Telefonica piloting blockchain across 8,000 companies Telecoms multinational Telefonica has teamed up with the Association of Science and Technology Parks (APTE) to provide approximately 8,000 companies in Spain with access to a secure, decentralised blockchain network. Telefonica plans to launch a three-month pilot project that will encourage companies to develop their own decentralised applications on the blockchain at no extra cost, and will also allow them to experiment with their own digital tokens. Blockchain is being widely adopted in a variety of industries, especially in the field of IoT, where 75 percent of IoT technology users in the US already use blockchain or plan to do so by the end of 2020. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/t8z8p9d Samsung Galaxy Fold sales figures revealed, and they’re worse than earlier reports Samsung Electronics sold close to half a million of its Galaxy Fold smartphones last year. Speaking to the Yonhap News Agency at CES 2020,…
Spanish wireless infrastructure giant Cellnex Telecom has acquired the Portuguese telecommunications tower and site operator OMTEL, owned by Altice Europe and Belmont Infra Holding. This agreement is worth around EUR 800 million, and the acquisition includes the projected deployment of 400 new mobile cell sites in the next four years, adding to the 3,000 sites that OMTEL currently operates in Portugal. Cellnex said that to facilitate the upcoming 5G roll-out in Portugal, the company has been rapidly expanding, and its build-to-suit (BTS) program could involve constructing a further 350 sites for third parties by 2027. The estimated investment for this BTS plan is expected to be EUR 140 million. The Spanish towerco anticipates that this acquisition will increase the company’s sales backlog by EUR 2.5 billion to EUR 38.5 billion. Tobias Martinez, CEO of Cellnex, said, “With OMTEL, we are not only integrating one of the leading independent…
DIDWW, a telecommunication service provider headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, has recently added two-way SMS services in the USA and Canada to their peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging coverage. The company has made this highly-requested service available through SMS-enabled local virtual numbers covering over 3000 area codes in the United States and over 1000 area codes in Canada. In a statement, this leading global supplier of innovative, high-tech IP-based communications and SIP trunking services said that this significant addition of two-way SMS coverage to a wide range of DIDWW services opens up great opportunities, such as personal customer and support agent communications, private communications between users, service provider and customer notifications, and the general provision of SMS services in one of the largest economies in the world. Furthermore, the two-way SMS service can be combined with simultaneous voice calls, thus making these SMS-enabled virtual numbers a highly efficient communication tool. DIDWW sets itself apart from…
The non-profit industry group i3forum, which focuses on transformation in the network carrier business, has announced the addition of three new members – Clear, Digicel and Lanck Telecom. Clear specializes in blockchain-based settlement and clearing networks, Digicel provides total communications and home entertainment services in 33 markets across the Caribbean, Central America and the Asia Pacific regions, and Lanck Telecom offers voice and data transfer services to carriers and retail operators in more than 190 countries worldwide. “New members bring new perspectives and insight to our discussions, workgroups and initiatives. We are excited to have Clear, Digicel and Lanck Telecom join us and share their expertise across a variety of topics. Unique voices and opinions support our vision for open and inclusive collaboration,” said Philippe Millet, Chairman at i3forum. “It is a very exciting time for i3forum as we get new initiatives off the ground and take our organization to new places. I’d…
Apple now owns Intel’s mobile modem business Intel, a leader in the semiconductor industry, has completed the sale of the majority of its smartphone modem business to Apple. The company said this transaction enables it to focus on developing 5G network technology while maintaining the ability to create modems for non-smartphone applications, such as PCs, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and autonomous vehicles. Apple now uses Qualcomm for 4G LTE and 5G modems for iPhones. With this acquisition, Apple is planning to develop its own modems for smartphones in 2021. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/rqmu724 Orange unveils new five-year grand plan Orange, a French multinational telecommunications corporation, has introduced “Engage 2025”, its new strategy that follows on from the Essentials 2020 plan launched in 2015. The corporation has revealed its goals for the coming years, emphasizing that its business model will be guided by social and environmental responsibility. Considering the operator’s business…
Ericsson, one of the world’s leading providers of technology and services to telecom operators, has completed the first transglobal 5G data call over live commercial 5G networks, showcasing its Spectrum Sharing technology. Through their collaboration with 5G ecosystem industry leaders Qualcomm Technologies, Swisscom and Telstra, and using a 5G smartphone from Chinese manufacturer OPPO, Ericsson continues to demonstrate its drive towards commercial dynamic spectrum sharing. The Swedish tech giant said that the November 29 data call connected Bern, Switzerland and the Gold Coast, Australia using Ericsson Spectrum Sharing deployed on Swisscom’s and Telstra’s commercial 5G networks at the respective sites. The call was achieved using spectrum sharing on a 3GPP Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) band and pre-commercial OPPO 5G handsets employing the Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System. Moreover, OPPO is the first 5G device manufacturer to implement Ericsson Spectrum Sharing in its smartphones. As part of the…
Telefonica launches Tech and Infra units amid Latam spin-off Spain’s telecom giant Telefonica has announced a major organisational restructuring after a meeting of its board of directors. The company’s chairman and CEO Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete has introduced a new bold strategy to spin off company assets and prepare for industry 4.0. With its 5-point plan, Telefonica aims to generate more than EUR 2 billion a year in additional revenues from 2022, by prioritising its four key markets of Spain, Brazil, the UK and Germany and carrying out an “operational spin-off” of its Latin American business. The company will also set up a subsidiary for its cloud, cybersecurity and IoT businesses called Telefonica Tech and another for its infrastructure assets, Telefonica Infra. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/wjkobwc AT&T and Microsoft launch edge computing network Microsoft and AT&T have integrated 5G with Azure to launch their new Network Edge Compute (NEC) service for…
French operator Bouygues Telecom and US-based TeleSign Corporation, a provider of user verification and Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) solutions owned by BICS (Belgacom International Carrier Services), have agreed on a new partnership. Under the agreement, Bouygues Telecom will gain access to TeleSign’s mobile identity products to protect its users from online identity theft and fraud activities such as Account Takeover (ATO) through SIM Swap and Synthetic Identity fraud. In the press release announcing the deal, Ravish Patel, Director of Mobile Identity at TeleSign, claimed that Mobile Identity represents a massive opportunity for mobile operators to play an important role in today’s digital disruption. “TeleSign has been working with mobile operators, guiding them on key aspects around the opportunity, use cases and privacy principles,” commented Patel. The announcement also points to breakthrough innovations in the European digital market in recent years, as more and more digital businesses…
Gamma Communications, a rapidly growing provider of communications services to the UK business market, has announced its acquisition of Telsis Communication Services, a UK-based developer of unified communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) products for small to medium-size enterprises (SMEs). Gamma anticipates that this acquisition will bring the right combination of specialist development skills and engineering expertise, thus helping the company to achieve its strategic goal of becoming a leading UCaaS campaigner. Andrew Taylor, Chief Executive of Gamma, said, “We’re really pleased to announce the acquisition of Telsis. The development skills they have are core to Gamma’s UCaaS strategy and we plan to enhance our existing engineering teams to provide more resource to accelerate our existing roadmap. We look forward to working alongside the Telsis team as we continue to grow Gamma and capitalise on the opportunities ahead.” The transaction, the value of which is estimated between GBP 2 to 3 billion, follows…
Peerless Network, Ribbon Team Up to Help Businesses Mitigate Unwanted Robocalls Ribbon Communications, a global software leader in secure IP-based real-time communications, and Peerless Network have joined forces to provide businesses with advanced protection against unwanted robocalling. Peerless Network, which provides telecommunication services and high-quality voice solutions for enterprise customers worldwide, will leverage Ribbon’s advanced security technology to power its new offering designed to combat robocalling. Peerless CallTrue gives its customers more options to deal with those nuisance calls. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/rzwk7dy Vodafone picks Google Cloud to develop and host its global data platform Vodafone Group, one of the world’s leading telecom and technology services companies, has come into partnership with Google Cloud to host its strategic cloud platform for data analytics, business intelligence and machine learning. According to the announcement, Vodafone’s Neuron big-data analytics platform will leverage Google Cloud to enhance its operations by making Vodafone’s existing software…