A leading communications solutions provider, BICS, has announced the release of their Local SMS Firewall, a fully managed end-to-end platform that helps operators protect and optimize their SMS traffic and revenues. This Local SMS Firewall oversees both A2P and P2P activities, and filters messages for unbillable traffic, thus preventing any loss of income. According to BICS, the introduction of their Local SMS Firewall was a natural reaction to the rapidly increasing number of A2P use cases and the demand for customer engagement. With mobile operators applying extra effort to boost customer satisfaction and taking advantage of A2P SMS opportunities, the new platform is a perfect tool for minimizing the decrease of revenue caused by traffic bypass. “BICS is dedicated to aiding operators in monetizing their SMS assets. SMS aggregators are always going to look for new ways to disrupt the industry, but with solutions like BICS’ Local SMS Firewall, the…
5G will be available for trial in seven cities across the UK. Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, and London were selected to run the tests on the upcoming network. Those new infrastructures will be running the new 5G at the end of 2018 between October and December. Earlier this year, Vodafone paid £378 million, to get 50Mhz of the 3.4GHz spectrum. Nick Jeffery, Vodafone’s chief executive stated, “We want to make 5G and new fibre broadband services available to consumers and business throughout the UK, delivering a Gigabit society for all. We will also be bringing ultra-fast 4G to several hundred sites in hard to reach rural areas this year, building on our position as the network that offers the best voice coverage in the UK.” Vodafone’s goal is to launch a full 5G service in the UK by 2020, when 5G devices will be available on the market.
After years of hype, we are looking forward to the impending rollout of 5G networks. This transformational technology will lay the foundation for many future services and change how we view productivity. But how will 5G affect you? Speed and responsiveness It is not yet possible to state definitively what network speeds will be reachable, but it is fair to say that the biggest benefit of 5G to the average user will be the speed of this service. Early estimates have shown that data rates could be up to a thousand times faster than 4G, potentially exceeding 10 Gbps. In practical terms, everything we currently do on the Internet would be significantly faster, and these speeds would enable users to download an entire HD film in a few seconds. Responsiveness or latency refers to the time between a request and a response. The ultra-low latency of 5G will result in response…
Security researchers from Rapid7 have found a large number of insecure UDP Internet services in Germany, which are used for VoIP. The researchers found nearly six million exposed SIP services on port 5060 / UPD, more than any other country in the world. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is used to establish a communication session in Internet telephony and is particularly difficult to secure. Only encrypted SIP (SIP-TLS on port 5061 / TCP) provides adequate protection against active and passive eavesdropping and toll fraud, but plain text SIP is still widely used in Germany. This is demonstrated by Rapid7’s new National Exposure Index, an annual ranking that examines the extent to which countries around the world are at risk of active cyber attacks. For the study, Rapid7s security researchers scoured the entire Internet for TCP / IP services that, for example, are not secured with modern encryption methods or offer…
One of Africa’s largest economy, if not the largest (an ongoing debate with South Africa), Nigeria’s VoIP sector has seen in increase of subscription over a period of 12 months. With 93% of growth on one year, VoIP went from 46,348 users in May 2017 to reaching 89,447 in April 2018. Out of the two main operators in that segment, Smile Communications is in charge of 93% of the market with 83,445 accounts against 6,032 for its smaller rival, Ntel network. Still, the VoIP technology is a very narrow market on a GSM-dominated market. So far VoIP represents 0.06% of communications when GSM accounts for 99.7%. This is mainly due to a lack of broadband penetration into the country’s infrastructure. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) assured that it expect to increase broadband penetration to 30%, compared to 22% right now, by putting on policies to achieve this goal. Prof. Umar…
The U.S. Congress is concerned about revelations of a deal that was made between Facebook and the Chinese device maker Huawei. Huawei is not the only device constructor to have a privilege access to data from Facebook, as Lenovo, Oppo and TCL are also on that list “Concerns about Huawei aren’t new – they were widely publicized beginning in 2012, when the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a well-read report on the close relationships between the Chinese Communist Party and equipment makers like Huawei,” said U.S. Senator Mark Warner. In an investigation done by the House Intelligence Committee, it was stated that “Huawei did not fully cooperate with the investigation and was unwilling to explain its relationship with the Chinese government or Chinese Communist Party, while credible evidence exists that it fails to comply with U.S. laws”. Moreover, the Chinese company has an history of collaboration with the…
Sprint announced that 5G PCs will be available to buy in their stores next year. Those computers will be built around Intel’s chips. The operator won’t be the only one to offer 5G PCs as Acer and Asus also recently declared their plan to produce 5G Intel-based computers. With Microsoft, Dell, HP and Lenovo having already announced their plan to launch 5G laptops, the market will see a total of six companies battling for this new segment, until others tech companies come out with their own project. Intel has fought hard for this, as the company met difficulties competing with Qualcomm in implementing its chips in connected devices, especially in 4G PCs that are supposed to be available in stores this year with Snapdragon chips inside.
Blockchain will be the next tool used by the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority in India) to fight against aggressive telemarketing, that is using spam calls and SMS. According to the TRAI, blockchain technology is able to track those annoying telemarketers. As they use unregistered phone numbers, they are usually hard to track, and with this new way of fighting against those marketing methods, India’s Telecom regulator will be the first to use blockchain as a mean of regulation. TRAI Chairman RS Sharma said: “Blockchain will ensure two things — non-repudiation and confidentiality. Only those authorized will be able to access details of a subscriber and only when they need to deliver service…“ and added that “TRAI will become the first organization to implement this kind of regulation on such a large scale,” 30 billion commercial calls or SMS are sent every month to users in India. Most of them are…
The Russian News Agency TASS reported that Apple and Google have been asked by the Russian authorities to remove Telegram Messenger from their stores. The request has been made in April 17th after a court ordered four days earlier that Telegram be taken off, has the company issuing the app refused to comply with the FSB’s request. The FSB asked Telegram to share its data, a demand the company refused to accept. The Russian telecom watchdog sent a notification to users concerning the use of Telegram and issued a statement saying: “In order to anticipate Roskomnadzor’s likely response to the violations regarding the operation of the aforesaid Apple, Inc. services we are asking you to notify us within the tightest deadlines of the company’s further actions regarding the solution of these issues.”


