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Jonathan Simon

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French startup “BlackBoxSecu” located on the Côte d’Azur,  has made the first demo of its secure voice communication system CipherBOX (CBOX) on Orange and Free mobile networks. Commercialization might begin the coming months. As the global threat evolves, listening to voice over the Internet and mobile networks becomes easier, cheaper and more accessible to third parties, private spies and foreign special services. Developed by BlackBoxSecu, the CBOX aims to provide secure high-level voice connectivity that meets individual communication needs on mobile, laptop, tablet or landline phones. The company has been awarded by Innovation Award of Special Forces SOFINS 2017, Trophées de la Sécurité 2017 (Bronze medal) in France and has been selected by Village by Crédit Agricole. Based on a stand-alone box developed during 3 years near Nice, the Cipher BOX encrypts the audio signal directly to the source of the voice (microphone of the user’s headset) as well as…

To compete with Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp as well as Apple’s iMessages, Google is looking for bold new ideas. They have had a number of failures in this area, having tried Talk, Hangouts and Allo! But for an American company, there’s no such thing as failure – there’s just the gaining of experience. Looking forward, Google will focus on delivering their new calling and messaging system called “Chat.” Chat aims to replace SMS, and uses the RCS protocol (Rich Communication Service) to achieve its goals. With Chat, users no longer need to download an application and keep that application updated, and the open-source nature of the RCS protocol will make this platform accessible to developers. According to The Verge media publication, more than 60 companies all over the world, including developers and operators such as Orange, Samsung and Asus have already committed to supporting Chat. For its part, Google promises…

By the end of the first quarter 2018, revenues from the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) market had outperformed those of DBMS (DataBase Management Systems), making CRM the largest market in the software industry. For the period January to December 2017, CRM software sales generated $39.5 billion, compared to $36.8 billion for DBMS. According to expert predictions, it is expected that revenues for CRM software will remain the top market performer for 2018, and will also show the highest growth rate of 16%. Growth will be driven by lead management, customer opinion management, and after-sales management software, each of which has been growing at over 20% during the past 18 months. The CRM solution providers covering the entire customer relationship cycle, including after sales service, are the fastest growing, thanks to their ability to cross-sell additional modules.

That’s what researchers at CCS Insight believe. According to their report, China and the United States will lead the way in deploying the next generation of mobile technology. Commercial deployments of 5G in the U.S. are expected as soon as the end of 2018.  CCS Insight’s forecast of an initial U.S. lead corroborates with a report from the GSMA at the end of March 2018, but the firms appear to disagree on the rest of their rankings for the period prior to 2025. In the GSMA’s report, by 2025, China falls to fourth place with 25 percent of mobile connections being 5G. The United States takes the lead with 49 percent, followed by Japan (45 percent) and Europe (31 percent). IN 2025, MOBILE BROADBAND IS STILL PREDICTED TO REPRESENT 98% OF ALL 5G CONNECTIONS “The industry might be struggling to establish the business models for investment in 5G, but this isn’t stopping leading…

Sprint and T-Mobile, two important mobile operators in America, have resumed discussions on a merger of their activities in the United States. In the world of telecoms, it seems that there are some things that never end. In the US, the prospect of a marriage between the mobile operators, T-Mobile and Sprint, regularly makes headlines. According to the Wall Street Journal, discussions have recently resumed between these two players, respectively number three and four of the market, behind the unstoppable tandem formed by the giants Verizon and AT&T. According to the business daily quoting sources familiar with the matter, the negotiations are “at a preliminary stage”. With all the failures of mergers that they faced in the past, we understand that the two boards are cautious … As a reminder, the two actors had once again attempted to join forces late last year. But they failed to reach an agreement, ending their…

French researchers are starting to work on the blockchain! Inria, Télécom ParisTech, Télécom SudParis and SystemX signed a framework agreement on Tuesday March 6th, to coordinate their research efforts in the blockchain area. Called “Bart” (Blockchain Advanced Research & Technologies), this initiative will last for six years and will mobilize thirty researchers. Its aim is to remove the technological barriers that slow down the deployment of blockchain-driven data storage, a technology which is currently attracting the interest of many industries. Three main challenges will be addressed: 1 – Scaling up In one second, six or seven transactions took place on the Bitcoin blockchain, versus several thousand for the Visa credit card system. This slowness limits the use of the blockchain on a larger scale. The problem is due to the validation technique required for transactions, with transactions being grouped into blocks that must be validated by a computer calculation process called mining. Typically, it takes about…