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…
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…
The South Korean tech giant, Samsung Electronics, has announced an effective demonstration of what it terms the world’s first video call on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform using Mission Critical Push-to-Talk, Data and Video (MCPTX, also known as Mission Critical Communications), the communications functionality designed specifically for first responders. Based on 3GPP Release 14 specifications, this implementation was enabled by the successful onboarding, integration and deployment on AWS cloud. Wonil Roh, Senior Vice President and Head of Product Strategy, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, said, “This demonstration showcases how Samsung’s Mission Critical Communications solutions can manage public crises and be readily deployed on public cloud platforms. It also enables us to learn and adapt to the evolving needs of service providers and end-users alike. This brings a new level of broad coverage, scalability and reliability to mission critical service deployments, and we look forward to continuing our journey…
ITU platform to protect networks during Covid-19 The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has introduced the Global Network Resiliency Platform to help global networks remain “safer, stronger and more connected” in the face of increasing strain and growing demand during the coronavirus crisis. ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao said, “The new platform will assist governments and the private sector in ensuring that networks are kept resilient and telecommunication services are available to all.” Also, this platform will collect relevant information and expertise on actions that telecommunication policymakers and others in the regulatory community can use to ensure that their telecom networks serve the needs of their country. Read more at https://tinyurl.com/vam4enm Remote working triggers demand for chips, laptops, and network goods As more and more employees switch to remote work during the outbreak of coronavirus disease, the demand for laptops, networking goods and supply chain components has increased substantially. Therefore, electronics retailers and…
Work from home: Can the telecoms industry take the strain? Many businesses opt for remote working due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, and this has led to a dramatic increase in the use of online services. The additional pressure is proving problematic for the telecoms industry in Spain, which has reported a 40 percent increase in data consumption and a 50 percent increase in mobile phone usage. Movistar (Telefonica), Orange, Vodafone, Masmovil, and Euskaltel have issued a joint statement in anticipation of the national lockdown, urging customers to take “intelligent and responsible use of the network and the resources it provides us.” Meanwhile, BT, the UK’s largest telecom provider, said that its network can handle it. Read more at https://tinyurl.com/sm8bms7 Vodafone unveils five-point plan to combat COVID-19 Vodafone has put forward a five-point plan to maintain network services and assist governments across Europe in controlling the outbreak of coronavirus. The five…
A towering success: Cellnex revenue tops €1bn Cellnex Telecom’s revenue for 2019 exceeded EUR 1 billion with 67.5 percent of total income coming from infrastructure services it provides to operators. The Spanish wireless infrastructure operator currently owns 36,471 operative sites in eight European countries and plans to add 28,000 more as a result of ongoing acquisition deals pending completion. Cellnex has also announced a partnership with Bouygues Telecom to help them deploy their 5G network. The two companies have agreed to create a joint venture (51 percent Cellnex and 49 percent Bouygues Telecom) that will deploy and operate a fiber network connecting infrastructure equipment across France. Read more at https://tinyurl.com/s6fmz4h Google plans to invest $10 billion in US offices and data centers in 2020 Google has unveiled its plans to invest more than USD 10 billion in offices and data centers across the United States in 2020. Google and Alphabet…
The leading VoIP and unified communications (UC) services provider Vonage and a cloud-native UC integration management company Qunifi have joined forces to provide a fully integrated Microsoft Teams calling feature for Vonage Business Communications customers. Based in the UK, Qunifi operates the Call2Teams Microsoft Office 365 voice integration service that connects Microsoft Teams to any PBX or SIP trunk within minutes, enabling businesses to make and receive calls on any device using the Microsoft Teams application. Mark Herbert, Qunifi co-founder and CEO, said, “Customers are excited about using Microsoft Teams as a unified collaboration environment, but up to now, adding the Teams phone calling feature has been perceived as disruptive or costly. We have worked with Vonage to create a simple, per-user add-on to the Vonage Business Communications service, allowing customers to get all the benefits of Microsoft Teams while using the Vonage services they already have.” “Call2Teams is…
Apple unifies its app stores by extending the universal purchase option to Mac apps Apple has added the ability for its app developers to sell their cross-platform apps as one universal purchase, including apps that run on macOS. Consumers will just pay once for an app that works across devices such as iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and/or Mac. Developers can choose to create a new app for these platforms using a single app record in the App Store Connect or add platforms to their existing app record. In preparation for the changes, the App Store categories will be unified across the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, to make the apps more discoverable. Apple said that support for universal purchase will launch in March 2020. Read more at https://tinyurl.com/txqz6al Israeli B2B blockchain startup Clear banks $13m in series A funding Blockchain settlement startup Clear has raised USD 13 million in a Series A round.…
Six global carriers form a group for MEC, 5G interoperability Verizon, Vodafone, America Movil, KT Corporation, Rogers Communications, and Telstra have joined forces to form the first-of-its-kind cooperation, the 5G Future Forum. The world’s leading telecoms and technology service providers will work together to develop interoperable 5G specifications and mobile edge computing across key geographic regions, including the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe. According to the statement from the carriers, they will “develop public and private marketplaces to enhance developer and customer access to 5G, and will share global best practices in technology deployment.” Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/u3vdooh Google acquires no-code app development platform AppSheet Google has announced the acquisition of AppSheet, a no-code enterprise app development platform that allows developers without extensive programming knowledge to collect rich data, fill up apps with AI, or automatically move data. This works by extracting data from a spreadsheet, database or form, and using the…
Samsung Electronics has completed an agreement to acquire network services provider TeleWorld Solutions (TWS). Headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, TWS provides network design, testing and optimization services to mobile service and cable operators, equipment OEMs and other companies in the United States. This acquisition is expected to help Samsung address the need for end-to-end support in delivering network solutions aimed at upgrading the 5G and 4G LTE networks, and providing connectivity service advancements in the US. Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, said, “The acquisition of TWS will enable us to meet mobile carriers’ growing needs for improving their 4G and 5G networks, and eventually create new opportunities to enhance our service capabilities to our customers. Samsung will continue to drive innovation in communications technology, while providing optimization services for network deployments that accelerate US 5G network expansion.” Under the agreement,…