Telecoms in Latvia

A "precision investment" blown under the radar by "rag traders"

2014-02-14T10:09:00.002+02:00

It was meant to be a highlight of the second annual Tech Chill Baltics conference in Riga and a record financing round for a Latvian startup with global traction, but it ended up blown down below the radar of mainstream media (where it may have been, in any case) by the double-digit afterburners of a Lithuanian rag trader.
Infogr.am, the infographics platform that has been gaining global traction and publicity, raised EUR 1.34 million from Point Nine Capital, Connect Ventures and a post-mortem dollop of cash from the recently deceased HackFwd. The new injection of cash will go into, among other things, developing Infogr.am's real time data display capacity (which, depending on the task, can involve a bit of rocket science) and in setting up an operation in the US.
Meanwhile, Vinted, a Lithuanian-based used clothing and accessories trading platform, raised USD 27 million from Accel Partners and Insight Ventures. Superficially, Vinted looks like an adaption or port of a generic peer-to-peer selling solution. And as the IT website/blog TechCrunch notes, the company is entering a crowded market, especially if it's main target is the US (where it already has employees).
Apparently, Vinted won't be building any warehouses or logistics facilities, so it is hard to imagine what the USD 27 million will be spent for.
The comparatively tiny investment in Infogr.am may, by contrast, be a case of precision investment, applying just enough new cash to some very specific needs, while keeping control of the company firmly in the hands of its founders. That seems to be the strategy favored by founder Uldis Leiterts, who recently wrote in an e-mail that "European startups have a problem of selling too early, that's why we don't see great companies emerging from Europe."
"Infogr.am' s founders are committed to stay on board for a long time and build a great service for our customers and a return for our investors," Leiterts wrote. Leiterts has indicated that Infogr.am turned down a "seven digit" buyout offer from an unnamed American company. Meanwhile, Latvian address book and contact management (for MacOS and IOS) startup Cobook was recently bought by Full Contact, a contact management company in the sweet smoke filled state of Colorado. The core Cobook development team from Latvia under co-founder and CEO Kaspars Dancis is moving to Denver as I write.

Highlights of TechChill 2013 (Video)

2013-02-13T16:38:00.001+02:00

Here is my video of some highlights of TechChill 2013 in Riga, mainly advice to startups by venture capitalists and other experts. Sorry for not posting this earlier, but my day was disrupted by a sudden request from my day job to attend a meeting of a parliamenary committee at the Latvian Parliament. So here is the video:

TomTom's plans for new services in Latvia

2012-12-26T23:49:00.000+02:00

In early December, some representatives of TomTom, the GPS navigation device manufacturers, visited Latvia and sat down for a short interview with this blogger. Some interesting facts: TomTom has completely mapped Latvia (as part of a Baltic map) and plans to introduce mobile connectivity for its devices, probably by a forthcoming deal with mobile operator Bite Latvija (a Vodafone partner, used by TomTom for its mobile services elsewhere).

Here is the video interview:

A talk with Kaspars Dancis of Cobook.

2012-09-04T22:48:00.000+03:00

With more than 250 000 free downloads, Cobook the alternative address book and contact management system for Macintosh computers, is ready to move on. As reported on TechCrunch, Cobook is now offering version 1.1, which syncs with the user's Google contacts. In his talk with this blog, Kaspars says there are plans for an iOS (iPhone and iPad) version of Cobook, eventually an Android version, and, somewhat sooner, a paid version for some consumers and for businesses.

Developments on the Latvian TV market

2012-07-18T00:18:00.000+03:00

For most Latvians, television is a service that comes over the net, so it rightly belongs in a telecoms blog. And anyway, what is telecoms? More and more, it is using a computer with a voice/video chat function. I am not only talking about Skype and its clones, but also those computers with voice functions that we call smartphones, such as the iPhone4s.

There has been a big hoo-hah about television in Latvia, mainly because of a big merger between a subsidiary of Sweden's Modern Times Group (MTG), TV3 and another privately owned TV company Latvijas Neatkarīgā televīzija (LNT). TV3 and LNT were both loss makers in a drastically reduced advertising market and it was a matter of time before LNT would go down first, taking a pretty talented crew and substantial audience down with the ship. So the move was necessary, and, even if it established a kind of Swedish monopoly on commercial television (with lots of restrictions imposed on the deal by Latvia's Competition Council) it was still better than the alternative of LNT going down or being sold to some murky Russian media group.
Up to now, both channels have been paying customers of Lattelecom, both for its terrestrial digital broadcast services (with the digital signal also going out over Lattelecom's interactive IPTV service). Oddly, Lattelecom's CEO Juris Gulbis spent quite a few tweets criticizing the merger, even though both were his customers and it really didn't matter who owned them as long as they pay their bills. In 2013, if amendments to the Electronic Media Law are passed, it will put an end to something called “must carry” and both commercial channels, hitherto broadcast over cable and internet networks for free, will be able to charge cable operators and, eventually, viewers, for watching them. Kaspars Ozoliņš, the CEO of MTG Baltics says the extra revenue will allow him to expand locally produced programming on both “national” commercial channels, thereby retaining and increasing his audience and the base for future advertising.
It may, however, be too little and perhaps too late. A lot of cable operators are saying they will relegate both national commercial channels to premium packages with fewer viewers, defeating the purpose of increasing the number of viewers. Others will pay but won't pass on their costs to their viewers (the head of a small cable TV operation in the town of Kuldiga told me this). Still others may use their cable networks as “common antennas” and feed the terrestrial digital signal (still for free for all of 2013) to their viewers. Those who have modern television sets with built in digital decoders will see the feed effortlessly, others may have to rig their Lattelecom terrestrial decoders to the cable network. So it looks like lifting “must carry” will not exactly free the Golden Goose to go flying into the coffers of MTG.
An interesting and still struggling free internet TV operation is draugiem.tv, launched by the social network of the same name. Its assortment of channels is still limited, but still includes BBC World. It seems that the commercial Latvian networks see it as an upstart and have blocked draugiem from using their signal. Look for a proliferation of internet TV and TV aggregators in Latvia as entrepreneurs discover how relatively easy this is to do.
On another note, I tested the new random videochat application Airtime.com. The jury is still out. I ended up talking to an internet entrepreneur in The Hague, told him about TechHub Riga. Before him, some murky faces appeared (bad lighting, bad cameras), not eager to talk. So it could be another Chatroullette, which by many accounts degenerated into a series of exhibitionists looking for random “viewers” of their attributes.

Back again with an update on 4G, the future of TV

2012-07-16T23:33:00.000+03:00

I have totally neglected this blog, but I will make an effort to get it back on track. Here is some news that may not have appeared elsewhere.

Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) has launched 4G services in the Latvian port city of Liepaja. This is one of the places where 4G was first tested a couple of years ago, but the first commercial launch of 4G (in the 1800Mhz band) was in the seaside resort of Jurmala near Riga, then in Riga and the immediate environs.

All of this has taken place without great fanfare, although, when asked, LMT officials will tell you that all new mobile internet modems sold are 4G capable. So it looks like the operator is planning to go nationwide. I have been given a test modem (passed on by a PR agency from another journalist). Unfortunately, it does not even show up on my MacBook, although my son managed to download the modem driver on his MacBook Pro, where the modem didn't work either. But that is, perhaps, an individual problem.

It should also be noted that LMT in its official presentations has downplayed 4G as a priority, saying instead that it would finish the build-out of its 3G network, which is capable of download speeds of up to 42 Mbps (the 4G network claims speeds of up to 100 Mbps). So is the Liepaja deployment a shift in strategy? Remains to be seen. For the moment, LMT isn't following this up with any high profile marketing activities.

Meanwhile fixed network operator Lattelecom has been presenting itself as a multi-platform TV distributor – digital terrestrial, interactive (IPTV) and internet TV (for watching on laptops, tablets and mobile phones). This is available for one package price (internet +various TV services+ increasingly less useful, but “free” fixed telephony), with free WiFi at Lattelecom sites across the country.

The next major issue Lattelecom faces on the television market is the end of its license to broadcast digital terrestrial as of December 31, 2013. It now looks like a)the Latvian State Radio and Television Center will be exclusively tasked with broadcasting the free-to-air public television channels of Latvian Television while b) “more than one packager” of pay television channels may be selected by tender. In practice, this probably means Lattelecom and another competitor will be awarded a license starting January 1, 2014, or so the government has indicated. Lattelecom has said it will participate in the tender, but has warned that if two winners are selected, there will be a duplication of functions and a division of the market that will more likely increase cost to both competitors, especially the newcomer.

On the IT side, the real excitement in Latvia is the increasing number of internationally recognized start-ups, such as the alternative Macintosh/iOS address book Cobook, the digital goods selling site Sellfy, the question and answer site for teenagers ask.fm, as well as some applications coming out of the Latvian social network draugiem.lv's incubator IdeaBits, such as the productivity tool Desktime and systems for managing vending machines (Vendon) and vehicle fleets (Mapon).
The other “hotspot” of innovation is TechHub Riga, an offshoot of TechHub in London that provides a co-working facility for startups with plenty of interesting guest lecturers and seminars. Hopefully I will be able to do more on both of these centers of innovation, probably in the form of videoblogs introducing some of the movers and shakers on the Latvian IT startup scene.

More on LMT, HAL & the bag man - Lattelecom be slightly afraid

2012-03-07T22:54:00.000+02:00

I found out the real story behind the Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) offer that seems to suggest the fixed line numbers can be transferred to a mobile operator. They can. What LMT has set up is a wireless "fixed line" phone service, much the way Lattelecom once did with CDMA standard operator Triatel. The whole thing does run off a GSM SIM card, to which the Lattelecom number can be transferred as a fixed line number. This baffled me at first, since, generally, fixed line phones don't need SIM cards (except when they are wireless). As for tariff plans, the new LMT home package will be on a semi-flat rate basis, that is, giving more minutes for a fixed price than a normal user can consume in a month (up to 1 500 minutes, unlimited on the LMT network. The minutes in can be used both for calling fixed and mobile phones (almost perfect convergence?). It is perhaps better than the Lattelecom unlimited flat rate, because with Lattelecom, once off the network or even calling a mobile phone, the money counter switches on.
So Lattelecom is challenged to some extent. It may have to find a way to offer a similar service, at least to add a mobile component to its offering, or to join forces and co-sell with LMT, with whom they have had a mutually cool arms-length relationship all these years. Maybe things will change when the never-ending story ends and TeliaSonera, hitherto the half-mother (haven't used that term in a while) is finally allowed to buy out the state and other shareholders in Lattelecom and LMT.

LMT, HAL and the bag man

2012-03-07T16:33:00.001+02:00

These mysteries will be solved soon. Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT), has been running a TV commercial where a child approaches a fixed phone, which warns him not to use a mobile (maybe I am confusing something) whereupon the kid's father (the bag man) arrives with a big bag from LMT. Seems it is some kind of family pack. Dad proceeds to unplug the landline phone, which makes a few desperate pleas (like HAL being disconnected in 2001: A Space Odyssey) and announces that everything will be mobile, including the home phone landline number.
The mystery is in just how this works. Seems that the wireless phone that is in the bag and goes with the landline (generally, a Lattelecom line) turns into a direct IP phone (hence it runs on WiFi or at least via the base-station router also in the bag). What this looks like to me is Lattelecom and LMT stealth launching Lattelecom's IP based new network. That means that wherever you can connect the wireless landline phone (via the router or stand-alone, if it is WiFi capable) to the IP network over the internet (in Riga or Singapore), you get a local virtual landline. There has been no announcement or detailed explanation of this, just the TV commercial. Will try to find out what is going on at an LMT event this evening.

Facebook outage hits 300 000 users in Latvia

2012-03-07T10:41:00.000+02:00

A Facebook outage lasting a few hours knocked around 300 000 users off the social network in Latvia (the whole barely 2 million strong nation would barely be a village in Facebook if it were a nation-state). This came just days after Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis set up his Facebook page and two days ahead of the launch of Latvia's official Facebook page "If you like Latvia, Latvia likes you" (the page has been up and running for some time already. Facebook seems to have come back online again just after 10AM local. However, this is the only report my readers will have of what happened (even though I think Latvia was among the first to notice FB going down), because my news agency simply shitcanned the story. Reasons unknown, your best guesses may start at provincialism, ignorance and worse...
Maybe this post also belong under the headline of Failed State Latvia? in my other blog.

TechHub Riga is opening (video)

2012-02-08T15:32:00.000+02:00

TechHub Riga, the first affiliate of London's TechHub co-working space and incubator for IT start-ups, is opening on Februaruy 9. TechHub Riga chairman Andris Bērziņš talks about what the facility has to offer and what it will be doing.

IBM's Robert Talbot (while in Latvia) talks about Watson

2011-10-31T19:33:00.002+02:00

IBM's Robert Talbot attended a local IBM Forum conference in Riga, Latvia recently, where he sat down to talk to this blogger (wearing both my Latvian and English-language blogger hats) about the future of the artificial intelligence entity called Watson. Here it is -- the color is a bit weird and the inter-titles are in both Latvian and English. Anyway, good luck on your med boards, Watson.

Catching up on events - Lattelecom to go to IMS by 2017

2011-08-05T01:08:00.000+03:00

Followup on the Tele2 fiasco

I have been remiss in updating this blog and there have been some noteworthy events that I will now belatedly relate.

First, I was more or less right about the cause of the big Tele2 crash on July 14. It was, as I said in a previous post, a “piecashit” gadget that brought down the house, but after talking to Tele2 technical director Ervīns Kampāns, the picture was a bit more complicated. What actually happened was that the system that was supposed to warn about a failure of the cooling system did itself fail, but not all the AC to DC transformers went down at once. When the first ones did, the UPS attached to the Nokia-Siemens core switch did kick in, but shared the power-supplying load with the diminished flow of current from the failing transformers. What resulted was that at some point, both the supply of current from the transformers and the UPS (which is intended to work for a short time until reserve generators kick in) was degraded and finally the core switch and all the complex systems it sustained crashed. It was, indeed, a perfect storm kind of event. According to Kampāns, Tele2 has now added additional backup and security systems, so that a repetition of the highly unlikely July 14 event is even more unlikely.

Lattelecom to go all IMS by 2017

On July 20, Lattelecom and China's Huawei announced they had signed an agreement to convert the entire Lattelecom fixed line network to run on IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) standards by 2017, with the first pilot tests to take place in early 2012. Migrating to IMS would expand the services available to fixed-line subscribers as well as offering them a kind of global mobility. Lattelecom would be one of the first telcos in the region to go all-IMS (globally, as far as I can see, there aren't too many other operators who have made a conversion, although IMS is used by some for a limited range of services)

People would be able to take their fixed-line Lattelecom numbers (actually, IP addresses attached to their handsets) anywhere in the world where there was a fixed or WiFi internet connection. Lattelecom CEO Juris Gulbis also told this blogger that the telco operator would develop applications for smart phones that would make it possible to call on the IMS network. With most Lattelecom subscribers on flat-rate, “free” calling plans, calls between two Lattelecom numbers anywhere in the world would cost only what the respective internet connection costs.

Technically, the move to IMS would mean eliminating most, if not all local switches and replacing them with two redundant switches to run the whole network. Existing copper landlines would be turned into DSL connections, while optical internet customers are already on the internet and would simply have their voice services upgraded to IMS.

The deal with Lattelecom is also another achievement for Huawei, which has succesfully challenged traditional infrastructure suppliers in the region, such as Sweden's Ericsson and the Finnish-German Nokia-Siemens. The project will be handled from the Chinese company's Swedisj office, which is located about a kilometer from Ericsson's headquarters in the Stockholm suburb of Kista.

Did an obscure "piecashit" gizmo bring down Tele2 in the Baltics?

2011-07-15T21:56:00.000+03:00

I got an official description of what happened July 14 to knock out Tele2's core switch (?) and take down (for some, briefly, in Latvia, well into the night) services to around two million customers in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Despite it being a Swedish-based international telecoms company, the network crash in the Baltics (as far as I could see) got exactly fuck all coverage in the Swedish media, which, like much of Scandinavia, is zoned out in a hammock somewhere or on the beach in Greece before, to use the Latvian expression, the place goes to the Devil's mother.
Basically what happens is this: the core switch, possibly a Nokia MCSI runs on 48 volt DC current, which is fed to the device through a AC/DC transformer getting it from the 220V grid. The transformer apparently can get hot, so it has a "climate control" (read air conditioner or chiller on it). Because the AC/DC transformer is mission critical, the climate control comes with a temperature sensor and some kind of alarm that alerts Tele2 technical staff that the system has failed, but giving them enough time to prevent damage to the transformer. The alarm and the sensor are what may have been the "piecashit" gizmos that ultimately crashed the network. The alarm failed to go off until it was too late. By then, the transformer had overheated and shorted out, knocking out the switch. With no transformer, there was no way to power up the switch until extensive repairs had been made. In addition, very complex systems like mobile phone network core switches do not usually reboot very easily, especially after a power-failure induced crash.
Utility power was still on --Latvenergo's press secretary freaked out a little when the media blamed electricity for the failure and said, rightly, that the electricity from the utility was never interrupted, it all happened inside the walls of the Tele2 facility. So it does look like one fucked gizmo brought down everything..
Except -- was there really no UPS (providing DC electricity) attached directly to the switch to keep it going for a while until the techies fix whatever broke or switch to generators? Perhaps the emergency protocol was to go directly to the generator, forgetting the possibility that the transformer, thanks to some cheapo gizmo, could blow? This is how we learn...

Charlie Foxtrot visits Tele2 in Latvia and the Baltics

2011-07-14T21:30:00.000+03:00

As I understand it, you weren't supposed to use obscenity on US Army radios, so instead of saying that something was a clusterfuck, you said Charlie Foxtrot instead. Well, today, and to some extent, still, tonight (2100 local time, July 14), Charlie Foxtrot visited Swedish-owned Tele2 in Latvia and took a chunk out of Lithuania and Estonia as well, knocking a total of well over two million customers off the network (just over a million in Latvia, a million pre-paid users in Lithuania, and the undisclosed prepaid part of a total of 467 000 users in Estonia).
The problems started just after 1400 local time when, according to Tele2's official version, a disturbance in electricity supply took down a major switch. To me, this was an immediate, red-flag WTF?? because mission critical switches have, by default, big motherfuckers of UPS (uninterrupted power supplies) that will keep things going until utility power is restored or switched to emergency generators.
My theory is more that there was some kind of perfect storm event or someone stumbled across a power cable (between the UPS and the Mother of All Switches, if that is possible) causing enough of a power fluctuation to crash the switch at a software level and perhaps fuck up some vital hard disks. That is just my guess.
Business and post-paid customers in Lithuania were unaffected, and in Estonia, pre-paid customers were only down for around 20 minutes, or so the spokesperson said.
Whatever happened, it possibly showed the downside of Tele2 and possibly other operators rationalizing their networks by concentrating services in one switching center (for smaller countries like the Baltics). It appears that prepaid service (billing, switching) were run for all three Baltic countries on servers/switches in Riga. Given how mission critical (more mission critical than if the supporting device and software systems were distributed) the Riga switch is, one wonders how there could be any event involving electric power that could take it down. Some part of the truth may come out tommorrow (July 15).

Another look at Kista Science City

2011-06-19T22:13:00.000+03:00

Unfortunately, I didn't get around to posting this video on this blog because I was busy with other stuff and then, from May 26-June 6, I was in the US for a personal visit. I don't think much has changed from what Åke Lindström said when we met on May 23. So here, ahead of the Midsummer holiday that the Scandinavian and Baltic nations share, is an insight into what is going on at Kista Science City.

Bite Latvija announces new tariffs (video)

2011-05-13T23:53:00.000+03:00

Looks like Charlie Foxtrot took over Blogger for a while, so I delayed posting this video, where Fred Hrenchuk, the CEO of mobile operator Bite Latvija talks about how the company (the smallest in Latvia with somewhat over 320 000 customers) has reduced its offering to just three tariff plans (all on a pay-as-you wish - pre, post, contract or not).

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A "cyberterrorist lite" attacks a Latvian news agency

2011-04-27T22:55:00.000+03:00

A person with sophisticated knowledge of data security matters became a self-appointed censor and avenger in an act of "cyberterrorism -lite" against the Latvian news agency LETA. Delivery of news to LETA's customers was impeded for several hours while LETA's home page www.leta.lv was replaced with a message from the hacker, who seemed aggrieved by a routine news story about the defacing of small business home pages that were hosted by low-cost hosting services.
The message from the hacker (in translation from Latvian) read:

Dear colleagues, before publishing the views of doubtful experts about small server hosting companies and discussing (their)competence, I suggest you review the content of this defamatory news story and stop publishing these offensive advertorials. As you can see, nothing is safe and unbreakable – if needed, therefore, don't try to leap higher than your own a(rse). Thanks for your attention.

The message included a link to the defacement story from LETA as published by the www.apollo.lv news website (I will admit here that this story was written by your blogger). The story quoted by name two persons associated with data security companies -- one from Panda Software (the Latvian representative of a Spanish security) and the other from a local company with past ties to Russia's Kaspersky Lab.

The latter source pointed out the latest round of defacements, providing a list of URLs and had, in earlier cases, spoken of the vulnerability of low-cost hosting companies. The other source said that Panda and others (meaning the security business in general) had solutions that could prevent such defacements, which can be assumed (with a grain of salt, there is no absolute security, only a raising of the barriers to hackers) to be true.

The news story was originally filed under the business news portal of LETA, nozare.lv. As a business news story, it unavoidably involves quoting people with some degree of commercial bias (tempered by the fact that one cannot stray radically from the truth even when self-promoting in front of a reasonably intelligent audience). To freak out over a small amount of self-promotion and label the whole story an "advertorial" is, to say the least, an overreaction from some strange mixture of ignorance (of journalism) and paranoia.

Taking it to next step and using specialized skills to take down a news agency (whatever one may think of its content) is, to my mind, an act of cyberterrorism-lite. If we envision real cyberterrorism as attacks on the IT infrastructure of utilities such as water, electricity, gas or telecommunications that prevent delivery of these services, then why not consider information/news as a utility that has been attacked in Latvia by an electronic terrorist?

OK, to be fair, and as a journalist, I try to be fair, LETA's IT infrastructure leaves much to be desired. It is not exactly a digital fortress. For that matter, most housing in Riga doesn't have steel doors, state-of-the-art locks and alarms. That explains, but does not excuse the successful activities of burglars. Except in this case, nothing was "stolen", but the homeowner was locked in and prevented from doing his business.

Also to be fair, there are hacking activities and "thefts" of information from those in power and with power over the population that should be hacked -- like Wikileaks or the activities of Neo (exposed as Ilmars Poikāns), who obtained government and municipal salary data from the Latvian State Revenue Service. However, a privately-owned news agency (clinging to its old label of "national news agency", whatever that means...) is not an agent of state power.

It should be mentioned that the censorious cyberterrorist was cheered on by a number of commentators on the usual Latvian news portals (what the British Bethlehem Asylum for the Insane -- hence bedlam -- was for part of the 19th century as a place to be "entertained" by the antics of the mad, has been replaced by the commentators on portals such as www.delfi.lv - a place to read the howlings and ravings of the deranged).

In any case, one can only hope that this does not herald the start of more of what I can only call mad-dog (it takes little to trigger the rabid) cyberattacks on the media. But all it takes is one skilled wacko, and in Latvia, we have found him.

A request for leads, tips and job offers :)

2011-04-25T00:58:00.000+03:00

It is pretty clear to me that Latvia is going to be in economic stagnation and suffering political disability of one kind or another for the foreseeable future. While this may make for some interesting news stories for the next five or seven years, it is not a place to stay with a family and a teenager who needs some kind of future. I'm afraid I don't see one in Latvia - not for someone who needs an education, nor for someone who may choose (strange as it seems) to retire at some point.
With some reluctance I am posting my attempt at a video CV to explore, very seriously, a "plan B" outside of Latvia. This is nothing against my present employer LETA, but to be frank and objective, I don't see any growth or development for the media in Latvia for several years, and the adaptation that media companies must make, economically, in terms of their employees, may work for the young, but it is distressing for me, even if, day to day, things are still tolerable. In short, I have served my nearly 16 years here, given it a good try, but conditions are not going to improve and will probably deteriorate in my remaining working life. Time to move on...

So, here is my video CV to any and all who are interested:

Michael Curry talks about the Websphere Application Accellerator at Impact 2011

2011-04-19T09:04:00.000+03:00

Here is my video interview with Michael Curry of IBM about the new Websphere Application Accellerator for Hybrid Networks during Impact 2011 in Las Vegas. The video was originally edited for a Latvian speaking audience, hence some of the opening and closing titles.

An adventure in electronic uselessness on the way to IBM Impact 2011

2011-04-09T14:17:00.000+03:00

I am on my way to one of the world's high-techiest conferences, IBM Impact 2011 in Las Vegas. However, I was sent a travel plan that a) keeps me in the air as long as I think, it took me to get to Australia in 2003. b) I was unable to check in online due to the travel having been ordered by IBM's travel agent. Fortunately, Riga Airport this morning was not as much of a zoo as I expected.
Then here at Schipol in Amsterdam, I was also unable to check in on one of the automated machines because I had checked baggage in Riga (the Riga check in machine didn't let me check in either). So I am finally checked in and typing this in one of the two 30 minute free WiFi sessions you get from KPN. Otherwise, it is starting at EUR 3 for 15 minutes. Insane. At least Las Vegas airport has/had free WiFi. I will see what Minneapolis offers, must spend a couple of hours there, too. All together, I am 24 hours, almost, from door to door. And then, with a 10 hour time shift, IBM expects European journalists not to write gibberish about their event :).
Anyway, will try to post both text and video from the event, with my Latvian day job taking precedence. Watch this space...

Latvia's 2011 census on the internet is off to...a clusterf**k

2011-03-02T20:22:00.000+02:00

Latvia's attempt to conduct part of its 2011 census on the internet has gotten off to a start that can only be described as a total clusterfuck. The Latvian Central Statistic Bureau (CSB) opened a internet page www.tautasskaitisana.lv where people could fill in a census questionnaire using three methods of authorization -- their passport number and personal code number, the PIN code and access code from a number of internet banks, and the official e-signature.
While the last two authorization methods are relatively safe, passport numbers and personal code numbers are often publicly available, widespread information. For example, the personal code of controversial Ventspils mayor Aivars Lembergs, on trial for money laundering and other economic crimes, was recently published in an official list of charitable donors. Travel agencies and employers also often have both personal code numbers and passport data.
The possibility to circumvent the authorization system was first pointed out by the Latvian language IT blog www.defense.lv. The internet news portal delfi.lv then conducted an experiment, opening the census data filed by a third person, altering it, then putting it right again. This clearly proved that it was possible for anyone with the right data to change someone else's census questionnaire.
The Latvian State Data Inspectorate (Datu valsts inspekcija/DVI) then hastened to stop internet census data collection, calling the authorization method a violation of the law. However, around 100 000 persons had already used the internet to answer census questionnaires, most, though not all using their passport and personal code data. The CSB announced on the evening TV news that it was freezing all these questionnaires to prevent anyone from making any changes.
Local data security experts are shocked by the way the CSB handled data security. Ilmars Poikans, a researcher at the University of Latvia's Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science, also known as the cyberactivist "Neo", who leaked state salary data from a poorly designed data base last year, called the census fiasco " a breach of sound thinking rather than a data security breach".
Ilze Murane, a lecturer in computer science and a data security specialist said the bungled internet census could destroy public trust in any kind of e-government services.
Baiba Kaskina, who heads the recently re-organized CERT.LV cyberincident reaction team, said the CSB had never consulted her staff about security issues, and there was no law that compelled them to do so. Although CERT.LV has a small staff, Kaskina said the agency would have advised the CSB on where to find descriptions of best practices and recommended data security auditors.
Somehow, almost year after "Neo" started leaking government agency salary data because he was able to leaf through reams of "unauthorized" data simply by changing the last number of an authorized URL in the State Revenue Service electronic filing page, this doesn't surprise me. As Poikans/Neo said -- now there can be many more "Neos" and it is doubtful whether the police can catch them all. Poikans is still under criminal investigation for his activities last year.

Latvia proposes an internet kill-switch -- Mubarak on the Baltic?

2011-02-10T00:23:00.000+02:00

Latvia's new draft law on a “ A State of Emergency”, which was presented to the meeting of state secretaries (part of the process of introducing it to the parliament or Saeima) last September, was way ahead of Egypt's authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak by granting the government the right to throw a kill switch on the internet and all other electronic media. They can also censor the press and all correspondence, too.

The draft law also contains provisions for regulation the movement of citizens during an emergency, for overruling the decisions of local authorities, for searches and seizures in private homes and a number of other totalitarian measures. It also provides for emergency allocation of resources, goods and services and other steps that are at least superficially reasonable in case of a natural disaster, war or insurrection.

What is worrisome is that a state of emergency can be declared for political reasons, such as “a threat of civil disorder”, and that the provisions for regulating media and electronic communications, especially the internet, are dangerous and disproportionate. It is hard to see what benefit the population could gain from being shut off from domestic and outside media during a major global or regional disaster. As far as preventing people in Latvia from disseminating information over the internet and social media, it looks like the main purpose of such measures would be to keep the outside world from learning of repression or other violent and irrational actions by Latvia's own government and authorities.

Let us assume that a megastorm, a Cyclone Yasi or Hurricane Katrina type of storm was raging over Northern Europe and about to hit Latvia, where a state of emergency had been declared. Why should people be cut off from looking at the Weather Channel, the BBC, CNN or other news sources on the internet or on their mobile phones for a “second opinion” in addition to what the government was saying in official announcements?

I don't think the government would cut off the internet simply because a storm was coming, but such measures could be used if there were mass demonstrations that presented a “danger of civil disorder” to police and government bureaucrats advising those able to declare a state of emergency. In such a case, the reason for cutting off electronic communications, including the internet and the social media that live on it, would be to prevent information about state repression from getting out and to interfere with efforts by dissident groups and civil society to self-organize using the internet.

In short, this is a dangerous piece of draft legislation that leaves way too much leeway for the state to censor, repress, and prevent the dissemination of information about its own repression. This law must be stopped and/or drastically modified so that it is not a compilation of “rubber clauses” that can be stretched to attack inalienable human rights in times of social and political tension. There shall be no Latvian Mubarak, no internet kill switch.

Amigo versus Bite, the unfucked version

2011-01-17T18:33:00.002+02:00

That's a pretty harsh title, but it describes what I want to present here in English on my personal blog. The story of the latest war of the gagoons as I translate the curious Latvian phrase gāganu kari got severely fucked up in the LETA/Nozare.lv editorial process, either by a technical or editorial failure. The essence of the story, abot how two mobile operators got out the long knives in Latvia over what was a comparison of differently derived ARPU (average revenue per user) figures from 2009 got the hatchet. The story was reduced, without explaining the core of the problem, to a tale of one side suing the other after the other denounced the former to the Latvian Consumer Rights Protection Centre (CRPC). The date for that event seemed very important, not the core of the conflict.

Amigo, the brand under which Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) subsidiary Zetcom operates, came out with an ad saying that ARPU for Bite Latvija was LVL 8.86 per month, and only LVL 3.56 per month for Amigo. Which is why Bite's claims of having a "zero tariff" (which they do, on their own network) was wrong, and one should choose Amigo, which charges 1,5 santims per minute on its network as the lowest tariff for prepaid customers calling "friends" ( a limited circle) on the Amigo network (runs on the LMT net).

ARPU is only indirectly related to specific consumer tariffs, it is more an indicator of corporate health (if reasonably high) than anything else. Low ARPU can be interpreted as a bad sign. Excessive ARPU, compared to the market, is a signal of poor competition. This is what I tried to explain in the story. This is what vanished from the text, along with some Bite and Amigo tariff figures. There was also a bit of what the Brits would call a cockup with emails between the editorial process and me, so I basically had to run the story out very fast, without restoring the deleted/butchered? parts.

I also explained in the story that ARPU comparisons only make sense among operators with a like set of services (including income from roaming, mobile internet, whatever, that doesn't affect the ordinary customer). Amigo, as Bite rightly pointed out, is making an incorrect comparison. For this, as I dod get across in the lead of the story, Amigo/Zetcom is suing Bite and asking it to retract its statement that it is wrong to compare different things as if they were alike. Well, maybe in Latvia you can find a judge for that...

In any case, this simply continues the rather bizarre tradition of courtrooms and consumer protection agencies as marketing battlegrounds for Latvian mobile telecoms operators. Last summer it was LMT' s pre-paid Okarte against Tele2' s Golden Fish, each represented by Gumby-like characters in TV commercials. That bogged down the CRPC for a while. This one will keep the lawyers busy. The sum of it all is that someone has to step aside with their leaking winter boots (footware is tha main consumer problem brought before the CRPC) and wait for the corporations to finish their fight.

Latvia affirms, yet again, it will someday privatize Lattelecom and LMT

2010-12-29T10:31:00.000+02:00

This is beginning to remind me of a black humor headline from way back, when popes were dying frequently -- "Pope dies yet again".
Well, Latvia's Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis and not-too-swift Minister of Economics Artis Kampars (he just offered to buy Russian gas at winter premium prices) said, yes, we want to sell off the state shares in Lattelecom and Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT). Latvian governments have been saying this since the late 1990s and "jack shit" has happened. I think that "jack shit" will happen again in 2011. An earlier Latvian government passed up a chance to sell the state stake in both companies for around 500 million USD (?) back in what the Latvians call the "fat years." Now the government keeps muttering that they don't want to sell to "the Swedes" because that would create a monopoly.
This is horseshit. There is competition on voice telephony with most people in Latvia using mobiles, and fixed domestic voice is no longer tariffed if you buy a package deal -- phone plus internet (optical 100 Mbps or more) and TV. On the cable TV market there is competition and in fast internet as well -- both Baltkom and Izzi offer 100 Mbps on different technologies. The problem is that Latvia cannot politically unfuck itself and get on with getting the government out of telecoms. It also has to realize that there isn't exactly a queue around the block waiting to buy the 51 % stakes in both operators. TeliaSonera is probably it, unless you want to sell to some bizarre, sleazy Russian consortium.
And so the never ending story continues. That is my piece of cynicism to round out the year.

SAP Baltic honchos talk about their deal with Lattelecom Technology

2010-11-30T22:25:00.000+02:00

I talked to SAP Baltics managing director Carl Langhorn and a channel manager from Lithuania, whose name I may have confused :( about their "software on demand" deal with Lattelecom Technology and the roadmap for SAP's small and medium business software as a service Business by Design solution. Since I had to use this video on my Latvian-language blog, the titles and intertitles are both in Latvian and English.