Hong Kong, South Korea lag in IPv6 adoption

Asia's emerging markets are leading mature markets such as Hong Kong and South Korea in IPv6 adoption as these countries have faster growing mobile broadband populations and a smaller pool of IPv4 resources. The mature markets' slow uptake could hamper competitiveness in the long run, according to the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC). According to a recent study by APNIC, the estimated IPv6 users in Hong Kong and South Korea as a percentage of the overall Internet population are 0.02 percent and 0.01 percent, respectively. Comparatively, the study showed Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia had higher IPv6 penetration than the two developed markets. Thailand had 0.16 percent of IPv6 users, Malaysia and Sri Lanka both had 0.13 percent, while Indonesia had 0.10 percent, the study revealed. 

The top 5 Asian markets in IPv6 adoption were Japan, which came in tops at 2.4 percent, followed by China at 0.67 percent. Australia had 0.42 percent, while Taiwan had 0.19 percent and Singapore 0.17 percent. In a phone interview with ZDNet Asia Wednesday, Paul Wilson, the director general of APNIC, explained the number of Internet users is growing faster in emerging markets than mature ones such as Hong Kong and South Korea.

This growth, driven by rising mobile broadband subscribers, means more new IP addresses are needed and increases the adoption of IPv6 address, Wilson said, adding this need to adopt IPv6 is not so pronounced in established markets. However, since Asia has ran out of IPv4 addresses, the executive noted even mature markets that still have available IPv4 resources need to prepare for the inevitable migration to the newer Web protocol for competitive reasons.

With most companies more dependent on the Internet these days, businesses that do not plan ahead for IPv6 migration could risk losing existing customers who are already using the newer IP (Internet Protocol). Being prepared includes looking to procure IPv6-compatible software, hardware and networking gear, or companies may risk paying more to cross over in the future, Wilson warned.

Enterprises lack IPv6 experts
 

Asked if IPv6 still has security issues to iron out, Wilson said the protocol provides more security capabilities than its predecessor. However, like other new technologies, mistakes caused by human error are likely when deploying IPv6 and this may lead to security concerns, he said.

This challenge is not helped by the general lack of IPv6-skilled professionals in the market, which is a major challenge for organizations looking to migrate. Those that do also have to put in more effort to retain and train their staff in this competitive recruitment climate, he added.

Apple to fix iOS Wi-Fi problems

Apple's dirty little secret, which was kept out of October 23rd's iPad 4 and iPad mini's limelight, is that iOS 6, the new and popular operating system for iPhones and iPads, still has serious Wi-Fi and 3G/4G networking problems. Now, though, it appears that a new version of iOS 6, iOS 6.01, will be fixing these problems in the next few weeks.

According to BGR, Apple sources confirm that they're testing iOS 6.01. I've also been told by sources at one of the major telephone carriers that testing has indeed begun. This update will fix numerous problems. These include the horizontal lines bug, a problem with the camera’s flash not going off, and other minor problems. The real news as far as I'm concenred is that it will will fix iOS 6's spotty Wi-Fi and fix the truly costly problem of iOS 6 using expensive 3G or 4G instead of free Wi-Fi when both are available.

Apple quickly fixed one self-inflicted Wi-Fi problem. This initial annoyance had iDevices phoning home to Apple only to end up locking devices off the Internet. That was the easy one. A host of other problems remain. These include iOS 6 users not being able to trouble connect with APs (Access Points) using WPA2 AES (Wi-Fi Protected Access II/ Advanced Encryption Standard) and some devices simply not being able to use Wi-Fi at all. We can hope that this forthcoming minor update will fix all these problems.

One problem that won't be solved though is Apple Maps. For that, you'll need to wait for, at least iOS 6.1 and it's all too likely that Apple Maps will still get you lost for long after that. Forturnately, there are many, better map alternatives for iDevices.

Up to speed: Small towns quick to download

You'd imagine that life in the city would provide the best chance of a decent internet connection, but small, regional towns with their own phone exchanges are a much better bet. There are only 500 people living in Manildra, for example. It's a small NSW town midway between Orange and Parkes, but it has its own ADSL2+-enabled phone exchange, and the small number of tests taken on the ZDNet Broadband Speed Test between February and September this year averaged 17.7Mbps. It's a similar story in Wallaroo, the little port town on the western edge of the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia. There's an ADSL2+-enabled exchange serving just a few thousand people, most of whom are only a stone's throw away, with no distance to build up resistance and compromise speed, and not many people sharing the backhaul connection to Adelaide.

The area around Crowley Vale in Queensland's Lockyer Valley has a population of just 1,600. It's so small that it doesn't even have its own Wikipedia entry, but it does have an ADSL2+ phone exchange, and it averaged 15.2Mbps from the 24 ZDNet broadband speed tests we tracked. It's the same across all of our top speed locations; small populations with their own DSL2+ exchange:

• Marian, home to 1,000 people, 24km inland from Mackay
  
• Riverton, just 700 people in the heart of South Australia's Clare Valley
  
• Monto in Queensland, birthplace of Mal Meninga, home to 1,500 people
  
• Moorooduc on Victoria's Mornington Peninsular, a small town of 1,000
  
• Tarwin Lower, 175 km south-east of Melbourne, with just 115 people
  
• Dunolly, heart of Victoria's goldfields, home to just 1,000.
  

In each case, the exchange serves far beyond the towns themselves, but most of the population is situated just a block or two away. It's a different story, of course, for country folk who are forced to make do with the exchanges located in neighbouring towns. Our bottom 10 postcodes comprise nearly 100 tests barely reaching 1Mbps. The only positive take-out for these people is that they'll never exceed their download limit — and, if they do, they probably wouldn't even notice that their speed had been throttled.

Big-city folk sit somewhere between the two extremes. No suburban location made it into our top 10, and there would be hell to pay if they made it to the bottom of the list. In Double Bay, home to Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, users get an average of 8.3Mbps. That's well above the country's average of 5.6Mbps (averaged from all of our DSL speed tests), and far above the result from Whittlesea, the heart of the prime minister's electorate, where speeds average 4.7Mbps.

The answer for Julia Gillard is simple. If the speed isn't to your liking, go bush! Find a small town with its own DSL2+ exchange, and enjoy the ride.

iPad Mini and new iPad look headed to EE's 4G network

Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller named EE as a 4G partner for the new iPads. Image: James Martin/CNET

Apple's new iPad Mini 7-inch tablet and fourth-generation iPad, introduced on Tuesday, look likely to plug into EE's 4G network in the UK. At a launch event in San Jose, Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller presented the new iPad and the much-anticipated iPad Mini, which will go up against Google's popular Nexus device. Among their many features, both tablets will have built-in support for LTE networks, Schiller said, but did not specify which spectrum this covers.

However, British operator EE appeared in a presentation slide showing carrier partners for the new iPad - a sign that the new Apple tablets will follow the iPhone 5's lead in being able to tap into the T-Mobile and Orange operator's soon-to-launch 1800MHz-based 4G services. "New features include a FaceTime HD camera, twice the Wi-Fi performance when compared to previous iPad models and support for additional LTE carriers worldwide," Apple said in its launch announcement.

After the launch of its previous tablet, the 'new' iPad, Apple had to field complaints over restricted LTE reach and paid an AUS $2.25m fine for marketing it as 4G, even though it didn't work on Australia's LTE networks. With the recently released iPhone 5, the company broadened its partners out, but still worked with only two 4G carriers in the whole of Europe - one of which was EE. Perhaps due to the 4G tweaks, the Wi-Fi-only models of the fourth-generation iPad and iPad Mini will arrive first. They are set to go on sale on 2 November via Apple's online and high street stores, as well as at retail partners such as Carphone Warehouse. The 4G-capable versions will start shipping a "couple of weeks after the Wi-Fi models", Apple said.

Neither EE nor Apple had responded to a request for comment at the time of writing. The new iPad Mini is about one-quarter thinner and half as light as the last generation of full-size iPad, according to Apple. It has a multitouch display measuring almost 8 inches, though this is not a Retina display, as some fans had hoped. Built on an A5 chip, it runs iOS 6 and promises 10 hours of battery life. With Wi-Fi only, the iPad Mini will cost £269 with 16GB of storage, rising to £349 with 32GB and £429 with 64GB. The same tablet with added 4G and other cellular capability is priced at £369, £449 and £529 correspondingly.

The fourth-generation iPad is built on a new chip, the A6X, that Apple says has "twice the CPU performance and up to twice the graphics performance" of its A5X predecessor. The tablet, which has a 9.7-inch Retina display, also runs on iOS 6. The new iPad with Wi-Fi only comes in at £399 (16GB), £479 (32GB) and £559 (64GB). Add in cellular, and the prices are £499, £579 and £659. Pre-orders for all models open at Apple's online store on Friday for buyers in the UK, the US and 24 other countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Huawei under fire in Ghana for alleged bribery

China's Huawei Technologies has been accused of bribing Ghana's ruling party, in return for a US$43 million tax exemption, leading to calls for the telecoms equipment maker to be kicked out of the country. At a press conference in the capital Accra, a spokesman for Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG), Davis Opoku, produced documentary evidence to support the civil society group's claims, according to a report Wednesday by the Daily Guide. He claimed Huawei had been funding the activities and operations of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), breaking the country’s electoral laws. According to news site Joy Online, the documents shown at the press conference included invoices and plane tickets for some government officials. These indicated Huawei had been printing campaign paraphernalia, T-shirts, cups, caps and key holders, worth millions of dollars, for the NDC's 2012 election campaign.

The AFAG said following the "immoral" gesture by Huawei, the government "in a reciprocal gesture awarded the Huawei group what could arguably go down as one of the juiciest contracts to be doled out by the current NDC government", according to a report by the Statesman Online. The Statesman noted the deal awarded to Huawei in September 2011 involved a contract totalling US$150 million for an e-government platform. The Chronicle pointed out under Ghana's Political Parties Act, only a citizen may contribute in cash or in kind to the funds of a political party. A non-citizen shall not directly or indirectly make a contribution or donation or loan, whether in cash or in kind to the funds held by or for the benefit of a political party, it added.

If found guilty, Huawei and the NDC party could face hefty sanctions, according to AFAG, which has also called for the immediate deportation of Huawei officials for the violation of the Political Parties Act. Elsewhere in Africa, the telecoms equipment maker has also been subject to investigations. Earlier this month, the Ugandan government reportedly ordered an investigation into its national fiber optic project over alleged inflated costs and use of inferior equipment by Huawei. In markets such as the United States, Huawei has been under the spotlight for accusations of spying, due to alleged links to the Chinese military. However, a White House review released on Thursday has so far found no evidence. It is still under scrutiny in the UK, which is set to launch its own investigations. The company has also been banned from taking part in Australia's NBN project due to national security concerns.

O2 scraps Ericsson database after second major network outage

O2 is removing key Ericsson technology from its network, following two outages this year that led to widespread customer disruption across the U.K. After a second outage earlier this month, which cut off two million customers from the network for more than 20 hours, O2 announced in a blog post that the country's second largest network will no longer use Ericsson's technology, which was also blamed for an earlier outage in July.

The July outage led to as many as 7 million of the firm's 21--22 million customers -- or a third of its U.K. customer base -- with expensive paperweights as phones, after phone calls wouldn't connect and data services were cut off. A post-mortem discovered that O2's transition to Ericsson's Centralized User Database left millions of phones unable to 'authenticate' with the network, according to The Register.

Following the outage, affected O2 customers were recompensed with a 10 percent bill discount for July. 

Ericsson's database technology allows SIM cards to register to O2's network and giving users' access to the network. But O2's chief operating officer Derek McManus said the firm is "not prepared to risk this happening to our customers for a third time and are implementing a proven alternative solution."

McManus also said the firm will spend an additional £10 million ($16.1m) on the transition away from the Ericsson database, on top of the £1.5 million ($2.4m) it spends on infrastructure every day.

While the move is good news for O2 and its customers, Ericsson's technology is firmly in the spotlight following the two major outages -- the worst O2 has suffered in years. As The Register explains, O2 isn't cutting all its ties with Ericsson as the mobile giant outsourced its entire mobile network infrastructure to the Swedish telecoms equipment maker in 2009.

It's even likely that Ericsson will be at the top of the list to supply new technology as the firm moves away from Ericsson's database technology. That said, Huawei may also be on the shiny new server shortlist after the Chinese telecoms maker won an contract with O2 earlier this year. 

In spite of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee across the pond, the U.K. remains invested in Huawei technology, even though the U.K. Parliament is starting to warm up to the idea that Huawei may be bad news -- even though there is little proof in the pudding that Huawei has actually done anything wrong beyond suspicion.

GSMA: Only 45 percent globally subscribe to mobile services

The number of mobile subscribers globally will reach 3.2 million by end-2012, excluding inactive SIM cards and multiple SIM card users, and this means mobile operators can capitalize on the "significant" market opportunities available for the next few years, the GSMA notes.

In its report released Thursday, the trade association's Wireless Intelligence team found the total mobile connections worldwide will stand at 6.8 billion including machine-to-machine (M2M) communications by the fourth quarter of this year. Excluding M2M and inactive SIM cards, the number of connections will drop to 5.9 billion, it added.

Additionally, since consumers on average use 1.85 SIM cards each, the total number of unique mobile subscribers globally will reach 3.2 billion by the end of the year. A unique subscriber can have multiple connections, or SIM cards under his or her name, the report noted.

This means global mobile subscriber penetration is only at 45 percent by end-2012, it added.

The primary research was conducted in 2009, 2011, and 2012 across 39 countries, which constitute about 75 percent of global connections. There was an even split between developed and developed economies, the research team stated.

"Unconnected" to drive growth
 

Looking ahead, future mobile subscriber growth will be driven by demand from "unconnected" populations in developing countries, particularly those in rural areas. The research estimates these populations would come to about 1.8 billion people through the next five years. Elaborating, the findings predict subscriber penetration in developed countries will pass 80 percent in five years' time, and growth is expected to slow then. By contrast, the penetration rate for developing economies is forecasted to increase from 39 percent in 2012 to 47 percent in 2017.

In Asia, specifically, subscriber penetration currently stands at 40 percent and is expected to grow to 49 percent in 2017. China's subscriber penetration rate will rise from 43 percent to 52 percent during the same time frame. "In developing markets, where there is clearly an opportunity for growth for the mobile industry, SIM per user patterns are influenced by cost-conscious, low-usage consumers who tend to accumulate prepaid SIM cards depending on the latest and most affordable prepaid tariffs," Anne Bouverot, director general of GSMA, pointed out.

Ultimately, the research points to a "significant growth opportunity" for the mobile industry as it continues to connect the world's population, Bouverot added.

10 corporate IT headaches over the next five years

ORLANDO---Corporate information technology departments will face common problems over the next five years---agility, budget crunches and the need to innovate---but at a scale they just haven't had to deal with until now. That's a high-level takeaway from a Gartner overview at its Symposium powwow. Gartner analyst David Cappuccio ran through the research firm's top 10 technologies CIOs will have to worry about over the next five years. The trends surfaced are a followup to Gartner's earlier keynote. 

Here's a look the 10 issues and my take on them.

By organizational entrenchments and disruption, Gartner is referring to vendors as well as IT. One prediction is that 30 percent of companies using software as a service will switch to on-premises applications due to poor service levels by 2014. Also by 2014, market consolidation will nuke 20 percent of the top 100 IT service providers.

Also: Can big data engineer marketing influence? | Mobile retailing: A non-factor

As far as the IT department, service levels also matter. IT support will have to show usefulness or it'll simply go away. Customer experience will determine whether the IT department lives on and agility will matter as development times shorten.

Gartner's No. 2---software defined networks seems like a bandwagon pick in some respects. Isn't everyone since VMware's acquisition of Nicira talking software defined networks now? The argument that SDNs will impact IT is that data center operations will change along with workloads and application requirements.

The big data issue for IT has been covered repeatedly. Gartner's biggest highlight revolves around managing storage growth and getting a handle on requirements between now and 2015. The talent shortage will be painful. Gartner estimates that big data demand will generate 1 million jobs in the global 1000, but only a third of them will be filled.

For No. 4, Gartner's pitch about the hybrid data center is on target. The reality is that commodity services will go cloud, but no one is going to ditch the infrastructure they already have.

As for Gartner's client-server disruption argument it noted that 90 percent of enterprises will skip Windows 8 and client server technologies will be a grab bag. That prediction isn't much of a stretch given many companies are still going Windows 7. For more on this Windows upgrade cycle, see Ed Bott's history lesson on enterprises and Microsoft's latest OSes.

The Internet of things is a technology that I would have put higher from a business model perspective. Sensor data and smart objects affects many other areas---including big data management.

Regarding No. 7, the move to appliances as a cure-all has been well underway. What's interesting here is Gartner's argument that virtual appliances will alter the equation. Will virtual appliances render all those physical appliances (Exadata, Netezza etc.) moot?

On operational complexity, Gartner's takeaway was that employee owned devices will be compromised by malware more than double the rate of corporate-owned devices. Welcome to the BYOD headache. IT is paying for more technology than it actually uses---20 percent of features and functions in a system are used. Operational complexity will always be an issue. The fix is elusive.

For No. 9, virtual data centers will mean staff shifts and force innovation. The vertical organizations in corporate IT won't work going forward.

And finally, IT demand will be insatiable. Adding capacity won't work and corporations won't control most of the demand via apps, social networks and other things. Key issue: By 2017, 40 percent of enterprise contact information will be leaked into Facebook via mobile devices.

DiGi Q3 profit up 7.8 percent, eyes more data boost

Malaysian telco DiGi has posted a 7.8 percent rise in its net profit at RM315 million for the third quarter,  boosted by growth from data revenue which it is hoping to grow further. In earnings announced Tuesday, DiGi noted for the three months ended September earnings rose 4.1 percent to RM1.58 billion. This was boosted by a 3.4 percent increase in data revenue to RM460 million.

Henrik Clausen, CEO of DiGi, pointed out in the statement data revenue accounted for about 31 percent of its total service revenue for the first nine months of the year. He added the company had invested between RM700 and RM750 million this year to upgrade its network to cater to the increased demand from data users and a growing shift from voice to data.

Over the past three months, the telco had prioritized its resources to improve its new network and expanding its 3G coverage, according to Clausen, who added this would remain a core focus. The CEO added DiGi had also invested significantly in strengthening its retail presence "to enable better access to mobile Internet for more customers, and enhance the customer experience across our touch-points". "All this will enable us to capture a bigger piece of the mobile Internet and broadband market in the long-term," Clausen said.

For 2013, DiGi is aiming to outgrow its industry peers in terms of revenue growth, according to its presentation. It expects to deliver growth of between 5 and 7 percent, above the industry average of 5 percent.

Microsoft Buys StorSimple, Pursues Hybrid Cloud Storage Strategy

Coming just a day before the announcement of its financial results for the first quarter, Microsoft has announced that it has bought cloud-storage provider StorSimple for an undisclosed sum.

Cloud Storage Market

There may not be any significance in the fact that this deal comes so close to the earnings announcement — except that IBM announced its third quarter results last night, and they weren’t good. In fact, Mark Loughbridge, IBM’s CFO, said in the earnings call after the results were released that IBM would be looking at analytics, its Smarter Planet initiative (which is closely connected to Big Data) and cloud computing to add US$ 20 billion to its books by 2015. Microsoft has come under some fire in the past about its cloud ambitions and functionality, but it has done a lot of running in the past year. With this buy, the company will be able to increase its ability send data into the Azure cloud, not to mention Google and Amazon Web Services.

Microsoft, StorSimple

And that’s the real functionality value of this deal. StorSimple was created nearly four years ago to provide cloud-integrated storage solutions and has worked with Microsoft in the past. In 2010, it optimized its products to work with Microsoft applications. This made it a sure target for Microsoft as it clawed back ground it lost to other cloud providers because it wasn't quick enough off the mark.

Microsoft is not saying how much it paid for StorSimple, but we have found in the past that this usually means that, relatively speaking, they haven’t paid a whole lot. But strategically, when StorSimple is added into the Microsoft mix, it should produce a really heady brew — and that’s where Microsoft is going with this. Microsoft says that the addition of cloud-integrated storage systems will “advance Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision." It may also be important to note here that StorSimple already works with Microsoft SharePoint (cloud storage is a great way to improve the performance of SharePoint).

Microsoft’s Hybrid Cloud Storage Strategy

In practical terms, what this means is that Microsoft is going into the hybrid cloud market in a big way. Combining primary storage, backup, archiving and disaster recovery with cloud integration, this will enable users decide to where their data should be stored.

Customers faced with explosive growth in data are looking to the cloud to help them store, manage and archive that data. But, to be effective, cloud storage needs to integrate with IT's current investments … StorSimple's approach helps customers seamlessly integrate on-premises storage with cloud storage through intelligent automation and management," said Michael Park, Corporate Vice President, Server and Tools Division for Microsoft.

StorSimple solutions combine the data management functions of primary storage, backup, archive and disaster recovery with cloud integration, enabling customers to optimize storage costs, data protection and service agility. With it, enterprises will be able to protect and restore production data using public clouds. Using encryption, cloud providers will be able to send data over the web securely, using compression technologies and de-duplication technologies to eliminate multiple copies of data. StorSimple appliances currently have storage capacities ranging from 2TB to 20 TBs with prices starting at around US$ 40,000.