The Chinese tech company OPPO, currently the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in its home country after Huawei, has announced a comprehensive partnership agreement with the UK-based telecom giant Vodafone. Under the deal, Vodafone will become an OPPO partner and bring its full-range of 4G and 5G smartphones to retail and online channels in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Turkey and the Netherlands. According to the announcement, the collaboration between the two companies will give customers more choice and accelerate 5G adoption in Vodafone’s international markets. Driven by strong growth ambitions, an innovative product portfolio and advanced 5G technology expertise, the leading Chinese smartphone brand has been very successful in its domestic market. With annual handset shipments of more than 100 million units, OPPO believes that it is “a natural partner for Vodafone’s leading gigabit network”. Alen Wu, Vice President and President of Global Sales at OPPO, said, “OPPO…
DIDWW, an Irish-based telecom operator providing global telecommunication services, has enabled free outbound calling to COVID-19 hotlines to help collaboration amid widespread coronavirus lockdowns. The company said that all customers using DIDWW outbound trunks and virtual DID numbers as caller IDs can now access local COVID-19 hotlines at no additional charge in 17 countries. Lina Zaboras, CEO of DIDWW, said, “DIDWW leverages and opens up its global access to local telecommunications infrastructure to facilitate another essential service. While enabling local dialing to emergency and short numbers is quite challenging in the VoIP industry, we are successfully expanding these services with the latest addition of local dialing to COVID-19 hotlines over our global VoIP infrastructure. We encourage our wholesale customers to enable the access and route these calls for their end-users with the mission-critical DIDWW global network, free of charge.” In a statement, DIDWW noted that so far, they…
Tel Q Global, a telecom hub for voice and SMS services, has selected Singapore operator Cataleya for its global voice network virtualization. With its superior technology, innovative commercial models and a world-wide footprint, Cataleya will completely virtualize Tel Q Global’s international voice network, resulting in significant cost savings and operational simplicity. According to a statement, Tel Q Global required a switching and BSS service in three global regions to be able to launch their new virtual number services in the shortest possible time. These new solutions include mobile and two-way SMS numbers, and are a highly anticipated addition to the company’s existing portfolio of DID and toll-free numbers. Moreover, the nodes also need to be used as geographic backup sites for each other, should a major disruption occur in any of the hosting centers. Ankit Agarwal, CEO of Tel Q Global, said, “Before we moved to Cataleya, we…
Copenhagen, Denmark-based Dixa has raised USD 36 million in Series B funding for its customer engagement solution, dubbed the “customer friendship” platform. This global customer service tech startup aims to create friendships between brands and their customers and will use this newly injected capital to accelerate the development of its product, expand innovations in data processing and enhance integration with third-party software. This Series B funding round was led by Notion Capital, with the support of existing investors Project A Ventures and SEED Capital. Jos White, General Partner at Notion Capital, stated, “Customer service is one of the largest software categories out there. And yet the market is still operating in transactional silos and not reflecting the world we live in. We think Dixa has what it takes to upend the industry with a platform that works across any channel and brings real-time intelligence to every conversation. We couldn’t…
The US tech company Ribbon Communications, a global software leader providing IP-based real-time communications security and software solutions, has extended its collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable the simplified forwarding of VoIP audio streams to Amazon Chime Voice Connector by using SIP-based Media Recording (SIPREC). Ribbon’s Session Border Controllers (SBCs) with SIPREC capabilities can forward audio streams to AWS for real-time, automated call analytics and recording. Ribbon is a member of the AWS Partner Network (APN), whose SBC Software Edition (SWe) is available in the AWS Marketplace and as an AWS Quick Start. In March 2019, Ribbon reported that its SBC SWe was successfully tested with the Amazon Chime Voice Connector, to help customers move their SIP trunking workloads to AWS. The company said that IT professionals can use the Connector for low-cost SIP trunking with on-premises or cloud-based phone systems. Sid Rao, General Manager at Amazon…
An independent news platform Telecoms.com has recently published its Annual Industry Survey 2019, with the main focus being on topics such as industry updates, 5G rollout, digital transformation, the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as the modernization of Operations Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS). The survey, covering the industry landscape over the last 12 months and projecting into 2020, has revealed an optimistic forecast that is mainly supported by the launch of 5G commercial services, innovations and progress in other important areas of the industry. According to the report, the single biggest change in the industry landscape over the past year was the deployment of commercial 5G services in different parts of the world. Regardless of the fact that the best-selling service is high-speed Internet access (mobile and fixed), B2B services, including 5G serving other vertical industries, will undoubtedly play a much more significant role…
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…
CounterPath Corporation, a Canadian software company that delivers Unified Communications (UC) solutions to businesses and service providers, has announced its membership in the Cloud Communications Alliance (CCA). As a peer organization that has a mandate to foster the expansion, availability and adoption of hosted communications services worldwide, the CCA provides a forum for industry leaders to discuss the most relevant topics. Todd Carothers, Chief Revenue Officer at CounterPath, said, “The CCA comprises some of the world’s leading cloud communications experts, vendors and strategists, and CounterPath is thrilled to be joining this fast-growing community. When extending the offer of membership into the organization, the CCA cited CounterPath’s long-term leadership in cloud communications as well as the ongoing technical innovations we have introduced to the market, including our award-winning Bria and Stretto solutions. We look forward to working with the CCA’s leadership team and members to advance the state of the cloud communications…
The three largest telecommunications providers in Germany, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Vodafone, have announced a partnership to build 6,000 new mobile sites in order to improve broadband coverage in the country. The companies are planning to work closely together and share the use of the network, aiming to provide the best possible mobile broadband coverage for customers in rural areas, as well as along road, rail and inland waterway transportation routes. This is a condition that the operators are required to fulfill as specified in the 5G spectrum auction held by German federal regulators earlier this year. Dirk Wossner, Telekom Deutschland’s Managing Director, said, “The planned collaboration is a milestone for network expansion in Germany. Our common goal is to eliminate coverage gaps in the mobile network as soon as possible. Sharing infrastructure is nothing new for us. Sharing it at this scale, however, is a major step in the right…
The latest report by the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) indicates that the 50th commercial 5G network has now been launched, following the activation of 5G services in China. All the three state-backed telecom operators, China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom have launched next-gen networks and have already registered more than 9 million 5G subscribers. The GSA 5G Market Snapshot marks this deployment as the 50th commercial roll out of a 5G network. Joe Barrett, the President of the GSA, said, “I think that we have all been surprised by how quickly 5G has taken off, with deployments and commitments from across the globe gathering pace. This latest milestone, combined with commercial launches in the world’s largest mobile market, is set to lead to an explosion in 5G users and also have a knock-on impact on driving both use cases and innovation.” By the end of October 2019, the…