INDIVIDUAL healthcare identifiers are likely to be seen as a new national identity number, according to an unpublished privacy impact assessment (PIA) conducted by Galexia in 2006.

(Telecompaper) Telstra and Nortel have successfully completed trials of 100 Gbps and 40 Gbps transmission over the longest distances ever attempted, according to Telstra. A continuous 2,038 kilometre fibre optic link between Adelaide and Sydney was used for the 100 Gbps trial, while the 40 Gbps trial took place over 3,370 kilometres on a looped-back section of the Sydney to Adelaide route. Both trials successfully used Nortel's DWDM links to enable un-regenerated transmission on Telstra's underlying optical fibre infrastructure over a two-week period in July.

Hong Kong - Two highly paid senior civil servants could be disciplined after a probe found they surfed the internet for pornography rather than working, a media report said Tuesday. In one case a department assistant director earning 120,000 Hong Kon...

Developer disaffection with Apple appears to be growing, spurred by the company's rejection of Google Voice and other apps.

Beijing - Authorities have detained four people after a 15-year-old boy was beaten to death at a training camp for internet addicts in southern China, local media reported Tuesday. The four detainees were teachers at the Qihang Salvation Training Cam...

(Telecompaper) Portuguese operator Sonaecom and Huawei have launched Soanecom's HSPA+ services. Sonaecom's mobile broadband service supports downlink data rate of up to 21.6 Mbps via 64 QAM in the air interface. To enhance Sonaecom's existing UMTS network, Huawei provided an end-to-end service with HSPA+ networks and customised mobile broadband modems. Sonaecom launched HSPA+ services after a technology trial carried out in June. The trial phase has been supported by Huawei and Qualcomm and uses terminal equipment featuring Qualcomm's MDM8200 HSPA+ chipset.

Mozilla has released two security patches to address critical flaws in the Firefox web browser.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - One third of European Union citizens say they have never used the Internet, compared with 40 percent in 2007, an EU study showed on Tuesday.

London (Reuters) - A growing number of British teenagers are swapping sexually explicit images of themselves on mobile phones leaving them open to bullying and victimization by their peers, police and a children's charity said on Tuesday.

(Telecompaper) Online purchases in Spain grew by 3.9 percent during the first quarter of this year, compared with the same period of 2007, according to a report from the Spanish telecommunications regulator CMT. The number of online purchases was flat at 15.1 million, generating a turnover of EUR 1.23 billion versus EUR 1.19 in the same period of 2008. Foreign buyers spent around EUR 173.2 million in Spanish online stores during the first quarter in over 1.7 million transactions, accounting for 14.0 percent of the overall number of online transactions in the period. The number of transactions made by foreign buyers towards Spanish websites dropped by 12.8 percent. Air transport accounted for 9.9 percent of the overall revenue, followed by travel agencies with 9.5 percent and direct marketing with 8.5 percent. The online purchases made by Spanish shoppers towards foreign sites accounted for 49.6 percent of the overall number of online transactions in the period, and generated nearly EUR