The French international IT services and consulting company Atos has announced the first release of Unify Office (UO) in the UK. This initiative is a combined effort with RingCentral, a global provider of cloud communications, collaboration, video conferencing and contact center solutions. This announcement follows a similar US rollout earlier in January. Unify Office is a cloud team collaboration and communications service provided by Atos Unify together with RingCentral. Unify Office delivers all features required by present-day team members, in one place, on any device, and from anywhere. Unify Office enables businesses to easily communicate and collaborate with best-of-class voice, video and team messaging functionalities. This can be done from anywhere and using any device by means of a single enterprise solution. By using Unified Office, customers can move from traditional on-premises telephony systems to Unify Office under RingCentral at their own pace, while continuing to use…
Telecommunications giant Telefónica has expanded its long-standing technology partnership with IBM and announced the release of Cloud Garden 2.0, the next step in Telefonica’s cloud services platform to accelerate application modernization. Cloud Garden 2.0 is supported on IBM Cloud Pak and Red Hat OpenShift. The first iteration of Cloud Garden, launched in 2019, was originally based on IBM Cloud Private technology. However, Cloud Garden 2.0 switched to the hybrid Red Hat OpenShift cloud Kubernetes platform and the IBM Cloud Pak for Application. Telefónica customers can now run their applications on containers on premises or in the cloud environment of their choice, along with the simplification and speeding up when launching new solutions. Cloud Garden 2.0 is hosted through Telefonica’s Virtual Data Center in Spain, helping its customers experience low latency and better uptime for managing their applications. Andrés López Hedoire, de Enterprise Product Marketing Director, Telefónica España, commented:…
The international telecommunications company, Colt Technology Services Group, has announced that it is releasing its Cloud Session Border Controller (SBC) in partnership with AudioCodes. This cloud-based voice solution provides Direct Routing as a Service to quickly enable PSTN calls for Microsoft Teams. The Colt Cloud SBC provides an important step towards speeding up and simplifying the implementation of PSTN calling in Teams. With Direct Routing as-a-service, provided by the cloud-based voice solution, users do not require on-premises hardware or hardware in a data center. According to the company, the new service provided more efficiency for both large and small businesses, as onboarding was completed in less than a week. Developed in collaboration with AudioCodes, a leading provider of smart voice networks, this new offering is an extension of Colt’s Intelligent Communications offering that was launched in 2019. The power of Microsoft 365 and Teams, along with Colt’s voice and…
Robocalls are not only annoying, they are potentially dangerous and are progressively becoming an even bigger problem. Sadly, it does not look like the situation will improve in 2021, as there were 22.8 billion total robocalls recorded at the midway point of 2020. Robocalls are phone calls made by an automatic dialer that transmits pre-recorded messages. While this may not seem like an issue, it can be. Some robotic calls may be from legitimate sources, but they may also be scams designed to deceive or bully people to provide personal information.
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…
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…
Zoom and Lumen advance their partnership The telecommunications company Lumen is already a partner of Zoom, but Lumen has recently announced that it has advanced the partnership further to introduce Zoom delivered by Lumen. Zoom delivered by Lumen combines the embedded network security capabilities of Lumen with Zoom’s integrated security features to actively protect businesses using their combined services. Shaun Andrews, CMO at Lumen, said: “We’re happy to take this partnership a step further by combining our platforms and our strengths to create Zoom delivered by Lumen. Together, we will help keep families, businesses, schools and hospitals securely connected to the world, and thriving in the fourth industrial revolution.” Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/y4luab48 BT to deploy their global network cloud next year BT has been working on their BT Network Cloud for some time now, since deciding to focus on this cloud-native platform. BT has Network Cloud nodes in the…
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. Benefits of VoIP phone systems There are many benefits in switching to a VoIP telephone system. In fact, every business stands to greatly benefit by implementing this sophisticated communications technology. Here are some of the advantages that VoIP can bring to your business: Lower costs VoIP telephone system utilizes Internet Protocol for voice traffic instead of using telephone lines, and all communication data is sent over the IP network. Because the data is sent…
European Commission staying out of O2 UK and Virgin Media UK merger Typically, the European Commission, or one of the myriad other state-owned organizations that are a part of the EU, would be involved in the proposed merger between O2 UK and Virgin Media UK. However, in this case, these organizations are steering clear of this deal. The theory is this: because the UK will no longer be part of the EU from the beginning of next year, the EU will no longer be interested in what UK companies do. Even if the EU had not made this decision now, it is likely that they would have just waited until 2021, when its jurisdiction over UK matters comes to an end. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/y2n84cgn Telia Carrier expands its connectivity in US Telia Carrier is expanding its coverage in the US, while increasing the diversity and range of its routes.…