Vodafone Germany to build new base stations and 5G Vodafone Germany has announced that it will undertake more than 7,000 mobile infrastructure construction projects including 3,000 5G projects, which it estimates will support 9,000 5G antennas. The projects will take place in the current financial year, which began in April. The company says it has exceeded its 5G coverage targets by expanding the network to 25 million subscribers, and estimates that it will soon cover 30 million consumers with 5G. In addition, Vodafone has also announced that it is swapping the L3G spectrum for LTE by switching 18,000 3G sites to 4G ones this summer. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/a5a7txbf Virgin Media shares its sustainability results Virgin Media released its latest sustainability report this week, which examines the ways that the company has supported its employees and customers during the pandemic and how it continues to deal with the climate crisis.…
Contributed by Maor Efrati, CTO at monogoto My generation grew up in the early days of the internet and global connectivity. The only truly global network was the phone network. Any content or other service was provided by a local operator. We saw the internet as a global network but mostly as a way to share and access information. A huge revolution parallel to the WWW was the OTT ‘over the top’. It’s not an information revolution but a brand new business model for a whole new set of companies to become a service provider without a physical connection to the consumer. OTT has revolutionized the way many businesses operate. In the early 2000s, operators and service providers generated most of their income from all kinds of content: TV, Voice, SMS, Ringtones, Stickers, etc. The internet brought a new wave of companies, technically new service providers, companies that…
Contributed by Maor Efrati, CTO at monogoto Working from home: A lot has been said about increased productivity and family time as positively impacted during the COVID-19 quarantine. I am discovering that it’s also good for writing and for analyzing the many conversations that I and my monogoto.io partner Itamar Kunik have regarding cellular, WiFi, and the future of connectivity. @monogoto we are building an OTT cellular network. We are providing a connectivity service to any company that desires to have cellular connectivity as part of the offering or product. Simplifying the backend and network with strong API’s while keeping all the bells and whistles that a cellular network can support over a traditional last mile (RJ45 and WiFi). It will be interesting to see what plays out regarding WiFi vs Cellular as the last-mile provider. Some think cellular technology is the perfect solution for all wireless networks, while others hope…
Verizon buys Zoom rival BlueJeans for less than $500 million Verizon Business has announced a deal to purchase enterprise-grade video conferencing platform BlueJeans, thereby expanding Verizon’s unified communications portfolio and improving its service for business customers. This acquisition shows that the company is also trying to capitalize on the current trend of remote employees making extensive use of online services such as Zoom, Slack and Microsoft during the pandemic. BlueJeans has more than 15,000 customers, including Facebook, IBM-owned Red Hat, ADP, Zillow and LinkedIn. The deal is worth USD 500 million and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2020. Read more at https://tinyurl.com/yd9qtfhg Apple’s new iPhone SE is surprisingly powerful for $399 Apple is launching iPhone SE 2020, the second generation of its cheapest smartphone in the iPhone lineup, priced at just USD 399. The iPhone SE runs on Apple’s latest A13 Bionic chip that enables great battery…
Global satellite operator Telesat, the Vodafone Group and the University of Surrey in the UK, have successfully accomplished the world’s first 5G backhaul demonstration deploying a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) communications satellite. This successful trial demonstrates that LEO satellites are able to provide efficient backhaul transport channels for mobile network operators (MNOs), including for 5G advanced services. During the live test conducted by these partners in April, Telesat’s Phase 1 LEO satellite was connected to the University of Surrey’s 5G testbed network, with the support of specialist Vodafone engineers. Vodafone also provided some funding and arranged licensing for the demonstration system. John Miller, Head of Satellite Engineering at Vodafone, said: “The use of LEO satellites provides an additional mobile backhaul option and can be an important part of the delivery system particularly to customers in our markets who live in rural areas.” Professor Barry Evans, University of Surrey, said: “The University of Surrey is very…
We are rapidly evolving into a digital and decentralized society, where private keys on mobile devices will play a critical and indispensable role in ensuring the safety of our daily transactions and securing our digital identities. FIX Network are aiming to revolutionize the blockchain and cellular industries by providing mobile device users with innovative key holder and transaction security, coupled with a practical user experience. The underlying technology for securing the user’s private keys are the SIM cards used by mobile operators, enabled by the FIX Network open-source STK residing on those SIM cards. This standard SIM hardware, together with blockchain- powered, distributed policy engines that govern end-user transactions, form the architectural backbone of the FIX Network security solution. This solution introduces the concept of a pool of SIM cards, enhancing security, and at the same time, eliminating the possibility of a single point of failure. Multiple SIM…


