UK mobile providers pressured to provide free data during lockdown After the UK decided to close schools again, UK telecoms providers were urged to stop charging for data so that underprivileged children could access remote learning facilities. It is concerning that children in such families lack the technological resources to attend schools from home, where a computer and an Internet connection is required. Although it may be hard to imagine, there are many families that do not have access to the necessary services, especially broadband. The company, Three UK, wasted no time in rushing to announce that it will provide unrestricted data access to disadvantaged children so they could continue their education. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/y46zylg2 T-Mobile reaches record connection gains in 2020 T-Mobile US announced that 2020 was the best year in their history for postpaid net additions, showing preliminary results that indicate a major win, despite the Covid-19…
The American telecommunications company Verizon, which offers wireless products and services, has announced that it will meet its $10 billion cost reduction target, which was first announced in 2017 by Lowell McAdam, the former CEO. Back in 2017, the company said it plans to introduce an aggressive cost-cutting technique called zero-based budgeting. The idea behind this strategy is that all business units should start each year with a clean sheet and justify the money they want to spend, in place of basing it on last year’s expenses. Since the announcement, Verizon has reduced its budget by a mixture of virtualization, early retirement offerings for its management team, and operational efficiencies through the One Fiber and Intelligent Edge Network initiatives. To achieve this goal, the company has been conserving billions of dollars annually in operational efficiency stemming from the foundation of their network to the efficient flow of…
The European Commission (EC) has appointed Nokia, a Finnish international telecommunications, information technology and consumer electronics company, to supervise Hexa-X, a primary 6G research project aimed at boosting the continent’s progress in developing the technology. The two-and-a-half-year Hexa-X initiative was funded by Horizon 2020, the EU’s research, and innovation program, and will start on January 1, 2021. The project is aimed at connecting the physical, digital and human worlds, firmly embedded in future wireless technologies. The project is led by Nokia, which coordinates the efforts, with Ericsson being assigned as the technical manager. The partners in the consortium are from academia and industry, including service providers, network providers and European research institutes. The partners include Orange, TIM, Telefonica, Intel and Siemens. The Finnish service provider said in a statement that it expects 6G to become commercially operational by 2030, following a normal ten-year intergenerational cycle and taking…
With Christmas just around the corner, we want to share with you 12 articles to read for the 12 days of Christmas. The best gift you can give to yourself is personal growth and autodidacticism. We hope this collection of articles will help you in the journey of self-education about VoIP and the Telecom sector. Finding the best VoIP phone systems for your business is an important task, especially if you plan to compete with more experienced industry participants or to expand business internationally. When choosing a VoIP phone for your office, it is essential to select one that best fits your company. Now it is a great time to move from a traditional service provider to a VoIP solution, considering the new technologies and advances in VoIP business phone systems. Full article: https://voip.review/2020/11/23/how-to-set-up-voip-for-your-office/ Maintaining an edge over competition, staying on track with ever-shifting customer needs and seeing steady revenue…
The two companies, Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier and Orange International Carriers, have announced the successful completion of a Proof of Concept (PoC) project to improve IPX services using blockchain technology. According to the statement, they were able to validate that blockchain can be used by operators to expedite the automatic transaction of end-to-end network KPIs between providers. This provides operators with an opportunity to offer improved quality of service (QoS) and enhance network performance forecasting and incident management. The cooperation between the carriers for this initiative was announced back in June. IPX systems are fundamental components for enabling international and domestic roaming services. Also, full-service level agreements (SLAs) on critical IPX networks are essential for ensuring that mobile operators can provide the best network quality. The companies said the results of the study will be presented to the GSMA. Emmanuel Rochas, CEO of Orange International Carriers, said:…
TIM, Telefonica and Claro take over Brazil’s Oi mobile assets in $3.2 billion bid On Monday, TIM Participacoes, Telefonica Brasil SA and America Movil SAB de CV’s Claro won an auction to acquire the mobile operations of Brazil’s Oi SA with a joint bid of $3.23 billion. According to the announcement, TIM will be taking over 40% of Oi’s customers (around 14.5 million people), more than half of the company’s spectrum allocation (49 MHz), and 49% of its mobile sites (around 7,200 locations). As a result, it paid the largest portion of the bid, around $1.44 billion. For $1.08 billion, Telefonica is gaining 10.5 million customers, 43 MHz of spectrum, and 2,700 mobile sites. Claro’s $710 million gained the company around 11.6 million customers and 4,700 mobile sites, but no spectrum. TIM, Telefonica and Claro have also offered Oi a long-term contract to rent its telecom infrastructure. Read more at…
Proximus Group, Belgium’s largest telecommunications company, has announced the acquisition of Mobile Vikings, a youth-oriented mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), from DPG Media for $158 million. In its report, Proximus stated that Mobile Vikings, which employs around 80 people, would act as a separate entity if the transaction were to be completed, as it is subject to approval by the Belgian Competition Authority. The transaction, which is expected to close next year, will give the current Belgian company around 335,000 additional customers. Proximus would also acquire Jim Mobile, which is part of the Mobile Vikings entity, as part of the transaction. According to the Belgian company, acquiring the Mobile Vikings was in fulfilment of its strategy up to 2022, which aims to open up opportunities in additional market segments and optimize its position in the residential sector. In purchasing Mobile Vikings, the company considered factors such as network…
Telinta, a global leader in cloud-based VoIP switching and billing solutions, has announced the deployment of additional infrastructure in Bangalore, India. These new facilities expand the company’s previous deployments in key global telecommunications markets in North America, Europe and Asia. The infrastructure deployment in India complements Telinta’s already existing facilities at 165 Halsey Street near New York, as well as additional infrastructure in Dallas, Frankfurt, London, New York, Newark, Singapore, Tokyo and Toronto. The facilities in these global markets provide Telinta VoIP’s service providers’ customers with significant additional availability, reliability and performance. The company’s award-winning cloud-based platform TeliCoreTM is the largest hosted softswitch of its kind anywhere in the world. This carrier-grade Class 4 and 5 platform integrates cutting-edge switching, billing and customer management to offer white label solutions to VoIP providers. Alex Ferdman, CEO of Telinta, said: “Telinta has deployed infrastructure around the world, so that…
Telecommunications trends tend to change dramatically every year. No one could have foreseen where 2020 would take us: during this year there were more digital transformations than in the whole of the last decade, with these transformations being accelerated by the global pandemic. Given the modernization of technology and the current situation, customer demand for reliable services has grown significantly. This means major changes and even more challenges for the telecommunications industry. With 2021 being within arm’s reach, let us take a look at the future trends and forecasts for the telecommunications and VoIP industry. 5G will go mainstream, with 6G being planned 5G technology is one of the most discussed trends in the telecommunications market today. 5G is a revolutionary fifth-generation wireless networking technology that will radically change the Internet. Its main advantages are faster internet speeds and shorter response times, while eliminating packet loss and network congestion during…
O2 UK to use OpenRAN to improve indoor connectivity O2 has tested Vilicom’s OpenRAN technology to make it cheaper for businesses to get 4G and 5G indoor coverage. Vilicom, together with cloud network provider Mavenir, offers the virtualized OpenRAN-based connectivity-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform. O2 said it was the first operator to test the platform and said it was doing so well, that they will connect the trial version to their live network next year. O2 is of the opinion that the virtualized platform would lower indoor cellular network costs and space needs, which it said would become very important to UK PLC after the coronavirus. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/y4aepnko A peek into Microsoft’s edge compute ambitions Judson Althoff, Microsoft’s EVP of Worldwide Commercial Business, unveiled some of the company’s ambitions at a UBS Global TMT virtual conference. According to Althoff, Microsoft is increasingly introducing edge computing capabilities. Some of the uses…