Comment wire

According to plans for the “digital economy of the Russian Federation”, the government aims to have reliable 5G communication in all the major cities of Russia by 2024.  In line with this plan, five major Russian telecom operators are planning on launching 5G commercially in 2020.

US cable company Comcast has acquired Dutch company Metrological, whose cloud-based application platform integrates over-the-top content into the pay-TV experience.  Comcast’s move highlights the growing opportunity for carriers to create go-to hubs for customers who want all their content collected in one place.

Pay-TV household penetration in Mexico will reach 56.9% by year-end 2019, the second-highest in Latin America with 17.7 percentage points above the Latin America average.

The Polish telecom regulator, UKE, is planning to auction the 3.4-3.8GHz bandwidth frequencies, which are dedicated to the construction of the 5G networks in Poland.

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology is making inroads into the US market over other Chinese rivals who are struggling to gain entry.  OnePlus benefits from a small product line that allows it to streamline its resources to offer better support.

Between October and December 2019 the BBC and ITV will launch their new subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service, BritBox, across the UK.

This year has already seen more than 14 telcos launch commercial 5G services globally, with launches concentrated in the US, Western Europe, developed Asia and the Persian Gulf.

A new privacy regulation similar to Europe’s Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is looming for companies doing business in California, as that state’s Consumer Privacy Act takes effect at the beginning of 2020.

IT vendors are all addicted to the subscription model, but can it survive an economic downturn?

With increased smartphone prices and reduced innovation between device generations, people are holding on to their phones longer.

US telcos are employing a cross-network number verification approach to fight phone scam and robocalling, but the solution is far from a silver bullet.

Pay-TV household penetration in the Americas reached 53.2% at the end of 2018, behind Central & Eastern Europe (71.2%), Asia-Pacific (67.4%), and Western Europe (62.5%), but above the global average, which stood at 55.3% for the same period.

Fixed and cable operators are increasingly delivering 1 Gbps services to residences thanks to new fibre buildouts as well as technologies that can squeeze more capacity out of legacy copper-based solutions.

To meet ever-growing consumer data demands and offer new digital products and services, European telcos are strongly investing in high-speed fibre broadband.

Total mobile subscriptions in Argentina will reach 61.3 million by year-end 2019, and will account for 8.4% of the region’s total mobile subscriptions.

Fixed broadband adoption in Kenya is relatively low, with a 0.54% penetration of the population, despite efforts under the 2013-2017 national broadband strategy.