The American mobile chip making giant, Qualcomm, is trying to persuade the US government to allow them to sell its chips to Huawei for their 5G smartphones. According to reports, Qualcomm selling its 5G chips to the Chinese multinational technology company might end up helping American business. The US trade ban on Huawei has severely affected the manufacturer’s inventories. When the US increased sanctions against Huawei in May, it was immediately clear that it would be a huge blow to the Chinese seller, as the company would no longer be able to use components from US suppliers. In fact, the impact of sanctions quickly proved to be as expected. Just last week, Huawei announced that its latest flagship smartphone, Huawei Mate 40, would be the last model to use high-end Kirin processors manufactured by its subsidiary HiSilicon. The US trade ban on Huawei will not prevent the…
IPFone, a provider of cloud-based business unified communications and telephony services, together with Ribbon Communications Inc., a global provider of real time communications software and network solutions to service providers, enterprises and critical infrastructure sectors, announced that they are making use of Ribbon‘s Intelligent Edge portfolio to ensure that their customers are able to seamlessly work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ribbon‘s EdgeMarc 2900, deployed at several IPFone sites in various states, helps support IPFone’s business customers as the company experiences an increase in its network usage. EdgeMarc devices are located at the edges of the customer network to ensure the successful deployment of IP-based communications services that improve voice quality, security and visibility on the customer network. Also, the EdgeMarc 2900 allows IPFone to easily adapt to the smallest or largest customer installations, while providing secure service delivery capabilities. This architecture enables the company to proactively keep…
The Apiary Capital portfolio company Conn3ct, a provider of unified communications, contact center and global network service solutions, has acquired ICR Speech Solutions and Services Limited (ICR), a highly specialized speech application development company involved in interactive voice response (IVR) and next-generation speech bot technology. Conn3ct said that this acquisition is a major event in the company’s strategy, and adds important skills and intellectual property to IVR, which is essential for delivering an optimum call center customer experience. According to a statement, this partnership with ICR will enable Conn3ct to offer a fully automated caller experience, where complex queries are quickly identified and routed to a live agent. IVR is a critical contact center technology that provides the initial response to the calling customers before they reach an agent. Substantial advances in technology and the introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning have driven IVR from basic call management to…
Salt Security raises $20 million to protect APIs with AI US-based Salt Security, a cybersecurity startup that helps companies protect APIs, has closed a USD 20 million Series A round. The company plans to use the new capital to renew its investments in product development and expand its sales and marketing teams. Salt’s platform aims to prevent cyber attacks with a combination of AI and machine learning techniques. It analyzes a copy of the traffic from web, software-as-a-service, mobile, microservice, and the Internet of Things (IoT) app APIs. Salt uses this process to understand each API and creates the basis for normal behavior tailored to customers and their applications. After that, Salt reveals anomalies that are identified as indicators of an attack during reconnaissance. Read more at https://tinyurl.com/y88n2l7r Lenovo delivers world’s first 5G laptop with Verizon, EE, Sunrise and CMCC Lenovo, one of the world’s leading personal technology companies producing innovative PCs and mobile…
Spanish telecom operator MasMovil agrees $3.3 billion private equity bid KKR, Cinven and Providence have made their Public Acquisition Offer for Spanish telecoms operator MasMovil. The three venture capital funds have proposed to pay EUR 22.5 per share of the telco, which is valued at almost EUR 3 billion. According to the statement, KKR, Cinven and Providence will pay a 20 percent premium on the current MasMovil share price. Meinrad Spenger, MasMovil Chief Executive, said that they have signed an agreement with the bidders on a deal which would be “beneficial for the shareholders and other stakeholders in the company.” Furthermore, the bidders noted that they would maintain continuity in MasMovil’s strategy, staff and executive team. Read more at https://tinyurl.com/y754vsc9 Google Cloud signs major UK government deal The technology giant Google Cloud has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) to make its cloud solutions…
US-based Reinvent Telecom, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saddleback Communications operating a private-label communications platform as a service (CPaaS), has enhanced the security for its real-time business VoIP, video, unified communications (UC) and collaboration services. The company has now deployed carrier-grade VoIP/SIP security, threat intelligence analytics and fraud-detection technology in cooperation with RedShift Networks, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions for communications service providers. Reinvent Telecom provides the ability for its wholesale partners to deliver secure, reliable and high-quality Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), conferencing and collaboration, Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and SIP trunking services. Bill Bryant, President at Reinvent Telecom, said, “At Reinvent, we understand that today’s VoIP networks are as vulnerable to cyberattacks as data networks. That’s why we’re doubling down on network security to give our partners and their customers the protection – and peace of mind – they deserve.” The wholesale UCaaS provider…
Openreach adopts Nokia’s 10Gbps FTTP broadband kit for the UK The Finnish telecom equipment manufacturer Nokia has announced that Openreach will deploy its next-generation fiber solutions. This will help meet Openreach’s target to bring ultra-fast and reliable broadband access to 20 million homes across the UK by the mid-to-late 2020s. Clive Selley, CEO of Openreach, said, “This new digital platform will help our economy to bounce back more quickly from the COVID-19 pandemic – enabling people to continue work from home, and millions of businesses to operate seamlessly online for decades to come.” This supplier agreement also marks a shift away from reliance on Huawei equipment for the UK’s largest broadband networks. Read more at https://tinyurl.com/yb6cj6jn Google and Apple’s joint COVID-19 contact tracing API now available to health authorities Apple and Google have released the first public version of their jointly developed API for COVID-19 tracing apps. This software will enable public health authorities to…
Facebook, telcos to build a huge subsea cable for Africa and the Middle East Facebook, together with a group of telecom companies, including Vodafone, Orange, STC, China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Telecom Egypt, and WIOCC, will build a subsea cable system that is claimed to be one of the largest in the world. The project is called 2Africa and will cover 37,000 km of cables interconnecting Europe (eastward via Egypt), the Middle East (via Saudi Arabia), and 21 landings in 16 countries in Africa. The system is expected to go live in 2023/4, delivering more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa today, with a design capacity of up to 180 Tbps. Read more at https://tinyurl.com/yahgfe8g Workvivo raises $16 million to reinvent the intranet in the age of Slack and Zoom The Irish startup Workvivo, an employee communications platform, has raised USD 16 million in a Series A…
The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), a non-profit industry organization representing mobile industry suppliers worldwide, has expanded its membership by welcoming nine new companies from the global 4G and 5G mobile ecosystem. The GSA said that it has so far accepted Approve-IT as a new ordinary member together with eight new associate members, including the French telecom regulator ARCEP and the Singaporean regulator IMDA. In March 2020, the association also extended its Executive Committee by adding ZTE as an executive member along with Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung. Joe Barrett, the President of the GSA, said, “The global mobile industry is not only highly competitive, it’s also highly collaborative. 5G doesn’t belong to one company or country; there is a whole ecosystem of regulators, vendors and operators who are working together to drive global harmonization of spectrum, innovation in networks and devices, and new use cases for 5G…
BEREC says COVID-19 won’t break the internet The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has announced that the increase in Internet usage across the continent is more or less stabilizing and that networks have been able to withstand the pressure. BEREC said that national regulatory authorities (NRAs) have reported “a stabilization in the overall traffic, but some NRAs still observe an increase of the overall traffic.” Some operators have expanded their network’s capacity to cope with the steady growth of traffic. According to the organization, “operators, which did not take any such measure, are still closely monitoring their network’s capacity to check if an upgrade is necessary.” Read more at https://tinyurl.com/rxmg53l Vodafone slashes costs of core network functions across Europe using VMware’s telco cloud The UK-based telecoms operator Vodafone has completed the deployment of a single digital network architecture across all of its 21 European business markets, using…

