SMS spam from +856207349489
I recently got my first foreign SMS spam to my mobile. It said:
“You won $123,000 USD,send your email address by sms text message to(+856207349489)so we shall send you an email with more information on how to claim your money”
Obviously this is some sort of scam, and a quick web search reveals quite a few people have received exactly the same message. Usually these sort of scams are sent via email because it cost the sender practically nothing and is very difficult to trace back to the individual responsible. SMS on the other hand almost always costs has a financial cost to the sender and is far easier to trace. The sender in this case has likely hacked or socially engineered they way into another party’s phone account in order to send out these messages. There is probably a fairly small window of time in which you could reply to the message before the SMS service is cut off by the telco who provides it.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing much SMS spam in the future.
Edit: The Age have published an article on this type of activity which they are calling Smishing (SMS phishing).
Tags: sms spam
NBN to sing, dance – Minchin
Apr 30, 2009 Australia, Enviroment, Internet, Telco
According to The Australian, shadow communications minister Nick Minchin has been quoted as saying: “Senator Conroy is claiming this all singing, all dancing NBN is also going to save the planet.” I’m taking his quote out of context, but it goes to show how petty and soundbite-driven politics can be at times.
The article I am linking to (well, until it link-rots away) actually raises some of the advantages the proposed NBN could bring to the country. I think once the network is built people will come up with all sorts of amazing high-bandwidth applications to use on it. Many of these will reduce the need to travel, bringing convenience and environmental benefits for most of us, but could be of huge importance for people with mobility challenges.
IPTV on the way
Jun 3, 2006 IPTV, Internet, Media & Advertising, Telco
IPTV is here … but don’t hold your breath ( The Age / Louisa Hearn )
From the article: “While telecommunication companies in many other developed countries have been investing heavily in improving broadband services, Telstra has been accused within the industry of lagging behind – something that Optus and other smaller telcos and ISPs say they are working hard to reverse by building up their own broadband infrastructures.”
With residential VoIP slowly making its way into households providers are starting to look towards the next step in the so called ‘triple play’ – IPTV. IPTV is simply the delivery of TV programming over the internet, although more specifically realtime or on-demand programming. This is in contrast to existing video distribution over the internet which requires the user to wait while the video file downloads before they are able to start watching it.
There is nothing magic or mystical about IPTV, but it does require a lot of bandwidth between the provider and the subscriber. ADSL2+ is going a long way towards solving this problem, but many households are not close enough to their exchange to be able to get a reliable high-speed connection. With Telstra’s FTTN rollout in doubt consumers may have to wait a little longer before IPTV becomes a reality.
Telstra LSS fees “not reasonable”
Watchdog snaps at Telstra’s fees (The Age / Lisa Murray)
The ACCC has considered the $90 connection & disconnection fee Telstra charges on its Line Sharing Service (LSS) is “not reasonable”. Telstra are apparently calculating the charge on the basis that they have to send a technician out to the exchange to perform only this one specific task. The ACCC argues that technicians visit exchanges frequently to perform other tasks and could do the LSS work at the same time. I agree with the ACCC on this one – it’s not appropriate for other telcos to pay Telstra extra for inefficiencies in their business, false or otherwise.
Yahoo & ninemsn to offer VoIP
Apr 4, 2006 Internet, Telco, Telstra, VoIP
Yahoo, ninemsn tackle telcos (Australian IT / Michael Sainsbury and John Lehmann)
From the article: “LOCAL internet joint ventures Yahoo!7 and ninemsn are gearing up to inflict more pain on the ailing $33 billion telco sector, with the launch of cut-price internet-based voice services (VOIP) later this year.
The two groups join eBay’s ground-breaking Skype service as the latest threat to fixed-line revenues that last year earned Telstra $8 billion.”
Customer VoIP uptake is a major threat to the revenue base of the major telcos, especially when the consumer accesses the internet via Wireless or other alternative technologies. The startup costs for a VoIP provider are tiny relative to a traditional phone service provider so I think we’ll be seeing a lot of competition over the next couple of years.
Premium SMS scam from 19900025
Dec 24, 2005 Australia, Enviroment, Telco
A lot of Australian mobile phone users have been the recipient of a premium SMS scam from the number 19900025. The message received is a really bad Christmas joke which you are charged up to $3.50 for receiving. A lot of information on the source of these messages has been uncovered at the whirlpool forums, but if you have received this message you should contact your phone company immediately to report the scam and dispute the charge. Hopefully if enough people complain quickly the scammer will be shut off before too many more people are caught.
Update: I called the number Juz gave below and left my details. A refund cheque arrived in the mail just over a week later.
Australian VoIP services to get their own number range
Dec 20, 2005 Australia, Internet, Telco, Telstra, VoIP
ACMA proposes new number range for VoIP services (ACMA press release)
From the release: “ACMA is proposing to introduce a new service definition, ‘emerging communications service’, to accommodate VoIP and other emerging services. A new number range for emerging communications services (0550) is proposed. Emerging communications services may be fixed, somewhat nomadic or wholly nomadic but the numbers allocated to them will have no geographic significance.”
I see the creation of a dedicated number range for services which are not geographically fixed to be a good thing. Those of us who run our own VoIP switches or ATAs will be able to easily route this range to a particular destination without needing to guess what is VoIP and what is not. I’m not sure how the fixed line telcos will react to this from a pricing perspective. They may want to price PSTN to VoIP calls at a fairly high rate to try to discourage people from abandoning the legacy networks, but this could just as easily have the opposite effect as being the final straw in what people will put up with from the existing pricing models. Other people are speculating the cost of all fixed line calls will be coming down to a rate closer to what is being charged by VoIP providers. We will have to wait and see what eventuates.
The ACMA is accepting comments on their proposal until 14 February 2006.
Telstra fixed line revenue falling
Defections erode sales at Telstra (International Herald Tribune / Fergus Maguire)
From the article: “The fixed-line unit, which generated more than a third of Telstra’s 22.2 billion dollars in sales last year, is headed for a “meltdown,” Trujillo said in a presentation to government ministers in August.
Fixed-line sales may fall as much as 6.8 percent this business year, following a 3.4 percent decline to 7.7 billion dollars the previous year, the chief financial officer, John Stanhope, said last month. Last year’s sales decline was the unit’s first.”
The article goes on to mention how the increasing monthly line rental costs for fixed line services and the constant price reductions of mobile services are causing people to turn away from fixed line services. The sort of call quality you get from mobiles is not quite up to the same standard as a fixed line but the suite of services being offered by networks such as 3 more than make up for the reduced voice quality. Once you factor in things like capped mobile plans it is clear for most people a fixed line service is no longer good value.
I’m curious to see how Telstra will react to the changing market. The only thing that could stop people moving off fixed line services is to drop the monthly line rental back down below $20 per month, or even under $15/month. Whether they can make a profit of that level of revenue is questionable, but it may well be better than no revenue at all.
Australian Government to tackle VoIP regulations
Oct 11, 2005 Australia, Telco, VoIP
VoIP rules on way, providers told (Australian IT / Andrew Colley)
From the article: “The federal Government said it would soon respond to industry calls to introduce measures to regulate low-cost voice-over-internet-protocol telephony services.
The announcement has been expected since last year when the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) co-operated with VoIP providers to develop a discussion paper on IP telephony for Senator Coonan.
“An announcement on the Government’s response to the ACMA report on VoIP is imminent,” a spokeswoman for Communications Minister Helen Coonan said.”
There are certainly a lot of regulatory issues that need to be examined with VoIP services. The main ones being emergency call handling and the portable nature of VoIP services. There is also some ambiguity currently as to whether a telecommunications licence is required to operate a VoIP service, or whether they are just considered to be part of an internet service which does not need to be provided by a licensed carrier.
The article also mentions a local VoIP industry group, the Australian Voice over IP Association. Their website says they have been operating since February 2005 however there is no information about what the organisation does or who the members are. Hopefully if they start getting a little publicity it will prompt them to publish some information on their site.
Telstra lagging behind in technology
Sep 19, 2005 Current Events, ISPs, Telco, Telstra
Telstra in need of a big technological fix to stay in the game (Sydney Morning Herald / Rod Myer and Garry Barker)
From the article: “New chief executive Sol Trujillo will release his strategy to transform the telecom next month. The transformation could take three to five years to really pay off but timidity and slow movement are no longer an option as Telstra struggles to re-engineer itself to meet the realities of technological change.
These dictate that the future will be in internet phone and television, massive levels of data transfer, personalised information services and video on demand, all operating on broadband, cable and wireless networks.
[..]
The old copper network yields Telstra a whopping 60 per cent profit margin but customers are deserting it. Ian Martin, telecom analyst with ABN Amro, expects land-line revenue, which fell from $8 billion in 2003-04 to $7.5 billion last year, will drop a further 7 per cent this year to $7 billion.”
The last mile copper network is Telstra’s biggest asset by a long shot. Virtually all DSL based connections sold in Australia rely on Telstra’s copper to reach into the household of office of the customers. The high wholesale cost charged to ISPs and other carriers for the use of the copper is driving them towards alternative technologies such as wireless. Some of the newer wireless providers such as iBurst and Unwired have no such dependencies on Telstra for reaching their customers enabling them to provide services at a lower cost. If Telstra does nothing to address this trend their largest asset will become irrelevant.