Daily Video: Supreme Court Wireless Decision Limits Municipal Zoning

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to uphold the requirements of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which mandates that companies whose zoning applications for cell towers are denied be provided with the reasons in writing in a timely fashion. The decision, T-Mobile South vs. City of Roswell, Ga., sends T-Mobile’s appeal of a zoning decision denying permission to build a cell tower back to the circuit court.

The lower court will be required to reconsider its decision now that the Supreme Court has overturned it. In turn, that means T-Mobile will have a chance for judicial review of the reasons for the denial. This is important because zoning approvals are a significant problem for wireless companies.

A cyber-attack program used in an ongoing cyber-espionage operation gives digital spies a backdoor into the affected network and allows them to retain control in a nearly undetectable way. According to Dell Secureworks, the program, dubbed ‘Skeleton Key,’ appears to have resided on a critical server–known as a domain controller–and allowed any attacker with a secret key to log in to the victim’s network by donning the identity of any valid user.

Samsung is rumored to have made a $7.5 billion acquisition offer for BlackBerry in a move aimed at obtaining key patents and diving deeper into enterprise markets for its products. The potential BlackBerry buyout by Samsung, reported Jan. 14 by Reuters, is based on information from sources who spoke privately about the matter; Reuters stated it also has seen some documents that describe such a move between the two companies. Under the rumored deal, Samsung would pay $13.35 to $15.49 for each BlackBerry share. Both companies denied the reports.

The next Apple iPhone, which is set to be released later in 2015, could have an improved built-in camera that will allow users to take advantage of true optical zoom, rather than digitally-enhanced zoom capabilities. The potential replacement of digital zoom with optical zoom was the subject of a recent rumor reported by UDN, a Japanese-language Website, which reported that the information came from reliable sources in the Asian supply chain.