Lebanon has decided to backtrack on a policy that would have resulted in a daily charge to users wanting to make voice calls over the internet.

The plan was to charge 20 cents per day for calls made over the web; including using services like WhatsApp and FaceTime Audio.

While it's a relatively small daily charge, Lebanon expected it to result in an extra $200 million per year for the cash-strapped government.

Lebanon recently declared an "economic emergency" and is currently in the process of...

Telecoms equipment maker Ericsson has surpassed quarterly earnings expectations and increased its market forecast for 2019 and sales target for 2020, owing to a quicker increase in demand for superfast 5G networks. 

Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm, said, “We see a much faster pace of introduction of 5G than expected,” citing particular strength in the US and South Korea. Shares of the company jumped as much as 7.4% to a three month high of SEK 89.94, pulling up Nokia’s shares in their...

SpaceX is doubling-down on its orbital broadband project and has filed paperwork with the ITU to launch 30,000 more Starlink satellites.

The ITU (International Telecommunication Union) is a global body which governs the allocation of international bandwidth. Any launch requires the ITU's permission to ensure fair, safe, and responsible satellite deployments.

SpaceX already has permission for 12,000 satellites to be launched. If the request for further launches is granted, a constellation of 42,000...

Qualcomm has taken the opportunity of its 5G Summit to make a plethora of announcements around next-generation architectures and partnerships.

The company announced that it is developing its first cellular chip optimised and certified for Microsoft’s Azure Sphere IoT operating system. The chipset will be preconfigured with the Azure Sphere platform, comprise of hardware-level security, and will automatically connect to Azure...

Huawei SVP and global cybersecurity officer John Suffolk claims the company is receiving one million cyberattack attempts every day.

Speaking to Japanese press outlet The Mainichi, Suffolk says the majority of attacks focus on stealing intellectual property. Huawei’s leadership in many areas makes it a clear target for such IP theft attempts.

The attacks may increase given Huawei’s bans in many countries, providing a gap for rivals with similar technology to...

Sunrise and Huawei have reached a record download speed of 3.67Gbps by using multiple 5G-enabled smartphones in one 5G cell in Zürich. This speed was achieved during a testing that was performed on C-Band 100MHz bandwidth, which was compatible to 3GPP standards.

Earlier, a single user smartphone speed was recorded up to 2Gbps.

Sunrise is the first telecommunication company in...

Wireless communications technology continues to transform the telecom landscape. Projected growth across the smart home, wearables, beacons, healthcare, smart cities, automotive, and commercial building automation, will help accelerate the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth share of device shipments.

According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, Internet of Things (IoT) end markets will represent 31% of total Bluetooth and 27% of Wi-Fi device shipments in 2024 - that's up from 13% and...

Research from uSwitch suggests Britain’s rural connectivity problems will not be solved by 5G connectivity.

The research found a third of adult smartphone users still have trouble connecting to 4G at least once a week. As shown in the chart below by OpenSignal, every region of the UK still has 4G availability issues with the South West suffering most:

Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at...

A piece of legislation called the CLOUD Act has been the root of much debate in the past few days over its privacy implications.

The CLOUD Act requires social media services like Facebook to hand over private messages sent using communications networks. Previous attempts by Western governments to snoop on private conversations have been met with backlash by citizens.

Under former UK PM Theresa May’s government, a proposal was made that encrypted communications must be made accessible by...

Huawei has unveiled what it described as an industry-first fully containerised 5G core network at the 5G Core Summit in Madrid.

The network aims to apply container technology to all network functions (NFs) to make network deployment more agile and provide more rapid service rollout, which helps carriers empower new businesses and operations across industries and digitally transform them.

During the Conservative Party Conference, Chancellor Sajid Javid pledged £5 billion for gigabit broadband in every home by 2025.

Standing on the steps of Downing Street following his election in July, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made the rollout of gigabit broadband one of his key pledges. The chancellor has now committed public money to help achieve Johnson’s pledge.

"We are setting out plans to invest £5bn to support the rollout of full-fibre, 5G and other gigabit-capable networks to...

A report analysing the costs involved with removing Chinese telecoms equipment in Europe has trashed concerns it will be a lot more than in the US.

The US has just pledged $1 billion for rural mobile networks to replace Chinese telecoms equipment in the country. European nations are still debating whether to follow the US’ lead, but concerns about the cost are a factor.

Earlier this year, Huawei funded an analysis which calculated the cost of removing Chinese telecoms...

South Korean telecom firm KT has entered into roaming agreements with Italy’s TIM, Switzerland’s Sunrise, and Finland’s Elisa, which would allow the company’s 5G subscribers to use the 5G networks provided by the three European operators.

KT, which has standing agreements with operators in 185 countries for 3G and LTE roaming, is now planning to extend those contracts to 5G as soon as 5G services go live in those countries. Before signing the agreements with the three European...

Satellite broadband provider Inmarsat is launching its new “gold standard” GX Aviation in-flight WiFi on AirAsia planes.

AirAsia will benefit from the world’s first and only global broadband network. Passengers will be offered a free trial on equipped aircraft until the end of this month.

GX Aviation integrates with AirAsia’s entertainment and e-commerce platform to provide passengers with access to a variety of free entertainment, music, games, news and shopping using their personal...

AT&T has signed roaming agreements with Canadian operators, including Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, and Telus, to support them in their endeavour towards the Internet of Things (IoT).

The American telco would provide Bell, Rogers, and Telus access to its LTE-M network across the US. As part of the mutual agreement, AT&T customers would be able to roam on these Canadian carriers’ national LTE-M networks in...

Huawei believes India must focus on allocating contiguous blocks of cost-effective 5G spectrum for a successful rollout.

Executives from Huawei made the comments during the company’s Connect event in Shanghai. Ken Hu, deputy chairman of Huawei, noted the allocation of spectrum as being among India’s current biggest challenges when it comes to 5G.

“We hope that spectrum resources can be allocated more efficiently. It’s very important to have contiguous resources released to carriers in...

Research conducted by Carphone Warehouse has led to The Connectivity Index, a ranking of the world’s 34 most connected countries.

The index takes into consideration things such as broadband access and mobile speeds, but also social and political factors.

Here are the factors Carphone Warehouse took into account when creating their index:

• Information: number of 5G deployments, number of internet hosts, mobile speeds and electricity production.

• Movement: number of air passengers, number of tourists, rail infrastructure quality and road...

Ericsson and Qualcomm have successfully completed a new 5G milestone that was conducted in the Swedish telecom firm’s lab.

During this testing period, commercial Ericsson Radio System base stations were used, along with Ericsson standalone New Radio (NR) software and Ericsson’s 5G Cloud Core solution with a mobile smartphone form-factor test device that was powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF...

The global automotive industry continues to explore ways to integrate the Internet of Things (IoT) technology into vehicles during the manufacturing process. Connected car capabilities provide the foundation for third parties to offer innovative new telematics-related applications.

According to the latest worldwide market study by Berg Insight, the number of active aftermarket car telematics units will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.6 percent from 58.7 million at the end of 2018 to 150...

In the past, it would have been odd to suggest that communication service providers (CSPs) should model their operations on an eCommerce retailer like Amazon. One might initially believe that the two don’t have much in common, yet today’s customers expect an experience as seamlessness and efficient as that of Amazon from all companies.

With the dawn of 5G and the automation it enables, CSPs can finally deliver it. In other...