Verizon Wireless’s LTE Network Nearly Complete

Ten Approaches to Protecting Mobile Data

It’s Friday, and much of the country is still in the deep freeze. No single news story has dominated the IT and telecommunications sectors during the past week.

That doesn’t mean, however, that important things aren’t happening (hopefully indoors). I’ve compiled some of the worthwhile news and commentary that has been posted recently.

Verizon Wireless’s LTE Network Growing

Verizon Wireless, as reported at Light Reading, released some interesting numbers. Its LTE deployment now covers 99 percent of the 3G footprint and is available to 97 percent of the population. It spans 500 markets and 305 million points of presence, including its partners.

During the fourth quarter of 2013, the story says, Verizon Wireless activated 9 million LTE devices, which gives it a 42.7 million device universe. That’s 44.1 percent of its postpaid connections, almost 18 percent more than the 23.3 percent. The story says that approximately 69 percent of its data traffic is carried on LTE networks.

South Korea Makes Big 5G Investment

Thus, with the LTE rollout so advanced, thoughts are turning to 5G.

ZDNet reports that South Korean Yonhap News carried an item indicating that the nation’s government will invest 1.6 trillion won – US $1.49 billion – through 2020 on 5G. The ZDNet report says that the effort, called the “Creative 5G Mobile Strategy,” will include ultra HD, holograms and advanced social networking services. The effort will have a test run on social networking sites by 2015 and advance to mobile 3D and cloud services at 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) two years later.

Angels Over Mobile

A survey that looks at where venture capital money is going suggests that heady days are ahead for mobile companies.

According to the Kansas City Business Journal, The Halo Report, which was in part created by The Angel Resource Institute, found that a larger share of angel funding is going to mobile companies. The story says that Internet, health care, which also spiked, and mobile companies accounted for 81 percent of investments.

The report also found that the size of investments being made is down for the second consecutive quarter. The story offered some interesting demographics: 74 percent of investments were completed in the sponsor’s home state and about one-third were made on the east or west coast.

Securing Mobile Devices

ABI Research released a report this week from its Cybersecurity Research Service that points to a growing need for hardware security as sensitive apps, for use by such organizations as mobile, finance and government, mature. It won’t be easy, though, according to the firm:

There are a number of obstacles barring the way to the full dynamic emergence of a hardware security market. Not least of which is the fragmented mobile device landscape, with as many players on the silicon IP side as in OEM manufacturing, led by ARM, Trustonic, and Samsung. This particular mobile movement is also colliding head-on with long-standing efforts on the PC side that is looking to adapt tried and tested methods to the mobile landscape, with Intel and Microsoft pushing the boat. Specifications on both sides of the spectrum are increasingly looking to answer the same problem, while not specifically competing head-on. TEE, TPM, and UEFI are a few of those specs looking to address the issue of intrinsic security within the device.

The release says that the market is too young and diverse to have a clear leader. However, it is attractive to a number of sectors, including silicon designers, system-on-a-chip (SOC) manufacturers, OEMs and others, according to ABI.

Be It Ever So Duplicable…

And, finally, comes a story that reminds us that there’s no place like home, even if it is copied from a home somewhere far away.

Tom’s Guide says that DUS, a Dutch architectural firm, is building a home via 3D printing. The story says that the home (duplicile?), which will take three years to complete, is being constructed along the Buiksloter canal near the center of Amsterdam. DUS built a specialized printer that creates pieces that are about 11 feet tall. The story says that several materials for bricks were tried before an 80 percent bio-based plastic from the German firm Henkel was settled upon.