5 things to know today …
1. Today is the deadline for potential buyers of Yahoo to submit preliminary bids, and Verizon is widely viewed as a frontrunner. AT&T, Alphabet, and Comcast have all decided not to bid, according to The Wall Street Journal. Verizon is still paying down the debt it incurred when it spent $130 billion to buy out former partner Vodafone in order to assume complete ownership of Verizon Wireless. The Yahoo acquisition would be much smaller, with analysts estimating the purchase price at $4 billion to $8 billion.
Yahoo is seen as an asset that will complement Verizon’s $4.4 billion AOL acquisition. By combining the two businesses, Verizon would increase its bargaining power with advertisers as it works to grow its digital media and mobile video business.
2. Mobile video is the focus of Amazon’s newest product launch. Prime Video is a video streaming service that the online retailer is now offering for $8.99 per month. Amazon Prime already offers streaming video, but until now Prime subscribers had to pay $99 per year for a service that includes free two-day shipping, Prime Video, Prime Photos, Prime Music, and a Kindle lending library for the company’s e-reader.
3. The SS7 protocol is vulnerable to hackers, according to a 60 Minutes report that aired last night. The report showed that hackers were able to exploit SS7 to listen to both ends of a conversation and to track the phone user’s physical movements from place to place. SS7 is a 3G protocol and most phones still use 3G networks for voice calls. Over time, network operators are expected to transition many voice calls to 4G networks (voice over LTE) and even to Wi-Fi. 4G networks use a different protocol called diameter signaling.
4. Nokia and China Mobile announced a small cell deployment at a Shanghai auto racetrack. China Mobile used Nokia’s Flexi Zone small cells and cloud-based AirScale Wi-Fi. Nokia said that this represents the world’s first large-scale implementation of mobile edge computing and edge video orchestration. Nokia’s AirScale Wi-Fi is meant to allow operators to integrate fast Wi-Fi with their existing mobile networks.
5. AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile US are offering free calls and texts from the U.S. to Ecuador following this weekend’s deadly earthquake. The offer will extend throughout this week. Sprint and T-Mobile US are including their prepaid brands in the offer.
