Meanwhile, another internet juggernaut, Google, is ramping up its fiber initiative and looking more and more like a competitive threat to CSPs than just “the little search engine that could.” Recently, it heralded the establishment of two new Google Fiber towns; Austin, Texas, was the first to be announced, but Provo, Utah, will likely be the first to benefit from the company’s ultrafast network—Big G purchased the city’s municipal fiber network as part of its deal.

These days you can’t talk about Google and Amazon without mentioning Facebook—together they form the holy trinity of the new digital world. News of the highly anticipated Facebook phone crossed the wire in early April, but the cat was out of the bag well ahead of the company’s official announcement. The social networking giant is aiming for Android with an HTC phone that turns the mobile experience into a Facebook-centric one, but shortly after its launch, users were already complaining about the experience,the all-important word in telecom these days. The threat of a “Facephone” revolution appears minimal, but since Facebook is currently losing millions of subscribers in major markets, a low-cost phone for emerging markets could help tip the balance back in the company’s favor.

Verizon cybercrime study: state-affiliated espionage on the rise

Verizon has published the latest in a series of annual reports that shed light on the number, type and origination point of cybercrime incidents around the world. Its 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) is more thorough than ever, drawing data from a pool of contributors three times the size of previous years.

The DBIR examines cybercrime from four angles—actors (internal or external to a company), actions (what happened), assets (what was affected), and attributes (how the assets were affected)—with the results filtered to only include network-based intrusions. To collect the data, Verizon developed a freely available platform called Vocabulary for Event Recording and Incident Sharing (VERIS).

Not surprisingly, financial cybercrime still tops the list, covering about 70 percent of all cybercrime that’s tracked. However, there’s been a notable rise in state-affiliated espionage, which now holds the number two spot, at 20 percent.

“The report indicates a decrease in financially motivated attacks, although they are still very prevalent,” said Marc Spitler, senior analyst with the Verizon RISK Team. But compared to 2012, “there is an increase in the amount of espionage-related incidents. These are state-affiliated actors going after intellectual property.”

China remains the origination point for the largest amount of espionage, with Romania as its counterpart in the area of financially motivated cybercrime. To read the full report from Verizon, click here.

NTT Docomo evolves

NTT Docomo has embarked on an ambitious plan to recast itself as a digital lifestyle provider. The Japan-based CSP is keen on capturing new revenue streams, and is restructuring its organization to accommodate this plan. Its new units fall under two umbrellas, M2M business and smart-life business, the latter of which includes groups focused on smart-life planning in addition to mobile retail, content, digital lifestyle and education, and financial services.

Vendor news roundup

April was a big month for Amdocs, which not only introduced a complete, cloud-delivered BSS offering for medium-sized CSPs but also renewed its vows with TOA Technologies for fleet management solutions and rolled out a comprehensive solution for carrier Wi-Fi.

“We expect handset Wi-Fi usage to grow to more than 60 percent of overall mobile-phone traffic in the next few years, while tablet Wi-Fi usage will remain constant at more than 80 percent of traffic,” said Chris Nicoll, principal analyst at Analysys Mason. “Service providers must capitalize on Wi-Fi’s popularity, and are now attaching increased significance to Wi-Fi as a service differentiator, using it to deliver incremental value to their customers and to open the door to new monetization opportunities.”

Ericsson is moving deeper into video by leveraging the assets it acquired from Technicolor to create a broadcast-services division. It also released details of its new video-compression technology and, a first for the network equipment manufacturer (NEM), a video chip developed in-house. Back in telecom land, the company announced an upgrade of Cellular One’s network to 4G, but even though Ericsson currently leads the market in 4G LTE deployments, Pipeline learned that Huawei has sold more LTE gear in the 1800MHz band of spectrum than any other NEM.

Last, but far from least, Cisco made a surprising move into mobile with its acquisition of small-cell experts Ubiquisys, while Subex released a network planning solution that helps CSPs dramatically reduce capital expenditures (CAPEX), and CSG International evolved its integrated charging and policy capabilities to focus on the customer experience.