Nextel Communications, Inc. was an American wireless service operator that merged with and ceases to exist as a subsidiary of Sprint Corporation, which would later be bought by T-Mobile US and folded into that company. Nextel in Brazil, and formerly in Argentina, Chile, Peru, the Philippines, and Mexico, is part of NII Holdings, a stand-alone, publicly traded company not owned by Sprint Corporation.Nextel Communications traces its roots to the 1987 foundation of FleetCall by Morgan O'Brien, Brian McAuley, Chris Rogers, and Peter Reinheimer. FleetCall changed its name to Nextel Communications, Inc. in 1993. Nextel provided digital, wireless communications services, originally focusing on the fleet and dispatch customers, but later marketed to all potential wireless customers. Nextel's network operated in the 800-MHz Specialized Mobile Radio band and used iDEN technology developed by Motorola. Nextel's iDEN network offered a then unique push-to-talk "walkie-talkie" feature in addition to direct-dialed voice calls. Nextel was one of the first providers in the United States to offer a national digital cellular coverage footprint.Prior to merging with Sprint Corporation in 2005, Nextel Communications, Inc. was a publicly traded company. Shares traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol NXTL. Nextel was headquartered in Reston, Virginia, United States.At the time of its 2005 merger with Sprint Corp., Nextel had over twenty million subscribers in the United States and served 198 of the top 200 markets. Nextel Communications, Inc. offered postpaid services under the Nextel brand and prepaid services under the Boost Mobile brand.In late 2010, Sprint Nextel announced plans to decommission the Nextel iDEN network; on May 30, 2012, Sprint Nextel announced that it would shut down the Nextel network as early as June 2013. The Nextel network was officially shut down at 12:01am on June 30, 2013, and Sprint began the process of deploying LTE equipment on the 800MHz spectrum formerly used by the iDEN network.Before the acquisition by T-Mobile US, Sprint Corporation continued to offer pre-paid services under the Boost Mobile brand and also offered push-to-talk services as Sprint Direct Connect using CDMA equipment..
Upcoming smart scenarios enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) envision smart objects that provide services that can adapt to user behavior or be managed to achieve greater productivity. In such environments, smart things are inexpensive and, therefore, constrained devices. However, they are also critical components because of the importance of the information that they provide. Given this, strong security is a requirement, but not all security mechanisms in general and access control models in particular are feasible. In this paper, we present the feasibility assessment of an access control model that utilizes a hybrid architecture and a policy language that provides dynamic fine-grained policy enforcement in the sensors, which requires an efficient message exchange protocol called Hidra. This experimental performance assessment includes a prototype implementation, a performance evaluation model, the measurements and related discussions, which demonstrate the feasibility and adequacy of the analyzed access control model.
Traffic volumes in mobile networks are rising and end-user needs are rapidly changing. Mobile network operators need more flexibility, lower network operating costs, faster service roll-out cycles, and new revenue sources. The 5th Generation (5G) and future networks aim to deliver ultra-fast and ultra-reliable network access capable of supporting the anticipated surge in data traffic and connected nodes in years to come. Several technologies have been developed to meet these emergent demands of future mobile networks, among these are software defined networking, network function virtualization, and cloud computing. In this paper, we discuss the security challenges these new technologies are prone to in the context of the new telecommunication paradigm. We present a multi-tier component-based security architecture to address these challenges and secure 5G software defined mobile network (SDMN), by handling security at different levels to protect the network and its users. The proposed architecture contains five components, i.e., secure communication, policy-based communication, security information and event management, security defined monitoring, and deep packet inspection components for elevated security in the control and the data planes of SDMNs. Finally, the proposed security mechanisms are validated using test bed experiments.
Upcoming smart scenarios enabled by the Internet of Things envision smart objects that expose services that can adapt to user behavior or be managed with the goal of achieving higher productivity, often in multi-stakeholder applications. In such environments, smart things are cheap sensors (and actuators) and, therefore, constrained devices. However, they are also critical components because of the importance of the provided information. Therefore, strong security is a must. Nevertheless, existing feasible approaches do not cope well with the principle of least privilege; they lack both expressiveness and the ability to update the policy to be enforced in the sensors. In this paper, we propose an access control model that comprises a policy language that provides dynamic fine-grained policy enforcement in the sensors based on local context conditions. This dynamic policy cycle requires a secure, efficient, and traceable message exchange protocol. For that purpose, a security protocol called Hidra is also proposed. A security and performance evaluation demonstrates the feasibility and adequacy of the proposed protocol and access control model.
The FASyS (Absolutely Safe and Healthy Factory) project, aligned with the European Factories of the Future (FoF) concept, has been set-up to develop a new factory model aimed at minimizing the risks to the worker's health and safety, and guarantee their welfare and comfort in machining, handling and assembly factories. To this aim, ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and wireless communication technologies in particular may represent very valuable tools to implement distributed and mobile sensing applications capable to continuously sense the working environment and the workers' health and safety conditions. The effective deployment of such applications in critical environments, like the industrial one, require the availability of a platform capable to monitor the operation and performance of the heterogeneous wireless networks that will connect the mobile sensors to remote control centers. This paper presents the platform implemented for this purpose in the context of the FASyS project. In addition to monitoring the status of heterogeneous wireless networks, the implemented platform provides the capability to reconfigure remotely the communication settings of wireless nodes based on possible malfunctioning or QoS degradation notifications. These functionalities will help guaranteeing the reliable and robust wireless communications required in industrial environments to implement innovative labor risk prevention applications exploiting ICT technologies.
This article presents the FREESIC system, as a solution to provide interoperability for PPDR communication systems. Project FREESIC has its origins in the legal, organisational and operational barriers that negatively impact on effective multi-agency interoperability during crisis events. These issues emerged in Project SECRICOM leading its consortium partners to progress on to FREESIC with the aim of resolving such matters. FREESIC is intended to deliver a solution that will enable highly secure and cost effective interoperability between PPDR communication infrastructures throughout Europe. The solution is based on a universal gateway with customisable adapter that enables third party infrastructures to be connected to the FREESIC Unified Communication Network. From the user perspective network management tasks will be facilitated through the Collaboration Site based on WEB 2.0 components. The FREESIC gateway source codes, documentation and operational guidelines will be freely provided to users upon acceptance of FREESIC terms and conditions stated in the FREESIC multilateral agreement. This article describes the concept of the FREESIC platform and its implementation.
