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Greek authorities to investigate telecoms operators  The Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) in Greece is about to launch an investigation into telecommunications companies for improper monitoring demands made by the Greek secret services. This probe follows a controversy last year in which the government reportedly spied on journalists and politicians using Predator malware. The Greek government has acknowledged some of the monitoring activities, but insists that they were carried out legitimately and that it did not purchase the malware. ADAE will form a team to supervise the probe and will analyze private data using powers given by the Greek Constitution. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/mwwms58e PBX-Change is now KUDUCOM™ KUDUCOM, a Tampa Bay, Florida-based communications company, has rebranded itself and introduced a new name, brand, vision and mission. For almost two decades, the company, originally known as PBX-Change, has offered organizations voice, internet and cloud-based communication services. The…

Meta was fined €265 million by Irish regulators on Monday. This is the company’s latest penalty for violating rigorous European Union data privacy regulations.    According to the Data Protection Commission (DPC), Meta Platforms Inc. violated parts of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which require technological and organizational measures to secure user data.   The authority began looking into press reports that user data for more than 533 million people was discovered to have been leaked online last year. This information was detected on a website for hackers, and includes names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, residences, birthdates and email addresses of individuals from more than 100 different countries.   The DPC investigation discovered that Meta’s Facebook Search, Facebook Messenger Contact Importer and Instagram Contact Importer capabilities did not adhere to GDPR rules between May 25, 2018 and September 19, 2019.   According to Meta, the information was “scraped”…

AWS announces 3 new Local Zones AWS has announced that AWS Local Zones in Atlanta, Phoenix and Seattle are now generally available. Customers in these three metro regions can utilize these new Local Zones to deliver apps that require single-digit millisecond latency to end users or for on-premises deployments. The company presently has 17 Local Zones spread over 16 metropolises. Each zone provides select services inside Local Zones near population centers, typically where Amazon does not already have a data center footprint. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/4ahzesr3 The Club collaborates with Google Cloud The Club, HKT’s loyalty program and digital enterprises arm, has inked a collaboration agreement with Google Cloud to build a hyper-personalization platform named ‘Copernicus.’ This platform will be integrated throughout The Club’s business pillars into its digital environment.  The Club hopes to give clients a personalized online digital experience by combining the network and database with Google Cloud…

Snom Technology, a premium worldwide brand for IP telephony in the business and industrial sectors, is known for its proximity to the market and the continuous involvement of partners and customers in the development of new products, which is also achieved through market surveys.  A representative survey, commissioned by Snom and carried out in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, by the independent research institute Norstat in November 2021, aimed to identify the opinion of users of IP desk phones in relation to more eco-friendly terminals, and to find whether – in the face of increased sustainability – the market would be willing to accept a possible price increase. What is the value of sustainability? Of the 1,937 European respondents, 66% currently use corded telephones at work. Despite each country having unique preferences, the survey confirmed that company desk phones still have a high market share – even…

VMware announces RAN intelligent controller This week, VMware released several of their initiatives aimed at bolstering and solidifying the company’s  telco cloud plans. The debut of the RAN intelligent controller is one of the recent announcements (RIC). The VMware RIC will be accessible in two deployment models: centralized and distributed, and will be capable of abstracting the underlying RAN architecture and providing RAN programmability via xApps and rApps. Wireless operators, according to VMware, are ready to transition from relatively inflexible conventional RAN infrastructures to more heterogeneous, multi-vendor virtualized RANs. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/2nxkde8x Verizon teams up with Project Kuiper Verizon and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite network, have established a collaborative partnership to provide broadband solutions for unserved and underserved populations. Project Kuiper and Verizon have begun to establish technical specifications and define early business strategies for a variety of connection offerings for US consumers and…

Orange considers buying infrastructure assets it sold almost two decades ago Orange is considering a probable purchase of the former telecommunications infrastructure unit TDF. The company sold TDF nearly two decades ago to lessen its debt. Orange is considering combining TDF with the recently established European mast company TOTEM, as infrastructure appraisals have recently increased with interest from investors such as the US private equity firm KKR and Spain’s Cellnex. TDF, previously known as Télédiffusion de France, operates TV and radio towers, mobile sites, as well as fiber infrastructure and related services through around 19,000 sites, of which 7,300 are active. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/2etpjpjn AT&T to modernize U.S. DOT’s network AT&T and the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) have signed a 12-year, $175 million deal to assist DOT in upgrading its IP and voice infrastructure. AT&T will supply DOT with virtual private networking and secure cloud technology, together…

5G has been a target of conspiracy theorists for as long as it has been around, just as with 4G and 3G before it. It is not the first time, and it will not be the last, that technological progress has  caused fear generated by uncertainty about the risks of new technology. The remarkably disruptive COVID-19 pandemic, which has coincided with the worldwide introduction of 5G, the latest standard in wireless networking technology, has exacerbated the situation. People have begun to link 5G to COVID-19 in various ways, saying that the technology weakens the immune system, that it is responsible for the direct transmission of the virus, or that the lockdown is a cover-up for deploying even more 5G towers. Let us take a look at some of the theories out there. 5G is the cause of COVID-19  Back in March of 2020, a video of a US…

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted industries and businesses all across the globe and has brought the world economy to a halt, with millions of people placed under lockdown. With most of society working and studying from home, the need for technology has increased considerably, and the significant rise in the use of digital tools during social distancing has put the telecommunications sector at the forefront in facilitating the situation. What kind of impact has Covid-19 had on the telecom sector? Now that the global supply chain has been thrown into chaos and the work-from-home concept has become the “new normal“, the need of remote communication has risen significantly so as to ensure business continuity. The telecommunication sector is witnessing significantly higher demands, as they play a key role in facilitating the connectivity required by customers implementing these essential digital tools . Rise of demand for Telco services…

BEREC says COVID-19 won’t break the internet The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has announced that the increase in Internet usage across the continent is more or less stabilizing and that networks have been able to withstand the pressure. BEREC said that national regulatory authorities (NRAs) have reported “a stabilization in the overall traffic, but some NRAs still observe an increase of the overall traffic.” Some operators have expanded their network’s capacity to cope with the steady growth of traffic. According to the organization, “operators, which did not take any such measure, are still closely monitoring their network’s capacity to check if an upgrade is necessary.” Read more at https://tinyurl.com/rxmg53l Vodafone slashes costs of core network functions across Europe using VMware’s telco cloud The UK-based telecoms operator Vodafone has completed the deployment of a single digital network architecture across all of its 21 European business markets, using…

Cisco Enhances Webex Teams as Unified App Cisco is introducing a series of updates to its collaboration solution Webex Teams. At the Cisco Partner Summit in Las Vegas, the company announced new products and features that include new desktop and room video conferencing systems, as well as more options to integrate calling and third-party PBXes into the Webex platform. These updates are designed to reinforce Cisco’s single platform approach to delivering consistent experience across all types of enterprise communications workloads running on any type of device. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/y63uhdqm Microsoft and Nokia accelerate Industry 4.0 Microsoft and Nokia have joined hands to accelerate transformation and innovation across industries with cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT). “Bringing together Microsoft’s expertise in intelligent cloud solutions and Nokia’s strength in building business and mission-critical networks will unlock new connectivity and automation scenarios,” said Jason Zander, Executive Vice President at…