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Communication / ICT in Americas

  • Submarine cable deployed in Angola to link Africa to South America

    ANGOLA, 2017/09/09 The project of deploying the initial submarine telecommunication cable in the South Atlantic ocean linking Africa to South America has been launched in Angola’s capital Luanda. The launch of the fibre-optic South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) follows months of marine survey that was completed by multinational telecommunications company Angola Cables in April.

  • GE shifts strategy, financial targets for digital business after missteps

    UNITED STATES, 2017/09/06 General Electric Co wants its industrial software business to cut costs and lift profits next year under new chief executive John Flannery, and is considering expanded partnerships and the possible sale of some equity in the unit, according to people familiar with the business. Former chief executive Jeffrey Immelt spent six years and additional than $4 billion transforming 125-year-old GE into a “digital industrial” company. But GE has had technical problems and delays with its software platform, known as Predix, which connects equipment like turbines and elevators to computers that can predict failures and reduce operating costs. This spring, GE called an unusual, two month “time-out” to tackle the Predix problems, which have not been before reported. With fixes in place, GE will presently emphasize sales to existing customers in its energy, aviation and oil-and-gas businesses, and scale back efforts to sell to new customers in other sectors, three senior GE executives told Reuters.

  • Surkus app lets companies pay users to be part of crowd

    UNITED STATES, 2017/08/21 Pretend for a moment that you’re walking through your neighbourhood and notice a line of people wrapped around the block outside a newly opened restaurant. Local food bloggers haven’t written about the venue, so you assume the trendy-looking crowd must be the result of contagious, word-of-mouth buzz. There was a time at the same time as that may have been undoubtedly authentic — at the same time as you could trust that a crowd of people was, in fact, a naturally occurring mass of individuals. But that time may be passing thanks to Surkus, an emerging app that allowed the restaurant to quickly manufacture its ideal crowd and pay the people to stand in place like extras on a movie set. They’ve even been hand-picked by a casting agent of sorts, an algorithmic one that selects each person according to age, location, style and Facebook “likes.”

  • Trinidad and Tobago seeks to leverage broadband in diversification efforts

    TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, 2017/07/01 A national drive is gaining pace in Trinidad and Tobago to prioritise access to data services as an engine for economic increase, part of wider plans to reduce the country’s reliance on hydrocarbons. In late April Maxie Cuffie, the minister of public government and communications, announced that a new broadband strategy targeting universal access to internet services was almost finalised. Speaking at a conference titled “Internet of Things: Smarter Living in the Caribbean”, held in Port of Spain, Cuffie said the potential broadband offered could be compared to that of T&T’s hydrocarbons sector. He voiced his confidence that increased reach and speed, combined with a rise in Wi-Fi-capable devices, could deliver significant ripple effects across the national economy.

  • Telecom News in Brief 25 May 2017

    WORLD, 2017/05/28 Africa: European access - Econet World subsidiary Liquid Telecom said on 15 May that it had established a point of presence (PoP) at Interxion's data centre in Marseille, its initial foothold in mainland Europe. The PoP will reduce roundtrip delays from Africa by up to 20 milliseconds. Interxion's MRS1 data centre in Marseilles is a major connectivity hub for Europe since it opened in 2014. It offers direct access to 13 major international submarine cables, inclunding SEACOM, I-ME-WE and SEA-ME-WE4, providing Liquid Telecom with onwards connectivity to its World PoPs in London, Mombasa and Fujairah. MRS1 provides direct access to the France-IX, NL-ix and DE-CIX Internet exchanges, providing new peering opportunities for Liquid Telecom.

  • The next generation A new wave of mobile technology is on its way, and will bring drastic change

    WORLD, 2016/02/21 THE next is by presently arriving, it is just a question of knowing where to look. On Changshou Road in Shanghai, eagle eyes may spot an odd rectangular object on top of an office block: it is a collection of 128 miniature antennae. Pedestrians in Manhattan can catch a glimpse of apparatus that looks like a video camera on a stand, but jerks around and has a strange, hornlike protrusion where the lens should be. It blasts a narrow beam of radio waves at buildings so they can bounce their way to the receiver. The campus of the University of Surrey in Guildford, England, is dotted with 44 antennae, which form virtual wireless cells that follow a device around. These antennae are vanguards of a new generation of wireless technologies. Although the previous batch, collectively called “fourth generation”, or 4G, is still being rolled out in a lot of nations, the telecoms industry has by presently started working on the next, 5G. On February 12th AT&T, America’s second-major mobile operator, said it would begin testing whether prototype 5G circuitry works indoors, following similar news in September from Verizon, the number one. South Korea wants to have a 5G network up and running at the same time as it hosts the Winter Olympics in 2018; Japan wants the same for the summer games in 2020. At the same time as the industry holds its annual jamboree, Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona this month, 5G will top the schedule.

  • Brazil and China launch sixth CBERS satellite

    CHINA, 2015/12/31 The sixth CBERS (China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite) satellite is scheduled to be launched into space in December 2018, said the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. The announcement of the date came as technical teams from both nations concluded that the CBERS-4A satellite project should proceed to the production phase of the flight models and their subsystems and equipment. On the Brazilian side, a team made up of experts from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB), both linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), assessed whether the satellite project met the requirements set for the CBERS-4A mission.

  • Guyana government to roll out Wi-Fi programme for schools in remote areas

    GUYANA, 2015/11/27 A Wi-Fi programme is being rolled out at secondary schools with Hinterland and remote areas slated to benefit by the end of the initial quarter of 2016. eGovernment Advisor, Floyd Levi said the unit has as well been mandated to provide internet access to all tertiary educational institutes. He said a pilot has by presently been implemented at President’s College to determine the needs and requirements of other schools. “What it does is that it gives them access to the eGovernment network, not just for internet access but for all government applications that we will publish on the network,” he explained.

  • Cyber Attacks Loom as Growing Corporate Credit Risk: Moody's

    WORLD, 2015/11/26 Cyber attacks on the private sector are an increasingly significant risk in corporate credit analysis, U.S. ratings agency Moody's Investors Service said on Monday. The threat of computer hacking varies from sector to sector and remains hard to measure because intrusions often go undetected or are not publicly disclosed, Moody's said. Likening cyber attacks to natural disasters, the agency said the two pose similar challenges in anticipating the duration or severity of problems in calculating ratings impact.

  • FBI ,Probe of 1.2 Bln Stolen Web Credentials

    UNITED STATES, 2015/11/26 A hacker who once advertised having access to user account data for websites like Facebook and Twitter has been linked through a Russian email address to the theft of a record 1.2 billion Internet credentials, the FBI said in court documents. That hacker, known as "mr.grey," was identified based on data from a cyber security firm that announced in August 2014 that it had determined an alleged Russian crime ring was responsible for stealing data from additional than 420,000 websites, the documents said. The papers, made public last week by a federal court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, provide a window into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe of what would all to the major collection of stolen user names and passwords.
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