Russia export controls and sanctions

Alcatel-Lucent reported a fifth straight quarterly loss Q1, offering a gloomy view of the future. The loss ballooned to $282 million, from $12.5 million a year earlier, due to the weak dollar and operators’ reduced spending, the company said. Revenue was up 6.3 percent from a year earlier but down 0.5 percent from Q4. The uncertain economy is leading the company “to be prudent in its market assumptions,” it said. Alcatel doesn’t expect CDMA growth this year because it’s a “declining market,” CEO Patricia Russo said on a conference call. But she said the company will keep pursuing CDMA opportunities, especially in Russia and India, to offset declines elsewhere. The GSM market will be flat to slightly down this year, Russo said. Alcatel believes revenue this quarter will rise by a mid-single-digit percentage from Q1, it said. The company sees the global telecommunications equipment as flat this year and its revenue will be down 2 to 5 percent “due primarily to the significant deterioration in the exchange rate and, to a much lesser extent, the potential for lower capital spending by a few customers,” it said. Alcatel expects an adjusted operating margin in the mid single-digit range this year, Russo said.

GENEVA -- Cyberattacks and countermeasures by companies and governments are making it harder to tell friend from foe in cyberspace, officials said. Additional international attacks and countermeasures are expected, they told a U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research meeting on communications technology and international security.

GENEVA -- International rules are needed to boost cyber- security and prevent information technology warfare, cyber- crime and cyber-terror, officials said at a U.N. meeting on international disarmament. The preliminary talks involve the idea of including cyber-security in a disarmament agreement, said a participant. The meeting was of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research meeting on communications technology and international security. “It looks like the Russians are pushing for a cyber-security treaty,” the participant said.

The European Parliament seems ready to approve a plan to jump-start the Galileo satellite radio navigation system. Lawmakers vote Wednesday on a compromise negotiated with the European Commission and Council of Ministers. Judging from Tuesday’s debate, most strongly favor it. Enthusiasm for the project was tempered by acknowledgement that Galileo is years behind schedule for lack of a public-private partnership with Europe’s space industry.

STRASBOURG, France -- The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) needs more political clout, its president said Wednesday at a CEPT conference on technology and regulation. With 27 countries in the EU -- and many others aligning their policies with the EU -- CEPT wants to be more than a technical body, said Anthony De Bono, citing the need for a larger presence at the ITU. CEPT’s Electronic Communications Committee brings together the radio and telecommunications regulatory authorities of the 48 member countries.

Moving from analog to DTV is a priority for the Russian Federation, which expects to spend $15.8 billion on the switch between 2008 and 2015, said the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO). Before the USSR collapsed in late 1991, it only had terrestrial TV, the EAO said. Development there of DTV the next five to seven years will be determined by a “contradictory configuration” of competing interests of key market regulators and large fixed-line telephony, mobile communications, and cable and satellite TV players, the EAO said. The process resembles that in the EU, where governments want digital transmission to free spectrum while broadcasters seek to maximize channels available to viewers, the EAO said. Russia has adopted Europe’s DVB-T standard, so regulators must factor in time constraints arising from the European digital switch and EU approaches to organizing digital broadcast, the EAO said. Russian operators mainly have focused on the U.S. model of TV delivery via satellite and cable. Only 10 to 15 percent of Russian households need terrestrial TV, the report said. In satellite TV, 100 percent of signals are broadcast in digital format, with the three operators tallying 2.5 million subscribers at the end of last year. By last April, around a million Russian cable TV subscribers, around 7.5 percent of subscribers, could get digital channels, the EAO said. Big telecom companies are investing in broadband access networks, it said. Digital cable TV and broadband rank highest on private companies’ priority lists, it said. The report cited diverse opinions on DTV penetration. The government says it doesn’t exist “in a practical sense” aside from a few pilot zones, while others say around 10 percent of households had access to DTV services at the end of 2007 (4.7 million out of 49 million homes), the EAO said.

HeliosNet, a Russian satellite broadband network operator, is deploying iDirect’s platform including two iDirect Universal 51F satellite hubs and multiple remote routers. HeliosNet will be able to build “an enterprise- class network with full mesh capabilities” throughout Russia and in the Commonwealth of Independent States, iDirect said. The network will offer access for applications such as VPN, VoIP and video conferencing, it said. Using iDirect’s Group Quality of Service function, HeliosNet will be able to offer various service level agreements by allocating bandwidth in real time, iDirect said.

A daylong Internet blackout would rock the world economy, said the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. Analyzing responses from 1000-plus scientists in 90 countries, the study found concern strongest in areas with high Internet penetration like the U.S., western Europe, Japan and Taiwan, the ICC said. But a shutdown wouldn’t do much damage to the economies of Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, it said. A January incident in which four undersea communications cables were cut offered a real-life example of losses occurring when Internet services are interrupted, ICC said. Along with a “dramatic breakdown” in access in much of the Middle East, India, the U.S. and Europe also experienced slowdowns, it said. Individuals, companies, and government rely so heavily on the Internet that policy, legal and regulator frameworks are needed to prevent economic loss and disruption of life yet maximize online opportunities, said Herbert Heitmann, chairman of the ICC Commission on Electronic Business, IT and Telecoms.

LAS VEGAS -- Though a shrinking audience threatens the broadcast networks’ established business model, new media distribution platforms offer unique opportunities for content providers and advertisers alike, speakers said at NATPE Wednesday. Unlike passive viewing in broadcast, the Internet makes viewers proactive, which demands new ways of doing business, said Yahoo Sports Vice President James Pitaro. “In today’s world, Internet users are too sophisticated to accept anything but openness. Putting a wall around your content won’t work… From the consumer perspective, there is a willingness to pay. We haven’t seen a shift towards a demand for free content which would push toward more advertising models.”

Nations in the World Meteorological Organization are deciding whether that body should delve more deeply into international coordination of space weather monitoring. Solar eruptions and other types of space weather can harm satellites and snarl radio communications, said Jerome Lafeuille, chief of the WMO’s Space-based Observing System. The WMO could facilitate harmonization of satellite instruments to avoid redundancy, and help standardize data, products and data exchange, said a WMO document from a satellite policy meeting this week. The U.S., China, Russia, Japan and other countries have interest in monitoring space weather, the paper said. WMO policy and consultative meetings on satellite matters took place Tuesday and Wednesday in New Orleans