Industry News

Korean tech giant Samsung decided to get its flagship launch in nice and early this year with three devices to take on the best Apple has to offer. Samsung smartphone announcements are among the most cluttered with hyperbole and general marketing noise. The Galaxy S21 phones apparently empower you to express yourself, which is nice,

Telstra’s 5G network now covers half of the population of Australia, the telco announced on Thursday. Without wishing to detract from the Australian incumbent’s rollout – it is clearly making good progress in 5G – this appears to be yet another case of a telecoms operator’s marketing team pushing a statistic that doesn’t actually mean

5G technology is touted as an innovation platform that will enhance our connected world. To deliver on this promise, 5G will demand the network supporting it to be as flexible as the services running on it. The following high-level 5G uses cases are well understood and documented by the wireless industry: • Enhanced Mobile Broadband

Nuvia was founded by former Apple chip engineers and it’s in legal dispute with one of them, so Apple must be especially delighted it’s being acquired by Qualcomm. The acquisition of Nuvia by Qualcomm for $1.4 billion is primarily about the US chip giant’s continuing diversification away from the smartphone. One of the main drivers

Korean tech giant LG is the first major vendor to promise a smartphone with a rollable screen. Flexible screens have been the holy grail of smartphone innovation since the current form factor became ubiquitous over a decade ago. The past couple of years have seen the emergence of the foldy phone, but they don’t seem

A former employee of Japanese operator group Softbank, who now works for rival MNO Rakuten Mobile, has been arrested on suspicion of violating unfair competition prevention law. So says an announcement from SoftBank, which is currently only published in Japanese, so things may have been lost in Google translation. It says that, while the employee

Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece Jade Brooks, Associate in the Dispute Resolution team at Blaser Mills Law, takes us through the legislation governing the relationship between operators and landowners. Since 1984, the relationship between electronic communications network operators and site providers

This article is sponsored by Red Hat and Intel Operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) are being rewritten or refactored to cloud-native, microservices-based applications capable of running on hybrid cloud and multicloud computing and storage infrastructure. MYCOM OSI is leading the way in moving the much ‘stickier’ mission-critical OSS functions, involving data-intensive,

Small and medium sized businesses are being especially hard hit by the continual lockdowns, so Vodafone UK is smart to push the boat out for them. The press release talks of giving small businesses free broadband for 2021. While this is technically true, it only comes if they commit to a three year broadband contract,

Comcast Cable consumer president Dana Strong (pictured) will take over as the new group chief executive of Sky this year after longtime holder of the post Jeremy Darroch tendered his resignation. US-based Strong has a track record in the industry that matches her name. She has been in her current role at Sky’s parent company

Swiss IoT logistics company U-blox wants to merge with UK company Telit Communications, which does much the same, but the latter doesn’t like the terms of the deal. U-blox made its preliminary move on 20 November and they had to extend the process in mid-December because the two parties had yet to come to an

Openreach has signed up testing and analytics firm Exfo to help with its roll out of full fibre networks in the UK. In a statement published this week Exfo said it has won a contract to supply to supply optical test heads and test access switching to the UK telco. Essentially, the deal should enable

The UK Public Accounts Committee reckons even the revised gigabit broadband rollout target will be missed. Welcome to the party, pal. A major flaw in the democratic process is that candidates will promise almost anything in order to get elected and Boris Johnson was certainly no exception when he was bidding to become leader of

The legal protections enjoyed by social media companies need updating, but that responsibility will fall to the Democrat-controlled FCC. A new administration means a new FCC Chairman. The incumbent, Ajit Pai (pictured), belatedly decided last October to push for reform of the law – Section 230 – that protects internet platforms from liability for the

Ericsson has poached longtime BT executive Katherine Ainley to head up its UK and Ireland business, whose current focus is squarely on the rollout of 5G networks. Ainley will join the Swedish vendor next month, after leaving her current role as Managing Director, Ventures, at BT, a unit that focuses on small businesses and start-ups.

The storming of the Capitol by a few nutters in fancy dress seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back regarding Trump’s relationship with social media. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in, of course, a Facebook post, that it is banning the US President from Facebook and Instagram indefinitely. Meanwhile Twitter has

Success is based on your ability to react to market changes. And as more versatile disruptors enter your market, the less time you have to make changes and release new services. To stay relevant, you need the ability to quickly plan and execute changes to software systems. Agile integration combines three powerful architectural capabilities —

This is just getting silly now. In the space of a few days the New York Stock exchange has reversed its position three times on the matter of listing China Mobile, Telecom and Unicom. On Monday we reported that the NYSE is delisting the three Chinese telcos in order to conform to some huffing and

Following the UK decision to close schools once more there have been calls for UK telcos to stop charging for data to ensure poor kids have access to remote learning. Since children appear to be barely affected by the coronavirus, which is having its inevitable winter spike, it’s hard to see what good closing schools

Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf is calling it a day in June and will be succeeded by the man so seems to be already running the company anyway. For as long as this hack has been covering Qualcomm – around 13 years – Cristiano Amon (right) was Qualcomm’s most trusted spokesperson. There have been others, but

Operator group Ooredoo, which has operations across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, has gone big on Ericsson for its 5G rollout. For some reason Ericsson’s comms people feel the need to label these deals as strategic, as opposed to tactical or ad hoc. It’s presumably corporate speak for ‘big’ and in this

Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece Christopher Lycett, Portfolio Manager for the MVNOs Series sat down with Hamish Cummins, Head of Pre-Sales at MDS Global to discuss the market opportunities for MVNOs in 2021 and beyond. Does 5G pose a real opportunity for MVNOs?

SMIC has been formally added to the Entity List by the US Commerce Department, hitting the Chinese chipmaker’s access to American technology and equipment. The Commerce Department announced that it had added 77 new names to the Entity List. Sixty-one of the new additions were from China, the rest from Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hong Kong,

UK-based Vodafone is prepared to pay up to €2.1 billion to end a long-running legal dispute with Kabel Deutschland Group’s (KDG’s) minority shareholders. The company disclosed on Tuesday that it has launched a €103 per share tender offer for the outstanding 23.2 percent of the cableco that it doesn’t already own. So far, shareholders representing

Observers and practitioners take it on the chin to predict what the telecoms industry may look like in the coming year. A piece of witticism goes something like this:  It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. There are slightly different ways to put across the idea, which has been variably attributed to

China’s competition watchdog is investigating the world’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba on accusations of monopoly behaviours towards merchants. In a terse statement released by Xinhua, the state news agency and one of China’s major propaganda outlets, the State Administration for Market Regulation said it has started an investigation into Alibaba Group after receiving complaints against

By the final round of bidding of the 3.7GHz spectrum this year, American operators have collectively committed $70 billion. The auction will resume after the new year. FCC’s Auction 107, opened on 8 December, will offer 280 megahertz of spectrum in the 3.7 – 3.98 GHz band, popularly referred to as C-band (which technically covers

The most popular stories on Telecoms.com show what have caught the industry professionals’ imagination this year. Plus an editor’s note. Nearly 50 years ago, John and Yoko asked: So this is Christmas. And what have you done? One thing many of you have definitely done this year is to spend a considerable amount of time

Emulating its strategy in France, the latest entrant to Italy’s 5G market undercuts its competitors with a €9.99 per month offer. Iliad is at it again, this time in Italy. A week after the group’s French business, operating under the “Free Mobile” brand, launched 5G in France, Iliad Italia announced that it is switching on

The Federal Trade Commission is asking Nvidia to submit more documents as part of its preparation for the competition investigation into the chipmaker’s $40 billion takeover of Arm. First reported by The Telegraph (paywall in place), the Federal Trade Commission, America’s competition watchdog, has sent out a so-called “second request” to Nvidia, asking the latter