A historic milestone for the Canadian telecommunications sector was realized as Rogers Communications Inc. announced it had successfully concluded its merger with Shaw Communications Inc. The merger unites two famous Canadian companies that have been connecting Canadians for over five decades. The merger creates a coast-to-coast nationwide company which has fiber-powered internet that is accessible to nearly 70% of Canadian households. The newly combined company plans to bundle more products and services, including internet, television, phone, smart home monitoring, wireless services, credit card offers and sports and media content. In the next five years, the company intends to spend billions of dollars to offer fast, reliable networks in additional towns across Western Canada. Rogers will invest $1 billion in the four Western provinces to link rural, remote and Indigenous communities, as well as unserved distant routes. The business also intends to invest $2.5 billion to expand and strengthen…
During Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Arizona, Verizon customers broke the company’s data use record. On game day, 60% of the 67,827 spectators used Verizon’s cellular network, consuming 47.8TB of data in and around State Farm Stadium. This statistic reflects a 36% increase in data use over Super Bowl LVI in 2022. The highest data use surges happened during the halftime performance and during kickoff. The network’s peak download rates reached 4,200Mbps, while the median download speeds were 2,300Mbps. A team of 100 Verizon engineers operated the Network Command Center 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide a dependable network experience for spectators, first responders and public safety teams. In preparation for the game, Verizon committed more than $100 million in network improvements and enhancements in and around State Farm Stadium and the surrounding Phoenix region. The company installed 5G Ultra-Wideband in various zones within…
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has put forward a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that gives airlines an additional year, until February 1, 2024, to address faulty altimeters in their aircraft. These altimeters, which measure an airplane’s height above the earth’s surface, are present on 7,993 planes registered in the United States. The FAA believes that 180 of these altimeters will need to be completely replaced, while 820 will need filters added to comply with the proposed modification requirement. This upgrade is expected to cost a total of $26 million. The ruling is part of a settlement reached between the aviation and cellular sectors after AT&T and Verizon paid $69 billion for C-Band spectrum licenses. Airplane altimeters typically operate in the 4.2 – 4.4 GHz frequency, but certain altimeters cannot filter out 5G signals from the carriers’ spectrum in the 3.7-3.98 GHz range. The FAA is therefore…
Orange has announced a partnership with Reservoir Sun, a pioneer in self-supply solar energy systems. The aim of this arrangement is to build a photovoltaic power plant at the major satellite communications station Bercenay-en-Othe (Aube), in order to provide environmentally favorable outcomes for France and Europe. The communications corporation is shifting its usage toward renewable energy sources and speeding up the process by utilizing solar energy in its tertiary and technical facilities. The solar energy farm is scheduled to be completed in 2025. A surface area of 50,000 square meters will be occupied by the farm. The power plant, which has a 5 MW capacity, 1 MW for self-consumption and 4 MW for reinjection, will provide 20% of the site’s energy requirements. Additionally, using low-carbon energy from the sun will reduce CO2 emissions by nearly 100 tons per year. An environmental impact analysis study will be conducted…
T-Mobile sells its wireline business for $1 On Wednesday, T-Mobile US reached an agreement to sell Cogent Communications Holdings, its wireline operations, for $1, taking a $1 billion write-down charge in the process. The wireline industry, which generated $739 million in revenue last year, houses communications systems, data processing machinery and fiber optic cable. In accordance with the deal, Cogent will also acquire some business-related liabilities in addition to the fiber network, related assets and customers. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/yckz82n2 SES and LiveU launch an integrated video solution In order to provide a complete solution for live video contribution and distribution along with premium content aggregation, SES has partnered with LiveU. Customers will now have access to the most reliable and affordable live video creation and distribution systems for broadcasting live sports, news and other events from stadiums, sporting venues and distant locations. SES broadcasts more than 700 hours of…
By 2026, the global market for A2P SMS is expected to be worth $74.7 billion. The rising usage of customer and employee engagement by large and medium-sized businesses around the world is expected to fuel this growth in the global market. A2P messaging, also known as application-to-person messaging, describes any type of traffic in which a person receives messages from an application. This type of communication is often referred to as professional or enterprise messaging, and generally consists of one-way messages that do not require a response. Given that over 98% of text messages are opened, A2P messages are very likely to be read, providing businesses with a cost-effective option for improving customer interaction. A2P SMS is used by a wide range of companies and industries to send messages to customers, including banking notifications, marketing notifications, two-factor authentication SMS authorizations, automated booking confirmations, as well as to deliver…
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…
With 5G networks still being deployed around the globe and 4G and even 3G networks still in use in many parts of the world, the term 6G is already a huge topic in the industry. 6G is the name for what will be the sixth generation in cellular technology, with a particular focus on increasing the capabilities and reducing the latency of wireless and edge networks. These are early days in the life of 6G and thus far this technology is only a theoretical discussion. The networks of the future will be a key component in virtually all areas of our lives, society and industry, meeting the communications needs of people and intelligent machines. So, let us dive into the world of 6G and explore what possibilities it holds. What will 6G be? 6G will be the sixth generation of mobile communications. It is still obscure what the final form…
Cisco, a global giant and provider of IT, networking and cybersecurity solutions, has announced that it has received the final regulatory approval for a $4.5 billion agreement to purchase Acacia. The merger was reportedly approved by the Chinese government’s State Market Regulatory Administration (SAMR) on Tuesday. The consent from SAMR was the last hurdle to clear for Cisco to complete the deal. Cisco’s plans to acquire Acacia Communications were first announced in July of 2019. The deal was on a fully diluted basis to buy the company for $70 per share in cash for a total of $2.6 billion. Cisco had then received the regulatory go-ahead from the United States, Germany and Austria. Cisco has received the approval under certain conditions. According to SAMR, the deal could progress as long as Cisco and Acacia continue to fulfill existing contracts in China, as well as supply Chinese companies in…
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…