As sanctions bite, Russia’s MTS begins to discount cell phones MTS, Russia’s largest operator, reported a 76.2 % year-on-year drop in Q1 net profit, blaming the results largely on rising interest rates caused by Western sanctions. Russia boosted local interest rates to 20% in the early days of the conflict before lowering them twice, leaving rates around 14% today. MTS has resorted to selling used and discounted smartphones, and is planning to sell its tower assets, in keeping with the current trend of monetizing passive assets located throughout Europe and beyond. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/c65t43kb Verizon warns of record rise in ransomware According to Verizon Business, the number of ransomware attacks on enterprises has increased by 13% year-on-year, resulting in a rise exceeding that of the previous five years combined. Ransomware was involved in some manner in one-quarter of the cases investigated, with desktop-sharing software and email being the two…
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…
The highly anticipated DIDWW telephony museum is now open to the general public in the Northern European city of Siauliai, Lithuania. The region’s premiere telephony museum is located in a restored cultural heritage building, a former treasury house (built in 1907-1908), and the project was made possible with the generous support of Lina Zaboras, CEO of DIDWW. Being passionate about telephone communications and guided by a strong vision to present the history of telephony to the general public, DIDWW has cherished the idea of a museum for many years, and this goal has finally come to fruition. Having assembled an extensive collection of exhibits and other artifacts related to the history of telephony in Lithuania and the world, DIDWW has opened this unique museum, featuring innovative, educational and historical exhibits. The museum’s collection is comprised of more than 200 pieces, reflecting over 200 years of telephony history. The…