, "I am looking for a new role where my skills and experience will let me make a difference." Sounds like he doesn't intend to become a lobbyist, like so many here in the U.S. Steve writes, "I really don’t know what I’m going to do next. I never planned to become a regulator, but I ended up really enjoying my time at Ofcom. So it will be interesting to see what turns up!"

Under Unger, OFCOM has done advanced work in spectrum sharing and network measurement. 

The 768 page T-Mobile-Sprint filing 768 page blocks out some of the most important information. The "redactions" make it almost impossible to determine whether some of the claims are accurate or bs. Most of them would not be of major value to competitors. No reason has been provided for why they must be confidential. So I filed a Freedom of Information Act request. 

The FCC is likely to sit on this; the U.S. is notorious for delaying things until they are no longer important. I don't have the money for a lawyer and hope someone will volunteer to back me up if this needs to go to court. It is an ongoing scandal that the FCC often allows companies to hold back information required to make a sound judgment on the merits. The law is clear but usually ignored. 

"I am requesting the redacted portions of the Sprint T-Mobile filing. Applicant has not provided particular reasons for the redactions. I will happily waive my request for any particular datapoint for which the applicant provides a compelling reason to hold back.
Much of the information held back is often available from public sources for major carriers. For example, Lowell McAdam recently mentioned the number of cells they have. I have several incumbents with figures for their average traffic. Others provide locations of cells. ...

In at least one case, the information redacted I suspect contradicts something claimed elsewhere in the filing.

In 2018, nothing can get approved in 3GPP that China strongly opposes. In the past, 3GPP often was a battle between a few American giants and their European peers. A Qualcomm or a Nokia will still be heard, but the power has shifted. I haven't seen evidence that the Chinese influence has made for better or worse standards.

There are now over a billion 4G subscribers at the big 3 Chinese telcos, by far the largest equipment buyers. Nokia, Ericsson, and the other vendors do not dare oppose their largest customers. Qualcomm, which sends 60 people to 3PPP, has been in crisis as the Chinese have held up their $44B purchase of NXP. The srock dropped $10B after the 4/16 ZTE incident. 

Huawei and ZTE each have thousands of patents in wireless and submit hundreds of proposals in standards. OF Week reports

There are more than 30 Chinese people holding key positions in the standards organization, voting power exceeds 23%, the number of contributions is 30%, and lead projects account for 40%.

Some 3GPP working groups have open mailing lists, where I see Chinese submissions are ubiquitous, 

Law enforcement is grabbing that information without a warrant. Hedge funds apparently are getting that as well. I found Google & Neustar (North American Numbering Plan) are also LocationSmart partners. 

ZDNet headlines "US cell carriers are selling access to your real-time phone location data The company embroiled in a privacy row has "direct connections" to all major US wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint -- and Canadian cell networks, too." Jennifer Valentino-DeVries at the NY Times has some of the story "Service Meant to Monitor Inmates’ Calls Could Track You, Too." Interesting comments at Hacker News as well.

Brenda Schafer of LocationSmart emailed, "LocationSmart provides an enterprise mobility platform that strives to bring secure operational efficiencies to enterprise customers.  All disclosure of location data through LocationSmart’s platform relies on consent first being received from the individual subscriber.