Today’s Industry News Roundup: Oracle Telefonica It plans a third cloud region for the Spanish capital. China celebrates the fifth anniversary of 5G. Russian cybersecurity firms are being barred from the US.And much more more!
Oracle The company plans to invest more than $1 billion to open its third cloud region in Madrid to meet the rapidly growing demand for AI and cloud services in Spain. The tech giant said the cloud region will “enable Oracle customers and partners across all industries, including Spain’s leading financial services sector, to migrate their mission-critical workloads from their data centers to the cloud in Spain.” Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is helping the communications giant comply with regulations such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the European Outsourcing Guidelines (EBA, EIOPA, ESMA).” Telefonica,for a long time Oracle Cloud Services Partnerswill be the host partner for the new cloud region. “Our partnership with Oracle has been fruitful for decades, and combining the best capabilities of both companies has strengthened our market position,” said Sergio Sanchez, director of operations, network and IT at Telefónica Spain. “On the one hand, we continue to migrate parts of our mission-critical infrastructure to Oracle’s cloud to deliver innovative products and services faster to our customers around the world. On the other hand, this is our third cloud region that we trust as a host partner, once again confirming our position as a leader in the data center industry,” Sanchez added. Oracle is also offering another cloud region. EU Sovereign Cloud The vendor said it will set up one region in Madrid “to help public and private sector customers with sensitive, regulated or regionally strategic data and applications migrate to the cloud,” adding that “Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud in Madrid is operated by EU-based personnel and supports workloads that fall under EU guidelines and sovereignty and data privacy requirements.” read more.
This month marks five years since the launch of 5G mobile networks and commercial 5G services in China. In June 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), a powerful agency of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), issued the first 5G commercial licenses to China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Broadnet. Since then, the technology and its availability have spread with astonishing speed, so much so that 5G has clearly become “part of people’s daily lives and work” and has “revolutionized a wide range of industries,” according to official statistics. This report From a Chinese state-run news site: China.org.cndescribes itself as “the authorized, reliable source of information on what is happening in China.” Operating under the umbrella of the State Council Information Office and therefore ultimately under the control of the Politburo, the 5G report clearly has a political bent, but that being said, some of the statistics provided are surprising. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s figures on the 5G sector at the end of April this year (2024), 3.75 million 5G base stations have been installed across the country, accounting for 31.7% of the total number of mobile base stations nationwide. Furthermore, the number of “5G subscription mobile phones” in China has reached 889 million (many 5G service packages are purchased in China in areas where the service is not yet available), accounting for 50.6% of all mobile phones in use in China. As the world moves towards the utopia of the “Internet of Everything,” China is also fully embracing 5G-Advanced (5G-A). Furthermore, 5G-A will be “integrated with cloud computing, big data, and AI,” the report noted. Moreover, China Mobile has “already launched the world’s first 5G-A commercial plan, expanding to more than 300 cities nationwide, laying the foundation for the world’s most extensive commercial 5G-A network. On the basis of 5G, China has also begun research and development of 6G technology.” Of course it does. The report also claims that since the commercial launch of 5G, the technology has “directly generated approximately 5.6 trillion yuan (CYN) (US$787.62 billion) of total economic output, and indirectly boosted economic output by 14 trillion yuan (US$1.97 trillion),” a huge but unfounded figure. The report then ventures into the overtly political realm, claiming that 5G has “enhanced the competitiveness of Chinese industry, but China’s progress has also had a major impact on a global scale. Currently, China’s 5G essential standards patent claims account for 42% of the global total.” These figures “highlight China’s leading position in global 5G applications,” showing that China is “a pioneer not only in technology development but also in its application.” That’s why “countries that try to restrict the use of 5G products manufactured by tech giant Huawei and other Chinese companies or block chip trade with China are actually stifling the growth of their own domestic telecommunications technology. This is clearly not a positive approach.” That’s one way of putting it, but it’s probably not a view shared by the United States. The report concludes: “China’s 5G achievements over the past five years show how important it is to reframe the narrative about Huawei and other Chinese 5G developers and see them as potential collaborators. ‘Taking measures targeted at these entities or pressuring or coercing other countries to do so is a misguided approach that misses the mark,’ they would say. And that’s exactly right. Happy Birthday!
Put this one in the “I can’t believe it took this long” category…The Biden administration has applied a law passed during President Donald Trump’s presidency to ban the sale in the United States of antivirus software and cybersecurity products made by Moscow, Russia-based Kaspersky Lab Group. Release a statement In a report released by the US Bureau of Commerce and Industry (BIT) on June 20, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the report found that Kaspersky Lab’s continued operations in the US pose a national security risk that “cannot be addressed by mitigation measures short of a blanket ban” because the Kremlin has “direct influence” over the company. Individual users and businesses who use Kaspersky Lab software are “strongly encouraged to migrate to a new vendor as soon as possible.” The deadline for migration is September 29, but the blanket ban on the import or sale of Kaspersky Lab products will go into effect on July 20. Raimondo seconded her argument, adding, “Russia has repeatedly demonstrated its ability and intent to use Russian companies, like Kaspersky Lab, to collect and weaponize sensitive US information. We will continue to take all possible measures to protect US national security and the American people.” The decision to suspend Kaspersky Lab’s activities in the US follows an earlier decision to clip the company’s wings. The first was made by the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, which ordered all federal agencies to stop using Kaspersky Lab products and remove them from all networks. The second was issued in 2018 under provisions of the US National Defense Authorization Act, banning the use of Kaspersky Lab software and other of the company’s products by any agency or person in the federal government. The third was issued in March 2022 by the US communications regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), adding Kaspersky Lab to the “list of communications equipment and services that pose a threat to national security.” There is history and intent there, and the only surprise is that the new announcement was waited so long. In response, Kaspersky Lab issued its own statement, indicating its intention to utilize “all legally available options” to challenge the ban (which is essentially non-existent), and categorically denying that its products, services, or actions have never and do not threaten the security of US networks or devices. Kaspersky Lab has a presence in 31 countries and has customers in around 200 countries and territories. The company is believed to provide cybersecurity and antivirus products and services to 400 million users and 270,000 corporate customers worldwide. It is unclear how many of those companies are in the United States.
International communications platform operator Syniverse We have begun offering a global service to assist mobile operators in implementing interconnection agreements and conducting test services (including voice over LTE). [VoLTE] Mobile operators are now required to employ techniques such as roaming testing to achieve compliance with key roaming standards. Mobile operators around the world are “decommissioning their 2G and 3G networks to reclaim some of their radio spectrum and avoid spending resources on costly maintenance,” Syniverse said. This announcement“But before they shut down these networks, operators need to fully support VoLTE services so that subscribers can stay connected while roaming. For roaming sessions to happen, operators need to reach agreements with roaming partners and complete fully defined VoLTE roaming tests to ensure that calls are handed over to the new technology when users move through areas without 2G or 3G service.” And with around 1,200 mobile operators worldwide, this is quite a task. “Launching services with roaming partners will consume time and resources that operators may not have,” John Wick (no, not) pointed out. that “For VoLTE roaming in particular, testing expertise can be difficult to come by and extensive troubleshooting may be required to pass testing,” said John McClellan, chief product officer at Syniverse. “Fortunately, we’ve demonstrated that we can accelerate the process, having completed over 387 launches with roaming partners, achieving final commercial launch status in two to four weeks instead of six months. That’s why operators around the world turn to Syniverse to support their roaming services.”
– Telecom TV Staff
