As more organizations in different industries consider emerging applications for robotics technology, new business models for vendors are also envisioned. Robotics as a service (RaaS) is an elastic concept. It refers to robotics systems providers that in addition to selling products, will now rent or lease their product to customers as a full-service solution.

Though the total market continues to grow, competitive pressure on robotics vendors to maintain profit margins means that they'll have to broaden...

Following a temporary reprieve from President Trump’s ZTE ban which the company estimates cost it $3 billion, the Senate has now voted to reinstate it.

The U.S. Senate vote to reinstate the ban may not make it into law – it first has to clear the House, and then avoid being vetoed by President Trump.

ZTE is one of China’s biggest telecoms companies and became

Fixed wireless trade body WISPA (Wireless Internet Service Providers Association) has called on Ofcom to modernise spectrum auctions.

WISPA believes Ofcom needs to ‘modernise the way it allocates spectrum resources’ because the current approach is outdated and ‘no longer fit for purpose’.

Spectrum allocation has become an even more contentious issue in recent years ahead of the rollout of 5G and IoT services.

David Burns, Chairman of...

The communications service provider (CSP) industry is experiencing significant challenges. Disruptive technologies have given way to an army of streaming service providers, such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple’s iTunes, as well as IoT smart home devices that sell directly to the customer, bypassing CSPs. Offering services that deliver simple and tailored experiences is now vital to remaining relevant and competitive.

The information and its analysis provided through technologies are the driving force...

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has raised its concerns that BT still has too much influence over decisions made by the Openreach national broadband network.

Following years of complaints from rivals that previous Openreach owner BT was prioritising their business in strategic decisions, Ofcom decided to step in last year.

Ofcom and BT reached the decision to keep Openreach under BT’s parent company, but have it run as an independent company in a bid to make its operations fairer to competitors.

In a...

A chairman from Huawei disputes reports suggesting the company has been locked-out from participating in Australia’s 5G network rollout.

Citing senior sources, Australian Financial Review said Huawei is 'all but certain to be excluded from providing equipment' towards Australia’s 5G network. The publication says the nation’s security and defence agencies are 'firmly against' Huawei’s...

A new report from ABI Research and InterDigital has suggested that carriers should embrace new strategies to form their position within the IoT and remain competitive.

“The deployment of open standards-based platforms, solutions, and approaches is the only way to unlock more value faster from IoT markets and, at the same time, allows adopting new business models, opening up new roles for carriers, such as aggregators and orchestrators of IoT ecosystems and market places,” the report...

Digital Catapult has released some interesting results from what its researchers are calling the UK’s first ever 5G landscape report.

5G is predicted to enable US$12.3 trillion (€10.47 trillion) of global economic output by 2035. According to Digital Catapult’s research, the UK is setting itself up well to capitalise on its potential.

Part of its strength comes from the range of relevant and skilled 5G actors in the UK. This includes private and public sector organisations, academics and...

Let’s get one thing straight with regards to Amazon buying a package of Premier League rights: it is, for now, simply a foot in the door. Testing the waters, if you will.

When the major rights were announced in February – Sky and BT Sport securing the primary packages for £4.464 billion – there were two smaller rights packages yet to be resolved. Some believed the packages would be filled by Amazon as part of a testing process. Others were less sure. Whichever, where does this leave...

Following its launch of the world’s first commercial 5G network last month, Ooredoo is debuting a home broadband device.

Qatar-based Ooredoo claims its home broadband device will offer speeds up to 2 Gbps. That represents over 20 times the speed of the company’s fibre broadband.

Waleed Al Sayed, Chief Executive Officer, Ooredoo Qatar, said:

“Ooredoo is ecstatic to announce that last night, we became the first in the world to have a live commercial 5G home broadband device.

SevOne, a network and infrastructure management solutions provider, has launched an SD-WAN Monitoring Solution that aims to increase the operational agility of managed services providers (MSPs) offering multiple, complex network services over their multi-tenant, multi-vendor software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs). The solution is based on the company’s data platform.

The SevOne SD-WAN Monitoring Solution, which will provide initial support for Cisco SD-WAN, delivers MSPs the foundation of...

The CEO of BT, Gavin Patterson, is stepping down after a five-year tenure in the post which has seen the business go through substantial changes.

During his time, Patterson handled the mobile industry-shaking £12.5bn acquisition of the UK’s biggest mobile operator, EE.

Patterson also oversaw the split of the Openreach fibre broadband network from BT into its own company and worked to modernise the company’s IPTV offerings as OTT players like Amazon Prime aim to replace traditional...

T-Mobile has announced its rollout of 600 MHz low-band spectrum has now reached over 900 cities and towns in the United States.

120 cities and towns have been added in T-Mobile’s latest update including New Mexico, Omaha, Nebraska, Maine, Augasta, and Los Alamos.

The operator has named its service ‘Extended Range LTE’ due to low-band spectrum’s characteristics of covering a larger area. In fact, the carrier says its signal carries twice as far from towers and is "four times better...

An overhaul of telecoms laws by the EU has been called a ‘missed opportunity’ by the association which represents Europe's operators.

ETNO (European Telecommunications Network Operators) said the Electronic Communications Code (ECC) “represented a once in a decade chance to simplify and improve the EU rules for the sector in the interest of European citizens and businesses.”

However, “this opportunity has been missed.”

The association believes the ECC...

The saga of 21st Century Fox’s bid to take over Sky may be coming to a close as Culture Secretary Matt Hancock clears the path for a deal on the basis that Sky News is sold to a suitable buyer.

Fox’s £11.7 billion ($14.6 billion) bid was first launched in 2016. The deal was referred to a ‘phase two’ investigation last June by former Culture Secretary Karen Bradley after it was cleared...

There has been a significant evolution in the variety of use cases for mobile Application to Person (A2P) messaging. Historically, A2P was used for alerts and as a billing mechanism and carrier for simple content and services, both for one-off downloads or actions (e.g. voting) and for recurring payments.

The latter use case has declined in the past 5 years, due to a combination of the transition to an app-based economy, largely driven by card billing and by regulatory action -- in markets such as the U.S....

Huawei has taken umbrage at claims it has links to the Chinese government and should be banned from Australian 5G infrastructure.

Last week, Telecoms reported Australian Labor MP Michael Danby called on PM Malcolm Turnbull to ban Chinese telecoms companies from 5G infrastructure. Danby said they are ‘effectively controlled by Beijing’ and named Huawei and ZTE specifically.

John Lord, Chairman of Huawei Australia, told Radio...

All consumer electronics devices eventually reach market saturation, where most of the people that crave the product already have it. After declining by 0.3 percent in 2017, the worldwide smartphone market will shrink again this year.

Smartphone shipments are forecast to drop by 0.2 percent in 2018 to 1.462 billion units, which is down from 1.465 billion in 2017 and 1.469 billion in 2016. However, IDC expects the market to grow by 3 percent annually from 2019 onwards. Worldwide shipments should reach 1.654...

Senators have expressed concern over the accuracy of a map the FCC is using to plan the allocation of over $4 billion in subsidies to improve rural broadband.

Under the Mobile Fund Phase II plans, money will be redirected over the next decade away from where private capital is already being supplied, and instead used to help bring 4G services to Americans in under-served rural areas.

In an op-ed back in February,  FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wrote:

"Right now, the federal government...

The GSMA has sounded a warning to operators: connectivity will only comprise 5% of the total IoT revenue opportunity by 2025, so more revenue streams are needed.

New data from GSMA Intelligence suggests that the global IoT market will be worth $1.1 trillion in revenue by 2025 – this is because the market has shifted from connectivity to platforms, applications and services.

Owing to the growth in the Industrial IoT, there will be more than 25 billion IoT connections (both cellular and non-cellular)...