Twitter, Facebook and MySpace team tells Google "Don’t Be Evil"
Engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have joined the protests against Google’s search integration of Google+ results, crafting a browser add-on called "Don’t Be Evil" that adds a far broader range of social into search. The tool, distributed at a site called Focus on the User, argues that rather than just pull Google+ profiles and topics into the search engine, Google would better serve actual users by integrating far more social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr and more. Rather than see exactly what Google wants you to see through its forced Google+ promotion, you can be shown what the company’s pure algorithm believes is relevant.
Slash Gear

Chinese mobile users may have sent 10 billion messages on New Year's Eve
Chinese mobile phone users may have sent more than 10 billion greeting messages on Sunday, making China Mobile, the country's largest mobile operator, the most profitable company on Lunar New Year's Eve. Kuang Jie, senior partner of ProKing Management Consulting, made the estimate based on the number of text messages sent by phone users during the same periods of the past two years. Subscribers of China Mobile's Beijing branch sent 680 million greeting messages on the Lunar New Year's Eve of 2010, while subscribers of the carrier's Shanghai branch sent more than 900 million messages on the Lunar New Year's Eve of 2011, Kuang said.
People's Daily

HTC Velocity 4G gets lift off, more 4G devices on the way
Telstra and HTC have jointly unveiled Australia's first 4G smartphone, while the telco has promised that a handful of 4G-capable smartphones and tablets will be released in the country by mid-2012. At a media launch in Sydney last night Telstra and HTC jointly released the Velocity 4G, Australia's first 4G capable smartphone. The device officially goes on sale today and promises mobile data speeds of up to five times faster than Telstra's current Next G network.
PC Advisor

Rome metro to have mobile coverage by end of 2012
Rome's metro network will be equipped with 2G and 3G mobile coverage by the end of 2012, according to wireless coverage company CommScope. CommScope said it has been chosen by Italian operators Telecom Italia, Vodafone, WIND and H3G to provide and install a multi-operator, multi-band cellular solution throughout the Rome Metro that will extend coverage to passengers and staff throughout the system’s stations and passenger trains. The project will enable 2G and 3G voice and data services for customers of Telecom Italia, Vodafone, WIND and H3G utilizing the GSM900, GSM1800 and UMTS frequencies utilized by the operators.
Mobile Europe

BRIC operators lay foundation for booming telco pay-TV
The long awaited explosion in telco TV looks like it is finally taking place with data from TeleGeography showing 94 million global pay-TV subscribers by the end of Q3 2011. This would represent a 12 per cent share of the global pay-TV market but at the growth rate revealed by the analyst,this figure will have already passed 100 million by the end of the 2011 calendar year. At the vanguard of the rapidly growing market are operators from BRIC countries, mainly China and Brazil where in the case of the latter, and to a lesser extent pay-TV operations in Colombia and several other Latin American countries, America Movil boasts ten million pay-TV subscribers. Snapping at its heels are China Telecom and Rostelecom, both of whom focus solely on their home markets, and France Telecom-Orange which has pay-TV operations in Poland, Spain and Slovakia in addition to being one of the leaders in its domestic market, traditionally Western Europe’s telco TV power house.
Rapid TV News

Ofcom to borrow spectrum from MoD for London Olympics
UK regulator Ofcom has outlined plans to temporarily use spectrum from the public sector to cope with increased demand for airwaves during the London 2012 Olympics. The authority said that it will borrow spectrum on a short-term basis from the Ministry of Defence and other public sector bodies, make unused frequencies available, such as the spectrum that will shortly be auctioned by Ofcom, but is currently not being used, and will use spectrum made available by the country’s digital television switchover, as well as spectrum that is available without the need for a licence.
Telecoms.com

US telecos battle for wireless customers
Record iPhone sales expected to eat into Verizon's profit margins. With AT&T Inc. walking away from its $39 billion bid for Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile USA, the telecommunications industry is focused on gaining wireless subscribers by offering faster and more-reliable network connections. AT&T, which halted the merger after meeting resistance from both the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission, had said T-Mobile would bolster its network and ease capacity constraints.
Total Telecom

Telefonica buys cloud expertise
Telefonica is continuing to splash the cash to expand its capabilities, boosting its cloud computing capabilities with an investment in start up cloud specialist Joyent. The Spanish incumbent’s venture capital arm handled the investment, which the operator claims will boost its new Digital division’s cloud ambitions by allowing it to leverage Joyent’s expertise to enhance cloud services for small and medium enterprises, and small and home office customers. Joyent has built up its knowledge launching and operating cloud services for 12,000 US businesses.
Telecoms Europe

Youtube is generating four billion views a day
Video sharing website Youtube has boasted of some impressive numbers this week, a massive four billion views a day. The number of videos uploaded has also been creeping up, or rather leaping up, in the last few years. In 2007, it said, it was operating at around six hours per minute, 24 hours by 2010, and 60 hours in 2012. This is a very big increase in uploads. "In other words, you're uploading one hour of video to YouTube every second. Tick, tock, tick, tock - that's 4 hours right there!" said Youtube in a blog post.
The Inquirer

US warns of mobile radio band bottleneck
Head of delegation says nations need to investigate every spectrum band possible. The U.S. seeks to avoid bottlenecks in crowded global mobile radio spectrums, the head of a U.S. delegation to the World Radiocommunication Conference said here Monday. "We believe that to avoid the crowded mobile radio spectrum crunch we need to look at every band possible," Decker Anstrom told a press briefing on the opening day of the WRC.
Total Telecom