France's Bouygues Telecom Scraps European Roaming Charges:

The French mobile price war continues as Bouygues Telecom has just announced that it will be scrapping roaming charges throughout Europe, and the French overseas territories.

Subscribers to Sensation mobile plans will be able to make unlimited calls and texts to France and French overseas departments (incoming and outgoing calls and texts) and use 3GB of mobile Internet data per month (which includes picture/video messaging) in addition to the data package included in their plans (3GB, 8GB or 16GB).

All current Sensation plan subscribers will be able to opt for these new plans as soon as they are launched.

Smartphone Users Turning Down the Brightness on Their Phone Screens:

Two thirds of British smartphone users who can, have adjusted the screen brightness on their handset, with half of them doing so to preserve battery life.

The youth segment aged 15-24 is most likely to change the settings and 66% of this group gave any of the aforementioned reasons to adjust the display settings.

An Apical Smartphone survey independently implemented by Ipsos MORI has highlighted the impact of screen displays on smartphone power. Half of all 15-34 year old males adjusts brightness solely to save power on his smartphone and this is a one of the dominant user groups (82% of the Male 15-34 age group owns smartphone).

The survey showed that half of all users (47%) are accessing social media as a top 3 activity. Significantly, eight of out ten (77%) are accessing some form of video based internet /app content with approximately 1 in 4 saying maps/navigation, viewing photos or viewing video sites such as YouTube are in the top 3 activities beyond calls and texts.

Android Edges out IOS with the Most Mobile Phone Ad Impressions in Q4 2013:

In the three days around Christmas (December 24, 25 and 26), the number of smartphones and tablets, increased by 13% in the USA and 22% in Europe, reflecting strong sales of these devices during the holiday season, according to analyis by the mobile ad agency, Opera Mediaworks.

Overall, Opera Mediaworks says that it has seen a significant increase in global ad traffic year over year, and now reaches over 425 million consumers, while serving over 60 billion impressions a month.

The ad agency also noted that while revenue from iOS remains higher, Android now drives majority of mobile ad traffic to phones.

In Q4, iOS devices captured 56% of revenue, up from 50% in Q3. However, when comparing iPhone to Android phone traffic, Android tops out with a nearly 36% share (vs. iPhone's 28.7%).

Social networking sites and apps are the most popular. Traffic volume for social networking services was the highest, at 34.25% of all global traffic. The Music, Video & Media category followed, with 17.7% of traffic; this category took the top spot for revenue generation (20.6%) as consumers continue to use their mobile devices more for streaming music and watching videos. Arts & Entertainment sites and apps captured 18.2% of revenue.

Korea Mobile Internet Bids to Become Country's 4th Mobile Network:

South Korea based Korea Mobile Internet (KMI) has again said that it will attempt to secure a mobile network license in the country's forthcoming radio spectrum auction.

This would mark the company's fifth attempt to secure a license, after its previous four attempts were blocked by the regulator as the company lacked the necessary financial backing.

KMI now plans to secure starting capital of W853bn and raise another W2tn by attracting foreign investors and executing an IPO.

The regulator then plans to auction off 2.5Ghz spectrum for use as either LTE or Wibro technologies, with a considerably lower reserve price if used with Wibro services.

KMI has always to date been a Wibro loyalist although it's future plans are still unclear. However, if it were able to secure the funding to bid for the spectrum as an LTE operator, it might also be able to secure national roaming with one of the three incumbent networks.

GSMA Joins Alliance Aiming to Lower the Cost of Mobile Broadband In Developing Countries:

The telecoms trade group, the GSMA is joining the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), a diverse coalition of over 50 members aiming to driving down the cost of Internet access in developing countries via regulatory and policy reform.

Launched in October 2013, A4AI's primary focus is to support the achievement of the UN Broadband Commission's Broadband Target of entry-level broadband services priced at less than 5 percent of average monthly income.

The Alliance believes that, while technological solutions are advancing rapidly, policy and regulations remain a significant barrier to affordable Internet. A4AI thus seeks to create the conditions for open, competitive and innovative broadband markets via policy and regulatory reform through a combination of advocacy, research and knowledge-sharing at global, regional and national levels.

Huawei Telecoms Equipment Targeted by NSA Spies:

Analysis of NSA documents released by the whistleblower Edward Snowden has shown that the US spy agency directly targeted equipment manufactured by China's Huawei.

The documents show that at least two, possibly three projects that were given individual codenames targeted Huawei routers, firewalls and network equipment known to have been sold to at least three major mobile network operators.

As a telecoms equipment vendor, Huawei would have been just one of many telecoms manufacturers targeted by the US spies.

Although Huawei has always denied it, there are these persistent allegations that the company was some sort of backdoor for Chinese spies, and yet it finds itself in the curious position of having been targeted to act as a backdoor for US spies instead.

The documents raise some uncomfortable questions, particularly for politicians who have accused the company of being a front for the Chinese military.

In October 2012, the USA's House Intelligence Committee carried out an investigation and concluded by recommending that US firms avoid doing business with the Chinese supplier, although much of the report's allegations appeared to be based on dissatisfaction with the company shareholding structure and openness than any proven security threat.

Google Blocking Malicious Add-Ons for Chrome Web Browser:

Google has had to take action to block add-ons for its Chrome web browser delivering malware or injecting their own adverts into webpages.

The add-ons, which add extra functionality to the web browser are accused of having been taken over by adware sellers.

The add-ons are not hacked, but actually sold by their developers to the adware injection vendors. When the browser detects that an updated version is available, it offers to download it, and causes the adware to be inserted into the users computer.

The revelations of a market in legitimate add-ons that can be reprogrammed to deliver malicious code came after a popular add-on developer wrote that he had been offered a significant amount of money to hand over control of his RSS reader application.

Shortly after he sold the add-on, the buyers used it to insert adverts into websites without either the website owners permission, or the permission of the end user.

Apart from being a nuisance for the end-user, such activity reduces advertising income for website owners.