Telstra and OneWeb collaborate to deliver a massive low Earth orbit (LEO) backhaul rollout, expanding connectivity for remote mobile customers in Australia and extending coverage to hard-to-reach regions.
More than 130,000 Telstra customers’ personal information has been made public online. According to the company, there was no cyberattack involved; rather, the issue was caused by a “misalignment of databases” as stated by Telstra. The incident is the most recent in a string of massive, unauthorized exposures of personal information in Australia. The telecom giant confessed that the information, which included the names, addresses and phone numbers of customers who had requested that their information be kept confidential, had been published on the White Pages and Directory Assistance Services websites. Telstra’s routine auditing procedures revealed the data leak. Following the finding, Telstra began contacting affected consumers and is providing free identity theft protection services. The corporation claims to have since deleted the consumer information from public view. “Protecting our customers’ privacy is absolutely paramount, and for the customers impacted we understand this is an unacceptable breach…
Telstra to decommission over 160 5G sites More than 160 5G mobile infrastructure facilities will be shut down by Telstra. The local competition authority expressed worries that the installations were set up to obstruct and stop Optus, a competitor carrier, from deploying 5G services. Months after The Australian Financial Review revealed that Optus had complained to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about the sites, Telstra has accepted an enforceable promise to deregister them. Using the mostly untapped 900 MHz range, Telstra is said to have registered 315 new sites in January, mainly in major cities and rural regions. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/2pnvk38t KDDI to compensate consumers for network outages A month ago, KDDI had its worst network outage ever, rendering voice and internet services unavailable to millions of Japanese consumers for nearly the entire weekend. KDDI statistics show that the outage prevented more than 7.65 million users from…
Cellcom and Voipfuture expanding their cooperation In addition to the currently provided monitored business voice services, Voipfuture, a supplier of a unique carrier-grade, dual-visibility voice service quality monitoring and analytics solution, stated that it has completed the deployment of its Qrystal monitoring system in Cellcom’s IMS core. Since 2018, Cellcom has been using Qrystal to monitor enterprise customer voice services and the organization will now use Qrystal to ensure voice quality for both individual and business users. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/5b2zt6jf Curious Thing to scale its solution with Vonage Curious Thing, an Australian voice-based conversational AI provider, is adopting the Vonage Communication Platform to grow its products and improve customer experiences. This will be achieved through automated and AI-enabled proactive client interaction according to Vonage, a worldwide supplier of cloud communications. Curious Thing users may now connect at scale, across regions and channels, using a mix of Curious Thing and…
Digicel Group Holdings Limited has announced the sale of Digicel Pacific Limited (DPL) to a subsidiary of the Australian telecommunications firm Telstra Corporation Limited. Digicel Pacific is valued at up to $ 1.85 billion, subject to usual post-closing adjustments and a three-year, $250 million earn-out. Digicel Pacific has operations in six South Pacific countries: Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga and Nauru. The Digicel brand will remain unchanged in these six markets, and the current Digicel Pacific management team will remain with the company and continue to lead it in providing superior telecommunications services to Digicel Pacific’s loyal clients across the South Pacific. For the past 15 years, Digicel Pacific has been a strong and expanding telecommunications company in the Pacific. Telstra’s takeover communicates a significant message about the company’s prospects as well as the larger commercial confidence in the Pacific region’s growth. Denis O’Brien, Digicel…
Google to use its own chips for the new Pixel phones Google has announced that its next Pixel smartphones will be available in the fall, powered for the first time by an in-house developed chip. Tensor, Google’s first mobile system on a chip, will be used in the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. Tensor is a single chip that integrates a set of processing units and enhances computational capacity in an energy-efficient manner. Google has not revealed who will manufacture the chips for the new Pixel phones. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/xsprb7ap Lumen to sell its ILEC assets Lumen Technologies announced that it has entered an agreement to sell its Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC) business in 20 states, including its consumers, small business, wholesale, and mostly copper-served enterprise customers and assets, to funds managed by Apollo Global Management affiliates for $7.5 billion. Lumen will maintain its ILEC assets in…
Softbank invests $700m in Sinch The Japanese operator Softbank has invested heavily in the Swedish software company Sinch. According to Sinch, it will use the profit to finance further mergers and acquisitions. The Japanese company acquired a portion of the newly issued shares in Sinch, as well as some existing ones, from various major shareholders. The total share expenditure amounted to approximately $698.5 million. Sinch said that it will use the proceeds from the shares primarily for beef up its financial flexibility for undertaking new acquisitions. Sinch announced two takeovers, one of Brazil’s CRM Wavy for $119 million, as well as the SAP Digital Interconnect deal, which was a cash and debt-free transaction valued at approximately $270 million. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/y5wgysrb Telefónica recently deployed nodes in Seville, Spain Telefónica has for the third time deployed edge nodes in its home country of Spain, recently launching this infrastructure in Seville.…
Telstra, an Australian telecommunications and technology company that offers a full range of communications services, has officially announced the launch of its My Telstra app. The new and improved application provides an easier way to manage Telstra accounts and services, find information, shop and redeem Telstra Plus points. With My Telstra, customers will gain convenient access to billing and technical support, as well as manage their services and payments, get help, check for outages and track orders from their home. In a statement, Telstra said that its app “has been designed with accessibility at the forefront” and is built to be compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. The company plans to update the existing Telstra 24×7 app so users can expect to see it on their phone soon. Customers who have auto-update enabled do not need to take any action – their current Telstra 24×7 app will update to…
The World Economic Forum Centre for Cybersecurity, in cooperation with leading Internet service providers (ISPs) and multilateral organizations around the world, have developed new Internet security principles to help protect up to one billion consumers in 180 countries. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2019, the impact of indiscriminate malicious activity on the Internet can be significant and will carry an estimated global price tag of USD 6 trillion in 2021. The new cybersecurity principles have been endorsed by BT, Deutsche Telekom, Du Telecom, Global Cyber Alliance, Korea Telecom, Proximus, Saudi Telecom, Europol, Singtel, Telstra, Internet Society, and the ITU. It is stated that ISPs are a critical community that have the ability to protect consumers against cybersecurity threats and therefore have a significantly positive impact on their safety. Amy Jordan, Delivery Lead, Platform for Shaping the Future of Cybersecurity and Digital Trust, World Economic Forum, said, “Cybersecurity…
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…