The security of enterprise information systems against malware once only involved ensuring the security of all PC clients and servers within a physically limited and often also physically secure environment such as an office.

However, the more recently growing number mobile smartphones, many of them personally owned and used for both personal and company use, anywhere and at any time has posed increasing security challenges to enterprise ICT systems managers.

For example, Morgan Stanley forecast that the number of smartphone sales worldwide would exceed the number of PC sales in 2012, while IDC forecast 270 million smartphone shipments worldwide in 2010 compared to 174 million in 2009, and by 2012, 73% of global enterprise workforces will be on mobile.

Meanwhile, a study by KRC Research and Synovate involving 6,000 smartphone and tablet users across 16 countries found 44% of them used their device for both personal and business use, while a tiny 4% use them strictly for business, while 81% admitted to using their devices to access their employer's network without its knowledge or permission, while 58% did so every day.

PETALING JAYA, 30 November, 2010: Reports in a blog this morning, alleged that “YTL Communications executive director Datuk Yeoh Seok Hong and the Prime Minister himself confirmed that the spectrum apparatus assignment (AA) rights was granted to YTL Communications Sdn Bhd (YTL Comms).”

However, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (SKMM/MCMC) said in an e-mail this evening, “An Apparatus Assignment (AA) had been given to YTL for its YES WiMAX service but not  for commercial roll out of its digital broadcast pay TV.  SKMM reiterates that no AA has been issued for this purpose (i.e. pay TV).”

“As in our press release (of 28 November), we are considering YTL's plan for broadcast TV and YTL  is to study if any clear channels can be used in the 80MHz (710-790 MHz) band to launch the service, subject the business plan being accepted, before being allowed to be issued with an AA for their commercial digital broadcast service.  As an additional note, the band is currently used by analogue TV at least until 2015,” the SKMM added.

Meanwhile in parliament, Minister of Information and Culture, Dato' Seri Utama Dr. Rais Yatim also refuted allegations by Jelutong Member of Parliament, Y.B. Jeff Ooi that the SKMM ) had ever given approval to anyone to operate in the 700MHz band, which can be used for broadcasting or broadband services, according to online news portal, The Malaysian Insider.

AAs, SAs and other techie stuff

In fact, all WiMAX and GSM cellular operators as well as broadcasters, satellite earth stations, satellite stations and other radio communications equipment are currently issued with AAs

Basically, AAs are short-term permits under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, allowing a an operator to use certain frequencies to operate a network facility of a specified kind for a specified purpose. AAs are valid for a maximum of five years, though they are typically renewed annually.

No spectrum in the 700MHz band (710 to 790 MHz) for digital pay TV has been allocated to YTL just yet, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia a Commission (MCMC) clarified in a press release dated 28 November, 2010.

This follows a report in The Malaysian Insider which quoted The Straits Times, Singapore as saying:-

“Singapore’s The Straits Times said the prime minister will meet senior telco officials next Monday to defuse the widening controversy over the 700MHz spectrum said to be given to tycoon Tan Sri Francis Yeoh’s YTL to operate its hybrid television service slated for end 2011. It can also be used to widen its broadband service.”

The MCMC clarified that the licence which it had issued to YTL Communications on 30 August 2010 was a Content Applications Service Provider (CASP) licence which allows YTL to provide Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service over its 2.3GHz WiMAX network.

YTL Communications already has a license in this spectrum for its WiMAX broadband service and IPTV is just one of the services which it can provide in this band as part of its WiMAX service, just as TM does over its Unifi fibre broadband, and which Maxis is planning to do over fibre as well.

The MCMC further clarified that at this stage, it is assessing  a detailed business plan by YTL for the roll out of digital pay TV and not WiMAX mobile services as reported, and that it had not issued YTL any spectrum in the 700MHz band as yet for digital pay TV, so what is said in these media reports and blogs is inaccurate.

The GSM Association (GSMA) which represents the interests of close to 800 mobile operators across 219 countries has been lobbying the Malaysian government to harmonise its allocation of spectrum between 698 and 806 MHz for  mobile broadband, instead of digital broadcast for a while now.

For example, Jaikishan Rajaraman, GSMA senior director, Asia Pacific mentioned this issue to Comm & Tech Asia in July, while visiting Kuala Lumpur to meet with regulators and key industry figures over matters of spectrum allocation for LTE, refarming of the 900MHz band and "aligning digital dividend spectrum plans across Asia."

Then in a press release dated 2 November, 2010, the GSMA said that such a move would be in line with the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity's (APT's) plans for “international spectrum harmonisation in the 698-806 MHz band for Mobile Broadband deployment.”

The APT is an organisation of governments across the Asian region which spearheads development and innovation programmes in ICT in collaboration with telecommunication service providers, communications equipment manufactures and research & development organisations in the region. Currently, 34 countries are members plus four territories and islands which are associate members, while its affiliate members include equipment manufacturers and R&D organisations.

The GSMA claimed that with increased Internet adoption across Malaysia, resulting from mobile broadband, such harmonisation would create an estimated 44,000 new jobs by 2020, many of which will be in rural areas versus 2,100 new jobs if this spectrum was allocated to broadcasting. Also, mobile broadband would also account for a US$1.1 billion increase in Malaysia's GDP, with increased tax revenues of US$2.1 billion between 2014 and 2020.

“The Malaysian economy and society could enjoy significant benefits if the government were to take a regionally coordinated approach to the use of the 698-806 MHz band,” said Tom Philips, Chief Government & Regulatory Affairs Officer, GSMA.

He said the Universal Service Provision (USP) makes it mandatory for all telecommunications firms to contribute six per cent of their annual income to a USP fund to develop Internet connectivity in rural areas.

"There is no specific area to develop and expand Internet connectivity, although development is focused on Sabah and Sarawak. The idea is for all areas in the country to attain the necessary infrastructure. We cannot leave any areas unserved, especially in East Malaysia."

On Monday evening, we received a press release from the MCMC dated 1 November, 2010, in which it confirmed that the balance in the USP Fund was indeed down to RM380 million from RM4.53 billion as of 20 September, 2010, after it had allocated about RM4.15 billion for disbursement to eight USP-related projects, including RM1 billion to distribute 1Malaysia Netbooks to qualified Malaysians.

Telekom Malaysia (TM) launched seven new premium channels for its HyppTV Internet Protocil Television (IPTV) service at The Curve in Petaling Jaya on Saturday, 9 October, 2010.

They are MUTV (Manchester United TV channel), Universal Channel, SyFy Universal, Warner TV, BabyFirst TV, Screen RED and a new HD channel, iConcerts HD, and they add to the 22 linear TV channels and 20 video-on-demand (VoD) channels on HyppTV.

HyppTV was launched in March 2010, together with TM's UniFi residential fibre broadband service.

These seven are part of TM’s ongoing plan to provide its customerse with additional foreign and domestic content to increase and diversify HyppTV's range of content.

HyppTV is available to all UniFi residential customers as part of the service’s triple-play offering comprising Phone, High Speed Internet and IPTV services – which include free and pay channels, as well as VoD and interactive content.

By Andrew Milroy

In the past year or so, it has been amazing to witness organisations finding ways of using social media to engender innovation and creativity.  By offering employees full access to these tools, innovative use of applications like Twitter and Facebook can come from all parts of the organisation.  Restricting access to social media risks placing an organisation at a competitive disadvantage.

These tools can be used in an enormous variety of ways.  They can support and enable common business processes such as sales, marketing, customer services and recruitment.  In addition, they can even support industry specialists that seek to improve the ways in which they do things.  Specialists in industries from aeronautical engineering to zoology are finding ways of using social media to support, enhance and transform their business activities.

I recently met up with an ex-colleague who now works for Carnival Australia, a cruise company.  To most people, it is not obvious how Carnival might use social media for business purposes.  But, some creative and innovative individuals within the company have found ways of using Facebook to enhance customer service and improve customer experience.  In addition to setting up pages that are used broadly for marketing purposes, Carnival also sets up Facebook pages for each cruise.  Customers of the cruise are then invited to ‘like’ the group for their cruise.  On the page, they can share information with other customers and with Carnival employees.  Discussions commence in which customers can gain information relating to their cruise, from peers in addition to corporate information from Carnival.  So far, Carnival has found that this feature is popular with their customers and the company believes that it improves customer experience significantly.

Given that there is clear evidence of social media tools, including Facebook, being used for innovation and to increase productivity, why do some companies continue to use web filtering tools to restrict employee access to social media?  The short and polite answer is that the people who make these decisions often have very little understanding of the relationship between business and technology.  In the 1980s, when spreadsheets were first widely used, some myopic employers were concerned that their employees would spend too much time using spreadsheets for personal use such as creating shopping lists.  A similar argument was used if we go further back to the widespread introduction of the telephone in the work place.

Growth in the Asia-Pacific smartphone market is expected to skyrocket in the coming years and by 2015, Frost & Sullivan forecasts that 54 percent of all devices sold in the region will be smartphones, up from only five percent in 2009.

Smartphone sales in Asia-Pacific are rapidly increasing in all markets, as developed markets like Japan and South Korea are switching from feature phones to smartphones, while operators in emerging markets are pushing smartphones to entice users to upgrade from 2G to 3G service.

Mobile social networking has also proven to be a big driver of smartphone adoption in all Asian countries.

“Smartphones are critical to every operator’s mobile broadband business case, as a smartphone user’s ARPU (average revenue per user) typically increased by 25 to 100 percent after adoption depending on the market,” says Frost & Sullivan industry manager Marc Einstein.

“The Asia-Pacific market is particularly interesting for smartphones as there has been significant uptake in emerging markets like China, India and Indonesia, even among prepaid users,” he adds.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.wireless.frost.com), 2010 Asia-Pacific Mobile Device & Smartphone Outlook, finds that the incremental data usage from smartphones will generate over US$38 billion for operators in the Asia-Pacific region (18 Asia-Pac countries, including Japan), up from just over US$1.3 billion in 2009.

Despite the massive growth in smartphone sales, there are still many factors impeding sale of the device in many markets. According to Einstein, “Eighty percent of Asian mobile users use prepaid cards, and in fact in many markets are as high as 97 percent, making smartphone subsidies impossible for most users. Furthermore, there is a lack of public Wi-Fi, particularly in emerging markets which has been a smartphone saviour in the USA and other developed markets.”

October 6, 2010 -- Mobile payments (m-payments) in Asia-Pacific are expected to record transactions worth more than two-fold from 2009 revenues of US$1.6 billion, in five years. In 2015, Frost & Sullivan estimates that m-payments could exceed billings of US$3.6 billion, at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 14.8 percent (2010-2015).

Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Shaker Amin attributes this growth to technology innovations and operators’ initiatives - particularly with NFC (Near Field Communication) - as well as rising consumer demand in both the developed and emerging markets.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.wireless.frost.com), 2010 Asia-Pacific Mobile Payments Outlook - 18 Asia-Pac nations including Japan - finds that contactless payments via the NFC channel will increase in popularity to account for 23 percent of all m-payments in 2015, from only 12 percent last year.

The SMS method which accounted for nearly 82 percent of total transactions in 2009 will likely remain the dominant mobile payment channel till 2015, albeit dropping to about 67 percent by then.

Other payment channels such as WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and DMB (Direct Mobile Billing) contributed small fractions to m-payments in 2009, with adoption levels not expected to rise through to 2015.

“Having one of the most advanced mobile cultures in the world, Japan and South Korea lead the region in the adoption of mobile payments,” Amin says.

He adds that the relatively less developed mobile markets such as China, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, where access to traditional banking services is highly skewed against the rural mass population, are showing rapid take-up of mobile banking services including person-to-person (P2P) transfers and remittances.

“Even in emerging markets such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - although limited to mostly SMS-based bill payments and micro credit transfers - m-payments services are increasingly becoming popular,” he continues.

Amin explains that these [emerging] markets also have good potential for mobile remittance services due to the large population of workers residing in other countries - Malaysia for example. “International remittance sent out from the significant migrant worker population in Malaysia is a lucrative business. This is significant for Malaysian operators as this segment of the population also has high mobile penetration; more than 90 percent of all migrant groups have mobile devices,” he says. He adds that operators’ initiatives in enabling remittance services - along with m-wallet and top-up/transfer services - have helped the mobile payments market in Malaysia, which, until recently, remained tepid and limited to bill payments.