Europe isn’t lagging behind in tackling challenges to mobile payments, the chairman of the European Payments Council’s m-channel working group said in an interview. The payment channel is still considered an emerging one across the world, as in Europe, Dag-Inge Flatraaker said. Each region “has a different starting point and specific target scenarios,” he said. Many European Commission suggestions for integrating Europe’s market for mobile, Internet and credit-card payments won’t achieve their desired goals, he said. The EC is digesting comments on its January “green” (discussion) paper on the issues and the results of a May 4 Brussels conference on card, Internet and mobile payments, and expects to publish its latest thoughts by the end of July, Jonathan Faull, director general of the Internal Market and Services Directorate, told the conference.
Europe isn’t lagging behind in tackling challenges to mobile payments, the chairman of the European Payments Council’s m-channel working group said in an interview. The payment channel is still considered an emerging one across the world, as in Europe, Dag-Inge Flatraaker said. Each region “has a different starting point and specific target scenarios,” he said. Many European Commission suggestions for integrating Europe’s market for mobile, Internet and credit-card payments won’t achieve their desired goals, he said. The EC is digesting comments on its January “green” (discussion) paper on the issues and the results of a May 4 Brussels conference on card, Internet and mobile payments, and expects to publish its latest thoughts by the end of July, Jonathan Faull, director general of the Internal Market and Services Directorate, told the conference.
TIA President Grant Seiffert commended members of the House Homeland Security Committee for looking at public safety technology research and development, in a letter sent Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bm6ucc). On Wednesday the Emergency Communications and Cybersecurity subcommittees, in a joint hearing, heard testimony about the need to develop better communications technologies from witnesses representing the Department of Homeland Security (http://xrl.us/bm6ug7), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (http://xrl.us/bm6uhb), and the New York Fire Department (http://xrl.us/bm6uhf), among others. Seiffert told Emergency Communications Chairman Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., Ranking Member Laura Richardson, D-Calif., Cybersecurity Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif., and Ranking Member Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., that the government needs to continue to research the interoperability, security, survivability and encryption of first responder technologies “before there is significant resulting damage.”
NEW ORLEANS -- The U.S. needs to move quickly to adopt a next-generation 911 system, panelists said Wednesday at the CTIA annual meeting. David Furth, acting chief of the FCC Public Safety Bureau, said a recent Verizon Wireless announcement that it would introduce a feature enabling users to send texts to 911 (CD May 4 p11) is a potentially important breakthrough.
Mandatory disclosure requirements and government procurement rules are among “effective economic incentives” for driving adoption of cybersecurity measures, said a study by the Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado’s law school (http://xrl.us/bm6jj2). In many sectors, the “business case for increased security is nonexistent,” it said. Citing the data breach disclosure laws that many states have adopted, the study said public disclosure of a breach is “expensive because it drives away customers, decreases public perception and increases the potential for lawsuits.” Similar mandatory disclosure of vulnerabilities and attacks by critical infrastructure could have the same effect with regard to cybersecurity, the report said. The government could require private sector contractors to adopt security standards “as a prerequisite to enter the contracting process,” it said. That would raise the “baseline level of security in many sectors,” it said. In the absence of government oversight, companies are “unlikely to adopt reasonably necessary measures in some sectors,” even as sectors such as telecom, oil and gas, transport and emergency services remain vulnerable to attack, the report said. The U.S. should adopt a critical infrastructure cybersecurity policy setting forth national goals and the “means to achieve them,” it said. “The appropriate policy goal should eliminate all reasonably avoidable risk based on best practices that balance both the relevant benefits of cybersecurity investment and the relevant harms of failing to invest.” Such a policy will allow the federal agencies and the private sector to “prioritize the threats, determine business rationales for security solutions, and focus on accountability, prevention and risk-management,” the report said.
States like Virginia said they are going beyond traditional methods to ensure cybersecurity, as a federal report found that despite progress at the federal level, “cyber capabilities are lagging at the state level.” The latest National Preparedness Report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (http://xrl.us/bm6jmy) found that cybersecurity was the “single core capability where states had made the least amount of overall progress,” with an “average capability level of 42 percent.”
States like Virginia said they are going beyond traditional methods to ensure cybersecurity, as a federal report found that despite progress at the federal level, “cyber capabilities are lagging at the state level.” The latest National Preparedness Report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (http://xrl.us/bm6jmy) found that cybersecurity was the “single core capability where states had made the least amount of overall progress,” with an “average capability level of 42 percent.”
The idea circulating in some news articles that the U.N. or ITU is “trying to take over the Internet … is simply ridiculous,” Hamadoun Toure, the ITU secretary-general, told the Canadian Wireless Telecommunication Association forum May 1, according to his prepared remarks. The last set of changes to the regulations, in 1988, “paved the way for market liberalization and the spectacular growth” in telecom, “including the ‘mobile miracle’ and the global spread of the Internet,” Toure said. ITU’s membership did a “great job” of preparing for future needs in 1988, and “we are confident that they will do so again” at the treaty conference to revise the International Telecommunication Regulations later this year in the United Arab Emirates, he said. “In the broadest terms, this means governments and industry will come together in Dubai to lay the foundations for a broadband-enabled future, for everyone,” Toure said. “I expect a light-touch regulatory approach to emerge,” he said. This means establishing “broad, forward-looking principles that support a transparent, efficient framework for investment,” he said. “We need to reach consensus on balanced and predictable rules to ensure fair competition and to stimulate innovation and the spread of information and communication technologies,” Toure said. The GSMA estimated that $800 billion would be needed in mobile infrastructure investment by 2015 to handle the rapidly-growing demands of mobile broadband users, Toure said: “Unfortunately, many national policy and regulatory regimes were not designed with the current shift from voice to data-centric networks and services in mind. And, the current ITRs are not properly equipped to deal with this challenge either, which raises the question of how all this new infrastructure will be paid for?”
The idea circulating in some news articles that the U.N. or ITU is “trying to take over the Internet … is simply ridiculous,” Hamadoun Toure, ITU secretary-general, told the Canadian Wireless Telecommunication Association forum May 1, according to his prepared remarks. The last set of changes to the regulations, in 1988, “paved the way for market liberalization and the spectacular growth” in telecom, “including the ‘mobile miracle’ and the global spread of the Internet,” Toure said. ITU’s membership did a “great job” of preparing for future needs in 1988, and “we are confident that they will do so again” at the treaty conference to revise the International Telecommunication Regulations later this year in the United Arab Emirates, he said. “In the broadest terms, this means governments and industry will come together in Dubai to lay the foundations for a broadband-enabled future, for everyone,” Toure said. “I expect a light-touch regulatory approach to emerge,” he said. This means establishing “broad, forward-looking principles that support a transparent, efficient framework for investment,” he said. “We need to reach consensus on balanced and predictable rules to ensure fair competition and to stimulate innovation and the spread of information and communication technologies,” Toure said. The GSMA estimated that $800 billion would be needed in mobile infrastructure investment by 2015 to handle the rapidly-growing demands of mobile broadband users, Toure said: “Unfortunately, many national policy and regulatory regimes were not designed with the current shift from voice to data-centric networks and services in mind. And, the current ITRs are not properly equipped to deal with this challenge either, which raises the question of how all this new infrastructure will be paid for?”
The National Weather Service will start pushing out emergency alerts to cellphones “sometime in late May,” using the new Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS), NWS Lead for Emerging Dissemination Technologies Michael Gerber said. Gerber said some questions remain as carriers begin to transmit the alerts, a step required by the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act, which was enacted in 2006. He spoke on a Federal Emergency Management Agency webcast Wednesday on FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.