Amazon to invest $10 bn in space-based internet system

Yahoo – AFP, July 31, 2020

Amazon could deliver satellite-based internet service to the US and other parts of
the world without reliable access through its Project Kuiper, which will deploy
some 3,000 satellites (AFP Photo/Philippe LOPEZ)

Washington (AFP) - Amazon says it will invest $10 billion for its planned space-based internet delivery system after winning US regulatory approval to deploy more than 3,000 low-orbit satellites.

The US tech giant said on Thursday it is moving forward with its Project Kuiper, one of several systems planned to bring internet to customers without land-based connections.

Project Kuiper aims to deliver satellite-based broadband services in the United States, and eventually around the world, and may offer connectively for wireless carriers and 5G networks.

Amazon offer no timetable for the project but said it would begin deployment of its 3,236 satellites after the Federal Communications Commission approved the project.

"We have heard so many stories lately about people who are unable to do their job or complete schoolwork because they don't have reliable internet at home," said Amazon senior vice president Dave Limp.

"There are still too many places where broadband access is unreliable or where it doesn't exist at all. Kuiper will change that. Our $10 billion investment will create jobs and infrastructure around the United States that will help us close this gap."

Project Kuiper seeks to deliver high-speed broadband service to places beyond the reach of traditional fiber or wireless networks, including disaster relief.

It will be aimed at individual households, as well as schools, hospitals, businesses and other organizations.

An Amazon statement said the project also aims to "deliver an affordable customer terminal that will make fast, reliable broadband accessible to communities around the world."

Kuiper is one of several projects to deliver internet from space begun over the past decades.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and British-based OneWeb, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, are working on similar projects.

UK approves restricted 5G role for China's Huawei

Yahoo – AFP, Roland JACKSON, January 28, 2020

Huawei has been given a limited role in the roll-out of Britain's 5G network
(AFP Photo/DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS)

London (AFP) - Britain on Tuesday gave the green light to a limited role for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei in the country's 5G network, in a decision that left the United States "disappointed" after it called for a total ban.

Even though London decided that "high risk vendors" would be excluded from Britain's "sensitive" core infrastructure, a US official insisted there was "no safe option for untrusted vendors to control any part of a 5G network", which offers almost instantaneous data transfer.

Washington has banned Huawei from the roll-out of the fifth generation mobile network because of concerns that the firm could be under the control of Beijing, an allegation it strongly denies.

The announcement came as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo prepared to meet British Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week for talks in London likely to focus on Huawei and as Britain looks for a trade deal with Washington after Brexit.

The United States had threatened to limit intelligence-sharing with London in the event of Huawei winning a UK role.

But Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told parliament: "Nothing in this review affects this country's ability to share highly sensitive intelligence data over highly secured networks.

"GCHQ (Britain's cybersecurity agency) have categorically confirmed that how we construct our 5G and full-fibre public telecoms network has nothing to do with how we share classified data."

Johnson spoke to US President Donald Trump and "underlined the importance of like-minded countries working together to diversify the market and break the dominance of a small number of companies", the British government said.

Balancing act

London's decision -- following a meeting of the National Security Council chaired by Johnson -- came shortly after Brussels said it would also allow Huawei a limited 5G role in the European Union.

Brussels and London are both grappling to find a middle way to balance Huawei's huge dominance in the 5G sector with security concerns, as they look to improve connectivity.

Britain's Digital Secretary Nicky Morgan insisted: "High risk vendors never have been and never will be in our most sensitive networks."

But that failed to convince Washington, where a senior administration official said the United States was "disappointed by the UK's decision".

The fifth generation or 5G mobile networks will offer super-fast data transfer for 

technologies such as self-driving cars and remotely operated factory robots 

(AFP Photo/Justin TALLIS)

Meanwhile, research group GlobalData said a limited role for Huawei allowed "the UK to bow in part" to the US.

"A total ban would have required massive amounts of infrastructure to be torn out at eye-watering expense, and would have set the UK's 5G roll-out back by years.

"It was simply never a practical option to ban Huawei completely," it added in a note.

Unlike the United States, Britain has been using Huawei technology in its systems for the past 15 years.

Intelligence sharing

Analysts Fitch warned that the US could look to retaliate.

"The US has been putting a lot of pressure on its allies to ban Huawei, and failure to do so will raise questions about its strategy, as we expect it will look to retaliate, with threats to stop intelligence-sharing already made," Fitch said Tuesday.

London's move excludes Huawei from sensitive UK locations, such as nuclear sites and military bases, while their market share will be capped.

Huawei itself welcomed the news that it would have at least a part in building Britain's 5G networks.

"Huawei is reassured by the UK government's confirmation that we can continue working with our customers to keep the 5G roll-out on track," said Huawei Vice-President Victor Zhang.

Brussels also ruled out banning the company. A top EU official said instead it was "a question of laying down rules".

"They will be strict, they will be demanding and of course we will welcome in Europe all operators who are willing to apply them," the official said.

Huawei is widely viewed as providing the most advanced alternative for super-fast data transfers behind technologies such as self-driving cars and remotely operated factory robots.

Existing providers of limited 5G network infrastructure in Britain include Nokia and Ericsson.

A number of UK mobile phone operators, including EE and Vodafone, currently sell 5G services -- but it is so far available only in a handful of cities, notably London and Birmingham.

Dutch to get tough on hosting companies with child porn clients

DutchNews, May 28, 2019

Photo: Depositphotos.com

The Dutch public prosecution department is going to get tougher on website hosting companies which allow child pornography on their servers, the Financieele Dagblad said on Tuesday. 

The department receives some 25,000 reports of child pornography a year and says this is being partly facilitated by providers who claim not to be aware of the problem.

‘We have been too cautious,’ public prosecutor Martijn Egberts told the paper. 

Currently some hosting companies only remove illegal material when ordered to do so in court. But the department wants to be able to take legal action against hosting companies which it sees as complicit, despite the legal problems. 

‘It is extremely difficult to prove that hosting companies are deliberately closing their eyes to material which they are storing or which is being exchanged via their networks,’ Egberts told broadcaster NOS. 

There are some 600 to 800 hosting companies in the Netherlands, the FD said.

Dutch internet providers told to make speed estimates more realistic

DutchNews, November 27, 2017

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Internet providers in the Netherlands have been told they must be more accurate about the speed of internet connections they are selling from January 1 next year. 

In addition, providers may no longer advertise maximum speeds which are not actually achievable in practice, the Dutch competition and markets regulator ACM said on Monday. 

The maximum and minimum upload and download times for fixed internet must be included in contracts and providers will also have to commit to a ‘normally available’ speed, which must be reached in eight of 10 times over a week. Estimated speeds will be acceptable for mobile internet. 

The rule will first be applied to new contracts but from March will have to be included in all contracts for both the domestic and consumer market. The new rules stem from European legislation on net neutrality.  

Mobile phone firms to ask clients about earnings for new phone deals

DutchNews, May 1, 2017

Photo: Depositphotos.com

People who ‘buy’ a telephone as part of a mobile phone subscription may now be asked by their phone firm to provide information about their earnings and living expenses because of new rules on credit. 

Since January, phone ‘debts’ of more than €250 have been added to listing at the Dutch credit registration agency BKR. In phase two of the switch from May 1, phone firms are now responsible for checking that clients can meet the payments. 

The change comes because the financial services sector regulator AFM has decided to treat the part of a phone subscription which covers the phone itself as a debt, if higher than €250. 

Since December 1, all credit greater than €250 which has been used for more than one month has been included in the register. This includes shop cards and credit cards, as well as short overdrafts. 

Banks and other cred providers use the BKR to check if clients are financially able to take on major commitments such as a large mortgage or other loan. 

Dutch draw up new law to block ‘damaging’ telecom sector takeovers

DutchNews, February 16, 2017

Server farms will also fall under the new rules. Photo: Depositphotos.com 

Takeovers in the telecoms sector which could damage the national interest will be stopped in the Netherlands, if new legislation drawn up by economic affairs minister Henk Kamp becomes law. 

The draft bill will enable ministers to prevent takeovers of ‘telephony, data centres, hosting services and internet’ companies which are ‘of vital importance to national security and public order,’ according to an economic affairs ministry statement. 

The legislation will give ministers the option of banning or reversing takeovers within the telecoms sector with the aim of securing continuity, the reliability of services and the public interest, the ministry said. 

Commentators said the new law was inspired by the attempt by Mexican telecoms company America Movil to take over KPN in 2013. Kamp said at the time he was powerless to stop the takeover, which eventually failed. 

Dutch ministers also intervened last year when Belgian state postal company Bpost tried to take over PostNL. That takeover bid also flopped. 

Criminal activities

‘Our country will not benefit from takeovers by foreign firms which are linked to criminal activities, are financially vulnerable or do not have a transparent ownership structure,’ Kamp said in the statement. 

The draft legislation has now been put out to consultation and Kamp hopes to submit it to parliament before the summer. 

The ministry is also looking at ways of ensuring the continuity of other services, such as postal delivery.

Damning report says goverment wastes up to €5bn on IT failures

DutchNews.nl, Wednesday 15 October 2014

(NOS/ANP)

The Dutch government is wasting between €1bn and €5bn a year on failing IT projects, says a parliamentary commission set up to look at a number of headline cases.

This ‘cautious estimate’ is an ‘unacceptably high amount’, the commission said in its report which was published on Wednesday.

‘The government often fails to keep control of its IT projects in terms of cost, timing and the end result,’ the commission said.

Unknown spending

Coming up with an exact figure of how much the government wastes on IT is impossible because ‘no one knows how much it spends’. But based on expert opinion the figure can be put at between €1bn and €5bn a year.

Parliament is also failing to properly monitor IT projects because of a lack of interest and expertise and projects are being undertaken with unrealistic expectations.

Among the 34 recommendations for improvement, the commission says a special committee should be set up to supervise projects with a budget of over €5m. The green light for such projects should only be given once the technical, management and organisation risks have been assessed.

What is ICT?

Parliament chairwoman Anouchka van Miltenburg made a major gaffe while accepting the report by saying she had had to ‘google ICT’ to find out what it meant.

The Netherlands uses ICT to cover information and communications technology, rather than IT like most of the world.

‘This is a real low point,’ IT entrepreneur Rene Veldwijk who was watching the proceedings told the Telegraf. ‘People are being cute about their ignorance.’

Projects

The commission was set up to look at six government IT projects which ran into serious trouble, and held its first interviews at the end of April. The NRC sums them up as follows:

• mGBA: modernising the local government registration system (births, marriages, deaths and address).

• Ov-chipkaart: smart card for public transport which was expensive and did not have enough loading stations.

• C2000: a new communication system for the emergency services which cost twice the budget and still has operating problems.

• EPD: a centralised system for storing patients’ medical records which floundered in the upper house of parliament because of concerns about privacy.

• Werk.nl: jobs website run by the UWV benefit centres which has been beset by computer failure

• A73 tunnels: a security system for tunnels on the A73 highway which did not work, leading to months of tunnel closures.

During the hearings information science professor Hans Mulder told the committee just 7% of the projects with a budget starting at €7.5m can be said to be successful. In total, 70% of projects fail.

Of those which flop, 36% fail so seriously the new system is never used and around half are of doubtful value because they turn out to be too expensive, take too long or produce unexpected results, Mulder said.

Related Article:

IT services group Ordina at centre of corruption scandal: Zembla

Hon Hai's cloud center catches the eye of Facebook, Alibaba

Want China Times, Cheng Shu-fang and Staff Reporter 2014-01-09

Hon Hai's cloud computing data center in Kaohsiung. (Photo/Yen Rui-tien)

Several prominent companies have inquired into collaborative efforts with Taiwan-based Hon Hai on a cloud computing data center in Kaohsiung's software industry park. Among them are the likes of Alibaba, Hewlett Packard and Facebook.

Hon Hai, the world's largest contract manufacturer known in China by its trading name Foxconn, started to build its cloud computing data center last August. The center is expected to become operational in March, and is currently applying for an operation certificate from Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Alibaba, Hewlett Packard and Facebook are interested in using space in the internet data center, which would allow them to launch more localized cloud services to Taiwan's technologically savvy population.

Hon Hai has invested in the software industrial park for over two years at a sum of NT$1.9 billion (US$31 million). The data center is approximately 10,000 square meters large and is geared for an almost 63,000 square meter expansion for software development.

Xinjiang cloud computing center starts operations

Want China Times, Xinhua 2014-01-09

The homepage of Dawning Information Industry. (Internet photo)

The cloud computing center of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region officially started operations on Tuesday, a key step for the region in building a regional information hub for Central and Western Asia.

The center, built by Dawning Information Industry, a national high-tech enterprise, currently provides cloud computing services for electronic government platforms, urban management, language and culture, and new energy development.

Xinjiang named the cloud computing industry as a strategic and new industry in 2011. The region has invested nearly 30 billion yuan (US$4.9 billion) in the industry with a number of projects launched.

"The Xinjiang cloud computing center has not only completed construction in hardware, but also made breakthroughs in practical use," said Su Guoping, an official with the Xinjiang Economic and Informatization Commission.

In the next ten years, Xinjiang aims to realize an annual output value of 32 billion yuan (US$5.3 billion) in the industry and become the largest data center in western China, said Su.

Cloud computing generally refers to services, including software and storage, accessed by users through the internet.

Netflix says Netherlands has the fastest broadband

The video-streaming company ranks the European country No. 1 when it comes to streaming speed, thanks to its Internet service providers.

CNET, Donna Tam, December 9, 2013

(Credit: Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)

Netflix has crowned the Netherlands as the country with the fastest video-streaming times, the company said in a blog post Monday.

After crunching its November Internet service provider data, Netflix determined that the European country really does have the fastest broadband. A faster connection means better picture quality and less interruptions. The company made the declaration when it launched the service in the Netherlands in September, and it says it now has the data to prove it.

Its November "Netflix ISP Speed Index," a monthly ranking of which service provider powers the best Netflix streaming, included the Netherlands for the first time. The country's broadband speed averages 3.16Mbps. Runners-up Sweden and Denmark followed with 2.83Mbps and 2.8Mbps, respectively. Mexico ranks last in its listings at 1.77Mbps, just below Ireland and the US. You can see the rest of the ranks here.

The index is based on data from the more than 40 million Netflix members, viewing over 1 billion hours each month. It looks at 17 Internet service providers, including Google Fiber, SuddenLink, Verizon, AT&T, and Clearwire. In the US, which had an overall average of 1.9Mbps, Google Fiber remains No. 1, with an average speed of 3.59Mbps, while Clearwire comes in last with 0.96Mbps.

Netflix's November 2013 Internet service provider rankings.

(Credit: Netflix)

US tech sector feels pain from PRISM

Google – AFP, Rob Lever (AFP), 27 August 2013

A 'Secure Cloud Storage' drive is seen at the CeBIT, world's biggest IT fair,

in Hanover, on March 3, 2011 (AFP/File, Johannes Eisele)

WASHINGTON, DC — Revelations about vast US data collection programs are starting to hit American tech companies, which are ramping up pressure for increased transparency to try to mitigate the damage.

An industry group, the Cloud Security Alliance said last month that 10 percent of its non-US members have cancelled a contract with a US-based cloud provider, and 56 percent said they were less likely to use an American company.

A separate report this month by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, or ITIF, a Washington think tank, said US cloud providers stand to lose $22 billion to $35 billion over the next three years due to revelations about the so-called PRISM program.

Daniel Castro, author of the report, says a loss of trust in US tech firms could lead to "protectionist" measures that hurt the fast-growing cloud sector.

"The risk is that a country like Germany will say you have to be a German company to provide data services in Germany," Castro told AFP.

"I don't think that helps anyone. We do benefit from free trade and the robust competitiveness in the tech industry."

The report notes that the United States dominates the cloud computing market both domestically and abroad, and that US firms could lose between 10 and 20 percent of the foreign market in the next few years.

Tech companies, especially firms in cloud computing, have been in a frenzy since details leaked in June about surveillance efforts led by the secretive National Security Agency, including PRISM, believed to scoop up massive amounts of data as part of efforts to thwart terrorism.

Castro said in his report "the disclosures of the NSA's electronic surveillance may fundamentally alter the market dynamics."

The news "will likely have an immediate and lasting impact on the competitiveness of the US cloud computing industry if foreign customers decide the risks of storing data with a US company outweigh the benefits," he wrote.

Much concern in being expressed in Europe. Estonian President Toomas Hendrik last month urged the EU to develop its own cloud industry, noting that 95 percent of the services come from US firms.

"Recent months have proven once again that it's very important for Europe to have its own data clouds that operate strictly under European legislation," he said.

Some analysts say losses could be even greater than the ITIF predicts, if the fallout affects consumer-based services like email and search.

And Forrester Research analyst James Staten argued that, in addition to the loss of foreign customers, US customers may look overseas for cloud services, and the rest of the tech sector could also see an impact.

"Add it all up and you have a net loss for the service provider space of about $180 billion by 2016, which would be roughly a 25 percent decline in the overall IT services market," Staten said.

The tech sector has been active on several fronts, filing court cases and making public pleas to the US administration for more transparency, in the hope that fuller disclosure will ease fears about how data is shared.

Six large high-tech lobby groups sent a letter to President Barack Obama this month asking for such steps, saying more transparency "can assist in reestablishing trust, both domestically and globally."

Ross Schulman of Computer & Communications Industry Association, one of the tech associations, said "the lack of information is compounding the trust problem."

Schulman said it's not clear if the volume of data collected by the government is more or less than people believe.

"If it's less, that could help trust," he said. "If it's more, people could have an informed discussion of surveillance practices."

But in the current situation, he said, "it's difficult to go to customers and say the cloud is the best place for your data."

Related Articles:

Prism program may prompt China to replace computer systems

Cisco's business in China set to suffer from Prism revelations 

Amazon.com website goes offline

BBC News, 19 August 2013

Related Stories

• Washington Post and CNN hit by hack
• New York Times site returns online

Amazon's US site is warning visitors of a problem

Amazon.com has become the latest high-profile website to go offline in recent days.

Visitors to the US shopping site were greeted with a message saying: "Oops! We're very sorry," alongside a "500 Service Unavailable Error" report.

The site returned online about half an hour after the problem was first flagged by users of the news site Reddit.

Amazon could not be reached for comment at this time.

It follows Google's two-minute downtime on Friday. That affected the firm's main search page as well as its Gmail email service, YouTube video site and Drive storage product.

Analytics firm GoSquared reported the fault caused a 40% dip in worldwide internet traffic. Google has not explained the cause.

Microsoft's Outlook.com and the New York Times website have also faced problems

Microsoft blamed a three-day-long disruption to its email product on a failure in its "caching" temporary storage service. It said this "resulted in a flood of traffic that our services did not handle properly".

The New York Times has said that an "internal issue" with its servers meant that the newspaper became unavailable for two hours on Wednesday.

Related Article:

Google goes dark for 2 minutes, kills 40% of world's net traffic

When Google goes dark, the internet KNOWS FEAR! (source: GoSquared)

European firms 'could quit US internet providers over NSA scandal'

European commission vice-president says American cloud services providers could suffer loss of business

guardian.co.uk, Ian Traynor in Vilnius, Thursday 4 July 2013

Neelie Kroes, European commissioner for digital matters, who said: 'If I were
 an American cloud provider, I would be quite frustrated with my government
right now.' Photograph: Yves Logghe/AP

European businesses are likely to abandon the services of American internet providers because of the National Security Agency surveillance scandal, the European commission has warned.

Neelie Kroes, the commission vice-president who speaks on digital affairs, predicted that providers of cloud services, which allow users to store and access data on remote servers, could suffer significant loss of business if clients fear the security of their material is under threat.

The warning came as it appeared that the Americans and the Europeans were to start investigating alleged breaches of data privacy in the EU as well as US intelligence and espionage practices.

Despite threats from France to delay long-awaited EU-US negotiations on a new transatlantic free trade pact, scheduled to open in Washington on Monday, EU ambassadors in Brussels reached a consensus on Thursday to go ahead with the talks.

They could not yet agree, however, on how to respond to a US offer of parallel talks on the NSA scandal, the Prism and Tempora programmes and issues of more traditional espionage arising from reports of how US agencies bugged and tapped the offices and embassies of the EU and several member states.

Dalia Grybauskaitė, the president of Lithuania, said on Thursday that she was not seeking an apology from the Americans. Lithuania takes over the rotating six-month EU presidency this week.

While no decision had yet been taken, she said she hoped the EU-US talks on electronic surveillance would also be launched on Monday and run concurrently. Since much of the alleged US hoovering up of telephone and internet traffic in Europe is assumed to amount to commercial and industrial espionage, the two parallel sets of talks will affect one another.

Senior EU officials complain that there is no point engaging in sensitive trade talks when the other side has already eavesdropped on you and knows your negotiating position.

Grybauskaitė emphasised that the American side was keen to come clean on the dispute.

"They are open to co-operation. They are open to explain," she said. "I never seek an apology from anyone. I seek information … We don't want to jeopardise the strategic importance of free trade."

Pointing to the potential fallout from the disclosures about the scale of NSA operations in Europe, Kroes, the European commissioner for digital matters, predicted that US internet providers of cloud services could suffer major business losses.

"If businesses or governments think they might be spied on, they will have less reason to trust cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes?" she said.

"It is often American providers that will miss out, because they are often the leaders in cloud services. If European cloud customers cannot trust the United States government, then maybe they won't trust US cloud providers either. If I am right, there are multibillion-euro consequences for American companies. If I were an American cloud provider, I would be quite frustrated with my government right now."

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the European commission and Grybauskaitė made clear they wanted the trade talks to go ahead as planned on Monday. France appeared to drop its objections despite previously insisting on guarantees that the espionage had been halted before the trade talks could start.

Grybauskaitė also voiced suspicions of a possible Russian role in the furore, pointing to Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, being stuck in Moscow at the same time as weekend revelations about US spying on Europe emerged in the runup to the trade talks.

She insisted that the espionage dispute should not be allowed to derail the trade talks but conceded that "some countries are very sensitive on this question." The Lithuanian finance minister, Rimantas Šadžius, said: "The French have some problems."

EU diplomats said ambassadors from the 28 member states engaged in "urgent and tricky" discussions on Thursday on how to proceed. While the European commission would lead the EU side on issues of data privacy, the talks on intelligence and espionage practices would need to be done by national governments.

It was not clear where Britain fitted into the picture since it is one of the biggest EU countries but has not been targeted by the NSA, unlike Germany or France, according to the reports, and the UK's GCHQ has itself been collecting vast quantities of European internet and telephone data.

Kroes warned that US firms could be the biggest losers from the US government's voracious appetite for information.

"Concerns about cloud security can easily push European policy-makers into putting security guarantees ahead of open markets, with consequences for American companies. Cloud has a lot of potential. But potential doesn't count for much in an atmosphere of distrust."

Related Articles:

Cisco's business in China set to suffer from Prism revelations

U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms

Joint EU-US group to assess US spy ops

Key US-EU trade pact under threat after more NSA spying allegations

'The agency is out of control'

Four big telecom firms 'keep details of clients' internet use

DutchNews.nl, Thursday 04 July 2013

(ANP)

The four big Dutch telecoms companies - KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Vodafone - have been breaking privacy legislation by storing details about their clients' internet use.

The Dutch privacy watchdog CBP has been investigating the storage of personal data gleaned through 'deep package inspection' for two years and says the big four firms have been keeping details for far longer than necessary.

'This is serious,' CBP board member Wilbert Tomesen said in a statement. DPI allows providers to monitor which websites clients visit and what apps they use.

Tele2

KPN has since destroyed all the records and T-Mobile and Vodafone have partly done so. Tele2 has the 'most difficulty in complying with the law', Tomesen said. The company has also been using the information for market research, which is against the law, the CPB said.

Tele2 said in a reaction it wished to discuss the matter with the CPB to try to reach a solution which is acceptable to everyone.

The CPB is to distribute its findings to other European privacy watchdogs.

Related Article:

MPs back calls for an inquiry into Dutch security service use of Prism

Some Users May Lose Data on a T-Mobile Smartphone

The New York Times, By ASHLEE VANCE, Published: October 11, 2009

The cellphone provider T-Mobile and Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft and one of T-Mobile’s partners, said over the weekend that a technical glitch in their computer systems would probably result in some customers losing their personal information like contact names, phone numbers and digital photos.

Sidekick LX.

T-Mobile and Danger operate what has become known as a cloud computing service to store important information for their customers. In theory, such a service should make life easier on people by leaving the management of complex computing systems to the pros and having data held in sophisticated computing centers. But when problems crop up, embarrassment ensues.

Last week, T-Mobile and Danger, which manages the data services, began grappling with a range of technical issues affecting users of the Sidekick smartphone.

Most notably, customers who had removed the batteries from their phones or had let their batteries run out faced the prospect of permanently losing their contact, calendar, photo and to-do list information.

Employees at the companies have worked over the weekend to try and fix these problems, but, as of Sunday afternoon, there were still some data and software application service flaws.

“Our teams continue to work around the clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information,” T-Mobile said in a statement on its Web site. “However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.”

A spokeswoman for Microsoft, which acquired Danger in February 2008, said the company continued to work on retrieving the data and hoped to have more updates for consumers by Monday.

T-Mobile is estimated to have sold about a million of the Sidekick devices. It is unclear how many customers have lost all of their information at this time. “We don’t think it’s a majority of the customers,” said Peter Dobrow, a spokesman for T-Mobile.

The situation has resulted in another black eye for Microsoft in the mobile phone market.

Microsoft bought Danger with the hope of adding some pizazz to smartphones running its Windows Mobile software. The Sidekick device, with its flashy, flip-out screen, had proved a hit with consumers and had a strong set of complementary software.

But close to 18 months after the acquisition, Microsoft has yet to show off any groundbreaking phone designs or software services to blunt the momentum of Apple and its iPhone.

Microsoft plans to release a new version of its flagship Windows software later this month and then introduce a suite of cloud computing services over the next year. The company is looking to prove that it can catch up to and then outflank rivals like Google and Amazon.com with its cloud services and software aimed at businesses and consumers.

Microsoft stressed that its own technology was not to blame for the T-Mobile service issues. Danger had its own technology, which has remained in use after Microsoft’s acquisition.

As for T-Mobile, the company had already started apologizing to customers, while promising additional information by Monday. It has also started crediting people’s accounts with one month of free data service and is considering providing additional compensation for people who lost their information.

“We will work hard to try and make things right for them,” Mr. Dobrow said. “That said, it has been a very difficult and disappointing week.”

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The lesson of data disasters? Time to back up your backups

T-Mobile halts sales of Sidekick

Sidekick users share their horror stories

Microsoft Danger: Living Up To Its Name

Sidekick outage casts cloud over Microsoft